Letting the world's overpopulation come in for a soft landing is not inherently fascistic and would not require any kind of genocide. (To the contrary, the actual fascism of 20th-century Europe embraced forced pro-population programs, for the "right" sort of people, of course; and in the extreme case of Romania [Stalinist or neo-fascist?], the dictators decreed illegal all forms birth control, with horrifying consequences.)

Birth rates are already falling all over the world with no encouragement from governments or any organized bodies, just individuals and couples deciding on their own how many kids they want to have. All it will take is for the global birth rate to fall moderately below the population's natural replacement rate (which I believe is 2.1 children per woman, men being irrelevant here...) for the overall population to decrease. A decrease of 1 percent per year, if sustained long enough (230 years), will reduce population to 10% of its current level.

I put this question to an old high school acquaintance who is generally very conservative (e.g. still thinks history will vindicate Bush and his Iraq war decisions) back in February. This was his reply:

"1) He voted against the Bush tax cuts. 2) He was in favor of the more moderate 'amnesty' approach to the immigration problem. 3) He came out strongly against waterboarding as 'torture.' 4) He joined the group of 14 that allowed the Dems to keep blocking federal judge nominees when the conservatives wanted to force a showdown on the 60 vote rule. 5) For the conservatives, McCain-Feingold is an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment that only benefits the Dems.

"In short, his 'maverick' status and 'working across the aisles' has generally meant he adopted the Democratic position. Only on the war has his record been strongly conservative. I'm not agreeing with all the conservative positions, just stating what they are with respect to McCain."

No comment, except to note that a startling number of journalists and pundits in our "liberal" press agree with the "conservative" take on these matters, e.g. that tax cuts during a time of war are perfectly prudent and that it is perfectly reasonable for the government to torture people whenever it feels our "national interest" is at stake. This rightward trend in our punditocracy means that McCains hard-conservative stands on abortion and economic justice (among other important issues ignored by the press these days) are seen by many journalists as mainstream, not conservative at all.

... Bill Kristol has jumped the shark.

(PS, anyone who thinks that Kristol and his pundit buddies will politely refrain from dumping the same bilge on the ultimate Democratic nominee, regardless of who s/he is and what s/he has or has not said, is not only smoking but inhaling...)

Obviously.

Personally, I doubt I'll ever buy a Mac for myself -- I'm far too comfortable with the PC menus and find everything about Macs counter-intuitive and frustrating (hey, it takes all kinds...). But, getting back to the point of the article: Farhad has an unmistakable point here. PCs take way, way, way too long to start up and shut down.

The worst aspect of starting up (this is on an older PC, no doubt too slow for you whizkids, with corporate virus protection): pressing the "on" button causes the gears to grind for about two-to-five minutes, at which point the dam' thing FINALLY asks for your password -- and then, after you log on -- it goes back to grinding away for another two-to-five minutes. Why can't it ask for the password either at the start or at the end of the endless process? Then I could go away and have breakfast while it's slowly firing up. But no, I have to wait, wait, wait until it's good and ready to ask for the mystery word.

And about shutting down: sure, you could tell it to shut down and then leave -- and sometimes I do that -- and sometimes I come back to work on Monday and find that some glitch prevented it from shutting down, and the stupid question "Quit process now?" has been sitting on the screen all weekend long. Lovely.

On another matter -- congrats to Farhad for the glowing mini-review in today's Nicholas Kristoff column in the NYT. "... Farhad Manjoo writes in his terrific new book, 'True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.' It's the best political book so far this year." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/opinion/17kristof.html

If airlines insist on cramming more and more seats into each plane, the least they can do is to find a way from keeping the guy in front of me from slamming his seat back into my knees. Sorry, I am just a tad over 6 feet, and for me the lack of legroom is worse than any of the other infernal torments of coach. Lumbar support? You can always bring your own, or stuff a sweater into the gaping hole where support ought to be. Footrests? You gotta be kidding -- with that guy's seat in my lap, I couldn't lift my feet even if I had the best footrest in the world.

What I need is a way to keep the seats from coming back. In an ideal world, all seats would move down and forward to recline (reduce your own dam' legroom, buster), but that will cost the airlines money to implement and I'm not holding my breath. Just de-activate all the recline buttons and I'll be happy. Maybe separate "reclining" and "non-reclining" sections would do, harkening back to the old days of smoking and non-smoking.

Thanks -- your posts are even better than the cartoon. Much appreciated.

Joan,

I'm sure your article fulfills some vital public service, though for some reason I'm having a hard time discerning what that might be.