News flash, but men are genetically programmed to want to sleep with women of child bearing age and are predisposed to get tired of any woman, no matter how beautiful or amazing, after a certain amount of time. (Women have their own tactics as well.) This programming has different strengths in different people. Some people happily stay married faithfully while others can't seem to manage it at all.

Recognizing one's programming and why one has it is important in living a good life. We have powerful instincts, but we also have some level of free will.

The problem with the programming is that it often ends with the guy alone, too old to get a young woman anymore, and with a lot of kids who won't talk to him. This results in many terrible years for the lonely old guy, but this programming is meant to produce as many offspring as possible, not make him or anyone else happy. Reading sad stories written by old writers reminiscing about their youth is a good warning as to the fate of people who let the programming run their lives.

The important thing for people to remember is that infatuation is temporary, the new crush will fade in a few months, and then the same problem will begin again.

Ummm, because it is still better than the alternative? We can stop aging any time we want.

The same plot made it further in 1994, and the authorities foiled the plot without having to confiscate people's toothpaste at every airport. In that case it WAS real terrorists who were making real bombs. Funny how the new people, who had been watched for months and didn't have any bombs or plane tickets, suddenly became an imminent threat right after Lieberman loses a primary with anti-war sentiment being a factor in his loss.

This whole thing is propaganda. If they had actual evidence of an imminent plot they would have actually charged someone in England by now. Nobody in England has even been formally accused of a crime.

The security measures are ment to frighten people and make them fear terrorists. At first I was skeptical, but after this much time without anyone being accused of a crime in England, this is looking more and more like a trumped-up mess without real substance. Keep in mind the brits are the ones who murdred an innocent Brazillian man execution-style in public because the police thought he was an Arab.

Very smart career-oriented women set off some primal fears in many men. I don't know what causes it but it is built in to their brains, like how cats will swat at jiggling string. I don't know if this is the result of evolutionary biology or some early cultural indoctrination, but some people have these feelings buried deep inside.

When I was engaged to my wife, a beautiful bi-lingual woman who already had her Ph.D. and who studied science at Harvard and Colombia, I was warned in dire tones by a fellow grad student "You DO understand that she could wind up making more money than you!" The person said this in the same voice one would reserve for a statement like "she has leprosy" or "she is a serial killer." This didn't dissuade me. Five years later we have great jobs, a strong marriage, and a second child on the way.

I *have* seen from observing other paired scientists and professionals that if the husband is not willing to share housework and child-rearing duties with a career woman you will have a veeery hard time getting more than one child out of a career woman. If a guy is lazy his genes would be steering him in the right direction (as far as they are concerned) in seeking out a stay-at-home wife.

The one working wife who I know did cheat on her husband worked at a restaurant for less than minimum wage. She and some of the waiters got a bit too friendly.

Red staters are people who can't tell the difference between a war hero and an old-money New England blue blood who has a pretend Texas accent. If Bush and company don't take advantage of them someone else will. As the red states and these down home people are the ones hurt the most by Bush's policies, one has to wonder if the current administration has any respect for the people who vote for them.

I can't listen to music that skips. iPods skip. They shouldn't have gotten out of beta testing like that, but they have been generating hits to Apple "How to troubleshoot skipping" web pages for five years now.

The new hard-drive free iPods claim to be skip free, but one has to wonder why they got so famous based on a buggy product that does.

This type of thing doesn't impress me much. If these people had tried to trick a hundred people and only five fell for it, they would only show the five who fell for it to make themselves look successful. Also, you don't know what fraction of those people were plants.

One has to wonder what happened behind the scenes for this to happen. Bush and company are not very generous to democrats, but handing Rumsfeld's head to the democratic victors was a huge present. With Rumsfeld suddenly gone every American who hoped their vote would bring about a change just got a huge shot of adrenaline.

I wish I had been in the room when the shouting was going on.