Wisdom from the Peanut Gallery
I was patrolling Robert Ebert's section of the Chicago Sun-Times site, trying to find what in his background could have warped his sense of humor so much that he only gave Beverly Hills Cop II a single star. Imagine my surprise when I found this little essay, in which Ebert pinpoints the greatest danger to America in G.W. Bush's war strategy: Bush is thoroughly convinced that God saved his soul to do the good work of re-making Iraq into a democratic state, and that any kind of withdrawal from that course would be a sin.

Can you imagine a scenario where the war has gone badly (e.g. high U.S. casualties with no indication of an end to hostilities, plus escalating retaliatory terrorist strikes on American soil), where the country has stopped supporting the invasion, but the President refuses to heed the word of the people he says he's sworn to protect?

I can.

And it's not pretty. For anyone.

New World Water: The Sequel
According to the most optimistic estimates, 1 out of every 4 people on this planet will not have access to usable drinking water within the next 40-50 years if current trends of contamination & draconian industrialization are not reversed. With that in mind, the United Nations has declared 2003 as the International Year of Freshwater to raise awareness of the looming crisis. You see what people are willing to do over the possibility of an oil shortage. Can you imagine the blood that will be shed if the United States is forced to start rationing out water?