Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he
had promised that, as President, he would:
Empty the Social Security
trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the
same time slash Social Security benefits
Cut Medicare by 17 percent
and reduce veterans' benefits and military pay
Eliminate overtime pay
for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent
Give tax
cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy
encourage their departure
Give away billions of tax dollars in
government contracts without competitive bids
Involve this country in
a deadly and highly questionable war, and
Take a budget surplus and
turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating
a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.
The fears which galvanise the Republican right are indeed irrational.
"Socialised" medicine, acceptance of
legalised abortion and protection of the rights of gay men and women
have not led to chaos in Canada or the European Union. Indeed these
societies are in many ways more tolerant and peaceful than the USA. But
instead of following the example of Canadians and Europeans who have put
such issues behind them, Bushites seek not to overcome these phobias but
to consciously or subconsciously use them as a means of maintaining power.
"I have a feeling I know your adoptive brother better than you, he is a
thief 'did you know that'???, he also likes to extract money and
play on the emotions of older men as well, I guess you enabled him
to do that by teaching him the rudiments of Computers when setting him
up with an E mail address, what for?? Well he thought
MONEY MONEYMONEY. £, $, bahts, any currency
actually."
Most printed material
(including, sad to say, this website) is redundant; it doesn't matter if
the fire regulations in your hotel bedroom are practically
incomprehensible - the diagram shows you where your room and the stairs
are and if you still use the lift in such a situation literacy in any
language will not help you.
My usual preference is
for short, no longer than knee length and of lightweight fabric. On
formal occasions I would go for an ankle-length sarong, the equivalent of a woman's
evening dress and worn properly it suggesting formality, wealth, intelligence
and wit. (I lay claim to about 30% of these properties.)
Regular readers of this column (I believe there are three of you now) will remember that at the end of each year I post
a competition with the possibility of winning one or more of my books. Either the prize is not enticing enough or the
questions are too difficult, but two years in a row I have had no entries. Looking on the bright side, that means I've
saved the cost of postage.
I have just finished watching The Decameron and
should immediately confess a sin. I bought the DVD in Hanoi, where films and
CDs that are pirated in China are sold at prices too low for weak Europeans to
resist. And unlike Bangkok, where bootlegs are usually limited to the latest
garish offerings from Hollywood, in the Vietnamese capital you can easily find
forgotten masterpieces and serious European cinema.
The idea of cryonics first emerged in a book by Robert
Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality, published in 1962. Since then,
as proponents point out, advances in several pertinent fields have made the
idea of vitrifying and "resurrection" more likely. The process
itself has become more sophisticated and nanotechnology (working at cell or
molecular level), while still in its infancy, is showing promise as a medical
technique. And although no human being has been revived after being cryonically frozen, there are instances of individual organs that have been
vitrified, unfrozen and returned to full function.
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