For serious politicians and analysts, the "global warming" scare is passé.

Imagine if you could offset the whole Ten Commandments.

As big consumers of oil, you and I are intervening powerfully in Africa -- and perhaps unwittingly furthering graft and bloodletting.

"That’s when all hell broke loose," Mr. Williams said.

But now the glue is gone.

He likens it to a school of fish moving in a particular direction until a new leader suddenly emerges, everything shifts in that direction and somehow the crowd arrives at something close to an aesthetic.

Genetic engineering is too big for ethics. It changes human nature, and with it, our notions of good and bad. It even changes our notions of perfection. The problem with perfection in the age of self-transformation isn’t that it’s bad. The problem is that it’s incoherent.

Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story.

Nothing amuses him more than the wincingly awkward silences that freeze a room in the moments after someone blurts out something embarrassing in a trying-too-hard attempt to look cool.

"The only explanation I can think of is the critical-mass explanation."

It will be dredged up from the ocean bottom, mixed with water and pumped to shore as a slurry that will spew out onto the beach.

Amazon folklore, in fact, is full of fanciful creatures that are used to explain unwelcome or embarrassing phenomena. The boto, for example, is a type of dolphin that is said to be able to transform itself into human form, wearing a white hat to cover its air spout, and seducing and impregnating impressionable young virgins.

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