I can dream, can’t I?

Listening to reports about the United Nations Climate Change Conference last month, my frustration mounted. 2007 temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were the hottest ever recorded and the amount of melting ice in the Arctic shattered records. But the decision-makers are like children squabbling over where to put home plate while the woods behind the outfield are on fire.

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A moment to define ourselves

Last year, you might recall, I made a somewhat cynical prediction about the 2008 Presidential race, namely that the Powers That Be had already figured out that a Clinton-vs.-Giuliani matchup would generate the most profit for them, so by golly that’s the way it was going to be.

The recent Iowa caucuses, which gave victories instead to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, were of course only the first major electoral event, with many more to come. So it may be too soon to discard my prediction entirely. But now I think we can contemplate a different kind of contest, not between candidates but between two different possible election campaigns: “Clinton-vs.-Giuliani” vs. “Obama-vs.-Huckabee.” The comparison might tell us a few things about ourselves.

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The Panamese zipline

The canopy tour costs $40 per person. But my dad thought the Panamanian woman (for some reason before the trip I was sure that they were Panamese) had quoted him four dollars each and he handed her a $20 bill for four people. Funny that somehow the language barrier translates into a seemingly lack of intelligence. The woman stared blankly at us, we stare blankly back, all of us confused and searching our minds for the one word that will make it all click.

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