Upon arriving at work the other day, I noticed that the Kuwaiti flag was at half-mast. Since I hadn't been bothering to read the local news, I asked my co-workers what was up, and learned that the crown prince had died. This was also presumably the answer to my unasked question of why two of the local radio stations had been playing the exact same Arabic monologue on the way into work, and why a third was only playing mournful music. I hear that the stores are all closed for a three-day mourning period, too, but as I don't really need anything at the moment, I haven't gone to check this out for myself. I probably shouldn't take my co-worker's word for it, as he was also telling me that the crown prince was the current emir, when I just read online obviously everyone knows that he was only the emir for nine days, before being replaced for health reasons.

It's a good thing the prince wasn't the current emir, as the current emir recently dissolved the Parliament, and since I think he has to ratify the results of the elections before they're valid, that could be a mess. The elections are confusing enough as it is, anyway:

[I]n addition to the differences among the parties - which are officially outlawed - the situation is complicated by divisions among tribal groups, between Sunnis (two thirds of the population) and Shiites, between the city inhabitants and the Bedouins, and above all among the different branches of the Al-Sabah family, which has been in power for 250 years in the emirate and secures for its members the post of prime minister and the key ministries of each government. The disagreement within this family - and therefore among the groups of parliamentarians loyal to its various branches - are seen as the real origin of the political crisis. [source]

Currently escalating political crisis notwithstanding, I think the Kuwaitis have hit upon one excellent idea: outlawing the political parties. I'm not really sure what the political parties in the States do, aside from giving people a chance to "vote party lines" without thinking or having to pay any attention to what's going on. I say we should get rid of them.

Now, it's possible that rather than forcing people to pay attention to current events, this would instead just add randomness to the elections -- but at least that'd be a change, and it still might not be worse. We can always reinstitute the parties if it doesn't work out, after all. At least, theoretically. Some of the politicians are pretty old, and it's questionable how alert they still are; it's possible that if we dissolved the parties, and then re-formed them, not all of the Congressmen would remember which side they'd come from. I suppose they have aides to avoid this sort of embarrassment, though. Maybe we should abolish the aides, while we're at it. If you can't handle the politics on your own, it's time to retire!

I suspect this would just cause the entire system to dissolve into chaos. Again, though, I'm not at all certain that this would be a bad change.

Mood of the Moment: discordant
Auditory Hallucination: Flogging Molly -- What's Left of the Flag

I've been thinking about getting abducted by aliens. After much deliberation, I was forced to conclude that I am not personally in favor of it. On the one hand, it's a presumably rare experience, one that not many people get to have, statistically speaking. On the other hand, most of the retellings make it sound like a trip to a stainless steel doctor's office, and there aren't even boring magazines to read. There are only steel clamps, so you can't even pass the time with hand shadows or anything. Plus they wipe your mind at the end of it, so you don't even get the experience -- although given how boring it seems to be, maybe that's a courtesy. They could at least leave the getting beamed up part, or something.

Clearly, the aliens aren't as good at this as they think they are, or people's memories wouldn't come back to them. You have to wonder what else the aliens are screwing up. I figure there has to have been at least one time where they beamed up a guy who got loose on the ship. Maybe they accidentally brought up an escape artist, or a guy with no thumb who could slip his arm through the manacles. Maybe they just forgot to lock the things one time. I mean, NASA's full of very smart folks, and they accidentally smashed a satellite one time because they forgot to put in the screws attaching it to its base before trying to turn it on its side. A little thing like forgetting to engage the arm clamps is a minor mistake by comparison.

I'm tentatively in favor of being abducted if I get to get loose on the ship. However, I'm not at all sure that movies have adequately prepared me for such an event. Will the doors really whoosh open when I near them, like in a supermarket? Will the walls have convenient ribs providing shadows in which I can flatten myself when the aliens come by? How hard should you hit an alien over the head if you just want to knock him out, but not kill him? Movies have told me all of these things, but they could well be wrong. Running for your freedom inside an alien vessel is no time to discover that you're operating on a badly flawed set of assumptions.

Of course, if I've learned anything from cinema and science fiction, it's that aliens build their technology based on Earth broadcasts, so I suppose there's a very good chance that the movies will be entirely right -- at least, the older movies, as they'd've gotten to the aliens first. I've been watching too much X-Files and Stargate recently, though; I could be thrown off by these new-fangled designs, when really what I need to be studying are the classics.

Let no one every accuse me of not being prepared! Go ahead and scoff if you like, but when we find ourselves huddled in a storeroom on an alien ship, I'll be the one you turn to for leadership. And I, magnanimous, will tell you where the escape pods are -- only to trick you into the Dangerous Crossbreeds laboratory. Because I will remember that you scoffed, and I will laugh heartily as I hurtle back towards Earth, alone.

Mood of the Moment: chipper
Auditory Hallucination: The Gaskets -- Best Thing

Perhaps you are a hypochondriac. Most likely, you are not; most likely, you are a perfectly normal human being, who maybe worries a bit too much about head colds every once in a while, but really, is that aching under the arms normal? Surely it is; surely there's nothing to stress about, even if you do feel a little feverish. Now you are starting to sound like a hypochondriac -- and that's a disease, isn't it? Maybe you do have it. Maybe it's a memetic disease, and you just gave it to yourself. Now you've got the bird flu and hypochondria, and it's not even lunchtime yet. It's well past time to quit while you're ahead; at this point, you'll be lucky to quit while you're alive.

But as I say, perhaps you are not. Regardless, let's pretend for a moment that you are the sort of person compelled to seek out new and different things that could be wrong with you. The New York Times has you covered! Earlier this month, they posted an attractive little graphic of several hundred hereditary diseases, linked together in a branching cloud connected by the genes that cause each disease. They're conveniently separated into color-coded categories, so you can just pick the general area of the disease you believe you've inherited, then zoom in to find numerous possibilities for what could be wrong with you. Best of all, thanks to the gene links, you can then find entirely new things to freak out about!

Feeling short of breath? Looks like a gene that causes asthma can also lead to obesity -- and on the other side, it's got a different gene link to dementia. Isn't that a fun picture of your retirement?

Strokes and heart attacks have a common gene, which is no surprise, but myocardial infarction also has links to diabetes and Alzheimer's. So if your family's got a history of heart failure, there are two more biggies to look out for. On the other hand, it also shares a link with something called "Factor X Deficiency" -- which I can only assume means you're not a mutant, so good work there. I mean, it's a shame that you won't be able to control fire or stick bone claws out through your knuckles, but at least you won't be hunted down by your own government.

What I like best about this chart are the number of unlabeled circles. They're drawn in with gene links, then left inexplicably blank. I assume this is so that you can fill in your own horrifying diseases, if the ones on the chart aren't unpleasant enough for you. "So you have this gene," the chart says. "Would you like cerebellar ataxia? Hypoceruloplasminemia? Or do you want to go for what's in the box? Remember, it's guaranteed to be something hematological!"

Perhaps that's just me, though. Maybe you'd like to fill them in with nice things, like "spontaneous rainbow generation" and "abrupt avian manifestation syndrome." If so, I commend you, and I hope that headache goes away soon. I'm sure you're right; everyone gets headaches. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about at all.

Mood of the Moment: cheerful
Auditory Hallucination: Monty Python -- Medical Love Song

I was watching a monster/disaster movie the other day. At one point, having watched her city be destroyed and various friends be killed off, one of the characters cries to the camera, "I don't understand why this is happening!"

I scoffed at this line. It wasn't happening because of anything -- which isn't technically true, but was a fair approximation on the level at which the character was referring. Obviously, there were things which had caused it; there just wasn't anything that she'd done, or hadn't done, or in any way had any control over. It struck me as an utterly ridiculous complaint, even for someone under the literally unreal amount of stress she'd been subjected to.

Of course, then it occurred to me exactly how many people do believe that everything happens for a reason. It's an extremely popular belief, and one which I've never gotten. I gather that the idea is that if everything happens for a reason, then you can believe that even if things aren't going your way, it's still for a greater good. You can then derive comfort from the knowledge that you're part of something bigger than yourself, and that even if you don't understand it, you can belong.

This concept baffles me. The thought that I may be a pawn in a game beyond my ken is, to my mind, far from comforting. It trivializes all of my failures, while at the same time demeaning all of my accomplishments. If it was all happening for a reason, then what have I truly achieved? If the final pattern was preordained, then why have I even been trying? I don't want to be a tiny piece of something huge. I want to be the entirety of myself.

I don't believe in much, theistically speaking. I don't believe that God cares about us and watches over us; I don't believe in eternal punishment or reward. I don't believe in karma, or things working themselves out for the best. I don't believe in a divine plan, or in divine guidance, or in much divine at all, really.

What I do believe in, quite fervently, is myself. I believe in my ability to change the world I live in, however I choose. I believe in my strengths and my weaknesses. I believe in my intelligence, and my skills, and my personality. And while I believe that life has no built-in goal, and that almost nothing happens for a reason, I believe in my ability to make my own reason. This is a belief which I find extremely comforting -- and while perhaps I'm mistaken, and will someday pay for my hubris, I don't believe it'll ever come to that.

Mood of the Moment: good
Auditory Hallucination: The Faint -- Glass Danse

I regularly receive emails from the American Family Association, a right-wing Christian group. I signed up for their mailing list some time ago because I like to know what they're up to -- and also so I could vote in their ridiculously biased polls, which tend to ask questions like, "Do you think Bush is the best president in Earth's entire 6,000 year history, or do you eat babies raw?" I always picked the "OM NOM NOM" radio button, and I'm frankly surprised that they didn't boot me off of their list after a while, but I guess they're still hoping to get through to me.

Now, in all honesty, they weren't likely to ever win me over to their viewpoints. However, recently they've adopted a tactic which is making them seem even more absurd in my eyes: innocuous word censorship. I'm not talking about "the F word," because it's a well-known fact that if children sense the presence of a swear word within 50 feet, even in written form, their heads immediately begin spinning around and you have to strap them to the bed and call for a priest. But if typing asterisks sanitizes dirty language in their minds, then fine, have a good time. It's always struck me as silly, but it's a widely accepted practice.

What's they're doing is even goofier; they've begun censoring non-swear words. Some time ago, I received an email from AFA in which, while complaining about sex education, they wrote "pen-s" rather than use the word "penis." This just made me laugh. They wanted me to believe that they had a healthy and mature understanding of sex and how it should be taught, but they couldn't type "penis" in an email being disseminated to a group of adults?

This instance stood alone for a while, and I thought that perhaps they'd realized that behaving like grown-ups could be a very rewarding pastime. Unfortunately, they've recently jumped back into this practice with both feet. The other day, I got an email cautioning me about the inroads the h-mos-xual agenda was making in popular culture; it seems that the g-ys were taking over a soap opera. I'd started to formulate a theory that perhaps it was the vowels that made these words evil, but that was shot down by their request that I sign a petition banning in-room a-ult mov-es in hotels. Don't laugh! Studies show that our society is being negatively affected by all of the p-rnography.

Honestly, this is just getting hard to read. I envision future emails from them that just look like a demented game of Hangman.

"Dear Micah: --e -omo-ex-a-s -a-e - ne- ma--o-, an- --ngo -- --- name-o."

Still, at least this keeps our children safe. Although, when it comes to understanding how forcing them to spend a lot of extra time poring over the message protects them from its contents, I've got to admit I'm drawing a blank.

Mood of the Moment: entertained
Auditory Hallucination: Eve 6 -- Tongue Tied

The Kuwaitis manage to get into some really inventive wrecks while they're driving. Since I've been here, I've observed two cars engulfed in flames in unrelated accidents, and seen the burnt hulk of another. There was a car that appeared to have taken a monstrous uppercut to the right side of its engine block on the side of the road for a while, and there's currently one lying on its roof on the shoulder, skid marks indicating that it slid at least 50 feet that way. And of course there was the house that someone crashed under an overpass; I hear they've taken away Dorothy's license now, though, so that's one problem taken care of.

These wrecks can't just all be happening by accident, though. There are too many, and it seems like none of them are normal. My theory is that there's a Kuwaiti rating system; the first responders to any accident include a team of judges, who rate the crash on categories like destruction, distance traveled on non-wheeled areas of the car, inventiveness and style in execution. I think you lose points for actual bodily harm, as people rarely seem to be hurt in these crashes; it makes sense, as otherwise you'd have to keep recruiting new participants for the sport.

Take the upside-down car, for example. Judging by the scrapes and debris pattern, this was a one-vehicle accident. The driver appears to have swerved into the jersey wall hard enough to have sent the car's rear bumper entirely over its head, smashing it onto its roof while maintaining the forward momentum. The car then skidded down the road, seemingly entirely on the shoulder, and came to rest out of traffic. This obviously scored very highly in the distance category, but somewhat lower in the inventiveness; I saw a taxi on its roof the other day, too, so this is something of a recycled trick. I'm curious how the driver managed the initial smash into the wall; perhaps there was an assist from another vehicle? If so, does he get some of the points, or was it just a courtesy move?

Perhaps there's a team category. That would explain the strange new accident I saw today; a truck was lying on the side of the road, flipped onto its side, with its underbelly facing traffic. Despite the fact that this vehicle was easily eight to ten feet off the road, there was a sedan smashed into it, nuzzled in like a piglet trying to nurse. There was no reason for anyone to be driving there unless they were just trying to add to the sculpture. I suppose there are other possible explanations, but the only ones I can come up with get increasingly more bizarre: perhaps they saw a small fire burning and tried to put it out with their bumper. Maybe the impact of the crash magnetized the truck's undercarriage. The sedan driver could have been stopping to help, only to realize too late that his brakes were out.

I wonder if I can get in on the judging of these. I bet if I make up some scorecards and look like I belong, no one will question me. I just hope I pick the right scale; if I hold up a 9 and it turns out they're on a 100 point system, I could have some very angry drivers after me. On the other hand, they'll've just lost their mode of transportation, so I should be able to ditch them pretty easily. It's worth the risk, I think.

Mood of the Moment: cheerful
Auditory Hallucination: Gary Numan -- Cars

Today, I was curious about the history of time zones. It was a passing thought, at first, until I realized I was sitting in front of the computer, and thus had easy access to the Internet, Repository of All Answers Be They True or Otherwise. I already had a pretty good idea where they came from -- namely, that some dude said, "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if we were on some sort of standardized timekeeping system?" at some point -- but there were a few points on which I was vague, as you may have noticed.

So I wandered over to Wikipedia, where I was both enlightened and shocked. It started out reasonably enough, claiming that Greenwich Mean Time was established in 1675; this squared with my idea that it had happened a long time ago. My personal divisions of history go about like this: 1980 until now is recent, 1910 until 1979 is fairly recent, 1800 to 1909 is American-level historical, 1700-1799 is regular historical, and everything before that is a long time ago. There are some further divisions, but they're mainly just adding on the word "really," so they're not worth mentioning here.

But then it went on to say that the first time zone wasn't established until 1847 -- all the way up into American-level historical times! And that was in England; America didn't get around to adopting time zones until even later, well after the advent of railroads. Until they finally agreed to all use the same time, every company ran on its own time, meaning that America has a fine tradition of making long-distance mass transit as difficult as possible. I'd always assumed that this was a recent thing that the airlines were doing, but apparently they're just carrying on the trend.

The idea of not having standardized time as recently as the 20th century baffles me. My watch is accurate to the second -- or will be, once I get back to the States; it can't sync up from here -- and, while that's obviously unnecessary, it's fun to be able to state the time with assurance. Even in the way it's formulated, it's assumed that there's only one; it's "the time," not "a time." Having to change your watch every time you go into a new town would just be weird. Of course, I suppose that you probably wouldn't have a watch, but think of the time travelers! They're having a hard enough time fitting in without people screwing with the time locally.

Apparently Chinese people felt the same way as me, only more so -- something else I didn't know is that China, massive as it is, is all in the same time zone. Not technically, of course, but in terms of timekeeping it is. This makes for a three-and-a-half hour jump in time when you cross one of the borders, and I suppose makes sunrise show up at like 2 AM on one side in the summer, but so it goes. At least the Chinese don't ever get their friends on the other side of the country calling them at 3 in the morning and pretending they forget how late it was there. Not that this is a problem that I regularly encounter, either, but I'm trying to find a silver lining here.

But seriously -- Detroit spent 18 years waffling on what time zone to belong to? The whole city was getting jet lag without ever moving. I would've thought that that would get old quickly; apparently it was a popular pastime for a generation of Detroitians, though.

Mood of the Moment: informed
Auditory Hallucination: Emmet Swimming -- 8:45

Earlier today, I was reading an article by Jon Carroll, better known around these parts as the writer I most admire. I was going to describe him as the writer I'd most like to be like, but the acronym for that is TWIMLTBL; not that I expect to refer to him by an acronym any time soon, but should I need to, TWIMA flows much better -- thus the admiration. I admired him anyway; I just wasn't going to put it like that. I thought about trying to twist it into a word, but that never ends well; you start with an attempt to make something short and witty, and the next thing you know you're referring to the guy as the writer of columns having acutely interesting researched subjects. I work with the Army; I see this sort of thing in project titles all the time. OpSec prevents me from giving examples, but trust me; it's better to resist the temptation.

Anyway, one of Carroll's recent columns was on the interestingly researched subject of stuff ownership. His point is summed up quite nicely in the penultimate paragraph; therefore, I shall reproduce it here, ruining the article completely:

You have to understand that, by any rational measure, we are all of us overconsuming idiots. That is how we learned to live. And although we are going to change too slowly to avoid malign consequences, it is not hopeless. All efforts are useful. The problem is known; a lot of the solutions are obvious. Here's the obvious one I propose today: Stop buying stuff.

I see his point. Wouldn't it be nice if people stopped overconsuming? We could solve so many problems if folks were just learn to live with what they needed. Get rid of the SUV; you're only driving yourself to work. Stop supersizing your food. Trim the excess.

Here's the thing, though: I like excess. I don't want to get rid of my house and move into one that's as big as I need, and no bigger. I don't want to quit taking road trips, just because I don't need to be in the places I'm going. I want to live in a large house, so that I can have parties that I also don't need to throw. I want to be lavish in areas where it's unnecessary, simply because I can.

It's not the most socially acceptable attitude to admit to these days, but I'm okay with that. I do try to help out people who are not as fortunate as I am, but I think of myself first. I would absolutely deprive myself of a luxury to help a friend in need -- but if no such friend exists, I'll certainly indulge myself.

I like my useless trinkets. I enjoy the fact that I have a tree in my living room, and a collection of stacking dolls, and a robotic vacuum cleaner. They are fripperies, and I freely admit that; indeed, I like them partly because of that. They are symbols of the fact that I am doing well, that I am succeeding, and am therefore able to live how I would like. I don't need the stuff -- but that is, while certainly nowhere near the whole point, at least a small fraction of it.

Mood of the Moment: greedy
Auditory Hallucination: Elastica -- Vaseline

It's been Printer Week at work. This is much like Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, or whoever has Shark Week these days; you learn a truly astonishing number of things about the subject, even though you thought you were pretty clear on it to begin with. A lot of it is trivial, but most of it is interesting, and there's always a chance that someone will get badly maimed to keep things interesting. You might think that this is more likely to happen on Shark Week than on Printer Week, but you would be wrong; I nearly killed a guy just today.

I was leaving work -- outside, bag in hand, halfway to the gate -- when I heard someone calling my name. I turned around and saw only the side of the trailer behind me; apparently the trailer itself was hollering at me, letting me know that its printer had stopped working and it didn't know why. I turned around and headed back. As I got closer, I found one of my coworkers with his face pressed to the screen. Why he felt a need to get me to fix his problem and not either of the techs who were on duty, I can't be sure. I came back inside and looked at the printer, which was displaying this message:

"PAUSED. PRESS 'STOP' TO RESUME PRINTING."

I pressed "stop."

It resumed printing.

I looked at my coworker and raised an eyebrow. He attempted to explain something, but I only heard as far as the part where he told me that it was paused because he had pressed the stop button in the first place before I just ceased listening. I'm afraid that my brief instruction on how not to press the stop button was less good-natured than I'd hoped, and rather more scathing, for which I should probably apologize tomorrow. At the time, though, it seemed like he was just inventing problems to join in the fun.

It's been printers for days. I've dealt with networked printers, USB printers, and parallel port printers. I've replaced cartridges, removed jammed staples and flashed the BIOS. I've changed power supplies, NICs, IP addresses and occasionally entire units. I've dealt with people who have too many printers, and one gentleman who did not, as I discovered after a fairly lengthy troubleshooting conversation, have any printer at all. Not "had no functioning printer" -- literally had no printer in his office. I'm not really clear on what he expected me to do about this over the phone, from another country.

With the notable exception of being called back after work today to fix a non-problem, I've actually been enjoying myself. It's like going to one of those training camps, except that I'm being paid to be here, instead of paying them. I like crash courses; it's much easier to build up the knowledge that way. I hate running into a problem that in order to solve, I have to first figure out something that I already found the solution to months earlier. I alleviate this problem somewhat by writing down the weirder problems, but it's really much more convenient when things break in categories.

I'm hoping for network failures next week; I've been meaning to brush up on the diagnostic uses for nbtstat and tracert for a while now.

Mood of the Moment: busy
Auditory Hallucination: The Bangles -- Be With You

I've often said that I can't hold a grudge. This is, in nearly all cases, true; I've tried on occasion, when I feel someone really deserves to have something held against them, but it just takes so much effort to maintain that level of emotional involvement. It seems odd to make that sort of commitment to something that I won't actually enjoy.

Interestingly, the only person against whom I can easily hold a grudge is myself. With everyone else, I've forgiven and often forgotten whatever slights were committed in short order -- not because I'm so kind and have such faith in people's inherent goodness, but just because I'm lazy. Holding something against myself, though, takes no effort at all. On the face of it, this could be a good thing; after all, if I refuse to let myself live down any embarrassment I've caused, the chances of me making the same mistake again are quite small. On the other hand -- we've gone from faces to hands, now; we're skipping around with wild abandon, so I hope you're all ears -- some of these things have far outlived their usefulness.

The oldest of them is from second grade, just after I'd transferred into the class; I felt stupid because everyone else knew the teacher's routine for ordering from the lunch menu, but I hadn't been told it. I vividly recall the teacher looking at me impatiently, but although I knew everyone else was ordering differently, I didn't know what was expected of me.

Shame's an excellent motivator, and arguably this sort of thing helped me learn to observe and adapt more quickly. However, I had just turned six at the time. This memory is over 21 years old. It's old enough to go out and join me for a drink. And yet it still regularly crops up and causes me to cringe and call myself an idiot; it occurred to me today on the way home from work, for no reason I can discern. It's really time to let this one go, I think.

Therefore, I've declared today Self Amnesty Day. On this and all future May 2nds, I shall forgive myself for all crimes against myself committed more than a year earlier. Only I need a better name, as the acronym for the current one is SAD. Self Amnesty Day won't do me any good if May 2nd rolls around every year and my first thought is, "Agh, what a stupid name! What was I thinking?" It's against the whole spirit of the thing.

I suppose I have until next year to improve it, though; then I can replace the name, and forgive myself for creating this one in the first place. Technically, it will have been just under a year, unless I forgive myself in the afternoon, but I'm willing to fudge it by a few hours. And of course, if I end up regretting that decision, there'll always be SAD 2010! I'm looking forward to not having to look back.

Mood of the Moment: dorky
Auditory Hallucination: Sarina Paris -- So I Wait

It's May Day! This is the holiday, not to be confused with the distress call -- not that anyone knowledgeable about the distress call would become confused, as it's always repeated three times for the purpose of avoiding said confusion. Also, another good hint is that this particular transmission is via LiveJournal, and not radio; while ships are required to have radios, I'm fairly certain that it's not yet mandatory for them to have internet connections. Which is too bad, really; otherwise, if your ship caught fire, you could just navigate over to coastguard.com and send them a quick email detailing the problem. That way, if they're all off on lunch break or something, they can still get the distress call on their Blackberries. Of course, then they'd have to weed through the spam; I suppose they could set up filters so it only allowed messages with a triple Mayday in the subject line to get through. The spammers could theoretically just start adding this to their emails, but everyone knows that if you stand in front of a radio and say "Mayday" three times when there's no emergency, a guy with a hook for a hand shows up in a cloud of bees and kills you, which is a pretty big deterrent. Also, there's a fine, which I guess they levy against your estate.

None of this has anything to do with my point, which is that Bill O'Reilly can learn a valuable lesson from May Day. For the last several years now, at the end of the year, O'Reilly's gotten all worked up about the "War on Christmas." The way this war works is, O'Reilly goes into some place like Wal-Mart, where the greeter then has the audacity to say "happy holidays," thereby acknowledging that other religions exist. This drives O'Reilly into a frothing rage. Picture a shark in the middle of a feeding frenzy; now imagine it's eating O'Reilly. Wouldn't that be nice? But I digress.

My point, from which I have again wandered away, is that O'Reilly should perhaps consider the consequences of succeeding in his quest to make "Merry Christmas" the legally-required way to greet all people for November and December -- and he can see what happens by looking at May Day. It started as a religious holiday. But as people realized that it made a great party, it slowly lost its religious significance -- not because the people who believed in it were any less devout, necessarily, but because folks who weren't of their religion started appropriating it.

If I say "Christmas," I bet that more people will say "Santa Claus" than will say "Jesus." If I say "Easter," I'm going to hear "Bunny." This is because Christianity already rolled up other religions' traditions into their own. They should know how it works; the religion with more followers executes a hostile takeover. And there aren't a lot of gods more pervasive than the God of Greed; you'll find an awful lot of people worshipping at the altar of materialism. If O'Reilly ever does manage to make his holiday synonymous with the winter shopping season -- which is where it's heading on its own, anyway -- I think he might discover that he's been