After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters: "As an American, I'm embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country." The news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been in southern Lebanon. He said: "It's a travesty. There's a million homeless in Lebanon and the intense amount of bombing has brought an entire country to its knees."

Embarrassing. Shameful. A travesty. Those kinds of words begin to describe the alliance between the United States and Israel. Here are a few more: Government criminality. High-tech terror. Mass murder from the skies. The kind of premeditated action that the U.S. representative in Nuremberg at the International Conference on Military Trials -- Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson -- was talking about on August 12, 1945, when he declared that "no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."

The United States and Israel. Right now, it's the most dangerous alliance in the world.

AUSTIN, Texas -- In case you haven't got anything else to worry about -- like war in the Middle East, nuclear showdowns, global warming or Apocalypse Now -- how about the suicide of capitalism?

Late last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down a new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring mandatory registration with the SEC for most hedge funds. This may not strike you as the end of the world, but that's because you've either forgotten what a hedge fund is or how much trouble they can get us into.

These investment pools for rich folks are now a $1.2 trillion industry (known to insiders, I am pleased to report, as "the hedge fund community"). Hedge funds are now beginning to be used by average investors and pension investors. Back in 1998, there was this little-bitty old hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management. Because hedge funds make high-risk bets, Long Term Capital got itself in so much trouble its collapse actually threatened to wreck world markets, and regulators had to step in to negotiate a $3.6 billion bailout. A similar fiasco at this point probably would break world markets.

Now about sex.… One school would allow us no flavor for our fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. ~Alcoholics Anonymous p. 69

I see the world in this spiritual way – way more fluid than how we’re asked to define it. I actually think there’s a whole spectrum of gender, not just men and women. In a lot of cultures, there’s not just two. But I’m glad when people take their destiny into their own hands and take actions that they think will make them happy. ~ Daniella Sea, http://www.girlfriendsmag.com/feature.html June 2006.

The love that dared not speak its name now won’t shut its mouth. ~ Spoken at a dinner party

Someone should make a video game of The Inconvenient Truth. The generation of most game-players will inherit global warming's escalating march, and many won't see any documentary, even an excellent one. Inconvenient Truth is, after all, a lecture and slide show, mixed with a strong personal story, some nice Matt Groening animation, and more humor and hope than you'd expect from a film on the subject. We need to get everyone we can into the theater seats, buying tickets for friends, colleagues, and neighbors, paying the way for those on the fence to at least give it a look. I'd love to see schools negotiate daytime matinees in normally empty weekday theaters, so their students can attend at radically discounted prices. But some--especially those swayed by the Bush administration's propaganda against science, thinking, and other "reality-based" pursuits--will still find it too much of a high-brow lecture.

Given that we need to reach more people, how about an Inconvenient Video Game, a Sim World where players learn about the issues surrounding global warming, choose paths of action to address it, and link to real-world