Well, my original intention was to write a fair bit about a Saturday meeting with a bunch of medical technicians I ran into on the train. They were from various countries around the world, in Tokyo for a conference. The point was the humiliation I feel due to Dubya being the most visible American these days. We're not all pompous moronic hypocrites. However, that little item got pretty well eclipsed by...

Another space shuttle was destroyed with the loss of all aboard. Kind of frightening that I recently read a bunch of posts predicting that something terrible was about to happen--because Dubya was slumping in the polls again. I really don't know what to make of it. If this is God's will, one has to wonder. Or maybe Dubya really has made a deal with the devil. Killing a bunch of fine people seems more like Satan's style. Anyway, the whole thing is obviously nothing to get thrilled about. I suppose one aspect of living in Japan is that I didn't even find out about it for a couple of days. I think if people were talking about it on the trains and in the restaurants I would have heard something, but I completely missed it. This morning I noticed a reference on the Web, and so I surfed over to a newspaper site and found out some of the sordid details.