I mentioned the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Only Living Boy in New York” yesterday because of the lines “I get all the news I need from the weather report / I can gather all the news I need from the weather report” and of course now I have the song stuck in my head.

Tom, get your plane right on time.
I know your part’ll go fine.
Fly down to Mexico.
Doh-n-doh-doh-n-doh-n-doh-doh and here I am,
The only living boy in New York.

I get the news I need on the weather report.
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.
Doh-n-doh-doh-n-doh-n-doh-doh and here I am,
The only living boy in New York.

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where.
And we don’t know where.

Tom, get your plane right on time.
I know that you’ve been eager to fly now.
Hey, let your honesty shine, shine, shine
Doh-n-doh-doh-n-doh-n-doh-doh
Like it shines on me.
The only living boy in New York.
The only living boy in New York.

Having this song in my head is no bad thing since it’s a lovely song and I’m finding it much more meaningful than I did when I first heard it in my teens. Apparently Simon wrote it when Garfunkel was flying off to shoot a film. The duo used to call themselves “Tom and Jerry” and so the reference in the first verse is to Garfunkel heading off and leaving Simon behind in NYC.

Presumably this was a welcome break for Simon because he’s “got nothing to do today but smile.” I really recognize that welcome relaxation after a period of intense commitment to a creative project. It’s wonderful when you can leave all that doing behind and just be. Yesterday I found that line particularly meaningful.

I was also struck by the line “Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where. And we don’t know where.” This is the problem with the overly-busy life. We spend much of our time so much focused on a project outside of ourselves that we lose touch with who we are. Our minds become distracted to the extent that we’re not even aware what it is we’re distracted by. We’re “gone, but we don’t know where.”

The Buddha said “The absence of mindfulness is the road to death. / The mindful ones do not die, the unmindful are as if already dead.” And that’s exactly what Simon’s talking about when he describes himself as “The only living boy in New York.” To be mindful — to stop doing for a while and just to be — is to be truly alive. When we’re unmindful it’s like we’re zombies — mere animated flesh with a modicum of habitual mental activity. It’s beautiful and sad to think of the young Paul Simon looking round him and realizing how driven and unaware this city full of people was — sad because it’s sad to see the suffering involved in lives half lived, and beautiful because mindfulness itself is a beautiful thing.

I’m not suggesting, by the way, that mindfulness and action are incompatible. We can certainly go about our normal business — working, shopping, doing housework — in a mindful way. But from time to time we need to stop and simply be — to catch up with ourselves and start living more fully once again.

I’m still on my news-fast, only glancing at the news headlines to stay lightly in touch with what’s happening in the world. Oh, and I still read some of the better comics online — Doonesbury, Foxtrot (Sundays only), Monty, Zits, Rhymes With Orange (often lame but sometimes spot on), Stone Soup, and Heart of the City. These are all bookmarked as a group in Firefox and I call them up while I’m making my morning cup of tea.

Plus I take a quick glance at the weather forecast. I’m reminded of what may well be my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song, The Only Living Boy In New York, which has a line, “I get all the news I need on the weather report / I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.” Well, that’s true for this week anyway. I’m taking my news-fast one week at a time.

Anyway (a very useful word when you’re rambling and want to get on track) while I was glancing at the NYT, making sure I wasn’t going to get sucked into finding out way more than I need to know about a whole lot of stuff that’s completely outside my control, I came across this article: Strict Vegan Ethics, Frosted With Hedonism. It’s not news. It’s a fun article about a spunky punky woman who bakes vegan cupcakes as a revolutionary statement. I did not make this up.

I hadn’t realized that the punk movement had started espousing vegetarianism and veganism as a way of sticking it to corporations.

And the article has some encouraging statistics about the rise of vegetarianism amongst young Americans.

I’ve been reading way too much news recently. It gets a bit obsessive. So I’m having a news fast. I’m not reading the news online, except to glance at the news headlines.

Reading the news can be addictive. It takes up valuable time that I could spend on meditation, studying the Dharma, or in pursuing my livelihood. I can easily spend an hour or more each day reading news articles.

At the same time I’ve been finding that reading the news generates anxiety. It’s as if my mind never knows when it’s well enough informed, and so it keeps searching for more and more information. In reading the news obsessively I can become an information junkie, moving from fix to fix with ever-diminishing satisfaction. And that restless attitude has been staying with me all day.

So for this week anyway I’m just taking in the headlines and occasionally picking up the news on the car radio. I’m feeling happier already!

We just sighted land in our adoption voyage. Our adoption agency called to tell us that we’ve been matched with a 3 1/2 month [I had "year" as a typo earlier, but just look at how wee she is] old baby girl in Ethiopia. We’ve decided to call her Maia Bereket Sering.

Maia is the name we chose for her. Maia is a goddess of spring, and the month of May is named after her. It’s also a variant of Maya, which is the name of the Buddha’s mother (it means “compassion”). Then of course there’s the famous Maya Angelou, the African-American poet, whose books I’ve found very inspiring.

Bereket is her given name, and means “blessing” in Amharic. Bereket is an orphan. Her mother died in childbirth and her father died of malaria last summer.

We’ll be traveling to Ethiopia in approximately two months in order to bring Maia home.

“We’re going to make some history here today,” said George W. Bush this week at the beginning of his annual speech at W-world in front of an expectant crowd gathered in keen expectation of the launch of a new product.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” he said, to scattered bursts of applause and excited whoops, “and W-Corporation has introduced a few of these. In 2002 we launched the iRaq. And it didn’t just change the way the way the world looks at the U.S., it changed the United States itself.”

“Well today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products. The first one is a new war on terror. The second is a revolutionary attempt to spread democracy in the middle east. And the third is the breakthrough toppling of a dictator. So, three things … but one product. A war on terror; spreading democracy in the middle east; topping a dictator,” he repeated, to a rapturous reception.

“Are you getting it?” he asked rhetorically. And there was no doubt that they did, judging by the the crowd’s response. “These are not three products. This is one product. And we are calling it … iRan.”

The launch, to many spectators, was long overdue. Although the iRaq was at first ecstatically welcomed by consumers its appeal has in recent years begun to wane. Critics had repeatedly pointed out that the product lacked the W.M.D. features that had long been promised by W-Corporation’s marketing department, and the I.E.D. interface — prone to malfunctioning — was increasingly seen as a liability. W-Corp.’s stock, which had soared after the iRaq’s launch, had plummeted. The company was losing market share. “W” seemed to have no way forward.

But faithful followers of W-Corp. — more a cult than a company in the eyes of many — had long rumored that a new product was in the offing. And here it is.

But can the iRan succeed in recouping W-Corp.’s lost market share and boost its stock value?

Bush himself was buoyantly optimistic. The new product will have the W.M.D. features that the iRaq lacked, he claimed, and W’s CEO promised that the launch would be a cakewalk: “When we launch this baby they’ll be greeting our sales team with flowers all the way to Tehran. They’ll go nucular.”

But despite the enthusiasm that was evident among the faithful at W-World, reaction in the wider industry was mixed. On the one hand many rival firms entertained serious doubts that the iRan would be the breakthrough product that W had predicted. “W’s sales team has its hands full and is struggling to expand its marketing of the iRaq — I just don’t see how they can take on a new product at this stage,” said one senior officer from Dem-Corp. “Sure, they have that whole W.M.D. promise, but so far that’s never turned out to be more than vaporware,” said another.

But on the other hand support came from an unlikely corner. “Although we’re technically rivals,” said Qaeda CEO bin Laden, “we’ve historically found that W-Corp. does a great job of opening up markets for our activities. Before W launched the iRaq we’d never seriously considered launching products in that market sector. Now we have a firm foothold and we’re excited about the possibility of expanding our activities.”

On balance, W’s optimism — and that of the W-World faithful — seems ill-founded. Although the notoriously upbeat CEO is bullish in the face of consumer resistance and industry skepticism, both the iRaq and the iRan face an uphill struggle. In the background prominent CEOs from other firms are preparing bids for a hostile takeover of W-Corp, and reshuffles of W-Corp’s board have failed to inspire confidence. And although the infighting amongst rivals for the position of CEO of W-Corp. may for a while distract attention from low levels of consumer satisfaction for W’s products, many industry insiders believe that even the iRaq has outlived its usefulness and needs to be pulled from the market.

“W” himself is undaunted. “I still believe in the iRaq,” he said, “and I believe the iRan is going to be an even more exciting product.”

My wife and I don’t watch TV. We have a television set but we only watch DVDs, mostly of TV series that we enjoy. Buffy, Friends, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica are steady favorites. But we don’t have cable and we don’t watch broadcast television.

So although I’d heard the name Bill O’Reilly I didn’t have much of a sense of who he was and wasn’t prepared for the extract of his book, “Culture Warrior,” that I came across in the New York Times today.

Mr. O’Reilly has a high opinion of himself and a clear sense of mission. He sees himself as “a warrior in the vicious culture war that is currently under way in the United States of America.”

He tells us that,

“On one side of the battlefield are the armies of the traditionalists like me, people who believe the United States was well founded and has done enormous good for the world. On the other side are the committed forces of the secular-progressive movement that want to change America dramatically: mold it in the image of Western Europe”

I’ve actually seen the culture wars as being rather different. On the one hand are the forces that seek to undermine the United States Constitution in order to recreate an authoritarian America in which conservative Christian values are imposed on the rest of us, and in which business interests trump the rights of individuals. In order to impose this on the rest of us the authoritarian right have had to campaign for a presidency with near unlimited powers to ignore all laws (and the Constitution itself) and to act without oversight.

On the other hand are those that represent the values upon which the U.S. was “well founded”: Enlightenment values such as the freedom of all to practice their own religion (or to be nonreligious), the separation of Church and State that allows this, the exercise of personal liberty so long as others are not harmed, and the balance of powers.

So my view is rather different from O’Reilly’s.

Mr. O’Reilly apparently has a television program, modestly entitled “The O’Reilly” factor, which is his eyes is part of the Blitzkrieg against the forces of “liberalism.” His mission on that program is to “Watch all of those in power, including and especially the media, so they don’t injure or exploit the folks, everyday Americans.” But I’ve never seen this program.

So I went on Youtube and searched for “O’Reilly” and came up with some interesting results. Most involved seeing O’Reilly through the eyes of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show (a comedy that I’ve also never seen). Through this lens it’s Stewart that watches all of those in power, including and especially the media (including O’Reilly himself). We see O’Reilly lamely trying to insert into an interview with Stewart the view that Sen. Kerry appeared on the Daily Show in order to appear “hip” while Stewart more reasonably points out that Kerry was likely doing what all politicians do and was taking the opportunity to reach an audience. We see O’Reilly slandering the Daily Show’s audience, claiming (perhaps in jest — it’s hard to tell) that they’re mostly on drugs while viewing the program. We see O’Reilly sycophantically “interviewing” President Bush — and supplying answers when the President can’t do so himself. We also see evidence of O’Reilly trying to fabricate a “War Against Christmas” by presenting an old Daily Show joke as if it were recent. We also, and this is particularly delicious, see Stewart deflating O’Reilly’s claim that his name is an a mythic Al Qaeda hitlist.

And we see Stewart being reasonable, funny, and ever ready to puncture the inflated egos of those on the left and right, and those in the media. Here are the examples I came across.

Arrested, beaten and jailed by police in Atlanta for crossing a road in an illegal manner, the British historian and writer reflects on his shocking ordeal - and what it reveals about the US.

Witnesses say that up to ten police officers were involved in the brutal take-down and arrest of a mild-mannered, frail, and elderly academic from the U.K. — in a city with a horrendous crime rate.

Though my own misadventure was trivial and - in perspective - laughable, it resembles what is happening to the world in the era of George W. Bush. The planet is policed by a violent, arbitrary, stupid, and dangerous force.

Further to my post on gay marriage and Buddhism, I’m utterly baffled by the views of those who believe that allowing homosexual people to marry one another will destroy the institution of marriage.

Here’s a quote from a letter by John F. St. Cyr in today’s Boston Globe, in response to an article about a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which is currently legal in the state of Massachusetts.

Perhaps the most specious argument by supporters of gay marriage, echoed by your editorial, is that legalization of gay marriage by judicial fiat has not resulted in the collapse of traditional marriage. Any reasonable person understands that an attack on a long-established value does not result in its immediate collapse. It is future generations that will feel the effects of the dilution of the true meaning of marriage.

I’m married. How does two people who love each other getting married damage my marriage in any way? How does forcing people to have sex outside of marriage defend marriage? How is encouraging an entire class of people to participate an institution designed to encourage monogamy, responsibility, and commitment damage an “attack” on marriage? I’m truly baffled.

And what is the “true meaning” of marriage? Is it the union of two people who are of the same race, as it was in many states until as recently as the 1960s? Is it the complete ownership of a woman and all her property by a man, as it was until not too long ago? Is it the political union of two families, as it often still is in many parts of the world? Is it the union of two people so that they can have children? — in which case why don’t we ban infertile couples from marrying? Is it a sacred union in the eyes of God, in which case we should ban all secular marriage and non-Christian marriages?

Surely the “true meaning” of marriage is that two adults have committed to spend the rest of their lives with each other because of their love. That’s all. Any other consideration is simply prejudice.

A slightly belated plug here for the New York Times article Happiness 101, about a positive-psychology class at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Positive psychology is a relatively new discipline that puts a practical emphasis on the promotion of wellbeing.

The discipline takes us back to the Ancients’ conception of philosophy, which was not just an intellectual exploration of ideas but the practical and experiential pursuit of the “good life” — a life that brings genuine happiness and is meaningful.

Take for example the topic of one class mentioned in the NYT article: “The distinction between feeling good, which according to positive psychologists only creates a hunger for more pleasure — they call this syndrome the hedonic treadmill — and doing good, which can lead to lasting happiness.” This is pure Buddhism, where there’s a distinction between pleasure and happiness, and where pleasure is seen as being inseparably linked to compassion, or concern for others.

I’m heartened to see academics exploring wellbeing in this way.

In what appears to be a planned campaign to prevent prisoners at Guantánamo, held without trial for over five years, from receiving legal counsel, Defense Department official Cully Stimson has called on major corporations to boycott the legal firms that are doing pro bono work for the detainees in order to guarantee them their constitutional right to due process.

Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, rattled off a prepared list of some of the most prestigious law firms in the nation, slandering them by suggesting that some were “receiving monies from who knows where.” Nudge nudge, wink wink.

“I think quite honestly when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists that hit their bottom line in 2001,” he said, “those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.”

Note the reasoning. Those held at Guantanamo are “the very terrorists” who hit the “bottom line” in 2001. This claim is belied by the fact that only a handful of prisoners at Guantánamo — recently transferred their from secret CIA prisons abroad — have any connection with 9/11. And note that the concern is not with the almost 3,000 Americans who died that day, but with the profit margins of corporations.

Mr. Stimson, concerned neither with truth nor apparently with the human lives lost on 9/11, also has no regard for the United States Constitution. As the Contra Costa Times points out, “Pro bono representation of someone who can’t afford a lawyer is a bedrock principle of American legal practice.”

Is this man fit to be in charge of detainee policy at Guantánamo?

380 detainees have already been freed from Guantánamo. Despite years or captivity without trial there was not enough evidence to charge them with any crime, or to put it in terms more in accord with legal process they were innocent. Some were imprisoned there because their captors were paid bounties for rounding up “terrorists.” Some who have been released say they were tortured.

Any person held in prison should have — does have — the right to due process, including the right to be charged with a crime, the right to know what those charges are, the right to legal representation, and the right to challenge the evidence against them. This is a moral issue, and it’s a defining moral issue. Are we governed by laws? Are we prepared to sacrifice our freedoms in order to “protect” them?

Just watched David Pogue’s NYT video of Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone. It’s a religious experience, with Jobs as the preacher and thousands of reporters and Mac fans as the adoring faithful.

Take me, Lord, I’m a-comin’!

Maybe it was bad karma. I’d been listening to a Guardian Unlimited podcast — The Ricky Gervais show — while driving back from the gym. It’s a cruel program that consists mainly of Gervais and Steve Merchant mocking the intelligence of someone called Karl Pilkington. Maybe Karl was playing dumb, I don’t know, but I found it unpleasant and should really have switched it off. It reminded me uncomfortably of how cruel my friends and I could be in our teenage years. I got home half-way through the podcast and put my iPod to bed (code: left it lying untidily on the kitchen table).

The next day my iPod failed to work in the car while I was driving up to visit a Buddhist group in a prison an hour away in Concord, New Hampshire. I assumed the battery was really sick, since the iPod failed to start even when connected to my in-car charger. Maybe when the battery’s really flat the 12v charger won’t work, I thought. But when I got home and plugged the iPod in to its “real” charger it still stayed dead. The screen was blank. I plugged in into the USB port to see if the Powerbook would give me some kind or error message. Nada.

I wasn’t too upset. Impermanence is a fact of life. iPods die. Stuff happens. I can live without my iPod, even if life would be a little less rich (often I listen to Dharma talks and science podcasts from New Scientist and the Guardian). And my LifeDrive can also play MP3s, although the sound quality’s poorer.

So although this wasn’t exactly a disaster I was pleased to find a simple solution online. I was able to reboot my iPod by pressing the “menu” and center buttons and holding them for three or four seconds, and now the iPod’s working again.

Still, this is twice in a week I’ve had to resurrect it. Last week it started skipping tracks and I had to reset the little rascal. No big deal, really. But two errors in a week suggests that it may be headed for the grave, which is a little sad. It’s brought me a lot of pleasure.

Well, that was a boring post, wasn’t it?

Did I mention I got this iPod for nothing? Thanks to Wired I discovered that a site called freeipods.com was giving away iPods. All you had to do, and it wasn’t much of a catch, I thought, was subscribe to a couple of special offers (things like join BMG’s CD club, take out a six-month subscription to the New York Times, that sort of thing) and then persuade a certain number of people (six, I think) to do the same thing. Once you had six friends who had signed up for two offers you’d get your iPod.

I promptly signed up for a couple of offers and started recruiting friends, or at least trying to. It was very difficult to get people to actually do anything, even though the free iPod program had been verified in the press as being genuine.

So I posted a link on a website and within a couple of months had six strangers help me get my iPod. I hope they got theirs as well. A couple of days before my 44th birthday my iPod appeared. It was a good deal, plus I got the 12 free CDs for joining BMG and a free month’s subscription to Audible.com. And I was in awe of how beautifully the iPod was made and how carefully it had been packaged. I think I was a Mac convert from that point on.

I’d assumed that the free iPod thing was now defunct (I mean it is a kind of pyramid scheme and sooner or later you run out of people to get to sign up for special offers) but it still seems to be running on a different site. I don’t know if the offer is the same deal.

Found on doonesbury.com:

“Bringing security to Baghdad — the essential precondition for political compromise, national reconciliation and economic development — is possible only with a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so. Any other option is likely to fail.”
– surge strategy originators Frederick Kagan and Gen. Jack Keane, in a recent essay

I’m bothered by the way that this administration’s language is picked up uncritically by the media. During the invasion of Iraq the administration frequently referred to Iraqi “death squads.” Although the term death squad generally refers to rogue military or paramilitary forces who kidnap and kill civilians in order to maintain fear and therefore control, they were actually talking about no more than ordinary units of Iraqi forces who were defending themselves from, or often trying desperately to surrender to, an invading force. And yet the TV and newspapers parroted the “death squad” terminology without question.

The latest assault on meaningful speech is the so called “surge” of 21,500 troops that President Bush plans to send to Iraq.

The definition of a surge is:

1. A sudden powerful or upward movement
2. A sudden large increase, typically a brief one that happens during an otherwise stable or quiescent period.

So a surge is something large: a sudden and dramatic increase well above normal levels. But there are already 132,000 troops in Iraq, so the increase is in the order of 16 percent, and the Secretary of State indicated today that not all of them might be sent over.

Is an increase of up to 16 percent — in stages — a “sudden large increase”? It seems to me to be neither large nor particularly sudden. The total numbers of troops would be around 153,500, and yet glancing back at the New York Times in November 2005 I see that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was announcing plans to cut back from 159,000 troops to about 137,000 or 138,000. We’ve already been to a higher troop level than this proposed “surge.” Oddly, it didn’t work back then, when the levels of insurgency were much lower.

Let’s question this language of a “surge.” And let’s not kid ourselves that it’s going to work.

In the Senate today Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice tried to justify President Bush’s plan for a “surge” of 20,000 troops to Iraq as a way of trying to reverse the deteriorating situation there.

The success of the President’s policy is predicated on a large number of conditions, including the Iraq government reversing its long-standing tacit support of Muktada al-Sadr, the insurgent-infiltrated Iraqi forces who are a large part of the problem seriously taking on the insurgents and thus becoming part of the solution, the presence of 150,000 troops (which we’ve seen there before) actually managing to control the civil war, and ability of the US government to maintain those numbers for an undefined period of time despite a seriously overstretched military.

Senator John Kerry reasonably asked, “What if it doesn’t work?”

The Secretary of State’s testy reply was, “You don’t go to plan B before plan A has been given a chance.”

Hmm. Haven’t we been here before? Didn’t we recently invade a country assuming that the grateful liberated citizens would greet us with open arms? Didn’t that all go kablooie? And didn’t it then turn out that there was no “Plan B” and that we were stuck in a quagmire?

Well, I guess Emerson did say that a foolish consistency was the hobgoblin of small minds. Unfortunately there’s no shortage of those.

The article Uncruel Beauty in the New York Times today brings a welcome mention of vegan and vegetarian products.

According to sources quoted in the article there are now 4.8 million vegetarians in the United States, one-third to one-half of whom are vegan. The source is the Vegetarian Resource Group, who can’t be said to be entirely unbiased, and I suspect (and regret) that these figures are inflated.

I know plenty of vegetarians, mostly amongst my Buddhist friends, but vegetarianism hasn’t made the same headway in the US as it has in my native UK. The selection of vegetarian/vegan meals in restaurants and supermarkets on this side of the Atlantic just doesn’t compare to what you’ll find in Britain, and I don’t think many US vegetarians have yet grasped that the vast majority of US cheeses contain animal rennet — an enzyme extracted from the stomaches of calves. Look for “microbial rennet” in the ingredient list if you want to eat vegetarian cheese, but don’t expect to find much of it around; on my last visit to a supermarket I took a rare peek in the cheese counter and found one vegetarian cheese out of perhaps fifty or sixty varieties. When you start seeing US supermarkets clearly labeling which cheeses are vegetarian you’ll know vegetarianism has really arrived here.

The emphasis in the article — typical of the NYT and of US newspapers generally — is on high-end products like $475 synthetic suede bags and $700 silk suits made from fibers harvested without harming silkworms. Sadly the article doesn’t say how you separate a silkworm from its cocoon without harming it and what you’d do with all the naked worms. Huddle them together for warmth? Wrap them individually in hemp? Put them in a silkworm nudist colony? Once I’ve finished having fun guessing I’ll take a look at the website.

But the article also gives a mention to Vegan Essentials, which offers a good range of reasonably priced non-leather shoes, wallets, and belts, as well as vitamins and a small range of food. They also mention the Vegan Fashion Blog, subtitled “Style with Conscious,” although perhaps that should read “Style without Grammar.” The Vegan Fashion Blog isn’t my scene — it’s unrelentingly oriented at women with a pink color scheme and lots of pictures of scarily-thin models. It looks just like any other fashion site. But then I guess that’s the point. Vegan clothes can look just the same as any other.

I was surprised and very pleased to learn that my iPhone post had been quoted in a Times article. That’s The Times — “The Thunderer” — and not the stateside version, which would have been even cooler in my humble opinion, although I’m not in any way complaining.

I was really lucky to get a mention considering the vast number of blog entries there must have been after Steve Job’s presentation yesterday. So thanks, guys.

Along with approximately 73 billion other bloggers I’m going to say something about the new iPhone from Apple. Many Buddhists seem particularly prone to technolust for some reason, and I’m no exception. I bet even the Dalai Lama’s drooling over this particular gadget.

At the moment I regularly carry a cellphone (nothing fancy — one of the cheaper models T-Mobile offers), my beloved iPod (which I got free from freeipods.com), and my pride and glory — my 4MB LifeDrive, which is a Palm OS handheld computer with the ability to surf the web and check email wherever there’s a wireless network, as well as the usual contacts, calendar, memos, the ability to carry around and edit word documents, etc.

There’s a considerable amount of overlap. The phone contains my telephone contacts and doesn’t sync with anything, so I often end up with conflicting information. Both the LifeDrive and the iPod sync with my Mac PowerBook and so I have two copies of my contacts and calendar, which is handy in case I forget to bring a device with me.

Both the iPod and LifeDrive sync with iTunes and so I can listen to music on both, although the sound quality on the iPod is far superior.

In theory the phone can surf the web, although it’s such a painful experience that I’ve never tried. Heck, getting a good enough signal to make phone calls is hard enough; I often have to step outside the house to make a call.

The LifeDrive is great for surfing in small doses and excellent for reading email, although I prefer to write replies on the PowerBook.

The LifeDrive also has a photo album and I believe it would let me watch video but I’ve never tried.

It’s a pain carrying around three devices, plus syncing the LifeDrive and iPod with the MacBook. So I’m really excited about the new iPhone, which will combine the functions of all three mobile devices and allow me to make calls, surf the web and check emails, listen to music and Dharma podcasts on the go, and even watch videos. What simplicity! And it doesn’t even have any buttons! Cool!

The only glitch at the moment, discounting whether I can get my wife to agree to my splashing out $500 to $600 for a new piece of male jewelry, is that the phone service will only work with Cingular, who to the best of my knowledge* have no service in my area. The phone may well be available in unlocked form so that I can just slip in my T-Mobile SIM card, but I can expect the price to be double the price of the locked version.

* Update: Cingular’s coverage map says they have a “good” signal where I live (that’s one step down from their “best” signal). However T-Mobile’s map says the same thing and as I mentioned I often have to step outside to make calls. When I’m inside the house and more than six feet from a window calls will generally be dropped. These maps seem to be more wishful thinking than anything.

It’s wonderful news that television host Oprah Winfrey has opened The $40 million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Where Oprah goes others will hopefully follow. (But NYT, why buried in the Arts section?)

At the same time Oprah is raising a stir for comments she made about why she chose to build her school outside the US.

Oprah reportedly said:

“I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

It seems that most commentators think Oprah is daring to tell the truth, and I agree with them. There’s a malaise affecting not just the US education system but the whole of U.S. society.

Consider than more than 50% of science PhDs in the US are earned by foreign students. Consider that 25% of new hi-tech businesses in the US are started by immigrants. While the children of immigrants are fanatically devoted to the attainment of a good education so that they can get on in life, too many US youngsters regard education as a chore and good grades as a right.

And this is not to blame the children, because the problem doesn’t start with them. US teachers are chronically underpaid. Hilary Swank’s new movie, “Freedom Writers,” about a young teacher who excites a class of disengaged inner-city youths makes a point of mentioning that she was paid only $27,000 for her very demanding job. But that’s way more than my wife was making when she was working as a high school teacher in Montana — and that was with a master’s degree and several years of experience under her belt.

We pay people more to look after our money than we do to look after our children’s education.

Local citizens who don’t have children routinely vote down funding increases for schools or proposals to replace inadequate facilities.

Parents all too often have a sense that their primary goal is to protect their children from criticism and low grades. If a teacher dares to discipline a student for bad behavior the phone is likely to ring off the hook with complaints. Good grades are seen as every child’s right, regardless of whether or not he or she has done any work. Bad grades are seen as inherently unfair because they damage a child’s self-esteem.

If children can’t concentrate we don’t teach them to concentrate, we give them pills.

Watching too much TV too young causes behavioral problems. Children need more unplugged time.

The whole attitude to education in the US is flawed. We need to pay teachers more (and weed out bad teachers, of course), to value education, and to demand that parents hold their children accountable for their behavior.

The US can get by for a while on imported brains, but that strategy has obvious limits.

As the Scottish novelist Alistair Gray said: “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.” They should put that on the currency.

I’m not entirely sure that President Bush knows what a syllogism is, but he seems, in this list of the top 10 Bushisms for 2006 to have come up with the first two thirds of a most intriguing one:

I want to be a war president; no president wants to be a war president.

Logic dictates that the proposition that can be inferred from these two premises is:

Therefore, I am no president.