While the excess of 40 years ago was relatively peaceful (until the very end of the movement), mainly involving self-destruction, the excess of today is rhetorical, and could become far more dangerous very quickly.

Amoeba have the ability not only to recognize their own family members but also to selectively discriminate in favor of them.

YouTube's innovation was really quite simple. They traded screen size for resolution. A YouTube window covers a full quarter of your screen, while a standard MPEG window goes just a few inches on a side. They also standardized the use of codes to enable people to either embed or link to videos in a straightforward manner.

Competition is coming, in other words. It can't be stopped. Moore's Law guarantees it. And with it, so will die the current bottlenecks on change. Without politics.

Rising foreclosures means there is more housing inventory in the "motivated seller" category -- banks and county governments are always motivated to sell. Thus, the real floor price of housing has to overshoot its true value, in order to clear out that inventory. Once the plunge begins, in other words, it continues.

What's different this time? Pollyanna, I think. A willful suspension of belief in reality on many levels -- politically, in terms of the war, in terms of the environment. When there are so many negative facts staring at people and they refuse to look at any of them, you better bundle up against the storm.

What it means is that Bill Gates is still smarter than you are, Ms. Post and Mr. Weekly (if those are your real names).

The next recession is going to be nasty. Real estate is going to go way down, earnings will fall, the dollar will be at risk of collapse. Smart investors are already geographically diverse. That means you should already have a substantial part of your assets in countries that use other currencies -- Yen, Euro, whatever.

America is falling behind. If real estate and heavy equipment and defense contracting is what works, you're eating your seed corn.

What we're really looking for here is a signature race, one where the Democrat is given no chance, even now, but triumphs anyway.