thomas and i sat at home with beer on friday night and watched the first presidential debate, the most distressing part of which was mccain stating that he would cut funding for things like studying the dna of bears in montana. you know, his point about wasteful spending is well-taken, or at least, taken, but that was a particularly poorly-chosen example (surely there are conservative basic scientists out there somewhere. you at the back?) i think last night more than ever i felt that mccain is just methuselah old -- alluding to russians in afghanistan cuts both ways; there's a fine line between experience and decrepitude, particularly from the vantage point of someone under 35. also, old politicians don't seem to me as eminent as old academics; i think this is something to do with the cyclical nature of history. what was it that one philosopher quipped: that the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn anything from it? i guess that's what cheapens the experience argument for me -- what's going to be important in the (quite clearly unpredictable) future is going to be discovered accidentally, fortuitously, and by a leadership willing to take chances on LHCs and wireless electricity and the investigation of near-death experiences. and yes, bears in montana as well.