Well, he certainly doesn’t stop it.

I managed to fast-forward through his...filmstrip (I certainly didn’t see any movement on-screen. How about a pamphlet, guy)? I mean, how long do you have to take to say:

• "This is the glacier ten years ago." (shows glacier)
• "This is the glacier now." (no more glacier).

Ooooooooooohhhh Goes the audience. Melty.

‘Twas the night before Xmas, and I am in Berkeley, California, meeting a good friend who’s been working at the outdoor artisans’ fair on Telegraph Ave. I walk through the town while I wait for the fair to end, through the University, the empty track, the gray sky turning dark. I go into the fairly crowded Barnes and Noble as it closes, 6pm, and and buy a gift for a friend.

I return to Telegraph, 6:30 pm; my friend Helen greets me, her workday done. We drive to the Whole Foods Market, six blocks away. We expect it to be closed and instead found it booming. Full, everybody in good spirits, happy to give a donation to the ghost of health-food’s past, and the yuppie-market’s future.

A man and a woman are stalking the sidewalk bordering the parking lot, “Excuse me, my wife and I are trying to get some food and money…”

I don’t carry any cash, and say so, but once I’ve eaten some olives and grape leaves, I remember myself, and buy a gift card for the pair. Fifteen dollars, not enough to turn life around, but enough for soup and bread for two, even at stinking, lovely, capitalist Whole Foods.

I’m becoming convinced that history will record the causes of the fall of the American Empire the way that Edward Gibbon records the fall of Rome.

So I thought as I left Best Buy today…No, really.

But briefly, back to Rome and its fall: For it, Gibbon blames Christianity (at least in part - and immigration, too). Christ’s preachings were, in 0 A.D., the degenerate rantings of a most unpopular cult (a mutant variant of the equally unpopular Judaism). But in a a few centuries, the “Good News” religion had become the populist rebuttal to the bureaucratic corruption that was ruining the Empire.

The inheritors of Christianity, the Popes in Rome, would soon bring their own versions of peccadillo, perversion and scandal to Europe that would have made Caligula blush, (and Nero remorseful, for not having thought of it himself…) But never-mind. Christianity was here to stay.

And so, back to Best Buy.

Alright class, you’re here to predict and solve the problems of the next three centuries. Pencils up…and…go!

Proposition:

Oil Will Run Dry Within 20 Years...

• 30 Years?

• 40 Years?

And the Face of the Nation Will be Forced to Change.

• How will it change?

• What will break down first?

• What will the role of Washington be in a decentralized U.S.? (What was it pre-1940)?

• Will we, like China, go to pebble-bed nuclear energy to supply the majority of our needs?

• If not, how will the nation meet its energy requirements?

We Will Rely on Local Agriculture, because Shipping Meat, Milk, Grains, Beans and Produce Thousands of Miles will no longer be Economically Viable for the Producers.

A few thoughts on African loss of life (and eugenics), for those for whom history began before 1979.

We're told that Africa has an AIDS problem. I used to think this was so. But after copious reading research and discussion, I am more than fairly convinced that Africa has a number of severe problems that have been collected together and name-branded 'AIDS'.

Last year I spoke with an epidemioligist, a specialist in water-safety, just returned from Uganda. She showed me her pictures of the tin-shack shanty towns, thrown up on the muddy banks of garbage heaps and drainage ditches, children playing in the refuse. I asked, where's the clean water? That, she said, was a problem. I asked, how do you tell dysentery, cholera, TB, malaria and sepsis, and all the rest of what occurs, from AIDS?

That, she said, was the problem.

She added, with some frustration - "But you can't get a grant to do anything over there, unless it has the words "HIV/AIDS" in the title."

Yes, I know, only a great many of the protesters were/are illegal.

Tens to hundreds of thousands of people in major cities, taking to the streets.

But why?

I can't figure it out from the protests. What are people protesting? What are they asking for?

The right to be legal citizens, regardless of current status (visa, illegal, what-have-you)?

What are the conditions being sought? And for whom?

* Citizenship for illegal workers? If so, how many days, weeks, months or years of labor equal citizenship?

* In what cities/states?

* For those who have family members here? If so, who and how many?