>>You know I like your curmudgeonliness (feels misspelled, or maybe not a word at all), along with your erudition. I wasn't kidding that time I said you really should write a history book. The incessant U.S.-bashing and general cynicism just get under my skin sometimes, that's all.
>
>Most of the time it's deserved. If you had one guy who was permanently and steadily stealing from everybody's lunch money, was caught and spoken against many times, and he sometimes gets a friend to speak in his favor, and mentions "all this him-bashing" - what do you think what's such a defense worth, if he doesn't stop?
>
>I also think I'm on the bashed side, my country being on the bad guys list for reasons no better than the reasons why other ex-brethren are on the good guys list. We grew up believing we were never on the offensive, our soldiers never shot first, we never invaded, we were always the freedom fighters... well, screw that. If fifty billion of media propaganda erases decades (maybe close to two centuries) of that image in a few weeks, the image is worthless. It absolutely doesn't matter what we thought of ourselves, or what we think now (if we do any of that anymore), the pants were falling by themselves and we were screwed either way. From inside, for living under Sloba [unspellable], from outside, for allegedly keeping Sloba [unspellable] in power. We got bashed with more than just words... for something someone did in or with our name, jebiga.
>
>Your country is getting just words (take it both ways). And it's not the countries, anyway, it's the knowing big corp's (misspelling intentional).
>
>>You're still on my permanent good guys list.
>
>At least I'm not in a Hollywood movie, where the good guys used to be boring and the bad guys had all the good lines :).
>
>>I should try to get back to sleep. Went to bed relatively early, about 10:30, then woke up a while ago wide awake. (Don't, LOL). My sleep has generally been great lately, but not tonight. There must be some book on the bookshelf that can cure this....
>
>I had no problem with that - I'd take a computer magazine, they always print in a 7px font, always short on space, always trying to squeeze in as much as possible, and trying to read that would get me to sleep. Then some day my wife (an MD) told me it was about time I got reading glasses. And I'm not buying magazines anymore - they seem so nicely printed and valuable documents of our occupational history, yet they take up space for decades until they are worthy of being looked at again... online is better. And even with just +1.5 I see my monitors without strain. So I really wake up in the evening and then late at night I have trouble getting asleep, and even more waking up :). Both things seem to take longer and longer.

Running in and out today, just checking messages. Wanted to let you know I read this and will respond more when I can. Great message. It should not surprise anyone in the least that you landed a doc-tah. You just come across sometimes as cynical and ungrateful, that's all. As I said in the beginning, you are one of my favorites here. You are never unentertaining.