Plato's view of an oak tree.

It strikes me that the most exciting phase of the current U.S. presidential race is going to prove to be the choosing of Hill or Barack. Once that's done, the actual election of a new U.S. president will be a foregone conclusion - whichever one of them wins the Democrat's nomination will get it. There's no way the Republican candidate, whoever that may prove to be, will win, right? Right?

On the "movies to see" front, go see "Persepolis". Great little movie. An excellent corrective to the usual vision of Iran. Yes, its government is totally nuts (kinda like you-know-who), but the average citizen isn't. They went from having a murderous, fascist dictator in control (helped out by, again, you-know-who) to having murderous fascist clerics in control. Iranians had really hoped to get rid of the dictator and set up a reasonable state, but, well, you know how these crazy "revolution" things can get out of hand. Remember the French revolution? Or the Russian? Neither of those went quite as planned, either.