The guy keeping Anna Nicole Smith from all that money just died. King Fahd died late last year. Now the world's second richest living man (Buffett) is giving all of his money to the world's richest man (Gates), who's going to give it all away.

There's a lot of money on the move. 

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary - the list of top 25 nouns:

time, person, year, way, day, thing, man, world, life, hand, part, child, eye, woman, place, work, week, case, point, government, company, number, group, problem, fact.

Other recent pentagon projects involve chemical agents which reportedly would make enemy soldiers irresistably physically attractive to each other - which I'm assuming would take the form of an aerosol cloud of highly concentrated Viagra/Cialis to give them the desire together with a pheromene additive in order to affect their orientation. Presumably the ensuing confusion would affect their morale and make them less willing to fight. 

...Make love, not war.

The top CNN Business headlines today:

• Goodbye, Mr. Gates
• Party on Wall Street

I agree - let's celebrate...

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When a man and woman meet for the first time, men may be more likely to think about sex -- or at least more likely to admit it.

That's the core finding of a study in June's issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly.

The researchers included Maurice Levesque, PhD. He worked on the study while at the University of Connecticut and now works in the psychology department of North Carolina's Elon University.

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There are two interesting things about this article:

First that Dr. Levesque apparently talked somebody into funding this research. 

[You know what they say about a fool and his money...] 

The second is that there is a magazine called Psychology of Women Quarterly.

[It's about bloody time...]

CNN: President Bush stressed the need for immigrants to learn American values and culture if they are to become citizens, as he paid a visit Wednesday to this heartland state where the Hispanic population is on the rise.

America 101:

Buy the biggest vehicle you can find so that you can use more gasoline than anybody else.

Buy lots of fried and sugary foods and get really fat.

Come up with a novel fraud scheme to finance these activities.

Sex: Bush and friends try once again to define a 'marriage' in constitutional legalese. That means something a little more descriptive than two people who decide to hang out with each other. It also isn't good enough to say it's two people who sleep together. A man and a woman. Hmmm. This is the constitution, and we're still arguing over the right to bear arms because they didn't define a well-regulated militia very well. Ultimately this is going to require precise anatomical descriptions in order for there not to be any loopholes. The only problem is that the constitution is read and studied by school kids. It is going to be a very delicate balancing act. 

Drugs: Troops in Afghanistan are going where the action is. That means to the poppy fields. There's a fresh crop. And the U.S. intends to control the valleys. You won't find this in a public policy statement, but to do this, they need to win the hearts and minds of the opium farmers. And the only way to do this is to become better at opium distribution than the Taliban.

Rock-and-Roll: Bill Wyman is more than just a survivor of 40 some odd years with the Rolling Stones. He's also a photographer, and has just published a book of photos which he took while hanging out in hotel rooms. Speaking of the Stones, it has been confirmed that none other than his satanic majesty Keith Richards will be playing Johnny Depp's (aka Captain Jack Sparrow) father in the next installment of Pirates of the Carribean. I have to hand it to the casting director - I think he's a good fit for the part. The only issue is whether or not he's got any acting talent.

It is particularly telling that the U.S. contingency plan for 'dealing with' Iran has but one military strategy - nuke 'em. It is the only military strategy being discussed. Bringing democracy to Iran isn't even on the table. 

Why? Because we took a fledgling democracy away from Iran in the early 1950's and installed a military dictatorship. Forcibly installing precisely the kind of government which we destroyed wouldn't go over well with the Iranian people. Forcibly installing any kind of government probably would not go over well with the Iranian people. The last time we did this, we brought them the Shah - who was arguably the most vilified human being on the planet until they finally were able to dump him in the late 1970's.

For those that are too young to have studied these events, it all came about because of a British oil conglomerate. They pumped the oil and shared the profits with the Iranian government (and people). Except this particular oil company was a bit corrupt (I'm shocked!). They cooked the books and weren't sharing all the money. So the government did what any government would do under the circumstances - they kicked out the corrupt thieves and took their oil back.

This didn't go over well in Washington D.C. You see, our oil companies were bigger than the British companies. What if all the oil-rich lands decided to nationalize all the corrupt oil companies? It wouldn't be good for business. It wouldn't be good for the continuous flow of cheap oil (gasoline was about 22 cents a gallon at the time). So at the urging of a handful of American business executives, the CIA covertly threw a few million dollars into a program to dump the government and take back the oil resources. We brought back the monarchy which had existed prior to WWII.

The Shah rapidly consolidated power and tortured or killed anybody who disagreed with him. In the 1960's the word 'Shah' was synonymous with 'torture'. This is why the Iranians don't particularly like the U.S.

It is therefore ironic that in the early 1970's the Shah nationalized the oil companies anyway. We grumbled a bit, but let him. He gave us long term contracts in exchange, and we really didn't want to mess with him, as he had created the largest military machine in the middle east due to our continued financial support. It was also more important for us to maintain our CIA listening posts and airbases near the Soviet Union than it was to defend the oil conglomerates again. This turned out to be a reasonable decision as Iran was the only Arab country that sent us oil during the 1973 Arab oil embargo; which was to protest our backing of Israel in the Arab-Israeli war earlier that year. The Iranian people would've preferred to join the embargo, but they had no say in the matter. The Shah had absolute control.    

All of this is why the Iranians would never allow a U.S. installed government to exist again. And it is why we have no other choice but to wipe the country off the face of the earth if current negotiations fail. 

What a mess we've created.