Well, here’s a sad confession for you: LI didn’t attend the historians against the war conference. It isn’t because times are tight – an LI reader thoughtfully offered us the ready. It is because the weather is cold, and LI has this thing about biking through 40 degree weather on the off chance that we will be able to see a panel discussion to which we may be barred, for lack of registration. Besides which, the other top ten thing on the list of what we don’t do is we don’t get up early – or at least, we don’t do that well. We did get up and think, okay, time to hit the 8:55 a.m. session, but then our will slumped, and generally we proved that we would never have built the British empire or laid the tracks of the transcontinental railroad by drifting off.

Sorry! I’m more of a big rock candy mountain guy in my heart, a descendent of one of those Brueghel peasants, dreaming of the fruit falling into my mouth. My scythe is rusting in the grass, and I feel the trickle of sand through the hourglass merely as a slight and pleasant tickling sensation as I pursue peasant girls in colorful undress in my dreams…

And so onto other topics…

For instance, Osama bin Laden, our billion dollar man, has decided to really strive for the best MTV video prize this year. He’s out with a new tape, or a director's cut of the old tape, and in this one he promises to live free and die free and compares Bush to … Saddam Hussein.

“Osama bin Laden promised never to be captured and declared that the United States had resorted to the same "repressive" tactics used by Saddam Hussein, according to an audiotape purportedly by Mr. bin Laden posted Monday on a militant Web site.

While there was no immediate way to authenticate the tape, it appeared to be a more complete version of one first broadcast Jan. 19 on Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite channel. In that broadcast, the first from Mr. bin Laden in more than a year, he offered the United States a long-term truce but also said his Al Qaeda network was planning more attacks on the United States.”

All of which makes me want to laugh hollowly and say, in my best Poe-like voice:
"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport."