Miscellaneous:

- Brent Scowcroft's falling-out with Dubya: "I'm a realist in the sense that I'm a cynic about human nature."

- Joe Klein blasts the GOP's brand of shoot-the-messenger politics of personal destruction.

- Biology can probably do without sex, but the whole mixing of the gene pool thing is probably our best defense against disease.

- Can a Beijing/Taipei confederacy really be the key to a viable cross-strait peace?

- Judge Richard Posner has probably written so much on so many topics that he just doesn't make much sense anymore.

- Sometimes the biggest secrets are the ones hidden in plain sight. Just ask the CIA guys who get paid to read newspapers.

- China and India will become superpowers. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Maybe.