My head is spinning like that brat from the Exorcist.

Two days ago ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked George Bush a pretty good question about US strategy in Iraq, if there was not perhaps a middle ground between the two jingoistic extremes of “Stay to Course” and “Cut and Run”.

Bush responded with “Listen, we’ve never been ‘Stay the Course’, George.”

Ideally, Stephanopoulos would have adopted Bush’s adolescent slang and called him out on this nonsense with something like “Yo man! That’s bogus George. You dudes have been like totally ‘Stay the Course.’”

Alas, he did no such thing and went merrily on to the next question.

Since the phrase has been used extensively by everyone in the administration, including Bush, as well as a great many GOP Senators, Congressmen and supporters, I was looking forward to Tony Snow’s spin on the matter.

Yesterday he explained that the president has stopped using the term “because it left the wrong impression about what was going on.” Well OK, but that’s not quite the same thing as saying you’ve never used the term. My favorite quote from the press conference was a reporter’s follow-up to that explanation.

Q: Is the President responsible for the fact people think it’s stay the course since he’s, in fact, described it that way himself?

Snow: No.

This seemed to satisfy all reporters present who then moved on to other questions.

Great, President Bush has now authorized torture and suspended habeas corpus — but only for bad people, so it’s all OK. You know, so much has been said about this on both sides, there is not much I can add. However, something reminded me of another similar story of treason and terror so I dug up the dialog from the play. (The movie is fantastic too, if you haven’t seen it.)

All of this is far too intellectual for political debate these days, but logic behind habeas corpus has been well understood for about 600 years.

ROPER: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

MORE: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

ROPER: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”

MORE: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

It seems like the whole nation has forgotten the last 600 years of history. Terrorists and criminals will be found guilty and held accountable under the law. Due process will be of no help to them. Laws and due process exist to protect the innocent, not the guilty.

This is a family-style restaurant that I saw in Yokohama the other day. For those of you who don’t read Japanese, the name of the place is Broccoli Land. Yes, it sounds every bid as bad in Japanese as it does in English. It’s the kind of place you would threaten your kids with.

“Now Jenny, if you clean up your room and are nice to your little brother, we’ll take you both to Disney Land, but if you don’t behave yourself, we’re going to Broccoli Land.”

“Nooooo! Don’t make me go to Broccoli Land. I’ll be a good girl. I promise!”

The kids don’t even have to know what the place is. The name alone sounds like torture.

Some guys really need to just turn off their computer and talk to a girl, but they never will. The scrappy young entrepreneurs over at Whorecraft (yes, really!) think they have found a magic marketing elixir - crossing RPGs and porn. The first installment is “Rouges Do It From Behind.”

Yeah, I know it’s all harmless, but there is something about this that makes me almost embarrassed to be male.

The other day, my friend was bemoaning the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet. (Yeah, my friend needs to get out more. He knows that.)

Over the past few months I read a bit of the nonsensical debate over whether “Pluto is a planet” with amusement. In fact, the debate has nothing whatsoever to do with Pluto. Neither the final decision nor any of the arguments put forth have the slightest effect on Pluto which will keep orbiting the sun as it has done for billions of years. Pluto doesn’t even know the debate exists. The debate was not about whether Pluto is a planet. It was about whether we should all call Pluto a planet. It’s an arbitrary label that people take far too seriously.

It reminds me of the duck-billed platypus. The platypus is a favorite of high-school biology teachers who explain that it is a freakish animal since it lays eggs, but nurses its young and does all kinds of things that make it difficult to classify. The platypus, of course, is blissfully unaware of this “problem” and continutes to eat, sleep, mate and make lots of baby platypuses just as it always has.

To say that the platypus is a mammal is not a statement about the platypus. It is a statement about our system of labels. Most people cannot separate the labels we apply to something from what that something actually is, and therefore think there is something odd about the platypus, because it does not fit cleanly into our labels.

Personally, I blame Aristotle for all of this, but I’ll save that for another post.

I just got back from another trip to the US.

When I travel, especially to places where I obviously stand out as a tourist, I generally get into the front seat of taxis. Although it tends to surprise the driver at first, they will generally assume that this is the custom where ever you come from and then drop into a much more talkative mood than if you had been sitting in the back.

I’m convinced that if you do this enough in Latin America, you will learn Spanish rather quickly. The drivers, being Latino, simply cannot sit next a person for more than five minutes without starting a conversation, and the fact that you don’t speak a word of their language is not going to stop them.

When I was in Peru a while back, I received hours of free Spanish instruction from taxi drivers while stuck in traffic. “OK. This is a bridge. A bridge. That’s a truck. A green truck. A brown truck.” Yeah, I know. Not exactly scintillating conversation, but it helped pass the time for both of us.

The only place I can’t really do this is in America where the passenger’s side door is always locked and the drivers and passengers are separated by an inch of bullet-proof glass. Of course, I understand why this is necessary, but it makes me a bit sad.