If you're an American voter and you're still undecided today, please read this New Yorker editorial and think hard about it before you go to the polls:

The Choice

And to those of you for whom opposing abortion is the most important issue in this campaign, please ask yourselves honestly why protecting a horde of merely potential human beings who are more likely than ever to be born into crushing poverty is more important to you than ensuring that there is a clean, prosperous, and stable world for them to live on.

If you don't like abortion, don't have one, but please, for the sake of us all, don't let that get in the way of dealing with the real problems we face here in the real world. Real, feeling people are suffering in real, horrendous ways now. You are part of the world economy, and you are without doubt feeling the pain yourself.

If you vote only with the goal of ending access to abortion in mind, you may call yourself "pro-life," but in reality you are voting against life—against the lives of the real, breathing, thinking, suffering people who are your friends, family, and fellow humans.

Think hard.

BEER: Now Less Expensive Than Gas

DRINK, DON'T DRIVE

We were having an email discussion with some friends about what musicians we like are Scientologists. It started at Chick Corea, but by the time it got around to Beck our friends were asking if this means the money they spend on Beck albums might end up in L. Ron Hubbard's skeletal hands, and if they should be concerned by this. I said:

I'm sure that's what it means, yes. But part of your money will also go to getting Beck's children braces, and organic soy milk, and some of it will end up in the pockets of evil record company executives. I guess my feeling is that all the money we spend will eventually pass through hands we don't approve of, the same way all the atoms in our bodies will eventually recycle through other people and animals and trees and clouds and landfills. I guess I look at the pool of available money as a closed ecosystem, and some of it will always be in the hands of organizations we don't like. But it won't necessarily stay there. It will keep cycling and maybe do some good too.

I feel like money to Beck is a reward for talent, and for giving me some aural pleasure. ("Heh heh, he said aural pleasure.") I feel better about rewarding talent, even if the talent might give the money to L. Ron Hubbard Inc., than I do about giving money to faceless companies like Blockbuster and Land's End (is that right?) that donate huge amounts of money to causes I dislike. I can go elsewhere for videos or yuppie hippie clothing, but I can't go anywhere else for Beck music.