Jeff Hawkins, Chiang Kai-shek, and Pileated Woodpeckers

Tempting as it is to try to write a coherent essay about Jeff Hawkins, creator of the PalmPilot, former dictator of China Chiang Kai-shek, and woodpeckers, in fact they come together as only a temporal coincidence.

Yesterday Jan had the camera out to take pictures of her PeacefulJewelry and saw, for her first time ever, a Pileated Woodpecker, a rather large and magnificent bird. You can see a picture I took of it at the Pileated Woodpecker page I created yesterday.

I had some time to catch up on book reviews as well. Part of Natural Liberation is understanding how the human mind works. I just finished reading On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins, and wrote a review of it.

I would like to get back to my U.S. War Against Asia writing project, and in my stack of books to review was Hollington's biography of Chiang Kai-shek. There is a lot about U.S. - China relations in the book, as well as Chinese history as seen by supporters of the generalisimo.

Meanwhile, today is election day in California, so I am going off to vote later . There is not much on the ballot in California (we had our presidential primary earlier); see my recommendations. I am looking forward to Barack Obama and the party bosses proclaiming themselves the rulers of the Democratic Party. I think an Obama-Clinton ticket would be great. It is a chance to show that non-white Americans and women can make it to the top of a corrupt system of government if they are greedy enough, power-hungry enough, and slick enough. It will be hard for my candidate, Cynthia McKinney, to make headway against a salt-and-pepper ticket. Or pepper-and-salt ticket, whichever it may be.