I would also recommend Hostile Waters by Peter Huchthausen. It's a fascinating story both in the events themselves, and in how it was handled by both countries.

I really think I WAS speaking in terms of strategic interests. My complaint is that our view of our strategic interest is horribly short-sighted. And, for what it's worth, the people of the countries in which we interfere are the body from which future leaders of those countries arise. So we DO need to consider the effects of our actions on those populations. Not doing so creates a situation like Iran.

As for South American intervention being more about communism/capitalism, probably the worst such intervention was related our activities to support the United Fruit Company. The term Banana Republic springs from that.

This notion that we must intervene in any government we don't like is exactly why we're in the position we're in now with the Middle East.

We don't like Mossadeq, we intervene to overthrow him, despite his being democratically elected. Khomeini replaces our hand-picked Shah, so we support Saddam Hussein in his ridiculously unjust war against Iran.

This is the most obvious example; but we've been through this in a half-dozen South American countries as well. We have no sense of time in this country. We don't take the long view of anything, anything at all.

And by the way, I do remember the Cold War. I've done a duck and cover drill. I've been afraid of the Russians. We acted with more measure and reason when we worried about the killing the planet. As it is now, we'll do anything if it just involves killing regionally.

I've been running Linux on the desktop since 2002. I used Fedora until this past summer when I bought a Dell Ubuntu system. My wife, who is not computer literate, and my 8 year old daughter have neither one had any problems. Occasionally a relative will buy some kids game at Best Buy as a gift for my daughter; but we've made it through with Wine for the most part, though not always. Occasionally we hit a website that doesn't work in Firefox, but they're getting fewer and farther between. Now that Flash is giving respect to Linux, our experience is very pleasant. Even those glitches provide a better experience than we had previously running Windows.

I don't worry about viruses, and I have all my geek-tools at hand, while my wife and daughter do just fine creating docs, sending email, surfing webkinz, etc. I've not found anything that I really want to do that I can't because I'm not running Windows.

But perhaps the best part about it is that I don't feel like I'm having to pay Microsoft to use my own computer. It's my data; I shouldn't need to pay them to access it.

You're dead on. In fact, I feel the same uneasiness as the original poster, and feel a similar awkwardness in situations where I'm alone with a female stranger. I completely understand the caution women exercise and I'm glad my wife is cautious and aware of her surroundings; but it is an odd feeling to recognize that the woman walking across the parking lot in front of me is keeping a close eye on me, or even hurrying her pace when simple chance has placed my car near hers.

I find myself walking to the side when following a woman who is by herself so that she can see me in her peripheral vision. I have slowed my pace before when the woman walking ahead of me toward the parking garage elevators was clearly keeping a wary eye on me, so that she could get the elevator car to herself.

I understand the caution, and I sympathize with it; but it almost makes me feel guilty or dirty when I haven't meant or done anything remotely wrong.

It's a tough issue.