Bleat On: When you're tired of hearing the same old thing said yet another way, go read Lileks. He has a way of saying things, on topics that everyone is talking about, that no one else is saying. Here's an example:

Think back to the post 9/11 climate, and remember the feeling you’d get in your stomach when you read a story headlined “Does Al Qaeda have a nuke?” or “Smallpox fears rise” - it seemed as if the one thick thread that held your world together was about to get a good hard yank. Some forget how every day brought the same routine - news report, a hot squirt of fear in your stomach, a quick imposition of denial, then . . . well, you had to make dinner, or pick the kids up, or take the dog to the vet. We lived in these twin worlds of the Now and the Horribly Possible. The latter, thank God, hasn’t happened yet.

Visceral, ain't it? Next time you hear someone yelling about how imperialist the U.S. is and how we need to wait for the threat to be imminent, for the gun to be smoking, remember the quote above.

I remember the feeling: I remember washing my hands, repeatedly and vigorously, after I opened the mail so that I could play with my son without being afraid -- because a lady that lived 65 miles southwest of us had died of anthrax. No, we don't know where that anthrax came from, do we? Does that make you feel better or worse?