Looking up and seeing that this is my 78th journal entry, I'm a bit amazed that I've been able to keep this up. To be sure, I don't write every day -- I fall a day or two or three behind constantly -- but I have kept up an average of one entry a day for over two and a half months. That in itself is quite an accomplishment. And for Dave, who's probably reading this: Get a life already!

So I was watching this show on the History Channel. You know, I watch a lot of television, started when I my family first moved to America. Television is quite entertaining and there are a lot of excellent programs made. There's also a lot of trash, but that's part of a free market economy. People want to see something, that's what they get. That market becomes saturated, you start getting different programs that, though they may appeal to a smaller demographic, can be just as profitable for the makers as another program competing in an overcrowded segment.

Anyway, this program I was watching was about the Vikings and how they settled a few colonies in the Americas. There was a lot cultural imperatives to go out and establish new settle- ments and the Vikings always thought there was land westwards so they didn't have that fear of falling off the edge of the earth. The program showed the remains of what is probably Leif Ericson's lodge. It was quite interesting, although once again I don't tend to pay full attention to everything. But one thing that I remember is that Eric the Viking named the land he discovered "Greenland" in order to attract people to go and colonise there. When I heard that I thought "that's marketing for you".

Something else I was watching was some sort of political news show. They were interviewing one of the Democratic presidential candidates and about the way that the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty failed to pass the Senate. Politics is quite interesting when you can get an insight of why some things are done. When you get a bunch of people, each with a little power, it's hard to get anything done since they all have competing interests.

So this Democratic Senator said that the President drafted this Treaty without consulting the Senate. He tried to sort of ram- rod it through the Senate, and so it of course failed since the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, although some Democrats also voted against it. But, one of the suppositions is that the President purposely did this to make the Republicans look bad. To most people, nuclear weapons are bad so a test ban is good. Personally, I'm not too sure that a test ban is a good thing, but having the Republicans nix this "good" treaty makes them look bad, and may help in next year's Presidential elections.

Politics is a big, complicated game. Sure, there are a lot of bad things that go on: corruption and so forth. But it does work, and rather effectively I think. If you have the time, read the Constitution of the United States. It's a marvelous blueprint of a good government, and it just amazes me how short it is. I once visited a site that has some great commentary on the Constitution, the significance of certain sections and Amendments. Too bad I forgot where it is.