There's lots of talk these days about "green" products and how people can be supportive of environmental issues. But what can an ordinary person really do to make a difference to the global ecology?

There are basically two competing theories of government and they are at the heart of any discussion of what government is, what government should do and why it should do it.

War certainly has a good press agent. There is practically nothing, with the possible exception of sex that gets more positive reviews for less reason.

I work with a fellow, a person of more than average intelligence, who surprised me the other day by stating his belief in the movement of huge amounts of weapons from Iraq to Syria. I was flabbergasted. I'd previously thought the only people who believed this obvious fabrication also believed in Bigfoot, astrology, and Atlantis.

Most war stories are sad, when true. One of the saddest I'm personally acquainted with was told to my father fifty year ago on Halloween. It was an old story when he heard it. It is no less sad for being old.

Why I'm going to have a hard time voting Democrat: The bipartisan support of the Detainee Bill clearly shows that neither party in our two-party system is prepared to act on behalf of protecting the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

I'm sick and tired of hearing people talk about the 1950s or the 1960s or even the 1970s, who were not alive then and have not the slightest conception of what those years were about.

There has been quite a lot of hot air expended in the American media about Cuba lately. To judge from most comments, Fidel Castro has single handedly oppressed the Cuban people and opposed any kind of Cuban democracy single-handed. Many commentators, for no clear reason, think that when Mr. Castro dies, the Cuban nation will awake, as from some dream. God, I hope not.

Change happens in our lives. Some changes we welcome, while others just make us feel old. Perhaps that's why older people tend towards conservatism and younger people tend toward progressivism - a conflict as old as people.

I previously thought that ours was becoming a more enlightened age, where many of the old abuses against human rights might still occur, but that people generally would know that they were wrong. But now, major American corporations are stealing peoples' money just because their name sounds Arabic -- and it isn't news.

Only in the modern era have we achieved even a little bit of freedom for the press in war time. In earlier times, opposition voices were summarily silenced. So it is only during the last few lifetimes that we have heard even a rumor of war's reality.

Our president, who has constitutional responsibility for implementing our laws, has stated publicly that, at least in time of war, the president is above the law. Does this make any difference? Why shouldn't the government be able to do anything necessary to protect the people?

There's nothing like travel to give you fresh perspectives on old things.