If, like me, you are looking to set the world on fire, the place to begin and end your search is with the Economist. This is the ultimate, status quo, reality check. Nowhere in the world are you likely to find soggier tinder than right here. The world might burn up around them and the Editors of the Economist would brand it a warm day.

Lookee here: In the English-speaking world [immaterialism] is shunned by polite society except in literature faculties, some of whose denizens have deconstructed the world into subjective oblivion.

That says it all. If anyone could instill in me a desire to take an aerial tour of the cherry blossoms, it would be these gentlemen. [Another deranged immaterialist took a dive in the Potomac last week. Those poor silly Americans!]

Bless their hearts. Those Brits do know how to keep a stiff upper lip, whenever they are not sneering at their closest friends.

I could have saved myself twenty years of frustration if I had only heeded the worldly wisdom of these cosmopolitan gentlemen. It takes them only one sentence to dismiss what I had thought was the last, best hope of humanity. I have spent hundreds of hours trying to impress this onto the minds of otherwise thoughtful people, and the Economist in one sentence artfully summarizes the total response that I have received to date.

I could be less sanguine. I could say that this is a glimpse into the heart of the Beast. The dapper, savvy, world weary gentleman. What chance do I have of putting one over on these gurus to the bankers of the world? What chance do I have to do a solo run against Oxford's best scrimmage line? Just about as much chance as Daniel had.

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rev. 5/21/97