On my way to work in the morning I usually listen to a local radio station that is run by high-school students and only plays songs from the 70’s. (No comment)

Well, this morning I heard a song I had long forgotten even existed, but the minute I heard it, I remembered most of the words and grinned as I followed along. It was that campy song from the mid-70’s called “Convoy”.

Before the song even finished a cereal box image flashed in my mind and my mouth was filled with the memory of sugary goodness. I thought about it for a minute and began to recall a “Honeycomb” cereal box that was tied into the popularity of that song and the big CB lingo craze that accompanied it. (Of course Flickr had photo evidence of the box.) It’s funny how the memory works and how intricately related all those supposedly dead memories were linked in my mind.

All of this made me think of my Grandfather’s brother and how when he was lingering in his final years, he lost most of his short-term and great swatches of his ‘mid-term’ memory…but how he could descriptively recall events that happened in his very early life.

I’m a bit concerned when I think of all the tacky 70’s kitsch that awaits me in…oh…2042 or 2050.

Common game theory has held that punishment makes two equals cooperate. But when people compete in repeated games, punishment fails to deliver, said study author Martin Nowak. He is director of the evolutionary dynamics lab at Harvard where the study was conducted.

“On the individual level, we find that those who use punishments are the losers,” Nowak said his experiments found.

Those who escalate the conflict very often wound up doomed.

-Nice Guys Don’t finish Last

From the BBC
[regarding the protests in Lhasa]

“As I have always said, unity and stability under brute force is at best a temporary solution. It is unrealistic to expect unity and stability under such a rule,” the [Dalai Lama] said.

I just got off the elevator and as I stepped into the hall/foyer, suddenly two big sized guys set a sort of basketball pick and blocked me into the corner, before I could roll and move to the basket hallway exit, several other guards ran a full-court press, ushering Tony Blair to the hoop elevator. The guards jumped in the elevator, the hallway cleared and I was free to go outside and hail a cab.

Score: Tony Blair = 2, hauself=0

Typically I think of DC like I do SLC…nice city, if you could just get the residents to move. But with the political scene as hot as it is right now, it’s been fun to be in the center of it and hear the bar-stool analysts (= armchair QBs).

(Plus, I got to hear from Donna Brazile, Michael Murphy and Chris Matthews in person today as well as a host of others. Nice mix of perspectives.)

I’m back in DC again this week … and right now…it’s warmer in DC than in Dallas.