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Robert Solow on his friend Milton Friedman: “One difference between Milton and myself is that everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper” (New York Review of Books, February 15). We keep many things out of M.E.M.O. Money? Sex? No—only war. Everything these days reminds me of the Iraq war, but I usually keep it out of the column. Everything these days suggests analogies to our 300 billion dollar—that’s 300,000 million dollar—Iraq venture.

"Life dies” will be the label for this column in my computer files. Life dies? Because of global warming? Is this a statement of the human condition, life being “a sexually transmitted disease with a terminal prognosis”? Is this the unavoidable topic the late Dr. Lewis Thomas wanted Americans to talk about: death? He noted: “There’s an awful lot of it going around these days.”