Smart Matter

It's time to repaint the living room, and you face the usual dilemma: neutral eggshell or a pink cast to reflect the highlights in your new Persian rug? As you ponder, a cement truck pulls up outside to begin to pour a foundation for a new house across the street. Anticipating six months of construction noise, you consider leaving the color as it is and moving to the country--the living room always seemed too small, anyhow. If scientists at Xerox Corp.'

Wilderness is or it is not. There is no mostly wilderness with just a little bit of development. President Bush says the United States can pursue energy independence and still protect the environment. No, it can't. Not by drilling for oil in a 1.5-million-acre slice of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the north coast of Alaska. The Senate, shadowed by the Enron scandal, will debate the nation's energy future over the next two weeks.

Wilderness is or it is not. There is no mostly wilderness with just a little bit of development. President Bush says the United States can pursue energy independence and still protect the environment. No, it can't. Not by drilling for oil in a 1.5-million-acre slice of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on the north coast of Alaska. The Senate, shadowed by the Enron scandal, will debate the nation's energy future over the next two weeks.

It's time to repaint the living room, and you face the usual dilemma: neutral eggshell or a pink cast to reflect the highlights in your new Persian rug? As you ponder, a cement truck pulls up outside to begin to pour a foundation for a new house across the street. Anticipating six months of construction noise, you consider leaving the color as it is and moving to the country--the living room always seemed too small, anyhow. If scientists at Xerox Corp.'

In Silicon Valley, technological breakthroughs sometimes seem to arise spontaneously, a kind of magic. Actually, nearly all the most important developments start as someone's deep thoughts. When Mark Weiser, chief technologist at Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center, passed away last week, taken by cancer at age 46, the world of technology lost one of the most thoughtful in its ranks. Weiser is considered the father of "ubiquitous computing."

Although neither group likes to say so, some Americans who support President Bush and many who don't support him have concluded over four years that he may not be very bright. This suspicion was not allayed by Bush's answers in the first presidential debate a week ago. Even Bush's most engaged critics shy away from publicly challenging his intelligence for many reasons, most of them good. To raise the issue seems snooty and elitist.

Kyle Matter was born 17 years ago in a Kansas City hospital on the border of Missouri and Kansas. He's never seen a tornado, but the "Wizard of Oz" comes to mind in describing the commotion swirling around the quarterback last season on the night of his debut for Hart High. Pressure had been building all summer. He was the replacement for All-American Kyle Boller, the greatest passer in Hart history. Matter was lined up in shotgun formation on the third play.