"The Offish" (Workshtathion seriesth) 37 (Novocaine edithion)

Just came back from the dentist: this is the post-Health Plan Era when Dharmonia and I can actually afford adequate dental care. Prior to this Era, I went seventeen years with, at most, two dental visits. What's astonishing is that I still have a tooth in my head.

If you want to know what makes radicals, look at suffering. And, to quote my much-missed stonemason father-in-law, the suffering of some broke graduate student whose teeth hurt are a "fart in a hailstorm" compared to the suffering which teenagers (and all others) go through daily--hourly--on the streets of Basra, Baghdad, Lagos, Addis Ababa, or Compton.

You want to depressurize radicalism? Lessen suffering.