Many TV crime dramas have a plot similar to the following: A crime boss goes into hiding. The police form a special undercover unit to find him. After months of questioning suspects, following up leads, etc., they locate his hideaway. A swat team raids his hideout, and he is killed in the ensuing gun battle. Change “crime boss” to “Osama bin Laden,” the “undercover unit” to “CIA and SIS (Pakastani secret service),” and the “swat team” to “79 heroic Navy Seals;” now you have the story the U.S. has been waiting for since September 11, 2001. The point is that bin Laden was found, not by the coalition forces in Afghanistan, but by good police-style work. He wasn't in Afghanistan. Although the armed forces were the best-trained in history, they were looking in the wrong place! The old story goes that one night Johnny found his friend, Billy, crawling around on his hands and knees under a st...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.