"A MAN with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." This pretty much sums up the wildly gyrating polls in the 2004 U.S. presidential race.

America is the richest country on earth, but its democracy is an ugly mess. To quote the September 24^th Economist - “If democracy means multi-party competition at the grass roots, America is not a full democracy in elections to the House of Representatives”.

U ROY'S Wear You To The Ball was the first big deejay hit. I was too young for parties in 1970. But I remember my uncle shouting "Turn off that tuneless garbage!" to my older cousins when it came on the radio. Now the same people who sing along at oldies sessions to 'Chica bow chica bow, she's got it, move it up!" condemn their children's dancehall favourites as 'foolishness'. Plus ca change ...

ALL SPORTS serve up the occasional storybook surprise. But watching the West Indies is becoming a surreal experience. Regularly plumbing the gloomiest depths and then abruptly soaring to ecstatic highs, Windies cricket increasingly resembles a weird theatre of the absurd. They say losing hurts worse than wining feels good. Yet the agony of constant defeat seems to make our rare triumphant moments even more exhilarating. A pitch black canvas punctuated by brilliant bursts of colour - such is the current picture of Caribbean cricket.

THE PNP came to power in early 1989, only a few months after Hurricane Gilbert hit the island. With the PNP conference being held in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, let's try and evaluate our situation then and now.

JAMAICA IS a marvel. Does any other country so constantly straddle the line between functioning order and disastrous chaos? Even forces of nature beyond our control regularly contrive to balance our fate on a knife edge and then tip the scales in our favour.

Why, I wondered to a friend last week, do some people place such importance on sports? Isn’t it ridiculous for grown ups to waste so much time and energy worrying about essentially childish pastimes over which they have no control? But he disagreed. Sports, he said, provide emotional training. Thrilling to victories and agonizing over defeats is an excellent preparation for the inevitable ups and downs of life.

I once heard some young men and women arguing about whether men and women can be ‘just friends’. The women all said yes, but the men disagreed. As one put it ‘Anytime a man pays attention to a woman, no matter how brotherly he acts, in the back of his mind he wants more than just friendship. Sooner or later the male beast will break loose’.

AVID READERS lead double lives. One is the flesh and blood reality of family and sex and work. The other is a mostly secret dialogue with ourselves about imaginary characters. For fellow book lovers are scarce, especially if you have a taste for what used to be called the classics, but which, these days, are labelled dead white European male ­ or dwem ­ literature.

IN 1980, the homicide rate in the United States reached an all time high of 10.7 per 100,000, having doubled in 15 years.

There was much 'woe is us' hand wringing. Could nothing be done to stem this seemingly inexorable rise?