SHIMON PERES

CSPAN carried a presentation by the 83 year old deputy leader of the present Israeli government, Shimon Peres yesterday (Wednesday, Aug. 16 ) repeatedly.

Kathleen and I were greatly impressed by the survey of recent events and their implications which Peres presented. He said that, although Israel would defend herself if directly attacked by Syria or Iran, for now Iran and Syria are "the world's problem".

The "world's" answer t0 the problem of Iran and Syria is the biggest present unknown. The easy way out is to ignore the Iran nuclear issue and maintain a semblance of peace. Europe certainly does not have the will to prevent Iran from going nuclear (in the sense of weapons).

The U.S. government should be talking to the Iranian leaders at the highest level possible (both them and us) as often as possible. Talking with the Iranian government can do no harm and doesn't imply that we respect their positions.

The U.S. could commit to not trying to aid any "regime change" in Iran, if in return, Iran agrees to abandon the nuclear weapons path and commit to full IAEA inspections of all nuclear facilities including surprise inspections anywhere in Iran.

We cannot turn our backs on Israel, although we can use our large financial support as a wedge to encourage Israel to continue to look for ways to reach limited agreements with the Palestinians which will reduce the tensions.

THE GREAT COMPUTER CRASH

Power on, blinking red light. Silence. Impotence. Abandoned on the shores of California without a working computer.

How long ago did I buy this Compaq computer?? Where is my paperwork?? If I had only let my wife Kathleen file the paperwork in her unique filing system, I would know where to find the info.

Of course I am intrinsically less organised than Kathleen, and waste hours searching for that crucial item of paper.

Anyway, forget how long the computer has worked. It is way past service guarantees for sure. I probably bought the computer at Staples.

Our local computer shop, Computer Stuff, decided the bad news was a bad motherboard and maybe also cpu. The clear path was to buy a new computer. The local folks moved my "teds documents" to my backup "little black book" hardrive, and started work making me a new computer.

I prefer to buy a custom local computer, so if anything goes wrong, I have an expert at hand who is intimately familiar with my beast.

In the meantime, I am using Kathleen's new computer, a HP Pavilion (with ram upgraded to 1.5 gigs) we picked up at central coast electronics/radio shack in Morro Bay, when we were doing our laundry in the laundromat around the corner. (problems with the new washer and dryer we installed in our San Luis home)

No problems dragging my favorite research files from little black book onto Kathleen's computer, so things could be worse.

I am firmly resisting the temptation to install a linux operating system on my new computer. But that means I will have to download unixlike stuff for windows that will give me utilities like ps2pdf etc.

So I can visualize hours of maintenance time getting my new computer to be useful.

The good news is my brain is still functioning and the sun is shining.