What can you add when one man says everything you're thinking and says it with such clarity and such poetry??

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart or whether we commit ourselves to an effort, a sustained effort to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

This feels like a strange thing to share so publicly, but since I've written about my mom a few times, I also feel compelled to tell you that she has finally passed away.

The end was as fast as the disease was agonizingly slow. I got a call and six hours later she was gone. There were no signs that the end was coming, at least that I would have recognized. Monday she was fine. Tuesday she was gone. It was a very peaceful death. She simply slipped away, with her family around her.

It's been a long time since I've written a Questions column, but now that we have so many new contributors and commenters, I think it's about time we get to know each other a bit better.

Alas, now that online poker has sapped my soul and absconded with my muse to a faraway island, I am forced to look to Cosmo magazine for inspiration.

Our friends over at salon.com have a series called, Ask a Wingnut, in which a former Bush official who wishes to remain nameless (I can only assume it’s Jeff Gannon) answers questions from wacky liberals about why conservatives do and think what they do. He goes by the moniker Glenallen Walken, borrowed from the fictional character of the television show The West Wing. This is fitting since he bases many of his arguments for neocon ideology in a fictional world.

This chapter is just a list of Seth’s descendents and their spirited competition to see who could live the longest. I will spare the reader its boringness except to say that the consensus winner was Methuselah, who died at the ripe age of 969. However, supporters of Methuselah’s father, Enoch, dispute the result. God transported Enoch directly to paradise while he was a still young lad of 365, so technically, he didn’t die. The Great Rabbi Ezekiel Bezekiel exhibits Solomon-like wisdom in his proposed resolution:

I should disclose at the outset that this is not a "How To" piece. If I knew how to find my joy, I'd surely have located it by now. But I've been thinking about happiness since Ross "What Women Want" Douthat declared why women are unhappy in his New York Times column last week.

You've seen a lot less of me on dagblog lately, and while I'd love to put all of the blame for my absence on my Beyonce and the wedding plans which have been set in hot and heavy motion (It's mostly painful, stressful stuff, but registering at Target was hella fun - come to Papa, Wii!!), but there is a much bigger badder beast than Mrs. All-Consuming Wedding at work here - and its name is PokerStars.

Oh, how I love the political drama that arises with the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice. Such classics like Robert Bork whose nomination was so disastrous that a verb was created to describe it (“borked,”follow the link if you don’t know, it ain’t good), Clarence Thomas who graced America with the only R-Rated hearing discussing squirrel genitals, and G. Harrold Carswell who just so happened to be a white supremacist (whoops) – oh the entertainment.

Once again, Illinois State Senators are calling for our good friend Roland Burris to exit stage left. One imagines a Dem Party master of ceremonies furiously giving the neck slash signal to end dear Roland's dance routine, but he just keeps twirling away and starts to remove items of clothing.

When I read about yesterday's Taliban attack on the provincial headquarters of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), I raised my eyebrows. Why the ISI? It's not an easy target, and in fact the attack was repelled by guards. Nor would a successful attack have been an effective way to create instability. The ISI is not filled with sympathetic targets whose deaths would arouse the nation.

You might think of couchsurfing as the exploitation of your friends' living room furniture. That is so old school. Welcome to couchsurfing 2.0, where you can travel the world via the living room furniture of complete strangers. The CouchSurfing Project is a social networking site where you can offer your home to travelers and take advantage of the couches, guest beds, and floor spaces of others when you travel. It was launched in 2004 and now has more than a million members in 232 countries.

I love it when men pontificate about what is wrong with women. Really (not really). I mean it (I don’t mean it).

Love. It.

That’s why I was so pleased to see Ross Douthat’s New York Times column today in which he discusses a new paper that a couple of economists have written, detailing how American women are less happy today than their 1960s counterparts (and also less happy than men).

The torch design for next year's Winter Olympics was apparently unveiled months ago. Only now have some sharp-eyed reporters started asking each other, "Hey, what does that look a bit like to you?"

Personally, I love it. It sums up in one image the best British Columbia has to offer: winter sports and B.C. Bud. Now if only the organizers can sign up gold medalist Ross Rebagliati to kick off the torch relay.

Memorial Day is a day that we honor our troops and their sacrifices. However, I think we should also take some time to shame some of the people that put them in harms way by enabling war profiteering for an ill-conceived war. After all, putting outmoded neocon foreign policy ideals and the pursuit of money in front of your own soldiers is something these people should be ashamed of.

This Bill Moyers interview is a must-watch for anyone who cares about meaningful healthcare reform:

Washington's abuzz about health care, but why isn't a single-payer plan an option on the table? Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Physicians for a National Health Program's Dr. David Himmelstein on the political and logistical feasibility of health care reform.

Orlando posed a puzzler yesterday: if you shut the Camp Delta prison, what do you do with inmates who have committed no known war crimes or acts of terrorism, but who still pose a security threat? How do you keep them from taking up arms or otherwise waging jihad against the U.S. and its allies?

It's triflingly simple: Ask them to promise not to.

"Huh?" I can hear you all saying. "That's crazy talk, acanuck. What's to stop them from breaking their word?" Well, first of all, the concept of "parole" has an honored place in Arab and Muslim history. It resonates.

Right after the election was over, I started a series of posts called Stuff I Learned, about the history of American presidents, as I read a book called The American Presidency. I didn't get very far into the book, and now I can't find it. I'm not all that worried about finishing, not being a fan of non-fiction.

So, at least for now, I won't be sharing with you the stuff I learned about American history. Instead, I'm hoping you'll share with me stuff you already know, because I'm confused.

I don't think that many people would be all that shocked or alarmed if I were to write that politics can be downright silly at times.  Even so, creative legislators continue to come up new tactics that seem to defy all logic.