And I think if you think about life without play no humor, no flirtation, no movies, no games, no fantasy and, and, and.

A pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.

Some in Washington charge that he has done too little to roust al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from safe havens along the country s border with Afghanistan. His recent flirtation with a plan to bypass Bhutto and declare emergency rule provoked pointed Bush administration criticism.

The United States and China are locked in an uncomfortable embrace the economic counterpart of what psychologists call codependency. The flirtation started in the late 1970s, when China was teetering in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and the US was mired in a wrenching stagflation.

This gap is bound to affect negatively the processes of nuclear disarmament that are now being envisaged, for these states flirtation with nuclear weapons is not just a quest for prestige or status it is an attempt to counter the conventional superiority of hostile neighbors or, as with Iran and North Korea, of the US itself.

By contrast, America s flirtation with colonialism in the Spanish American War, its involvement in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean throughout the twentieth century, and, arguably, World War I, were not watersheds for the US. But America s inability after the Great War to overcome Old World politics at Versailles and isolationism at home marked a failed opportunity to promote a positive watershed.

In order to end its fatal flirtation with jihadism and bolster stability, Gaza must pursue an economic and political deal with Israel that represses the temptation of war. Just as the rehabilitation of the Egyptian towns along the Suez Canal in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur war paved the way for an Israeli Egyptian peace, a prosperous Gaza would serve the interests of all parties involved beginning with Israel.