i am spending the summer in jordan, about 56 km from the iraqi border and 82 km from the saudi border. i am digging an epipaleolithic site and doing some lithic analysis, and reading the one jordanian newspaper that is published in english. the question i most often get asked by jordanians (orjust non americans) is "hilary or obama." the town i am staying in was once an oasis (by once i mean twenty years ago) but now most of the groundwater has been pumped out to amman, jordan's capital city, which is right now building its first two skyscrapers, incidentally they are two matching towers. i would think that it would be a complete disconnect from the world out here in the desert, but as it turns out, most people have satellite tvs.