Carrying the weight of this blog on my shoulders

EDINBURGH -- I was thinking about a Thomas Friedman-like post about how a small anecdote tells the entire story of globalization, but I'll leave the Pizza Hut saturation of Scotland and observations about the atrocities of British reality television for another time.

Last night I met an elderly Scottish bar owner named Ian. Ian likes George W. Bush and doesn't understand why Americans hate him. Nigel, who owns a scuba gear factory, argued that a missile hit the Pentagon and that there's been a cover-up of what happened to the fourth plane.

Earlier in the night, a drunk local tried to fight a bunch of Spanish backpackers. The pretty ladies tending the bar were frightened and upset. They said that they've never seen anything like that happen. Some dude sitting next to me apologized to me on behalf of Scotland for my having had to witness the near-altercation. It was kind of exciting, but not as good as a crazy fight I saw at the Subway Inn on E. 60th St. Later, I was told that fights in Edinburgh lead to someone getting a black eye, but a fight in Glasgow leads to a broken bottle being jammed into your chin. I'm glad that Glasgow was not on the itinerary.