Jorn Utzon, architect of the Sydney Opera House, never saw his creation.

And now, at age 90, he has died, and the question whether he will ever return to Australia and see it has been answered for good.

From Bill Bryson's book "In a Sunburned Country":

Nothing so daringly inclined and top-heavy had ever been built before and no one was sure that it could be. In retrospect, the haste with which the project was begun was probably its salvation. One of the lead engineers later noted that if anyone had realized at the outset how nearly impossible a challenge it would be, it would never have gotten the go-ahead. Just working out the principles necessary to build the roof took five years -- the whole project had been intended to last no more than six -- and construction in the end dragged on for almost a decade and a half. The final cost came in at a weighty A$102 million, fourteen times the original estimate.

Utzon, interestingly, has never seen his prized creation. He left the project in 1966 in a dispute over rising costs and has never been back. He also never designed anything remotely as celebrated.

Obama calls Hillary "Bush-Cheney lite."

One more thing that tips me toward Clinton! Bush-Cheney lite sounds like just about what we need. Clinton declares the epithet "silly," but I think that secretly she knows the comparison helps her in some quarters.

And Obama came out with that in the context of trying to justify what was in fact a major gaffe at the debate:

In South Carolina and during a visit to New Hampshire earlier in the day, Obama compared Clinton to Bush because, he said, she has said she will not have unconditional meetings with foreign enemies.

He told the College Democrats that her approach showed "stubbornness" and in New Hampshire he referred to her as "Bush-Cheney lite."

"Stubbornness"? As opposed to what? Giddy impetuousness?

Clinton's retort:

"I've been called a lot of things in my life but I've never been called George Bush or Dick Cheney certainly," she said. "We have to ask what's ever happened to the politics of hope?"

Oh, come on. He's overflowing with hope! Hope that Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and Iran will play nice. Hope that saying Clinton is like Bush will cause voters to recoil in horror...