FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL

I don't care if NYNEX and Bell Atlantic want to merge, but at least they ought to have the decency to keep it to themselves. Even if I did care, of course, I wouldn't challenge the God-given right of American corporations to expend most of their energy breaking up and coming back together. This is, after all, the fabulous free-market dynamic that generates so much wealth for the executives involved, a process that must be taught in leading graduate schools of business as the Amoeba Principle.

And I'm not worried about the possibility that because of the Amoeba Principle, all the...