Atlas V generates a peak 4 meganewton thrust. The old Saturn V(apollo booster) generated up to 35MN, and could deliver up to 120,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.
Sigh... were the Moon landings a technological feat, never to be duplicated?
The moon landings were primarily a result of a Cold War need to upstage the Soviets, and not some great fascination with technology and engineering on the part of the White House. Now that the USSR is history, there's no longer that same justification for moon shots or similar stunts.
And who cares how big the rocket is? Apollo did make some important discoveries about the geology of the moon. But I think sending people back to the moon for a photo op is vastly less interesting than strapping a tiny rover atop of a small booster and sending it to look for life on Mars. These modest, unmanned missions are where all the real science is.
Re:The moon, tis a harsh mistress
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Return to the Moon
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Humans. Robots are a lot of money for little return. For example, a human on Mars could do in minutes what takes the Rovers months to accomplish. Humans are extremely adaptable to changing situations, and can actually cover ground extremely well on foot. In addition, they're excellent at building and operating a wide variety of tools.
Humans have a lot of requirements that robots don't. Pressurized atmospheres, oxygen, water, food, mild temperatures, 8 hours of sleep a day, and soforth. All of that requires a lot of supplies and equipment, which costs a lot.The other major human disadvantage is that, unlike robots, they die.
Nobody freaks out when we leave a lander on Mars, but if we'd sent Neil Armstrong on a one-way trip to the moon and left him on the surface until he ran out of oxygen, there would have been outrage. Robots are disposable, but astronauts need a costly return mission. Death also means we can't take the same risks with people that we do with robots. Robots can achieve a high probability of success, cheaply, by having a large number of robots with a high probability of failure. Nobody would tolerate that with a Mars mission: you couldn't send two teams of astronauts to Mars and say, "Yeah, each team has a 25% chance of dying. But we're sending two teams, so the probability of BOTH teams dying is only 6.25%, and that's a 93.75% chance of mission success!" Astronauts might accept those kinds of risks, but the public would never accept it. If NASA slams a probe into Mars then Jay Leno cracks a joke; if the shuttle blows up, then it's a national day of mourning and the program shuts down for a year. So that means lots and lots of expensive backup systems for each mission.
As for agility, there has been a lot of success in building agile, legged robots recently (check out the cockroach-inspired running and climbing robots coming out of Berkeley). We should soon be able to build robots for things humans were never designed to do- like scrabbling over boulders in low gravity- and have them outperform anything a guy in a space suit could do.
Re:spam is dead, long live spam
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Spam is Dead
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· Score: 1
fighting spam, much like "the war on terror" or "the war on drugs" or fighting pedophilia, is mostly a policing activity. that is, it never ends, nor will it ever end, nor should you think it will ever end, if you really understand the nature of the problem
You pansy-ass liberal. Your defeatist comments only aid and comfort the spammers! We don't need policing; we need to strike a decisive blow and prove once and for all that the USA, the greatest country on earth, won't take crap from spammers. The only way to do that is an unprovoked, unilateral invasion of Nigeria. Only that way can we defeat this menace, and only then can the people of oil-rich Nigeria truly be free.
4th and last repair was replacement with a G4 iBook, and that's been much better.
Would you believe I had to have my logic board replaced three times on the same computer due to the same defect? The repair was free because this was covered by a recall, and Apple's repair was fairly fast and efficient. However, I felt it was pretty lousy the way they kept replacing the defective parts with more defective parts. Eventually I broke down and bought a powerbook G4 and it's been trouble-free for a year. I've been using Apple since the days of the IIe. In my experience, I seem to get two kinds of Apple products- gems, that run for years with no maintenance, and lemons, which require repeated repairs. And from what I've seen in the past, you can expect little or no sympathy from Apple if you get a lemon.
OK, so they have plans for dealing with a nuclear strike. But what about the aftermath? What's their plan for dealing with a psychopathic terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?
The MIT media lab website says:
Kids in the developing world need the newest technology, especially really rugged hardware and innovative software.
Frankly I think these MIT guys are idiots. Perhaps kids in the developing world need 19th and early 20th century technology- clean water, decent roads, adequate food and nutrition, basic literacy, electricity, basic medical care- before we start worrying about the goddamn laptops. But hey, what do I know, these are MIT engineers and I only spent three months in rural Madagascar.
While I was there I saw remote mountain villages that were barely out of the Stone Age and I can't imagine how a 100$ laptop could help these people... unless they sold the damn thing and bought some rice and cows. Maybe these guys ought to spend some serious time in the developing world and seeing what the problems are before they start touting the solution. If anything, this 100-dollar laptop does more harm than good, since it distracts from the real problems facing the developing world (seriously, when is the last time you read a headline that said "millions dying in Africa due to laptop shortage"?). Sure, there are probably some things you could do with a laptop in Africa. But the same 100$ a kid, spent on basic development of infrastructure, agriculture, education and health care would do vastly more.
I don't know about you, but from the articles I've seen on Wikipedia, they've been quite rich in information.
Of course, there's the issue of the type of information. Wikipedia has a dissertation-length discussions of Half-Life 2 and Babylon 5, for instance, and a meager couple screens devoted to Moby Dick (unless you count the discussions of Moby Dick's influences in Star Trek episodes, Japanese video games and comic books as a serious discussion of the novel).
Though I suppose you could make the argument that this is actually a strength rather than a weakness. Moby Dick may be a masterwork of American fiction, but today, video games and sci-fi soap operas have a vastly greater cultural influence than Herman Melville.
I'm just trying to imagine what nefarious devices Microsoft would use to disable the Chinese networks. All I can picture is Clippy popping up and saying, "It looks like you're trying to invade Taiwan. Would you like help with this?" and then leading you through the steps to wipe your hard drive.
What doesn't make sense to me is why only males have these structures. If they are purely sensory- used to navigate, locate prey, etc.- then you might expect the females to have them as well- wouldn't it be advantageous for females to be able to navigate/sense prey etc.?
That implies to me that these are display structures along the lines of a peacock's tail, designed to advertise the male's fitness rather than serve any particular function. Of course, that doesn't really explain why you would have all those nerve endings if it's purely a display structure. Perhaps it's both- it evolved as a means of advertisement, and then the sensory function evolved later. Perplexing. There's also a fossil relative of narwhals called Odobenocetops, known as "Whalerus". The tusk points backwards rather than forwards, and it is thought to be a walrus-like suction feeder.
Yeah, product placement really galls me. After a long day at work, I come home and just want to unwind with a sitcom and a cold Budweiser, king of beers. But then I'm subjected to a bunch of product placement. I swear, it's enough to make me need an Advil, which is recommended by four out of five doctors. So instead of watching a sitcom, I go for a long ride in my Lexus, with its roomy interior, six-way adjustable seating, and powerful V6 engine.
Writer? To be fair, my understanding is that many authors make a lot of their money from book signings. But if you write books on, say, "Home septic installation made easy" I somehow doubt the local independent bookstore is going to arrange a signing. Likewise, it's going to be difficult getting an advance on your work if the publisher can't be granted exclusive rights to it, and you can't sell the rights to Hollywood if there is no law against simply stealing the story.
I'm not saying that means that Stephen King's great-great grandchildren need to be collecting royalty checks on "The Shining" at 117 years old, but it's hard to see how writing would work if there was nothing to prevent someone from taking your work without compensation.
This is why the psychology industry has lost all credibility with me. Every failing that a person has is now some addiction or other problem that is beyond their control.
The psychologists can't help this kind of behavior, because they're addicted to it.
If you disagree with it, just edit it! No need to get all indignant.
This kind of attitude is exactly why nobody is ever going to take Wikipedia seriously. The enterprise is a noble one, but the entire point of a real reference text is that you can rely on it. The best Wikipedia can muster is, "If it's not accurate, then edit it".
And this comment exposes another weakness of the Wikipedia approach, which is its postmodernist approach to reality. I don't think the issue is that the guy "disagrees" with what Wikipedia said the way we might disagree over, say, whether "Friends" is a great sitcom or a crappy one. That's a matter of opinion. His issue is that it's just plain wrong. Either the dude lived in the USSR for ten years, or he didn't. There are always going to be different interpretations of reality, but not all of them are equally valid and equally deserving of consideration.
Yeah, really, why should anyone listen to this character? He is, after all, under investigation for a series of brutal mime slayings in the New York City area. Plus, he sacrifices homeless people to Satan, on an altar hidden in a secret dungeon in his basement. He's even part of the conspiracy to hand Earth over to an alien invasion force in the year 2017. And as if that weren't enough, the guy even hates cute little puppies. What kind of a horrible human being hates adorable puppies?
Well, first of all, Google started out specializing in internet search before moving on to other areas like maps and email. Second, Google has a 120 billion dollar market capitalization, a revenue stream from its ads, and 7.63 billion dollars in cash (according to finance.yahoo.com). So conquering the known universe isn't necessarily hubris in their case; they have the resources to be all things to all people on the internet, if anyone can. Third, it's not entirely clear whether Google's strategy will pay off, either. The guys over at Slate.com keep running articles about Google's impending doom. They may be exaggerating a bit, but they argue that Google's approach is too diffuse and shows a lack of a core strategy. I think ten years from now- probably not even that long- we'll see whether that really is the case or not. You could also argue that Google's approach is sort of an evolutionary algorithm- throw out a bunch of services and see which ones have a demand and produce a cash flow. Time will tell whether Google's strategy (or anti-strategy) will pay off. Again, though, Google has the time, money, and mindshare to make that approach work, if it will work. A tiny startup probably doesn't.
These guys can't seem to figure out what they want to do, though. Their site highlights Glide Personal, Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Music Shop, Glide Videos, Glide Docs, Glide Allmedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Mailshare, Glide Liveshare, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline, Glide Shops... I take one look at this and think,"this is supposed to _simplify_ my life?"
These guys seem to be (a) overly ambitious, trying to conquer the known universe with their site, and (b)confused, lacking a clear strategy or a well thought out business model... dude, that is just so 1999.
The summary doesn't really give a good, well, summary of Pogue's review. He notes some major problems with their interface design that make it difficult to see what the files are, or manage large numbers of them. For instance, he says "... figuring out how to do some simple tasks, like backing out of a photo container to your full collection, are challenges for puzzle lovers only." The review also says that there are "...some telltale signs that the company may have bitten off more than it could chew"- there's no help or online manual, apparently.
The core concept is good. I'd like to be able to store documents online so I could access them from anywhere, and it would also be useful to allow others to see them. But a hundred megabytes isn't much in the way of storage (many of my graphics files are 10-20mb), and I can have twenty times that for free if I just email files to my Gmail account for storage. Sure, they offer more, but the problem is (as the New York Times is finding with it's TimesSelect premium online content) that on the internet, people are used to getting stuff for free.
As for buying them out, I suspect that it would be easiest for Google/Microsoft to simply duplicate the site's functionality while improving on the interface and offering more storage for free.
Personally, I want one of these devices that works on senior citizens. There's a gang of grannies who hang out near my store, harassing young people and keeping the town in a constant state of fear.
And don't even get me started on that vicious gang of "keep left" signs.
It is basically impossible to travel anywhere inside the country without body armor and a squad of mercenaries. I mean, look at the threats you have to deal with. Kidnappings by organized crime. Assassinations of intellectuals and government officials. Sunni insurgents. Islamic suicide bombers and mortar attacks. Shiite militias. Guys in Iraqi military uniform, who may be Iraqi military, Shiite militia, or both, hauling people off who later show up dead, with holes in the skull from bullets and power drills. Jumpy marines with M-16s.
That's just the personal safety side of the issue. You've got intermittent power and water, the Sunnis didn't participate in the first round of elections so they are largely left out, the Kurds may split off and form their own state, a bunch of Shiites are trying to set up an Iranian-style theocracy in the South, and corruption in the government. We've gotten rid of Saddam with his torture rooms and death squads, and now we've got a new government with torture rooms and death squads.
If this is success, God help us if we encounter failure. This war may still be winnable. But right now, most signs suggest that we're losing it.
For those who oppose missile defence, I ask: The only other thing protecting you from nuclear attack is the fact that the United States is willing to commit an act of genocide to avenge your death. Does that make you sleep better at night? Especially since this does not protect you against mistakes, malfunctions, or insanity.
That's an idiotic argument. Nuclear weapons aren't the only deterrents; you've also got the massive conventional arsenal of the United States military- tomahawks, laser-guided bombs, fuel-air explosives, you name it. Plus, if anyone ordered a pre-emptive attack, they would also have to deal with the possibility of allied nations like Britain declaring war on them. Finally, you've got the economic argument. Most nations benefit from trade with the United States. China, for instance, probably isn't going to nuke us as long as we continue to buy billions of dollars of their imports.
Which gets rid of a lot of risk for the company. Apple released the Newton before the software had all the kinks out of it. My understanding of that story is that after some work, the Newton actually worked pretty well- a lot of people apparently swore by the thing. But by the time that happened, the Newton had the inescapable air of failure around it, the buzz was negative and they couldn't come back.
You could imagine how, say, Google rolling out a product prematurely could be bad if it fails. It would break that air of invincibility they currently enjoy. With the current scheme, they roll the product out as a Beta, if it succeeds you do the final release, if not, it never gets out of Beta, and you have a perfect score of successes because you never officially release your failures. That's my theory anyhow.
(2) Arm yourself under the protections of the 2nd amendments. We're allowed guns not just to hunt prey, protect our country from foreign invaders, and ensure our private security, but also to protect ourselves from domestic threats (meaning from within our borders.) If and when our government has become so corrupt that reform through the ballot boxes is impossible, then it is time to turn to the ammo boxes. (I don't believe we are near that point at all. When we are, a whole lot more people will be reaching for their ammo boxes.)
The fallacy of this argument is obvious when you look at the enormous political clout the NRA weilds. Politicians are terrified of them. Why? Not because the members are armed with pistols, deer rifles, AR-15s and the occasional.50-caliber sniper rifle. Because their actually show up and vote based on issues that matter to them instead of sound-bites and advertisements.
Isn't it odd that the party that believes in "small government" is the one that keeps throwing all these laws on the books?
The Republicans have basically gone insane, as far as I can tell. There are some I can respect, even admire, like McCain. But come on... running a gulag in Cuba? Endless detentions without trials? Secret prisons in Europe? Allowing the government to spy on people with almost no checks? A vice-president who's lobbying for torture? Who the hell are we, the USSR?
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The moon landings were primarily a result of a Cold War need to upstage the Soviets, and not some great fascination with technology and engineering on the part of the White House. Now that the USSR is history, there's no longer that same justification for moon shots or similar stunts.
And who cares how big the rocket is? Apollo did make some important discoveries about the geology of the moon. But I think sending people back to the moon for a photo op is vastly less interesting than strapping a tiny rover atop of a small booster and sending it to look for life on Mars. These modest, unmanned missions are where all the real science is.
Humans have a lot of requirements that robots don't. Pressurized atmospheres, oxygen, water, food, mild temperatures, 8 hours of sleep a day, and soforth. All of that requires a lot of supplies and equipment, which costs a lot.The other major human disadvantage is that, unlike robots, they die.
Nobody freaks out when we leave a lander on Mars, but if we'd sent Neil Armstrong on a one-way trip to the moon and left him on the surface until he ran out of oxygen, there would have been outrage. Robots are disposable, but astronauts need a costly return mission. Death also means we can't take the same risks with people that we do with robots. Robots can achieve a high probability of success, cheaply, by having a large number of robots with a high probability of failure. Nobody would tolerate that with a Mars mission: you couldn't send two teams of astronauts to Mars and say, "Yeah, each team has a 25% chance of dying. But we're sending two teams, so the probability of BOTH teams dying is only 6.25%, and that's a 93.75% chance of mission success!" Astronauts might accept those kinds of risks, but the public would never accept it. If NASA slams a probe into Mars then Jay Leno cracks a joke; if the shuttle blows up, then it's a national day of mourning and the program shuts down for a year. So that means lots and lots of expensive backup systems for each mission.
As for agility, there has been a lot of success in building agile, legged robots recently (check out the cockroach-inspired running and climbing robots coming out of Berkeley). We should soon be able to build robots for things humans were never designed to do- like scrabbling over boulders in low gravity- and have them outperform anything a guy in a space suit could do.
You pansy-ass liberal. Your defeatist comments only aid and comfort the spammers! We don't need policing; we need to strike a decisive blow and prove once and for all that the USA, the greatest country on earth, won't take crap from spammers. The only way to do that is an unprovoked, unilateral invasion of Nigeria. Only that way can we defeat this menace, and only then can the people of oil-rich Nigeria truly be free.
Would you believe I had to have my logic board replaced three times on the same computer due to the same defect? The repair was free because this was covered by a recall, and Apple's repair was fairly fast and efficient. However, I felt it was pretty lousy the way they kept replacing the defective parts with more defective parts. Eventually I broke down and bought a powerbook G4 and it's been trouble-free for a year. I've been using Apple since the days of the IIe. In my experience, I seem to get two kinds of Apple products- gems, that run for years with no maintenance, and lemons, which require repeated repairs. And from what I've seen in the past, you can expect little or no sympathy from Apple if you get a lemon.
OK, so they have plans for dealing with a nuclear strike. But what about the aftermath? What's their plan for dealing with a psychopathic terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?
Frankly I think these MIT guys are idiots. Perhaps kids in the developing world need 19th and early 20th century technology- clean water, decent roads, adequate food and nutrition, basic literacy, electricity, basic medical care- before we start worrying about the goddamn laptops. But hey, what do I know, these are MIT engineers and I only spent three months in rural Madagascar. While I was there I saw remote mountain villages that were barely out of the Stone Age and I can't imagine how a 100$ laptop could help these people... unless they sold the damn thing and bought some rice and cows. Maybe these guys ought to spend some serious time in the developing world and seeing what the problems are before they start touting the solution. If anything, this 100-dollar laptop does more harm than good, since it distracts from the real problems facing the developing world (seriously, when is the last time you read a headline that said "millions dying in Africa due to laptop shortage"?). Sure, there are probably some things you could do with a laptop in Africa. But the same 100$ a kid, spent on basic development of infrastructure, agriculture, education and health care would do vastly more.
Of course, there's the issue of the type of information. Wikipedia has a dissertation-length discussions of Half-Life 2 and Babylon 5, for instance, and a meager couple screens devoted to Moby Dick (unless you count the discussions of Moby Dick's influences in Star Trek episodes, Japanese video games and comic books as a serious discussion of the novel).
Though I suppose you could make the argument that this is actually a strength rather than a weakness. Moby Dick may be a masterwork of American fiction, but today, video games and sci-fi soap operas have a vastly greater cultural influence than Herman Melville.
I'm just trying to imagine what nefarious devices Microsoft would use to disable the Chinese networks. All I can picture is Clippy popping up and saying, "It looks like you're trying to invade Taiwan. Would you like help with this?" and then leading you through the steps to wipe your hard drive.
That implies to me that these are display structures along the lines of a peacock's tail, designed to advertise the male's fitness rather than serve any particular function. Of course, that doesn't really explain why you would have all those nerve endings if it's purely a display structure. Perhaps it's both- it evolved as a means of advertisement, and then the sensory function evolved later. Perplexing. There's also a fossil relative of narwhals called Odobenocetops, known as "Whalerus". The tusk points backwards rather than forwards, and it is thought to be a walrus-like suction feeder.
Yeah, product placement really galls me. After a long day at work, I come home and just want to unwind with a sitcom and a cold Budweiser, king of beers. But then I'm subjected to a bunch of product placement. I swear, it's enough to make me need an Advil, which is recommended by four out of five doctors. So instead of watching a sitcom, I go for a long ride in my Lexus, with its roomy interior, six-way adjustable seating, and powerful V6 engine.
Writer? To be fair, my understanding is that many authors make a lot of their money from book signings. But if you write books on, say, "Home septic installation made easy" I somehow doubt the local independent bookstore is going to arrange a signing. Likewise, it's going to be difficult getting an advance on your work if the publisher can't be granted exclusive rights to it, and you can't sell the rights to Hollywood if there is no law against simply stealing the story.
I'm not saying that means that Stephen King's great-great grandchildren need to be collecting royalty checks on "The Shining" at 117 years old, but it's hard to see how writing would work if there was nothing to prevent someone from taking your work without compensation.
The psychologists can't help this kind of behavior, because they're addicted to it.
This kind of attitude is exactly why nobody is ever going to take Wikipedia seriously. The enterprise is a noble one, but the entire point of a real reference text is that you can rely on it. The best Wikipedia can muster is, "If it's not accurate, then edit it".
And this comment exposes another weakness of the Wikipedia approach, which is its postmodernist approach to reality. I don't think the issue is that the guy "disagrees" with what Wikipedia said the way we might disagree over, say, whether "Friends" is a great sitcom or a crappy one. That's a matter of opinion. His issue is that it's just plain wrong. Either the dude lived in the USSR for ten years, or he didn't. There are always going to be different interpretations of reality, but not all of them are equally valid and equally deserving of consideration.
That's what Wikipedia says about him, anyway.
Well, first of all, Google started out specializing in internet search before moving on to other areas like maps and email. Second, Google has a 120 billion dollar market capitalization, a revenue stream from its ads, and 7.63 billion dollars in cash (according to finance.yahoo.com). So conquering the known universe isn't necessarily hubris in their case; they have the resources to be all things to all people on the internet, if anyone can. Third, it's not entirely clear whether Google's strategy will pay off, either. The guys over at Slate.com keep running articles about Google's impending doom. They may be exaggerating a bit, but they argue that Google's approach is too diffuse and shows a lack of a core strategy. I think ten years from now- probably not even that long- we'll see whether that really is the case or not. You could also argue that Google's approach is sort of an evolutionary algorithm- throw out a bunch of services and see which ones have a demand and produce a cash flow. Time will tell whether Google's strategy (or anti-strategy) will pay off. Again, though, Google has the time, money, and mindshare to make that approach work, if it will work. A tiny startup probably doesn't.
These guys seem to be (a) overly ambitious, trying to conquer the known universe with their site, and (b)confused, lacking a clear strategy or a well thought out business model... dude, that is just so 1999.
The core concept is good. I'd like to be able to store documents online so I could access them from anywhere, and it would also be useful to allow others to see them. But a hundred megabytes isn't much in the way of storage (many of my graphics files are 10-20mb), and I can have twenty times that for free if I just email files to my Gmail account for storage. Sure, they offer more, but the problem is (as the New York Times is finding with it's TimesSelect premium online content) that on the internet, people are used to getting stuff for free.
As for buying them out, I suspect that it would be easiest for Google/Microsoft to simply duplicate the site's functionality while improving on the interface and offering more storage for free.
And don't even get me started on that vicious gang of "keep left" signs.
Then you're a drooling, lobotomized idiot.
It is basically impossible to travel anywhere inside the country without body armor and a squad of mercenaries. I mean, look at the threats you have to deal with. Kidnappings by organized crime. Assassinations of intellectuals and government officials. Sunni insurgents. Islamic suicide bombers and mortar attacks. Shiite militias. Guys in Iraqi military uniform, who may be Iraqi military, Shiite militia, or both, hauling people off who later show up dead, with holes in the skull from bullets and power drills. Jumpy marines with M-16s.
That's just the personal safety side of the issue. You've got intermittent power and water, the Sunnis didn't participate in the first round of elections so they are largely left out, the Kurds may split off and form their own state, a bunch of Shiites are trying to set up an Iranian-style theocracy in the South, and corruption in the government. We've gotten rid of Saddam with his torture rooms and death squads, and now we've got a new government with torture rooms and death squads.
If this is success, God help us if we encounter failure. This war may still be winnable. But right now, most signs suggest that we're losing it.
That's an idiotic argument. Nuclear weapons aren't the only deterrents; you've also got the massive conventional arsenal of the United States military- tomahawks, laser-guided bombs, fuel-air explosives, you name it. Plus, if anyone ordered a pre-emptive attack, they would also have to deal with the possibility of allied nations like Britain declaring war on them. Finally, you've got the economic argument. Most nations benefit from trade with the United States. China, for instance, probably isn't going to nuke us as long as we continue to buy billions of dollars of their imports.
What is this "World" that you speak of? Is "World" one of the Middle States? Like between Kansas and Ohio? I never could remember those.
You could imagine how, say, Google rolling out a product prematurely could be bad if it fails. It would break that air of invincibility they currently enjoy. With the current scheme, they roll the product out as a Beta, if it succeeds you do the final release, if not, it never gets out of Beta, and you have a perfect score of successes because you never officially release your failures. That's my theory anyhow.
The fallacy of this argument is obvious when you look at the enormous political clout the NRA weilds. Politicians are terrified of them. Why? Not because the members are armed with pistols, deer rifles, AR-15s and the occasional .50-caliber sniper rifle. Because their actually show up and vote based on issues that matter to them instead of sound-bites and advertisements.
Great idea. Why don't we start by catching what's-his-name. You know. With the beard. Blew up the World Trade Center? It'll come to me.
The Republicans have basically gone insane, as far as I can tell. There are some I can respect, even admire, like McCain. But come on... running a gulag in Cuba? Endless detentions without trials? Secret prisons in Europe? Allowing the government to spy on people with almost no checks? A vice-president who's lobbying for torture? Who the hell are we, the USSR?