Armed robbery is up in my area. Car jackings, too.

think such efforts by trolls on a site such as this are, as Mrs Whatsit says, a complete waste of time and money, if the Democratic party is in fact paying these people.

JThoits,I’d be pleased if I knew for certain that it was the Democratic Party that was the ultimate source of funds for this. My concern about paid trolls is not their effectiveness (which I agree is nil), but rather their existence. Organized and paid surveillance of dissident opinion smacks of a police state.

I thought from the get go that an Obama Presidency would be about betrayal: either of his supporters, or the country, or both.

On the money, zhombre. The question is who’s the rube? And the big one – who’s behind him? Soros leaps to mind, I must confess. But Obama’s history is consistent with a more disturbing possibility, that he was chosen, groomed, and propelled upward by a communist network, starting with Frank Marshall Davis. Again, not to sound like a conspiracy nut, but communists have been a major feature of Obama’s entire life. (How many of us have even known — much less been friends with — one hard-core, straight-up, communist? I exclude myself; I went to Berkeley.) And communists take in conspiracy with their mother’s milk (hence the effectiveness of the French Resistance, which was in essence the French Communist Party directed by Stalin to fight the Nazis).

if you were going to allow space travel and such, that would end the pollution problem, first for nuclear materials, then later when ubiquitous, for other things.

just as they wont allow drilling because cheap energy would let the steam roller run fast, they wont let us really into space because that would then remove a HUGE area of social control.

nuclear waste disposal containers are being made to be ok for 10k plus years. why? we can already make containers that could survive reentry in a crash and not crack open (embed the material in boron glass, etc). (heck we could embed it and drop it in the marianas trench and never see it again)

the technology development would cause social justice issues as not everyone can go into space equally…

how can you say we will run out of raw materials if you have ubiquitous space flight? you have planets of materials available.

it would prove that capitalism was the best way, socialism was and is a lie, since it would also solve population issues, farming issues, pollution issues, raw materials issues, energy issues all at once.

and you think control freaks are going to let that happen? heck no. they dont want to create a USA ENGLAND situation between eartn and another planet of homesteaders!

and of course thos who want change are going to fight to prevent change (we cant go to other planets we will pollut them!!!)

ya know what? pollution is a false concept. in less than 200 years the most productive mines will be companies that will reprocess land dumps for rawmaterials. (they can already chop up and sort cars and other things in mass ways – wont be long before they do that for dumps).

so so many issues of our times are not real issues. oh they are to luddites who think that they are forward thinking by stagnating everything.

basically since the treadmill is moving, they think progress is stopping the treadmill. then when they stop the treadmill, they will think that getting it movnig again is progress. darkage, followed by…

As to character education, folks might take some comfort in Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You. He points out positive aspects of the video gaming culture that we older ones who see only the flash overlook: they are completely unforgiving – there is no point in making excuses to a machine; most games start out with the player not knowing what the dangers are, what the objective is, and what skills he has – you have to find that out as you go; instantaneous high-stakes decision making with inadequate information is the norm. In short, it’s a lot like real life, condensed into an entertainment format. In my own children, I note that they have less ability for sustained unattractive effort than I would like (both physical and mental), but their adaptability is enormous, far more than anyone in my generation.