Maybe their religion isn't a fantasy. Imagine a Lovecraft scenario: the ET know that the Great Old Ones exist because they've met them and they're not nice.

Lot's of animals survived the last asteroid, including the avian clade of dinosaurs. That was without the benefit of any preparation or technology. Building some underground bunkers is a hedge bet against asteroid impacts than trying to create on an entire ecosystem from scratch on a barren, airless, irradiated rock.

If you can store genetic material space and grow people from scratch, why would we need a back up civilization on Mars? Just park and maintain your baby factory in Earth orbit. If a disaster strikes, wait for the dust to settle and recall the ship to the surface.

That land across ye sea already had a million people on it, long before Europeans "discovered" it. Mars is a bit different.

Its not pointless at all. Long division and multiplication are an exercise in how to take a large calculation and algorithmically break it down into manageable units. This is a fundamental skill for practical math at any level.

I don't see how drones would help since the it sounds like the corruption has already been reveal. The citizens just need to decide how they're going to deal with it.

Of course that's not what's happened. In this case the Free Market (kind of) works and auto interest rates have been dropping for the last 30 years. http://www.carloanpal.com/car-...

Look, you're are just plain wrong. Average auto loan interest rates have been going DOWN for the last 30 years. http://www.carloanpal.com/car-...

Except that it is true, fact as well as theory.

The price of a loan is the interest rate. If you have a halfway decent credit rating, you can drive often off the lot with a new car at less than 1% interest rate. And the fact that people with "sub prime" credit can get a car loan at all is a sign of lower borrowing cost. In the old days, a jobless single mother wouldn't be able to get a car loan at any interest rate.

In the city of Seattle, there are five different tiers of residential trash collection service and three tiers of food and yard waste service available. Recyclable goods are collected for free. Is that proportional enough for you?

http://www.seattle.gov/Util/My...

That's the dilemma of freedom, isn't it? You either pay for the service to pick up the trash and comply with the related rules or you figure out some other way to deal with your trash that doesn't infringe on your neighbors' right to live in a clean environment.

If you have a problem with the rules for trash collection, then you are free to opt out. But you can't eat your government services and have your libertarian cake, too.

Times change. Cavalry was a military necessity up to WWI, 50 years later it was irrelevant. Marches were a stunning political tactic 50 years ago, now they're just another blip in the 24 hour news cycle.

The wealthy can sell stuff to each other. Take the wealthy 1% of the world: that's 70 million people right now. That's 210 million meals that need to be produced each day. That's 70 million luxury cars (or more) that can be built, sold and discarded each year. 70 million villas (or more) that need to be maintained. Etc. Etc. That's more than enough consumption to sustain an internal economy.

Despite all those failing, Obama is still better than the alternatives that were on the ballots.