"Googles regular search has turned to shit. Even bing is better." I have the opposite experience.

Pretty much.

Yep. It takes one to know one.

"...suppose that some *other* species evolved into intelligence more than 5 million years ago and left. Would we see any evidence?"

Yes. Assuming they didn't try to hide their traces. If I remember right, full surface recycling takes more than 200M years.

That certainly makes more sense. I read about a fight someone in Oregon has been having for years. I think what got him was the type of caveat above: "and has not been previously been put to beneficial use".

"If somebody brought a model of that to school in the 50's as a lunar lander project, it would be laughed at, smashed, and given an "F", not necessarily in that order."

Yeah, pretty much. I guess it was in the 60's when people in general started realizing that "no air in space" means "no aerodynamics needed".

Of course if SpaceX et. al. have their way, perhaps we'll dust off ol' Bonestells blueprints in the future.

Ok, thanks. I can think I can see the benefits regarding grayscale.

Then two weeks later they return it to you bricked due to the same mysterious malfunction that caused the cop-cam to have no video.

Wow. He drops everything. He starts to turn away. They pepper him with half a dozen shots. Then yell "Get your hands up!".

"When dealing with the police, avoid being black"

Words to the wise, yet people still consistently break that rule. It's their own fault.

So, basically everyone is non-law-abiding at some point. What follows from that?

"The American Public has rights, an individual citizen has no rights. Welcome to America, sucker."

The scary thing to me is that I think the AC is a cop. And the way he lays his argument out tells me that he was trained that way. It's a gut feeling, though: I hope I'm wrong.

Think of the kittens!

Hear, Hear!

The coda: "I really now believe that in some parts of the United States people have started to mate with vegetables."