How much clearer does it need to be made to us, that our oil addiction is putting us in bed with some really, really objectionable regimes around the world?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no hippie on a bicycle, and I don't hate Muslims or their faith (at least, no more than I dislike Christians or Christianity) but when you've got nations involved in the whole "execution for apostasy" game, cut them off. Yes, geopolitics is hard, but we should never have let ourselves get put in a position where we'd support any regime like this.

Pretty solid, actually. DC really put some good writers on this project. J. Michael Stracyznski, Darwyn Cooke, Brian Azzarello, Len Wein. All great creators with the capacity for writing extremely well. The same thing can be said for the artistic side of the books involved. Every single book has A-list artistic talent on it.

And as Peter David said in his comments published by newsarama.com today, it's rather funny for Alan Moore to be all defensive about this considering that the characters he based Watchmen on were all just rebranded ones from the old Charlton Comics line that DC had acquired just before Watchmen was done. Also of course, the fact Moore used fictional and historical characters in his own works such as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls. Watchmen was work for hire, and if DC hadn't published and promoted it as heavily as they did, most people here wouldn't even know Alan Moore's name.

Time Cube Guy was RIGHT! Holy shit!

Just as it is not right to force someone to not publish something, it is also not right to force someone TO publish that thing. Throwing words together does not result in an inalienable right to have it published. You can't force Sam's Club to carry a book they don't like any more than you can force Apple to sell Packard-Bell computers in their retail stores.

Fortunately, for everything else, there's the internet. Last I checked, nobody said Time Cube or Phantom History couldn't be put out there for everyone to see. For better or worse. =P

No, just... no. Evolution does not work that way. Evolution does not generate new species within a span of 6000 years. Or even 200,000 years. Not like that, not for complex higher mammals.

If the Abrahamic flood story is real -- and it will have to compete with the Babylonian flood story -- then it's possible 'two of every animal' meant two of every domesticated animal on his farm/land. That would make more sense.

But there is no evidence whatsoever of *all* humans dating back to any flood. Mitochondrial Eve dates back to at least 200,000 years ago, when homo sapiens sapiens was just developing, and she was in sub-Saharan Africa. If you really want to contemplate that all of humanity arose from a single population, that is the current theory; and the holes in it suggest that the single population originator dates back even FURTHER.

Could Mitochondrial Eve's population of h. sapiens gotten on an ark to escape a flood? Doubtful. They were budding tool users but not to the extent that it would take to build even a coracle boat. Plus, they were not in a region in which there is geological evidence that there was any flooding.

The best contender for the flood myth is the recurring theme of floods in Egyptian mythology. Egyptian history -- history, not myth -- also has some intriguing events to look into, in particular the establishment of Atenism (the first true monotheism) and the civil war in the Late Bronze Age between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, which was under the control of the Hyskos and Sea Peoples (called in Egyptian the 'Habiru.') The Hyskos were driven out of Egypt, and one theory is that these people went to Canaan. After a period of integration and assimilation, Atenism reasserted itself and the priests of El' (sound familiar?) declared him to be the one true god, purging the priesthoods of other deities including Baal Hadad and Asherah.

There's some fascinating things in the actual history of the world, before, during, and after the Bronze Age Collapse. Between the Sea Peoples and the detonation of Thera/Santorini, the the disappearance of Minoan civilization, there's a gloriously complex world that we've only just begun to uncover. Sadly, if you take the Abrahamic Bible as anything other than metaphor, mythology, and religious scripture, you are going to be sorely, sadly disappointed.

You mean the battery in my Prius that's still going strong after five years? The Prius that has more cargo space than my old Jeep and can hold four people as opposed to the Jeep's two (four if you cut off two peoples' legs)? The Prius that gets me fifty miles to the gallon because I take the highway to and from work?

Have you even driven one? Hell, have you even SEEN one?

I dunno, McCarthy managed to keep from being killed, and he had a list, or said he did, anyway. His death at age 48 may or may not have been natural causes, depending on if you believe hepatitis, or liver failure from alcoholism, counts as 'natural causes.'

It would seem strange that an employer would be required to report such a thing, particularly if there was no evidence that any child had been harmed,

If the pornography is photos or videos of real live children (as opposed to drawings/art/renders) then the argument can be and has been made that children have been materially harmed. Not only were they abused in the taking of the photos, but the photos of them -- doubtless embarrassing, certainly a painful remembrance of what happened to them -- still exist and are still being distributed. So there is measurable harm that was done and is still being done to them.

A slightly more specious argument can be made that possession of child pornography enables child pornographers by fostering a demand for it. That's a good debate to have, since it can apply to a number of other situations as well.

Some counties don't elect the sherriff; they're appointed or hired by the county seat. Not sure what the ratio is between elected sherrifs and appointed.

There is no way that the military is going to permit autonomous combatant units. At least, not without having a stake put through its brain.

For starters, the PR would be through the floor if even one of these things killed a civilian (though I guess with how callous the US has been towards civilian collateral casualties for the past ten years, that might not be a big deal.)

The other main reason is that there's no way a manly man is ever going to give up on the idea of manly soldiers charging manly into battle. Basically, it'll take a total discrediting of the entire War College and Army general staff to see ACUs see any sort of serious use on the battlefield, in much the same way that Gates disenfranchised the 'fighter mafia' from the USAF a few years ago. The difference is that the 'combat arm mafia' (not that there actually is one) is a hell of a lot more entrenched. The idea of big burly virile men shooting the hell out of some amorphous Enemy is too much part of the military self-image.

Then again, the fighter jocks had a pretty strong self-image, too, and they've lost a lot of ground in the Air Force to the transport "pukes" (Who's a puke now, Roger Ramjet?) and the drone operators (who are mostly CIA anyway), so who knows?

The ironic thing is that, ideally, you get drones and ACUs on both sides, let them beat the snot... er, silicon out of each other, and call it a day. Pity that won't happen anytime soon. Plus, random freedom fighters^H^Hinsurgents probably won't be able to afford such things, so it'll still come down to bloody gobbets strewn across some hellhole.