I actually really appreciated the update to the format. The original movie beats you over the head with symbolism and was never subtle about it. This movie made the apes, you know, apes. There are two very, very interesting Ape stories that should be required if you are going to watch Rise. The first, as others have mentioned is Project Nim, and the second is a story about an ape named Lucy. There is a great hour long program by NPR called Radiolab where they talk about the Lucy Story for nearly an hour, and it's a near copy of the story of Rise of Planet of the Apes, and interesting tidbits about how apes bite off fingers to show disrespect, etc...

I have a friend who works at the IRS cleaning up business filings, calling businesses when they have incorrect information or missing information on their filings. He was complaining just last week that probably half of his calls are made to businesses who use LegalZoom and other similar online services. He was saying that these companies should be shut down for false advertising and misleading customers to what service they are really providing.

I see this Adventure Update as a good direction though. I haven't played it in months because I played much like you describe. Create a home-base, maybe a minecart track to get you in and out of your base and main mine, but then get bored. Having the ability to build an adventure and share that would get me firing up the game again.

Quick, messy version:
House/Senate writes the bills.
President signs/vetoes bills.
Supreme Court examines laws (when challenged) to verify they don't conflict with the constitution. If a law is ruled unconstitutional, it is no longer a law, and then the house/senate can try to write a similar law that doesn't conflict with the (current supreme court's reading of the) constitution. Or, if they are so inclined, they can try to amend the Constitution.

>>They ALL equate Net Neutrality to a revival of the Fairness Doctrine

Well, just because they say that on their radio show doesn't mean that its true, or what they believe. The "fariness doctrine" canard has been used by republicans for years as a boogeyman of government taking away your favorite things. It's easy to get support for your anti-net neutrality issue if you just call it the fairness doctrine on the internet and demonize it. Do you really think that people who are part of such major media companies would say anything good about net neutrality? Much like the democrats, they aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them.

In Soviet Russia, they have entire sacks of Potatoes?!!

Why are we arguing over time frames? Shouldn't we really be discussing what legislation it was that killed the economy? If you can point to a single bill passed in 2006-2010 that caused the collapse of the housing and financial markets and the ability for banks to bundle mortgages and create unregulated CDO's, then you might have a point, but A gigantic bubble of debt and borrowing against home values was not built/burst in 1.5 years. Yes, this might be the fault of the overturn of Glass-Stegal act in 1999 under Clinton, but it most definately is not the fault of the 2006 congress

And there are "hard" games out there. Just last week, Super Meat Boy came out, which is by no means easy. Yes, it has individual levels to beat, so no nintendo style restarting from the beginning, but that's for the better.

Seriously, if someone is so nostalgic for old school game difficulty, go play those games. They are still there, they still work, and I'm sure you didn't play all of them. Go beat Ghosts n' Goblins twice.

Layoffs today
ATK makes the main SRM for the shuttle and the proposed Ares I rocket.

This didn't get them more attention than it otherwise would have.

Well, it did get them 2 important posts on the most important globally influental website out there - Slashdot.