Perhaps you should put all the politics into it first then fire it to get them out.

Trust me as a Mormon and at Utahn I very must distrust the government, and have been dismayed and angered that this monster has found a home in my state.

that Bill Gates wouldn't approve of emacs either.

just the latest NSA robot used for spying....

"The aim was to recreate, in true-to-life detail, what happens when a volcanic eruption punches through Earth's crust."
Hugh, it seems to me the aim an excuse to play with explosives.

It's not crime in the neighborhoods that increasing. It's the crime in the fancy buildings in Washington DC that's increasing.

I work from home, and when I'm sick (unless I'm really sick) I work, not because I feel like I have to, but because I could be sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself and wiping my nose, or sit in front of my computer with something to concentrate on and distract myself from my own discomfort.

One possible unintended consequence to taxing pollution is that the government will become dependent on the tax revenue. Which may well cause the government to encourage pollution blocking manufacturer's efforts to reduce pollution.

in the server room...

and in related news. Changes to the IP protocol now include the evil bit. Any packet with evil intent has it's evil bit set to 1 and everything else is set to 0. So to filter out bad communications just drop all packets with the evil bit set to 1.

In my opinion it's time to execute your exit plan. This company is down the tubes and they know it. They are only trying desperate measures that aren't likely to work. It will only get worse, soon they'll have a meeting where they will say we can only pay you half salary, but when things get better we'll promise to make up the difference.... That's what happened to me. And I jumped shipped to the company I'm at now. Who by the way are looking for employees. http://vpi-corp.com/ They are great to work for, have good benefits, only rarely ask you to work overtime, and that's usually because your own code is broken and you need to fix it. Once it's fixed then your off. Good luck on your exit strategy.

Not only were the stories likely oral, but it's important to note that the Bible wasn't written in English in the original, or any modern language, including modern Hebrew.

I'd wager that connotations of words have changed. We read the literal "first day", but perhaps word day had other meaning that made perfect sense when it was written, such as a connotation of "period of time".

Read that way the Bible's view of the world creation does make more sense for a world being prepared for life.

Light, Water, Dividing the Land and Water and adding plant life, sun, stars and moon (I take this as clearing the sky so you could see the sun, stars, and moon.), animal life, and human life.

It's not a bad theory for origination thousands of years ago. Not sure that it matches perfectly the accepted geological chronology but in a general way it's not horrific.

Finally I don't think God intended the Book of Genesis as a detailed set of instructions for how to create a world. So why would it include all of the detail or interplay. Perhaps he was saying for human life to be possible this is what needed to be done, and here are the general epochs in which it was achieved.

For me at least the message of the creation story isn't a practical lesson in geology, but that God took care of what was needed for humans to survive. It has meaning in an allegorical way on how to build a good life by first building your proper foundation. Brian

Though in general I agree with you that full-time politicians should by paid, so that poor but intelligent, and moral people could serve as a public servant. However, I wouldn't say that no-one could serve. Our first president, George Washington, refused any payment for his 8 years of service.

I think a middle ground would be better. The pay should be low though, like maybe the average pay for an American. Then they might want to make conditions that raise the average American

Somewhere I've seen a study that correlated corruption in a state government to the amount it's representatives, so the higher the pay, the higher the corruption. Of course I have no idea how they quantified the corruption in the given state's governments.