Isaac H

Every time it's the same "let's all work together and ignore our fundamentally different ideas for how the country should work."

And then I made the mistake of watching the Republican response. Wow. It was even more useless.

Why do I even bother with politics? The whole thing needs to come down and be re-built.

Perhaps I'm an oddity, but I'm tired of both sides. I'm young, socially liberal, and I cherish my freedom from religion - so today's staunch Republicans are a tough sell. I also run a tight ship personally and am a moderate fiscal conservative (I watch the debt my generation will inherit with trepidation) - so I vote for today's liberal Democrats only grudgingly.

More importantly, I proudly flip-flop on issues when presented with new information. I will happily compromise and discuss and weigh my views. A few short years' worth of knowledge ago, I was socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Adjusting one's views is a sign of maturation (I would say "maturity," but it seems a touch presumptuous to ascribe that to myself) and concern for the truth, but it is now seen as a political weakness.

I don't understand how so many people can be convinced that they are the fonts of all wisdom and that everyone else is ignorant and/or attempting to destroy the nation. I get that it sells - it sells talk radio; it sells "news" channels; it sells religions; it sells political parties; and it buys votes.

But that's just the problem - every time that blind adherence to political ideology sells something, that means someone has to be buying it. We complain about our gridlocked government; we complain that the other side is so extreme. Meanwhile, we somehow seem to miss the fact that we are the ones not just allowing it, but demanding it - with our dollars and with our votes.

I wonder, are we really as polarized as we seem, or have we allowed ourselves to be pulled artificially to the wings, convinced that there is honor in political and ideological purity? Media and politicians wield fear adeptly. They have us eating out of the palms of their hands, switching off our brains, and demonizing anyone whose opinions differ from our own, without consideration.

Am I the only person who thinks that we have begun valuing ideological certainty far too much? How much longer are we going to demand it in our politicians? We need balance, facts, and honesty, not ideology, more now than ever...

The concept, as I understand it, is that the basic necessities of life could be provided through technology/automation. This would, in theory, free everyone up to pursue their true interests.

However, doesn't example after example show that people are not satisfied with the basics? Is it really possible to remove monetary/barter value from material goods, when those goods have intrinsic value stemming from usefulness, rarity, and resources expended to acquire them?

There are precious few occasions when this system has been attempted (I think of the early Christian church, for example), and these were extremely short-lived due to what is arguably a fundamental human materialism.

Is there any evidence that a resource-based economy is actually feasible, given human nature and our material world?

When it is the antithesis to everything scientific?

I'm trying to save a dying Dell 2300 (yes it's old, but we can't afford a new computer) and things just seem to be getting worse. I've been getting all sorts of BSOD errors, and nothing I've tried has fixed the problem(s). I WAS able to get to BIOS and boot (sometimes) with the hard drive, but now it doesn't even get there. It demands a System disk because "No Boot Device detected" and when I put the XP disk in it can't really do anything because it can't find a hard drive. I want to try the recovery console, but I can't because it doesn't recognize the hard drive. Help?