That’s interesting, but I think this country will see political changes that will be more consequential than technological changes.

I have no idea what’s coming down the pike, but never in my worst dreams could I have imagined 30 years ago how the constitution would be stripped like it has been in the past 10 years.

If that regression continues, I think the role of the supreme court will change along with other institutions. If I had to guess, I would guess that as an institution it will be more and more sidelined by the executive and at some point probably ignored altogether.

If you believe members of the High Court are out of touch now, imagine how bad some members might be after 200 years in the same office.

Especially if they are originalists. They will be more than 400 years out of date, as opposed to Scalia and Thomas, who are merely 200 years out of date.

Interesting point. I am not so sure it is science fiction anymore as medical researchers are zeroing in on the ageing process. They already understand cell reproduction limits via Hayflick Limit and the role telomeres play. The main obstacle they have now is controlling cancerous growths, which cell death seems to be a brake to prevent.

The real flaw though is this increasing propensity to appoint SCOTUS based on purely ideological grounds and the self-policing ethics that no other Federal Judge enjoys. If these problems are not addressed, we may well be barreling to a Dystopian future where what’s left of our ‘democracy’ is turned completely upside down.

Of course, only the 1%ers will be alive. The 99ers will die of slavery in their 20s or 30s, without any medical care.

You mean the .01%. Just being a billionaire won’t cut it 400 years from now.

Pardon the pedantry, it is “Moore’s” Law. Morse is a code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

Picky picky. I won’t be alive, so an approximation is good enough. *g*

Thank you.

Morse was also a painter of portraits. Did you know that?

If only we had the cojones to IMPEACH the traitors when they overstep their bounds or lie on Federal , perjury penalty included, forms.

So was Da Vinci!

Only using dots and dashes ?

Aha. Another inventor of code. Took me awhile, but I figured it out.

thank you it is fixed, damn autocorrect.

Precursor to Pointillist school. *g*

Morse’s house is directly across the Hudson. On one visit, the book containing his oeuvre was on sale for something like $7 so I bought it. I’m in the middle of a project to deacqusition books (keeping the Morse one for now), so have been doing a lot of rearranging of shelves. Just skimmed thru the Morse book a couple of days ago.

An almost completely off topic note. I have noticed that someone making a correction as to grammar or word choice or the like on a left-leaning blog is generally thanked. Doing the same on a righty blog earns anger and resentment.

Quite the conundrum!!!!!

What to do???? I have a simple solution. Driver’s tests. To stay on the bench after 75 you have to pass a driver’s test. Already “in place”.

Also….I learned this when my dad wa aging. Make them spell WORLD backwards. That will weed out the senile ones.

“In heavily Mormon areas, he said, members of his denomination often see themselves as “a discriminated-against minority.” But Land still thinks that Romney could usefully rally evangelicals who have resisted him so far by naming a running mate who would appeal to them. Santorum was at the top of his list.”

GASP!

How many of them drive cars anyway? At least 4 of them believe their stature assumes they don’t need one for voting.

Well, you know, the left wants to be right.

I thought they all had chauffeurs?

I figgered you would!:)

Glad you aren’t my son!

I am allergic to any fad like that, so I would never read such a book. Esp since assertions about the bible & religion are complicated enough without injecting fiction into the witch’s brew. That’s my excuse for taking awhile to figure it out.

Don’t have to read it. I didn’t. I’m faddish about fads.

The problem for Obama is that practically nothing has improved. It’s going on two years since his “flagship” achievement of healthcare reform became reality, and the reality is that the improvements simple don’t exist for most americans, and, not incidentally, that obscene amounts of money are still being made by businesses and people who are basically a bunch of healthcare leeches. Leeches who, in any real program of improvement, would have been taken completely out of the healthcare picture.

Tweaking this abomination around, or endlessly parsing it’s piece-of-this/piece-of-that provisions is practically meaningless. The U.S. government should take over health care for most americans. It’s that simple.

If Obama had made this his main focus, with the clout he came in with, he could have done it. When he went “bi-partisan”, it meant that any “reform” was going to amount to a hill of beans. Now, the question is, should he pay for abject political surrender?

Except that the US government has been castrated.

We keep putting people in office who have no real objection to americans being sheared like so many sheep, by these giant corporations.

We hoped that had changed, with the election of Obama.

Clearly, we were wrong.

Yep. And the castrators didn’t even have to go after him; he walked in, dropped trou, and they went to work.

:o)

That was one of the words I was asked to spell backwards when I had encephalitis. It appears that the competency tests are alike no matter the reason.

BTW SCOTUS taking this up in this session, i.e. before 2012 election, is a political move. They could have waited for next session.

Devoting 6 hour to orals, when one is typical and two are rarely granted.

I got a call once from a senator’s office and I immediately asked if I was to be invited to the senate Ball. The caller replied “The Senate doesn’t have any balls”.

I was asked once to spell otto backwards. People thought I was drunk….

“The Senate doesn’t have an balls.

That was made evident, or made evident for the umpteenth time, when none of them raised hell when Obama had Reid kill the Dorgan amendment. Same thing with the House, when Pelosi refused to allow that group of democrats to bring up a bill to strip the health insurance robber barons of their exemption from the anti-trust laws.

And, here I go again, “off topic”, with a ‘toon from Ted Rall. :o)

http://news.yahoo.com/comics/ted-rall-slideshow/

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

I heard once that’s the longest Palindrome.

Able was I ere I saw Elba is also one of my faves.

Wonk is know spelled backwards, though opinion differs on whether that is the origin of wonk.

Thus endeth the gospel for today.

Must be. I was there when they gavd him the test. Thet asked him when he was born, what was today’s day/date, who was president, and to spell WORLD backwards.

Funny, I was 52 he was 78. We both missed the same questions.
LIke father like son.

May I answer that question?

Emphatically, yes.

But, they are ALL friggin’ NUTS.

And may the LOrd be with you. amen

There was a time when the Supreme Court was respected by the people of this country. Not anymore……..

There is no doubt that Supreme Court will vote yes to all the parts of the Unaffordable Health Law,including the vicious mandate.
No P.O,no single payer,NO medicare for all,that was the big goal of them all.

Before clarence the clown.

This excellent, no-more-bullshit, piece was up on FDL a couple of days ago, I believe.

It ought to be linked to in every thread about what Obama has “achieved”, or more accurately, what he has NOT achieved:

http://www.cpa-connecticut.com/blog/?p=5147

Some one should put together a list of all his clerks and what they’ve done since then. I’ll bet it’s a real rogues’ gallery.

Except Social Security is not an entitlement. Just imagine all the money insurance companies could make if a law was passed that they didn’t have to pay on life insurance, or any other for that matter, because they are entitlements.

When will we ever learn? If the repugs have their way, FDR will only be a footnote and the New deal never happened.

. . .the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court judges. Frankly it is just too long and produces several issues. It can encourage mentally failing judges to stay on, it causes judges to play politics with their decision to retire, and an unusual string of bad luck could potentially give a single President the ability to reshape judicial power in the country for a generation.

Your concerns about issues are unimportant.
There has been no problem with “mentally failing judges,” which comes close to age discrimination, doesn’t it.
Any playing politics with retirement is small potatoes compared to any other alternative, like elected judges or frequently appointed ones.
“An unusual string of bad luck” would be . . .unusual.

I agree to a point. Also the Constitution is red meat for each of the nine of them. Broadly written, synergy with lifetime tenure.

I was, however, surprised at the 9-0 slap down of the EPA yesterday. It should have been 5-4 or4-5, no?

And they all drink Coke, cans not bottles.

“In Time”, a fine sci-fi action flick (greatly underrated by reviewers) dealt with this issue.