In a world with the beauty of ligers and tigons, what's wrong with a bit of Ralph/Sam?

I think a lot of the caveman/astronaut assumptions don't give enough credit to the caveman. Sure, the astronaut could either be a MacGyver-like engineer or an ex-military killing machine but the caveman has a lot more going for him than just brute strength and a killer instinct.

These people had to live by their wits. Even though they might not be smart enough to have fully functioning speech, they had to be canny, clever creatures just to survive. Their skills would extend beyond just hunting and include problem solving, often in high stress situations.

If we're not counting space tourists (and I'm not), astronauts are selected pretty hard to be our best and brightest. And to me, key in the question is the plural, so our best and brightest get to scheme in groups which is what we clever monkeys do best, with the astronauts getting paleolithic-to-now refinements on the basic model.

Unless we're in squash court territory, with the cavemen getting designer weapons fashioned from freshly vanquished cheetah, and the astronauts getting say, pocket protectors, them cavemen is soon to be rotting meat.

I wonder if the re-rise to prominence of this debate is a symptom of the fundie-right American anti-intellectual pogrom or if folks just miss ST:TOS Shatner.

ita is in her scary place.

would someone email my boss and say I need to have the rest of the day off for a happy day? Thanks

ita is in her scary place

The Valley?

Dear msbelle's Boss-

msbelle contains all the happiness today. Please excuse her so she can use it properly.

Sincerely, The Cranky One You Really Don't Want to Deal With Today

PS. Smash that stupid caveman while you are at it. He's eating his boogers again.

Simi Valley.

sheepdog/coyote slash

[link]

Star Trek inspirational posters: [link]

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:

[link] (Has a big-ass list of ways in which we're far from #1)

"Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.

eta:

The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.