Bill, as usual, strikes multiple nails on the head with his big-ass hammer. But I think one sneaked in there he didn't anticipate, and it illustrates one of the essential differences between conservatives and liberals.

The liberal is always calling people to do things that people don't do well: prioritize risks; act altruistically; put yourself in someone else's shoes.

When the facts are that human beings are just plain lousy at assessing risks, and even worse at comparing them. Evidence: all the people who are afraid of flying but happily do 85 on the highway; all the people who still believe that "stranger danger" addresses a major threat to children; everyone who shrugs off TSA lunacy with "at least we're safer". Not to mention acting altruistically and striving for empathy.

The conservative, on the other hand, is always calling people to do things that people do extremely well: be fearful; be selfish; relegate anyone different to "the other".

To put it simply, it's just easier to be a conservative, because it's basically giving in to the worst, most base characteristics of humanity.

Being liberal, being progressive, trying to understand the world in all its complexity, understanding that complex problems have simple wrong answers, that's just plain hard.

One of the many ironies this brings into focus is that conservatives, who don't want Darwin taught in schools, are asking us to behave just like our closest evolutionary cousins, whereas liberals are calling us to be human.

It may be harder, but I know which road I'd rather walk. Aim high, help others, leave this world better than I found it.

Roughly 3 out of 4 letters so far offers a variation of this:

I don't WANT to resell my computer. I want to keep it until it dies...

as a "rebuttal" to Farhad's main point. And fair enough. But then the question becomes "How much use do you get out of it, then, on average, until it dies?"

I'm typing this on an iBook I bought in 2002. It's running the latest version of OS X. It's running it very fast. It's had a hard life and been around the planet 4 times. It's produced tens of thousands of words, hundreds of business plans, and stores all the music I own, and all the photos I've generated in 5 years.

Imagine a hypothetical "PC" laptop purchased in 2002.

*It wouldn't be capable of running Vista (not that you'd want to!)

*It would run very slowly, with loads of crudulous registry/spyware/hidden process issues, unless I'd wasted hundreds of hours "cleaning up" after it.

*It would probably have had major-part replacement at least twice (if you go on the regularly published averages for these things)

So think of another excuse, Mac-haters, because "I don't care about resale I use my machines until they die" still leaves you somewhere in Western China with a bad case of the latest Outlook Express social engineering virus meaning you just ain't gonna hit that deadline... or maybe that's just me...

I'm not as much of a A380 external profile hater as Patrick -- for me it's a case of A3-bland-0.

What makes me hesitate is the seat configuration. Getting past one sleeping person you don't know is barely tolerable -- but getting past two!?

All of the main-deck configs I've seen in economy for the A380 have 3-4-3. Which means in every single row, two poor suckers have to get almost intimate with two total strangers to, say, take a bathroom trip.

It's the worst part of long-haul -- and the A380 does nothing whatsoever to alleviate it. I understand I'm flying cattle-class, so squeezing past one person is probably required, but must inconveniencing a majority of your row-sharers for your own convenience be compulsory?

Is there anything besides tradition stopping a 2-3-3-2 layout (three slightly narrower aisles) on this huge plane? Food service would be faster, getting on and off less painful, and you wouldn't have to give two just-rudely-awoken strangers a lapdance to use the head...

Sheesh! "The problem is us, all of us..." is the second worst commonly uttered line of dialog -- and poor Redford has to direct himself to say it! The cascade of things that when wrong to have that happen boggle the mind.

The worst line of dialog? Two characters sit looking at each other:

"Thank you," says one.

"No, thank you," says the other.

Scorsese dropped that clanger into "The Departed"... along with one very superfluous rat...

Which goes to show, I guess, that even the best make beginner mistakes every now and then!

You, sir, are a credit to your uniform, and to your country.

Please do whatever you can to encourage others in positions like your own to come forward.