This is a beautiful bit of perspective - not only on how tiny we are, but also how fundamentally unwilling we are to cope with that fact. As the Animaniacs' song put it, "It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny. We're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney. It's big and black and inky, and we are small and dinky. It's a big universe, and we're not", though we don't let the fact stop us.

Oliver's point is something of which we should all think when we look up at the stars, and one I try to keep in mind. It is humbling, but also exciting. It is a complement to the other two thoughts that so often run through my head while looking up at a nigh sky speckled with stars: 1. how many others are looking up at the same sky here on Earth, and 2. how many are looking back, not only from worlds circling those distant points of light we see, but also those we cannot. Anyone else?

Not meaning to make it harder on you, but another complication in your question is this: what would have been the probability, were the tape of history to be replayed with your parents having had sex at that same time, of the same sperm fertilizing that egg? Different sperm, different specific genotype, different starting point...or not. If a different sperm were to have gotten through, it might have borne a lethal mutation at some locus, resulting in a non-viable zygote, or some other variety of spontaneous abortion (as a pretty high proportion of human conceptions do).

Have you by any chance read Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life"? The last chapter, as I recall, basically plays this game as applied to life on Earth in general, and humans in general. I think you might like it, though it can make for some disturbing thoughts at times.

This is the best they can do? This? They have made an absolute hash out of the last half decade or so of near absolute power, and this is the best they can do to frame the '08 election? Wasn't this the party that went around bragging how it was the "Party of Ideas"(tm)? Wow. I have no doubt that the GOP brown shirts will swallow this bunk another time (How could they not, given that to refuse it would require confronting reality as it is?), but I rather doubt the rest of the country will.

1. The profile generated is of what a Bush supporter is most likely to be. There is a spread to the numbers, and the profile should not be taken as a description of all Bush supporters. What it means is that, should you draw a Bush supporter at random, that supporter will most likely fit the profile.

2. As to the number of people who continue to support the walking disaster, beyond the fact that there are people who really do agree with what he has done (there are scary people in the world, folks, and many of the live here), there is something else that should be remembered: many, many people are ill-informed. I would wager that many of Bush's continuing support comes from people who do not read newspapers, do not read blogs, do not listen to NPR, do not watch legitimate TV news, have not read the constitution, and have no clue how the government is supposed to work. Don't believe me? Go and look up the PIPA survey from th 2004 election season. There were a large number of ill-informed people who thought Bush was in favor of things like peace, the UN, and abortion rights. In top of this, there are people who are informed, but the information come from Republican Pravda outlets like right wing talk radio (where the other day I heard one host saying that the Democratic Party was a threat to our democratic system because the people might vote them a greater majority in the next election. In what universe does that make sense?) and, of course, Fox News. Considering that these provide primarily officially sanctioned Republican propaganda, how could their consumers not end up supporting Bush?

I think that tiberius and Elephantman are perhaps also upset that Bush has proven so lazy. After all, had he been more diligent in his work, he might have succeeded in completely destroying the US, rather than simply badly hurting it and the world. Had he succeeded, those two reprobates might just have been able to get the lawless, feudal land "conservatives" such as they so seem to crave. Sure, the Bushevic reign is not yet over, so they might just get what they want, but it seems unlikely at this point. Sorry, you two, real Americans have seen how irresponsible "conservatism" really is, and far prefer law and order, respect for citizens' rights, fiscal discipline, and good, effective government. Maybe if "conservatives" were more competent you might have gotten what you wanted, but that would have required that you not have decided on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as model (i.e. fiscal irresponsibility, disdain for science, cronyism, rampant corruption, disregard for civil rights, and, above all, ideological blindness and extremism as virtue). America will survive, rebuild, and become better and stronger. You and your kind will just have to fume about that. For now, why don't you go find another nation to destroy if you so hate ours?