Max Eskin wrote: Maxie, you are young. As I recall, when I was about your age when I spent about a week as a Marxist before I realized there was nothing in it for me or for anybody else. Contrary to popular fantasy, very little is actually _created_ by governments. The biggest problem with NASA for instance is that it tries to pretend it's responsible for shitloads of developments done by contractors who worked for a profit. The printing press was developed by a guy who owed too much to a church/ government lending agency. Castles were developed by guys who realized they needed walls to hide behind in case the people they were stealing can give me an independent reference for _anything_ the USSR invented, I'll be extremely surprised. Hell, the Soviet auto and gun industries were based out of factories delivered by the US during "The Great Patriotic War". Give me an example of a computer innovation done during the last twenty years by a government or socialist organization. If you do, I swear that I will shit in my hat and wear it backwards. And I do not swear lightly. Companies working to take a profit from government contracts don't count (and rarely produce). -- Ward Griffiths They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else. Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_