Hello zippy --

I have responded to your questions on the communications page for your product.  Please note that you should respond there as well -- you can use the "Create New Message" text entry box located at the bottom of the product communication page to do this.

Thank you --

Robert (aka XENOPHONZ)
Renderosity Marketplace Admin

Yes, we are very sorry to hear about your health situation.  Please feel free to contact any of us on the Marketplace staff directly at any time if we can be of assistance to you.

I hope that you are able to be back here with us soon.  Best to you and yours.

Robert

Hey dreamscometrue --

I have responded to your questions via site mail.  ;-)

Robert

Hello dreamscometrue --

I've looked at your product upload, and the main product promo image is in place, and looks as it should.  So there is no visible issue.

I hope that this helps.  Please feel free to directly site mail me if you have any other questions.

Thanks -- :-)

Robert (aka XENOPHONZ)
Renderosity Marketplace Admin

Quote - So we turn to our Team for predictions on the 2nd half of this exciting match...

I dunno -- there might not be a second match.  At least if the combatants are actually "done here".  But then again: you never can tell for sure. 

Bahhh -- rather than waste bandwidth in citing lines of quotations from your last couple of posts -- I'll just roll over some points of interest here:

You seem to be taking the position that most people living in the 1960's and earlier were a bunch of ignorant, uninformed provincial dunces: and that no one had an educated ear attuned to national -- or even to local -- news events.  And that the media of that day was so limited that the average person simply couldn't hope to grasp the magnitude of passing world events.  :rolleyes:  I have to admit that such attitudes are standard fodder for self-important snobs (who fancy themselves to be Great Intellectuals -- and so superior to all of the mere mortals below), but the realities were (and are) often quite different.

People -- including people living back in the day -- were as much of a mix of the informed and the uninformed as they are right now.  In spite of the famous 24-hour news cycle that we all have the joy of living in today: there are still plenty of people -- as in those that Howard Stern's man on the street reporter recently interviewed -- who when informed that Obama had picked Sarah Palin as his running mate: praised Obama for his wisdom and his foresight in making such a superb choice.  And that's another reason why they were voting for Obama, too..........

So, yes: ignorant people exist in spite of all that the 24-hour news cycle can do for (or perhaps to) them.

I'd take a look at the famous 8th-grade standardized test from 1895 (admittedly controversial as to precisely how we should interpret it in the light of today's 8th graders -- because some people don't like the implications):

http://people.moreheadstate.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html

I can tell you something about the 60's - I was there.  Little boys in the 3rd grade even knew about LBJ and "what he was doing about LSD and dope and all that".  Some of them wee saddened that LBJ had chosen not to run again, too.  (shudder)  But after what had happened to him in New Hampshire, it probably couldn't be helped, you see......  We discussed Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Goldwater, WWII and Patton, the Civil War, NASA.......and so forth.  And I was raised in a small southern town.

Information was more than readily available for anyone who cared to casually look.

Attempt to deny the clear facts on their face as much as you like: we, as children, had no fear about going where we liked in those days.  And nothing ever happened to any of us as a result.  Or only fear was from the mean old man or old lady who lived down the street, and that everybody (meaning us kids) hated.  It's not like that today.

People didn't shoot up schools, restaurants, workplaces, shopping centers, etc. in that day, either.  Charles Whitman was the beginning of such: and at the time, he was so notable because he was so totally shocking, an abberation, a freak.  Today he'd be a minor blip in the 24-hour news cycle.  Just another one in a long list.

You know, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which so galvanized the entire nation's attention in it's day -- and which so outraged the public at that time........to the public of that era: it was an unthinkable, horrific crime.  By contrast: today, a mere incident on the order of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre -- at least in terms of the number of people killed -- hits the news every couple of months or so, at least.  If not more often.  It's another temporary blip on cable.  "Hey, Ethel -- did you see that?  Another crazy killed 7 people because his girlfriend broke up with him.  yawn  Be sure to turn off the TV, will ya?"  One week after, that particular news story involving 7 dead teens-old folks-children-women-whoever will have been totally forgotten by most of the public.  If they ever learned of the incident in the first place.  The once-shocking has now become the everyday, the hum-drum.  So are things different now?  Nahhh.....they just can't be...........

In the 1950's, a divorce was a major cause of scandal for local neighborhoods at that time.  Today, it's nothing at all.

I could go on and on..........

Are things different today than they were a couple of generations ago?  Are people's attitudes different?  Is amorality on the move as a cultural wave in our times?  Yes, it is.  And it's not the ready availibility of the news cycle which has caused this state of affairs.  It's the tenor and the calling of our times: as expressed in the opinions, thoughts, desires, and the hearts of individuals.

No, we didn't get here overnight.  But -- as Rome's fall didn't happen because of the events of a single year: but the cracks in late Roman society grew over decades.........that single year of 410 AD was the result of a society in decline for some time before.  410 was merely the culmination of the effect.  Likewise, a decent structural engineer can see the same cracks forming in our own foundation today.  In fact, a sharp-sighted layman can spot the warning signs -- if he cares to see.

Quote - Alright, you two.   Seriously, the back and forth is enough.  The personal attacks are a bit much from the BOTH of you. 

Not a problem, Jen.  It doesn't bother me: such things never do.  But without the personal insults being allowed, I fear that DQ won't have much else left to say..........

But dropping them on this end, as per your indication. 

Quote - As for the rest of your recent, various and sundry comments, as I said, I'm not interested in insults, attempts at ridicule and so forth. As is often the case, you resort to these tactics, among others, when you wish to avoid attempts at rebuttal, presumably because, other than such folderol, you have nothing much to say.

:lol::lol::lol:

You're killin' me, DQ!  :biggrin:  I gotta admit -- you're one of the more snarky self-important types that I've run across.  It's pretty much a standard forum debate tactic to use ironic projection in the way that you do.........:biggrin:    I note that your last line of defense always seems to be a sneer, and always involves claims of inherent superiority.  I gotta tell ya: I love forumites like that.  They're so much fun to take down.

As for your interests or lack thereof: that's all entirely up to you.  But it's no never-mind to me.

And as for me "wishing to avoid attempts at rebuttal" -- do you really believe that?  Do you think that I have the least concern whatsoever about answering another of your moustache-twirling diatribes?  It's true that RW concerns take me offline for hours at a time, or even for a day or two: but rest assured.......I have no problems over the fearful (snort) thought of rebutting yet another University Freshman mixture coming from you.

No time to twiddle my own thumbs right now, DQ.  Other than to mention that you're a bit confused on the "high-sounding rhetoric" bit.  That has to do with your implied lip-curling in regards to your own self-proclaimed Higher Order of Deep Intellectualism: and to the lack of it on the part of any others with whom you disagree.  The rhetoric.......I have to admit.........is equally as profound as its basis. 

Quote - I can't decide if you are really so unsophisticated or if this is simply part of a strategy to tucker out your "opponent" by demanding one exhaustive explanation after another to support the obvious while offering very little in the way of such explanation to support your own claims ... but in any case:

You know -- the irony here is just too great to resist.  :lol:  It's quite funny.  Hilarious, in fact.  Thanks for that one.

As for the remainder: I'll have to get back at 'cha when I have more time to kill. 

Quote - Well, a lot of high school kids of yesteryear were not actually high school kids. They were laborers, or signed up early for the military, or dropped out to take care of parents, or to look after younger siblings, etc., but I suppose that's really beside the point.

Yep.  It's beside the point.

Quote - Nor did they have to deal with all the pressures and stresses of rapid scientific, technological, political, racial, cultural, class, and social change, which stresses even adults, as we all know.

Ah -- OK.  I get it.  So the pressures of the Great Depression, a couple of world wars, the threat of the atomic bomb, and a few other suchlike minor incidents didn't have much bearing on those young people's lives back then, eh?  It's so-o-o-o-o-o-o much harder today -- with Xbox's and full cable TV + DVD players in every 8-year-old's room.  Tough life.

Those high schooler's of yore had things so much easier than kids do now. :ohmy:

Quote - They were also a smaller overall percentage of the population in most times, i.e., than we've had since the baby boom, and to some extent, more recently.

shrug  The angst of youth was ever thus.

Many popular Victorian novels focused upon the central character of a rebellious teenager.  Often a 17-year-old girl.

Quote - But high school shootings now apparently being the primary measure of all things bad and evil (for Xeno)

Nope.  It's just an example of something that happens now, which clearly did not happen back then.  There are other examples, too.  Like workplace shootings.  And restaurant mass shootings.  And shopping mall mass shootings.  And......well, you get the picture.  Or perhaps you don't.

Quote - plenty of horrendous crimes were committed, but because they were crimes of a different nature, like unreported and unpunished rapes, and unreported and unpunished wife and child beatings, and unreported and unpunished murders of blacks and homosexuals, etc., I suppose they didn't really happen and don't really count so far as you are concerned.

Oh, they happened all right.  Please see my response to you in regards to this same rhetorical ground above.  It might help to clarify things.

But just in case if you missed it, I'll state this again:  "facts" based upon assumptions are no facts at all.  You continue to make the spurious claim that gazillions of crimes were committed that we know nothing about -- in an attempt to make the well-known crimes of today seem less by comparison.  Prove it.  Prove that those hidden events actually happened in per capita numbers to compare to today's outrageous numbers.

You cannot logically make the assumptions that you have to make in order to "prove" such an unfounded point.  You can only guess, and imply, and suggest.  Not establish.

I can point to the ruins of ancient civilizations, and to well-known historical facts.  You are the one who is making assumptions.

Quote - I suppose this could go on and on as you have now accused me of not having an argument without actually having a particularly coherent or empirically supported one yourself, but obviously, as always, at least when it comes to Xeno, there is no point to any of this.

See above in response to this type of rhetoric.  Again.

Quote - In terms of how our modern moral decay may or not be worse or more pervasive than other times, I was not claiming to have the truth. For the most part, I have not even argued against many of the points and assumptions you are making. I don't claim to know that what I have offered is the explanation for anything. I was simply asking you, and others, to consider, and perhaps even examine and think about, some other possible explanations for some of what you so self-servingly (considering your political/social philosophy) assume, but I see that it is pointless ...

History is as history does.  I suppose that one could argue that the Roman empire never actually fell at all.......as you seemed to imply, at least in a measure, earlier.

Tell me -- when will the next Senatorial appointments be made?

Quote - And strangely, it is not all that rewarding to discuss this, or anything else, with someone who has so obviously and completely closed their mind. Who would have thought? Go figure.

Once again: a high mark for ironic humor.  Without any question, DQ is the master of irony.  Especially when he's attempting to be high-sounding with vacuous rhetoric.

Quote - And in any case, at the moment, I've much, much better things to do.

Like sleep. 

Quote - Well, concerning the imminent collapse of civilization, thousands upon thousands of self-appointed "prophets" throughout all of history would agree, except in regard to their own times and their own cultures. A few were right, the vast majority were wrong. History is replete with Chicken Littles screaming the sky is falling and the end of the world -- or at least as they know it; and occasionally -- as one might statistically expect -- they are right.

History is replete with prophets who said "peace, peace", when there was no peace.  Or at least they knew it, and frequently -- they were wrong.

Many of those soothing (It's always been this way......so no need for concern.  Go back to sleep.)  prophets had a lot to say just prior to WWI and WWII.  Not to mention just prior to many other similar events of the more distant past.

It's recently been claimed that over all of recorded human history, there has been 20 years of cumulative "true world peace".  Personally, I tend to doubt that figure.  The "chicken littles" of today have good cause.  The "chcken littles" who took Hitler at his word, before that man had actually moved -- Winston Churchill foolishly believed that Hitler actually meant the things that he had said in Mein Kampf -- i.e. -- that Hitler wasn't just kidding around -- some of us likewise foolishly believe that the leaders of nations like Iran actually mean the things that they are saying that they are going to do to us today.  And that they will be only too happy to carry their words out at the first opportunity.

Those "chicken littles" of the early 20th century were disbelieved at the time by the soothing prophets of peace (of course).

Statistically speaking, I wonder who was right.......?

Quote - Perhaps you will be one of them. On your death bed perhaps you can let me know.

Boy, the places where Freudian analysis could go with that one..........

Quote - And really, Xeno, on the rest of it, you insist on missing much of my point.

Nope.  I just insist on responding to you various points, and pointing out the flaws in them.

Quote - That all these things happen today I don't contest.

Good.

Quote - Much of my point was that much of what happened in yesteryears was simply never documented and the information never disseminated, either because they were not considered crimes or because those who documented and disseminated such things were nonexistent or in such short supply. We simply don't know how many abortions there were when it was only midwives and pregnant women performing them. We don't have a very good idea how many people were killed in the streets either. We don't know how many kids were abducted or sexually abused.

Oh, there were always bad times.  Frequently brought on by people's behavior as a culture......cultures which were comprised of individuals, making individual cultural choices in keeping with their times.  Choices which brought about certain results.  Which takes us back to the examples that we have from history as to the places where certain types of accepted cultural mores will take us........because we have the pattern, oft repeated, of others who've tried the same sorts of social experiments which we are bent on trying today.  From which we expect to see different results than they did -- which someone has called the definition of insanity.

As for "not knowing"......in the Old West (one of the periods to which you refer) -- there wasn't nearly as much internecine warfare as the Saturday Matinee westerns would tend to lead someone to believe.  It depends upon your sources for your history, I suppose.

However, it's easy to suggest that there was a whole lotta child abductin', etc. goin' on that we didn't know about.  Because making such a completely unfounded suggestion represents an attempt to mitigate the guilt of the current era, by implying that "it was always like that -- we just didn't know about it".

When did a high school student shoot up his school a couple of generations ago?  And why was it OK for kids to ride their bicycles down to the creek in 1955, but not today?

Quote - Of course, we can guess, and historians can infer, but the fact is that there was simply not the ubiquity of law enforcement or news media or scholars or researchers or institutions which kept track of all these various statistics -- or at least certainly not even remotely on the scale that we have today.

True -- you are engaging in guessing.  That's correct.

But once again: you are attempting to dodge around my point by first obliquely admitting to it: and then speaking wonderingly of why others can't grasp your logic.  Now that's funny.

Yep, bad things happened "back then" as a result of the paths that people chose to follow "back then".  And while no modern statistician was there at the time to analyze things to a .001% sample (snort), and do so just as accurately as they do today ()........yet the results of their choices remain for us to read in the ruins.

BTW - as a side note on statistical matters: there has yet to be a presidential election since (and including) 1980 where the polls favored the Republican candidate.  The Democrat was always supposed to win -- every single time.  Including in 2004.

Quote - As far as having TV way back then, too, I said several decades, and then, it was 3 channels, no internet, and in a social culture in which most "national" news was almost exclusively about Washington and major metropolitan areas, and many parts of the country strove mightily (as some still do) to keep their crimes and "weird goings on" under wraps for fear it would give their community a bad reputation.

Uh......so what's different today?  Beyond the existence of the internet?  And the addition of some cable news channels?  Big steps, I'll acknowledge.  But people had ready access to information back then, too.

Quote - And as far as 410 A.D. goes, and whoever the original owners of Greek and Roman civilization were (who, based on your argument, apparently must have lived for hundreds of years, i.e., not being dead yet), I'll read a little bit more if you will ... but Rome went through a lot of upheavals, up, down, and sideways, and though it was once widely accepted among historians like Gibbons -- whose work is now well over 200 years old -- that 410 was the "official" date of the "fall" -- more recent scholarship suggests that particular take on things is very much an oversimplification ...

Where the part about "thinking that the original owners of the Greek and Roman civilizations lived for hundreds of years" came from escapes me.  The "original owners" refers to a society, a culture.  Not to individual human beings. :rolleyes:

Yep.  It's simplified.  As I mentioned earlier: it was a simple matter for the Roman women to grasp.  Vestiges continued after 410.  Vestiges always do.  But there was a cultural / historical process which led up to 410.  And we're doing an excellent job of mimicking that process today.

Quote - Several decades ago a man living in a small community could go to a local bar and get into a brawl and beat another man senseless, and sometimes even accidentally to death, and the odds of him being arrested for it were fairly slim.

Overall crime rates were also considerably lower.

Quote - In what has been frequently termed the "Old South," it was not particularly infrequent for grown men to court and/or marry what today we would all consider to be girls (i.e., children, not adults), and it was likewise true in the Old West that grown men sometimes married child brides of 12 or 14 and sometimes killed each other in the street in front of witnesses and walked away free men.

All of those things still happen today......but with certain caveats.  The relationships with younger girls are normally carried out today without any need for complications like marriage.  And as for "killing someone in the street in front of witnesses and walking away": convicted 1st degree murderers in the US spend about 4 years on the average in prison for their crimes, statistically speaking.  That is to say: those few of them who are actually caught and then actually convicted.

IIRC, something on the order of 76% of the murders which occur in New York City go unsolved.  Nobody saw nuthin'.  In most cases, the police don't even have a suspect.

Did you happen to see the recent news report of the old man who was run over, and no one helped -- or even seemed to be particularly interested?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4wWGH51-A

Typical.

Quote - Some of these matters may have been due to differing economic conditions, responsibilities, etc., but the point of bringing these things up is not to condone (or even to condemn) the behavior of our forefathers, but to argue that, coinciding with the increasing sophistication of our civilization and increasing ubiquity of our institutions have evolved many more laws, more enforcement, and many more generally accepted rules of morality.

As far as marrying young was concerned: depending upon the precise era to which you refer -- people used to have an average life expectancy of 35-40 years of age.  Under such circumstances, getting married at age 14 might have had some legitimate reasons behind it.

Quote - And perhaps all that, too, contributes to there being so many criminals and perverts about, i.e., some of such behavior, while it may always have been deemed to be irresponsible or in bad taste by some, was once considered to be neither crimes nor, by many, as particularly immoral.

True.  In late Rome it wasn't considered to be particularly perverted to sell castrated boys for sexual purposes.  Or to engage in certain other types of activities.

Give us a little time: we'll come around to it.  We've already come around on so much else.  You know: cultural advancement and all of that.

Quote - I know by now this is pointless nitpicking (in the eyes of some), but some very serious historians (actually, many) would argue the point of Rome's "fall," as well as the cause(s) thereof. Gibbon's "fall" of the Pax Romana has been largely discredited.

Too bad that no one was around to tell the Roman women that in 410 AD.  The Roman women who committed suicide rather than permit themselves to fall into the hands of the Visigoths.

Quote - All civilizations, including ours, have had periods in which they waxed and periods in which they waned, and often, depending on what one looks at and how one measures, both at the same time. Every civilization that no longer exists, by definition and in some limited sense at least, "fell," and there is no reason I can think of why one should expect any civilization, or any particular mainstream cultural point of view, to last indefinitely.

True, insofar as it goes.  But it remains that certain historical cultural trends can be reliably and consistently pointed to as indicative of the character of societies before they fell from within.

Quote - Greek culture transformed due largely to the failure of the Polis and the rise of Alexander and was eventually adopted and adapted by the Roman empire, and Roman civilization transformed or declined due largely to economic and military factors and gradually became the Byzantine Empire, the barbarian kingdoms of the West, the eventual dominance of European Catholicism, etc.. And there were many, many factors, and given that those successors adapted some of their institutions and officialdom from the Romans, and even in some cases considered themselves a natural evolution of the Roman Empire, there was not exactly a "fall."

Aspects of both Roman and Greek culture remain with us to this day.  But, indeed: their nations fell.  And violently so.  The fact that their "ruins" -- both figurative and literal -- remain to this day is merely evidence that the thing itself is gone.  Shadows remain, sure.  But the originators died.

Quote - "Transformation" versus "fall" -- I suppose it comes down to how one defines one's terms again ...

shrug  The city of Rome took on a different character after it was sacked.  The same thing goes for Thebes, Tyre, Carthage, Tenochtitlan, and Saigon.  Some to a greater extent: others to a lesser extent.  There have many, many such.

When the original owners are dead, and new owners move in to take over: then I suppose that one can call such an event a "transformation", if one wishes to do so.  Heh -- vestiges of the original owner's culture still cling to the areas, even when their nation died right along with the original owners centuries or millenia ago.

Quote - In any case, while my instinct is to agree that a civilization in which all, or large portions of the population, are only interested in carnal pleasure (the argument presumably being at the expense of more productive and civic-minded behavior) would very likely prove problematic, it is at least arguable how much of the "fall" of these civilizations had to do with people pleasuring themselves to death, and claims that some massive portion of our population are doing that in the present are at least somewhat questionable.

:biggrin:  I'd suggest reading late Roman history.  And then reading about the cultural history of Europe in the decades prior to WWII.  And then reading about the cultural history of the Western world over the last 40 years or so.

And then turning on the television set: and watching a little network TV.

Quote - What is factual is that there are now over 300 million people in the US, and over six billion people on the planet, and many of those people living in crowded, close proximity to one another. There are not only very many more people committing crimes and doing immoral things than in the past, there are also very many more people working, raising and taking care of their families, and living largely conventional lives of mostly conventional morality than in the past.

Fortunately and unfortunately.  But few would argue that the character of what's considered to be culturally acceptable, and what's not -- has not changed considerably over recent decades.  And not just in terms of the quantities involved.

Quote - But of course we only rarely see the behavior and activities of the latter folks made into major nightly news stories.

There's a lot of the other kind of event around to report on.  But it's true: the character of the reporting appeals to the cultural interests of the day.  Our day: our times.  And the culture which prevails in it.

Quote - What is also factual is that there has never before the last few decades been a civilization in which the everyman was being so thoroughly inundated -- through mass media, the internet, etc. -- with so much information about illegal and immoral goings on hundreds and thousands of miles away, much of which may have been happening (relative to per capita, of course) without our knowing it many years ago when information did not flow so freely, so far, so fully, or in such quantity.

What is possible is that many of us may not be adapting our attitudes to correctly interpret the meaning and significance of all this new information-rich reality.

And what is at least thinkable is that the perception that so many of us have that things are so terribly bad now might be at least partly due to the above factors.

Or, alternately, it could be due to the fact that things such as mass school shootings simply did not happen 50 years ago: at a time in which guns (including full-auto machine guns) were easy for anyone to obtain via mail order.  Or at a time when parents -- such as my own parents -- wouldn't give a second thought to their children taking off on their bicycles and being gone alone all day.

Something must have changed in the meantime.  Something more than just the ready availability of "information".  BTW - they had television, newspapers, and radio back then too.

Quote - Of course it is also possible that Xeno and Shonner are right, and the end is nigh, or nearly so.

Could be.  I'd suggest starting a betting pool, only it's not something that I'd like to collect on.

Quote - Quote - "You're right, Shonner."

The Greek civilization died out.  The Roman civilization died out.  And America is simply only repeating what's already been done in history.

Yep.  I've been making the same point throughout my "active" portion of this thread.    The parallels are truly eerie -- for anyone who's studied the end of bygone civilizations in detail.  I really, really wish that I could be more optimistic about the way that things are headed..........but not now.

When a society is hell-bent on pleasuring itself to death -- persons (including children -- in fact: especially children) become mere objects for our enjoyment, to be used and disposed of as we please.  It's the ultimate fulfillment of the philosophy of De Sade.

Teen mothers have gotten into the occasional habit of throwing their newborns into trash dumpsters -- and then blithely going on to party with their friends as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened -- for a reason.

I recall a scene from a movie of a couple of decades ago -- Time After Time.  During one scene the main character -- H.G. Wells -- confronts a former friend from his own era who had stolen Mr. Well's time machine.  His former friend is none other than Jack the Ripper, who'd escaped the Victorian era in Well's time machine in order to avoid being hung.  "Jack" had then simply returned to practicing his same bloody trade in the late 20th century.

By way of explanation, Jack the Ripper's character tells a stunned Wells that "Ninety years ago I was a freak.  Today I'm an amateur."

Quote - > Quote - Can children consent in similar fashion? I think not!

But a Supreme Court judge will think so one day, sooner than you expect.

They couldn't "consent" in ancient Greece or Rome, either......but they weren't given the option.  There are lots of things that infants can't "consent" to these days -- but it's done to them anyway.  So, if we're in the soup for an inch: then, logically, we might as well go the whole distance.  Either way: children are a mere commodity -- to exist or not to exist at our own whim and convenience.  So why not use them for other purposes, too: in the same fashion that one would use any other similar home-grown agricultural resource?  Think about it.....it's no worse than what Jonathan Swift suggested to the elites of his day in A Modest Proposal.  I don't understand why anyone could possibly object, or could feel that such a suggestion is in any way unreasonable.

On some of the other topics that have been touched upon since I last posted to this thread......I'm nowhere near as politically correct as some of you painfully and self-consciously bend over backwards in straining yourselves to be.....in order to firmly establish the credibility of your "I'm hip and with the program" bona fides.  But we don't want to get into too much of a flame-fest in the Poser forum, do we.......so it'll all have to wait for a different discussion venue.

You're right, Shonner.  We're likely just a Supreme Court jusitice or two away from such a decision.  No doubt, if we manage to get the "right" (he says in quotation marks) man elected this time around -- we'll see a lot of things happening "sooner than we expected".  Or wanted.