OT Alien Spotting

"64% of Americans believe aliens have contacted humans; 28% believe in George Bush." Randi Rhodes

I think that is rather sudden to have a change of heart and already have a book pressed. Just 3 years ago he was seething about the Richards book.

And he's had liposuction.

How are you planning to celebrate Air Conditioning Day this year?

I think it is a long time to be convinced of lies...

Instead, he suggests that his change of heart has occurred largely since he left the White House.

"Although the things I said then were sincere," he writes, "I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided. In these pages, I've tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured."

He suggests that the process of working with editors and publishers helped shape his thinking. "Many of the conclusions I've reached are quite different from those I would have embraced at the start of the process," he writes. He came to realize, he writes, that Washington culture is "a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin."

Silicon isn't conducive to forming the analogues of hydrocarbons and carbohydrates, due to the relative strengths of the covalent bonds.

My guess is that you need a hybrid of two or more elements to duplicate what carbon alone can do--at least, to sufficient complexity to permit substantial life.