Whatever your stance is on Mill's utilitarianism reflects deeper questions of morality and ethics. It's almost a cheap out to say that what's best is what gives the most people happiness. Giving cocaine or anti-depressants to everyone might make everyone happy, but is that really what gives the best result? When slavery was acceptable, the majority of people thought that the cheap labor was a good idea even though it meant repressing individuals.

Studies have been done that show that people are happier when they are much better off when they are in a better situation than those around them. People making 100k a year feel happier living in neighborhoods where others make less than them than living in neighborhoods of millionaires. The thing that causes the greatest amount of happiness might be to give most of the money in a nation to 55% of people and to surround them with the poor 45%, but that doesn't make it fair or moral.

The real answer is to behave as you would like to behave. But it's better put in this case in the reverse. Don't treat people like you wouldn't want to be treated yourself. In Mill's terms, it shouldn't be what gives the most people the most happiness, but it should be what gives the least number of people the least unhappiness. That solves the problems of things like slavery and injustice for popular benefit.

Tina Fey is much more attractive. Sarah Palin has too much of that drawl and seems like she thinks she's more clever than she is. Tina Fey is always hot because she has the sexy librarian look. On top of that, she gets extra points for being funny.

There is no clear case that McCain will reform the Republican party. He has voted consistently in line with President Bush, which shows he acts along the party lines.

His recent activity shows that he's not up for the position:

1. Forgetting where spain is, trying to bluff

2. Strange twitches and confusion during press conferences

3. Refusal to release medical records unless behind closed doors

Exactly. It's just another tool to give you some information about how closely your views align with the candidate's, not telling you who to vote for.

Citizens should be encouraged to vote and debate issues from childhood. Student government is supposed to form a basis for that, but not enough kids are involved in it to make an impact. If teachers let more decisions be made in committee by the students, and illustrated how decisions were made by regional and state governments, people might be more active as adults.

Not many people participate actively in local government, and when was the last time you contacted your congressman to let them know how you felt about an issue? Maybe through education, citizens would become more active in their local area.

The way that McCain tried to postpone the debates using the financial situation as an excuse to not have them right away shows that he's not ready. If he was ready, he wouldn't be worried about a couple hours of debate mixed in with his schedule. It's a bad sign for a presidential candidate when they can't handle more than one thing at a time.

With the weakness in the US dollar we have right now, returning to the gold standard would require the US government to purchase gold to satisfy the foreign holders of American debt that would cash in some of their dollars for hard assets. That kind of demand would mean that the US would have all kinds of problems keeping the currency pegged to gold.

At the same time, the gold standard would limit the ability of the fed to control inflation through their control on the money supply. A deflationary currency makes it harder to come up with the money we need for the national budget, since dollars continue to be worth more, and the US government has to ensure there are enough pounds of gold to cover any new currency they mint.

On top of all of that, it would be a logistical nightmare to shift over to a different currency or to start propping up our current currency at a fair dollar to gold rate.

Basically, the change means that Palin won't get hard questions or have to stand up to any rebuttals Biden makes. This should be a fair, standard debate, because if she's elected as a Vice President, she won't get the world to give her handicaps because she's unfamiliar with politics and how to do the job she's elected to.

The change will make the debate less interesting and less of a true test of the two vice presidential candidates.

Statistics show that abstinence only education leads to risky behavior, while sex education informs and does not promote high risk activity. When abstinence only educated teens start having sex, they don't know how to use a condom, or even what the risks of unprotected sex are. Teens are going to have sex, they always have. We need to give them the right information so they can be informed when they make their decisions, rather than just guess about what works off of rumors and television.

Very hard to tell, and it depends a lot on consumer confidence. If people start getting freaked out and withdrawing money from everything, then more banks could fail causing a chain reaction. If our currency is destabilized too much, other countries would move away from it in world trade, further weakening it. That could cause a mass rush away from the dollar, throwing world markets into upheaval.

Probably more likely is that people are shaken up for a while, there are deals done to keep wall street alive, and in the long term, the situation stabilizes and keeps growing. Drops in stock markets tend to be a leading indicator of overall economy, so we'll probably have a slowdown for at least a bit. They also tend to clean out overenthusiasm and irrational pricing, so after the drop, we'll regain footing when people start behaving rationally again and buying when valuations are reasonable.