Answer: Sure. Lots of safety-razor customers have at least some of those activities as ambitions. Not everyone wants to crash the SUV, at least not unless someone else is paying for the repairs, but most of the other activities are considered fun by their participants.

In all fairness, we ought to allow the other side some space to speak in favor of ignorance and watching more television. It is possible that they can make a compelling case for it. At least they should have the opportunity.

One of the challenges that we face here in Florida is how to shift to a “steady state” economy that is not driven by artificial growth, which is spurred by land speculation and profits from development rather than the needs of our communities. We need to build sustainable communities based on sound economic and ecological principles. We need to adopt economic policies that preserve our rural lands and conserve our soil and water resources. We need to recognize that our communities do not exist to serve the needs of the “development industry” and that all growth is not necessarily an enhancement to our way of life. If that were true, the areas where we’ve seen the highest growth would also have the highest quality of life and the lowest taxes. Please show me where that has happened.

I’m glad to see that Democrats will have a choice for governor in the 2010 primary, and Mr. Arth is doing the party a favor by pointing out the rampant hypocrisy and lack of democracy in the party’s own political process. Why should a candidate for governor be “annointed” by a handful of party hacks (who happen to control the purse strings) when the purpose of the primary process is to give the voters an opportunity to hear from the candidates and make an informed choice? It is sad to see the Democrats continue to conduct their affairs in such an unprincipled “business as usual” manner, and Michael Arth is right to protest. Unfortunately, it won’t do any good, because the party “machine” isn’t interested in candidates like him, and they would prefer that he just go away.

There are 220,000 more people added to our limited planet every day. As philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell once said on the subject, “People would rather commit suicide than learn math.”

Ken, you need to do the math on the overpopulation problem. Instead of talking about how the lemmings won’t listen to me, you should also do the math on how our electoral system works and how it limits our choices. It’s your choice whether you want to find out about how we are being cheated from having a proper say in the things that determine everything about the way we live.

However, with ideas such as population control and a complete misunderstanding of how electoral districts are apportioned in our representative democracy he is too far outside of most Floridians sense of the mainstream. The parties operate in their own ways and he can try to operate within a party organization or not. Its up to him, no one is holding a gun to his head to do this.