There is a comedian/journalist up here in Canada named Rick Mercer.
He used to occassionally go and interview Americans about their understanding of Canada, and issues of importance to Canadians.

On one visit he went to Arkansas. The Arkansas capital buildings, he found, were a scaled down copy of the National capital buildings in Washington. He told his credulous American interview subjects that Canada’s capital buildings were also copied on the US capital buildings (!)
Those he showed on in the segment believed this (!) Except, he told them, they were made of ice (!) However, with global warming, Canada faced the grave danger that its capital building were in danger of melting. So, we had a plan to enclose the ice capital in a big dome.

This segment captured various Arkansasers congratulating Canada on saving its capital building

Then he asked several Arkansasers if Governor Huckabee was an intelligent, well-educated man. They assured him he was. One old codger assured him, if Governor Huckabee needs to know something, then he knows it.

The segment ends with Governor Huckabee waving at the Camera, and saying: “Congratulations Canada on saving your National Ice Palace!”l
he told the ordinary.

I am sure I don’t have to remind your readers that Ottawa is at about the same latitude as Seattle.

From http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_The_fix_has_been_in_0214.html

“Republican John McCain and Barack Obama both voted on amendments to the measure; Obama opposed telecom immunity, while McCain supported it. Clinton left town early to get to a campaign stop in Texas.

“Although he voted to sustain a filibuster on the FISA update, Obama left Washington for a campaign stop in Wisconisn without voting on the final bill.”

But, regardless, the House of Representatives failed to act at all on the FISA bill passed by the Senate and the law has lapsed. Still leaving the telecom industry in a bind with existing lawsuits.

Ugggh…I hate the thought of having to vote this fall!

I am sorry Dr. Plait but you definitely said that Prof. Park didn’t know what he was talking about in response to a comment I made on a thread several months ago. That is an exact quote. Prof. Park was also interviewed on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe a year or so ago and explained why he is considers manned space flight to be a waste of resources.

My personal opinion on the matter is that I would favor manned space excursions if NASA had a budget sufficient to support both them and the various scientific activities it is supposed to be engaging in. Since that is not the case, I am in favor of canning most manned space excursions (other then activities such as repair of the Hubble Space Telescope) as not cost effective in terms of scientific achievement as compared with the unmanned activities.

As a for instance, I consider the exploration of the moon Europa to be possibly the most important activity we could undertake Finding life of any sort in what appears to be a liquid water ocean under the ice layer of that body would be IMHO, the greatest discovery in the history of the human race.