 for my part i d rather people didn t use fork as a place in which to dump an expression of their political beliefs i ll second that although with emphasis upon dump rather than on political i don t mind if people advocate nuking gay baby whales for jesus if they can make a good original argument for it i do mind if someone should attempt to further the notion that NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER merely by cut and pasting a few pages of w r new bits are not a temporal property we create them when we add context or clarification to the old bits of others thoughts dave being rude and disrespectful is not the way to influence politicians but the standard way of using lobbyists and writing checks is beyond many of us the standard way has some extreme precedents q when was the roman empire sold and who bought it a on march NUMBERth NUMBER ad the roman empire was auctioned off by the praetorian guards to the wealthy senator didius julianus for the price of NUMBER drachms per soldier as found in URL quoting gibbon now an economist might argue that selling offices is the most efficient way to fill them what would coase say but wouldn t that convince everyone but the supporters of plutocracy that efficiency is not the primary virtue of politics 