Earthlings

I never thought of it before but, now that you mention it, I don't know why we are called "Earthlings". It means, "children of the Earth", which is kind of cool, but that doesn't explain why none of the extraterrestrials are called "lings". Maybe it's because, as far as we know, there are no extraterrestrials. If there were, I'm sure they would have complained by now that we call them "extraterrestrials", seeing as it expresses a terrestrially centered bias, which can't be politically correct. "Space aliens" is even more offensive because, to them, we are the space aliens. Of course, nobody cares if they say something offensive about us, as long as we don't say anything offensive about them. 

The thing about the bailouts is that they go against the ideology of lassez faire capitalism, which all those fat cats claim to believe in. "Lassez faire" is a French term that means "let them go", or "let them be", or something like that. So why don't we just let them stew in their own juice? If there is a demand for the service they provide, somebody will step in and fill it. Maybe we should get some nice Japanese or Chinese businessmen to come over here and show them how it's done. They said that, if we don't bail those companies out, the economy will go down the tubes. So we bailed them out, and the economy went down the tubes anyway. There is no way of knowing if it would have been better or worse without the bailouts because there are no "do overs" in real life like there are in video games.

The same can be said about Russian Communism. If it hadn't crashed and burned, who knows what it might have evolved into by now? It was already a far cry from the days of Lenin and Stalin. They still have it in Red China, but if Mao could see what they have done with it, he would turn over in his grave. To be fair, I suppose you could say the same thing about American Capitalism. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "Things sure ain't what they used to be but, in a manner of speaking, they never was."

Okay, here's another pie for the sky: What they need is a machine that sucks carbon out of the atmosphere and makes something useful out of it. Green plants already do that, but it seems like they can't keep up with the current situation. Coal is mostly made out of carbon to begin with. How hard could it be to pick stray carbon atoms out the air and turn them back into coal? I understand that diamonds are also made out of carbon, and the world can always use more diamonds. Space Age problems call for Space Age solutions. Somebody should get on that right away.