I had heard the 380 metric tons somewhere before, and I found it fairly easily.  So here are some conversions to behold.

To begin with what reminded me of this: Air Force One's maximum takeoff weight is 833,000 pounds.  380 metric tons converts to 837,756 pounds.  So a loaded of the gills AF1 is equivalent to the amount of explosives stolen.

But you may say, oh, that isn't what an actual planes weighs.  An empty plane conversion yields about 2.4 Air Force Ones.  Or if you would like a conversion of a normal plane, 6.7 737-300 planes at standard operating weight.  These are used by most big airlines.

Other fun conversions

97 Hummer H2
84 Elephants
266 Toyota Camrys
5077 Humans (@ 165 lbs)
10.5 18-wheeler semis at their maximum payload in America
~2 loaded B-2 bombers
~11 brontosaurs (if the estimated weight is correct)
~1.86 Statues of Liberty
100000 gallons of water
1.38 Washington Monuments (not counting the foundation)

You can add your own, if you wish.

There is a lack of knowledge of what stem cells are actually used for and the abilities that they have.  So this is a primer of sorts and a complaint on the current views of our President.  It is a bit long though, sorry.

Since this always comes up, there need to be some sort of explanation here on what is what

So, my previous post generated one of the more "spirited" discussions I've seen on this site.  I read this site back in the day, back in the runup to the 2002 election.  Amazing how time flies.

Anyway, the one thing that should always be constant is policy, not personality, should dictate debate.  I still believe in this, even though I do deviate from that in these diaries, because hey, people are swayed by attacks on character.

So my last article was a test of this, since it called Bush a "sissy" to generate attention, but actually had some words at the end there with policy, namely whether North Korea or Iraq is/was a bigger threat to the security of our nation.  Of course, then Jerome promotes for the exact reason he should.  The most interesting thing is, nobody comments on the policy.  It is all "W stands for wuss", "chickenhawk" and "Clinton had 2 debates".  Policy doesn't matter to people.  Only attacks do.

People try to sum of candidates into a sentence.  Gore is a liar.  Bush (I) is out of touch.  Perot is nuts.  But the candidate isn't policy, and don't know if there is a way to actually get that through to people.  Most of the Democratic platform would look exactly the same if any of the 6 major candidates had been chosen.  Just the front man changes.

That frankly pisses me off, because I was -12 years old when Kerry/Bush served.  Vietnam, I'm sad to say, isn't a priority for me.  My future is the next 60 years, and talking about Kerry's service and Bush's lack of it doesn't tell me what they are going to do for this country.  What does matter if in ten years, we have an additional 2 trillion dollars of debt, the rich paying even less in taxes, and a rollback of constitutional rights through activist judges.

I will not have that - so I will vote for Kerry.  To Republicans I know, I promote a Kerry vote to push the Republican party back to what it was like 1994, when they actually had a plan and policy instead of some bizarro Daddy figure as a plan.

There is now the possibility that Bush will back out of a town hall style debate with Kerry.

I say if this is comes to pass, it is the perfect time to smear Bush as a sissy, with this and with some other foreign policy.  Read on below the fold.

OK, I didn't mean to post a short one, because I have something more complete in the works.  But on this whole we will win/can't win the war on terror - why doesn't anyone ever say what the damn end goals are?

You see, in most wars, there are objectives and winning conditions - like the fall of Berlin or repelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait.  But for this war, we always hear "it's different from any other war?"  Oh really?

Now, in full honesty - I disagree with implementing something like this.  I really don't think that Vietnam should matter in this election.  Iraq matters.  Al Qaeda matters.  Health care matters.  Deficits matter.  It is just a thought experiment to show exactly what would happen if the R and D on the names was reversed.

Just some details on what happened when in the lead up to the story, and interesting things along the way.

The most interesting things, by far, are the March quotes, so I included them here, along with citations for your enjoyment.