needs philosophers. This thought has been nagging at me for a year now, and recently it's been growing like a tumor. One that plenty of folks on the 'net would love to see kill me. People don't put much stock in philosophers these days. The popular impression of philosophy is that it's just rhetoric, just frivolous debating about stuff that can never properly be answered. "Spare me the philosophy; let's stick to the facts!" The funny thing is, it's philosophers who gave us the ability to think rationally, to stick to the facts. If it weren't for the work of countless philosophers,