Reading the much-talked-about GOP "autopsy" today, trying to put together some impromptu thoughts about it for a Senate District meeting tonight, I find myself reminded of a passage from Douglas Adams' novel Life, The Universe, and Everything. Slartibartfast, a hapless hero, is trying to explain to his allies, the even more hapless Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, that the universe is going to be destroyed by a fanatic army of unstoppable robots, and that they must move quickly in order to prevent the end of the universe. Ford replies: