If someone were to ask us to explain it, we'd first ask, 'How much do you want to know?', followed by, 'How much time do you have?'. Because this thing is complex. Even describing the powertrain is something only worthwhile in the company of fellow enginerds.

But the stakes are higher for McCain as a presidential candidate; what might play as endearingly sympathizable ignorance in your home state becomes more problematic at the national scale, with another 49 state treasuries under your watch.

Think Red Hots are a taste challenge? Or the Atomic Fireball is the ultimate tongue torture? They barely move the needle for confectionery connoisseurs.

The sole truth was that supplied by mathematics or by such lapidary propositions as “What's done cannot be undone,” which was irrefutably correct.