...as long as it's the institution's right to unceremoniously expel them for academic dishonesty.

As far as Ontario is concerned, I'm not sure they'll notice any difference.... since they tend to believe that Ontario is practically all of Canada over there anyways, or at least the only part of it that actually matters.

The actual scientific state-of-the-art for the nature of the start of this observable physical universe is a resounding "we do not know", and it looks like that is not going to change anytime soon.

I was under the impression that the cosmological microwave background radiation made for a pretty strong argument in favor of the big bang. Not proof, obviously... but strong enough that it is far and away the leading scientifically accepted theory.

If we've supposedly established that the universe could have always existed, then why the hell are we talking about it coming from nothing in the first place?

I haven't asked anyone to assume that god has the same attributes as the universe. The post to which I had originally responded did specify

.. there absolutely is a need for a beginning

I'm asking why this must necessarily be the case for god as it would seem to be for the universe? As you said, they do not necessarily possess the same attributes, so I'm unclear why almost any kind of assumption or axiom about one of them would necessarily hold true for the other.

Certainly I can see the need for a beginning of the universe, but can you explain why is there a requirement that god, if any were to have existed, should also necessarily have had a beginning as well, unless you presuppose that God was somehow part of the universe in the first place (which from a creationist standpoint is going to sound as absurd as suggesting that a programmer is part of the programs that he or she creates).

Apples and oranges.

If the universe came from nothing, then by definition it did not always exist.

However, the notion that God created it usually (but not always) suggests that God simply always was, and had no origin at all. I'm not sure that suggesting the universe never had an origin is a particular popular theory... but if you are going to argue that whatever characteristics supposedly hold for God could hold equally for the universe itself, then that's the conclusion you'll probably have to come to.

Of course, the notion that the universe came from nothing isn't even incompatible with the notion of creation in the first place, since if God were to simply speak our reality into existence, which is more or less how it is described in the book of Genesis, anything within that reality would not be able to define its origin relating to anything within it, and it objectively would most certainly appear to have come from nothing unless one actually did attribute it to God. This subscribes to the notion that God would then literally be a being that is either super-real, or surreal, as compared to reality... and going by that standard, it would be entirely consistent to suggest that God is not real while at the same time still acknowledging the existence of God on a level that exceeds the boundaries of reality itself.

Of course, none of this suggests that God actually exists.

My point remains though... one should not assume that properties of God can be equally considered properties of the universe, or vice versa.

Pedantry...

Silica is not an element.

Silicon is.

And Silicon is not the most abundant element on earth, or in its crust. Oxygen is, comprising almost half of the earth's mass. Silicon is a runner up in second place at just under 30% of the earth's mass.

Of course, silica is made up of oxygen and silicon, and is easily the most common compound found within the earth's crust... but it's still not an element.

in the privacy of somebody's home anything he wants to do is a-ok as long as he does not force any other person to suffer it

As I said, however... the smell of marijuana does not seem to dissipate very quickly indoors, and I know there are people in my building that smoke it, from the occasional odors that waft through the hallways every so often. If it becomes legal here, my concern is that those who smoke it may use less care in keeping the smell from getting outside of their own unit, since there would be no further reason for them to try and be discrete about their practice, and the odor will linger outside their unit for much longer, possibly even getting into nearby units, since the unit doors are just plain old fire-resistant doors, and certainly not hermetically sealed.

The fastest typing speed ever recorded, according to Google, is 216 words per minute. Assuming that were really how fast you type, and you did actually type 10 times faster than you could think, then it takes you roughly three seconds to think of just a single word.

Really, if that were remotely true, you wouldn't even be able to read 216 words per minute, let alone type them.

For myself, I type between 50-60wpm, and I can read silently at more than 700 wpm, which I do not think is a wholly unreasonable benchmark of about how fast one can think in terms of language.

But what I'd really like to control just by thinking about it is my computer. No more wrist RSI...

Also, I can think at least 10 times faster than I can type... so I could get more stuff done in the same amount of time.

It's not that everyone will start doing it.... it's that those who already do it may do it more frequently, or certainly much more openly, since they would not have to pursue illegitimate channels to engage in the practice.

Honestly, if legalizing marijuana wouldn't affect how often other people might notice the smell of it because those that practice it would no longer have any need to at least try and keep their practices as hidden as possible, I'd have absolutely no problem with it at all.

.... but in all honesty, I really can't stand the smell of marijuana, and the smell of it seems to travel considerably further and persist for considerably longer than regular cigarettes (which I also can't stand, but .cigarette smoke smell doesn't seem to hang around for as long). It's not yet legal where I live, but I'm not looking forward to when it becomes so, because I already know that some of my neighbors in my building smoke this stuff occasionally because I smell it every once in a while as it is. If it becomes legal, I fear the stench will just start to pervade the whole freaking building.

I think it's clearly a case where somebody feels like they can't trust other people to make up their own mind about him without controlling what information others are allowed to see or hear.

Until such time as it is somehow ever immediately profitable for corporations to try changing to do something about this, we can be assured that absolutely nothing will ever change.