at which point in the story were drugs legalized?

Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win.
- Robert Heinlein

Some athletes compete in both summer and winter games, so biennial would be ok. (not that the parent used biEnnial.)

http://ask.yahoo.com/20060222.html for examples

The oldest version of this story that I know of is in a book called the "New Testament." The tale is STILL being twisted by its adherents, 2000 years after its 1st edition. FWIW, I still prefer the Dune stories, though I can't say I am much of a follower there either.

disagree/agree. If successful, more Americans start using electric to power their cars -- Today, it probably WOULD come from COAL.

I'm guessing that is what the parent meant.

There really is not much GENETIC difference between all of those tribes of people.

From what I understand (citation needed,) homo-sapiens grew out of a very small breeding population - only several hundred individuals - while still on the plains of Africa. The exodus ~70k years ago did cause certain physical traits to come into dominance or fade for the various tribes, but the genetics didn't really change that much over those 70k years. It seems that today's chimpanzees are *much* more genetically diverse than today's humans are. (Chimps all look the same to me, but I am a known specie-ist.)

Point being - "us" is Berber, Inuit, Norwegian, Ainu, Zulu, /.-er, etc. We are VERY CLOSE to being identical to each other - individually AND collectively.

I hate to say the following for two reasons. 1) it is a stereotype of my own design, and 2) I am an engineer.

Engineers are ALWAYS right. ALWAYS. Even when (especially when?) something is clearly opinion based.

Ask a non-eng what their favorite color is, you get a simple answer.
Ask an eng the same, you get an answer PLUS reasons why it is superior to other colors.


As I said, I am an engineer. It was only after I noticed behavior like this in other engs that I noticed it in myself as well.
I don't like having that trait (flaw?) and have had to make a conscious effort to be less judgmental. (Yet remaining critical.)

So, yeah, as RobotRunAmok pointed out - engs tend to think/say "Right is right - AND I'M RIGHT" even when it isn't a correct/incorrect discussion, sometimes when they are clearly incorrect (they defend what they've said, clearly wrong.)

Also, and again this is something that I've caught myself doing, is that these personality types can and do play the Devil's Advocate rather well - up to a point. There is a difference between seeing the other side of a discussion and being contrarian for the sake of "being right."

The above may not be worded all that well, but I need my morning coffee. Besides, it hardly matters if you disagree with me, since I KNOW that I am correct.

... or squint

Faith is belief in something for which there is no proof or even strong evidence. Faith is generally applied only to spirituality, and it should be so according to the definition. For example, I don't need faith to believe that the Yankees won the World Series this year - there IS evidence for that. I do believe that they won BECAUSE of the evidence.

You do NOT need faith to believe that the universe is anything. Ordered, structured, causal, etc. A good scientist believes these things because there is evidence of order, causality, etc.

To not have faith is to not believe in something for which there is no evidence.

One does not need faith to look forward to the future doing something chaotic because of the belief (through prior observation) that those kind of things (earth turning into a carnivore butterfly) just does not happen.

Science and faith are NOT intrinsically linked. Science and belief ARE. Science and faith are two completely separate things.

The point behind installing all of those OSes is to see if it can. Seriously.

If a system can run those, well then running linux is a non-issue.
(since it runs on just about any hardware.)