To that level of specificity, certainly. I'd probably argue that those "tastes" are more likely to be rooted in a (quite possibly innate) taste for conformity.

Oh, I'm not saying that there necessarily is, just that announcing that there is not seems like an extremely bold claim with little supporting evidence. Your comparison with the "other" taste is interesting, because attraction-repulsion responses in infants when exposed to gustatory stimuli are well documented. The presence of innate preferences in one form of stimuli indicate to me that other innate preferences are more likely to exist than not. (Some evidence appears to exist for color preference in infants, for instance.)

The assertion of the GGP was that since there are animals that prefer one thing to another thing based on shininess, and since those animals are not exposed to advertising, it might also be possible for a human to prefer something over something else because of shininess or whiteness or stripedness or anything that is not advertising. It's a pretty benign claim.

Irrelevant, as the successful application of coping strategies is an essential component of happiness.

That's not to say that asking people how happy they are give you any kind of accurate answer. Then again, most established measures of objective happiness (an oxymoron) aren't likely to accurately describe the -- high stress, high personal sacrifice, yet rewarding and characterized by a feeling of purpose -- daily life of parents of young children.

And therein lies the rub. One dialog pops up, and we expect people to immediately pull the power cord and go rinse off under a hot shower. Another, seemingly identical, dialog pops up, and users are expected to click OK instantly and without question, providing their admin password if needed.

It's important to realize that without a keen and well honed intuition to tell you what is real and what is scam, something that most computer users will never develop, there is no difference between these two events. What is instantly obvious to you is completely invisible to them because they have no clue about the subtle cues that enable you to accurately classify something as an attempt to trick you. Complicating the matter further is that in all likelihood neither do you. Typically seeing the difference is an entirely subconscious process, making teaching it very hard and understanding the need to teach it perhaps even harder. I mean, it's obvious, right?

Killing your asses more effectively than the islamists could ever dream of using heroin, methamphetamine and crack cocaine, and getting filthy rich in the process?

False. Cash dollars are an easily transferable scarce resource. Your shotgun guy would accept it as payment for a shotgun, trade it for gasoline with some guy who would trade it for tinned beans with some guy who would trade it for sexual services from your mom who would trade it for protection from you and your shotgun. Scarcity (and confidince in scarcity) is sufficient for tradeability, and tradeability is value.

The scarcity is sufficient. Any scarce resource can be traded for monetary value. The actual value is determined by agents accepting the resource as payment for productive services, which again is determined by the impression that the resource can be traded. It's a circular thing.

The BitCoin project is built on a quite thorough understanding of how money actually works, which is not through component value or scarcity or magic or anything. It's through controlled scarcity and absolutely nothing else. BitCoins are money in the way that gold, oil, stock or Pokemon cards are money, with the added benefit of perfect divisibility and tightly defined scarcity.

Also, BitCoins are not in any way protected from inflation. Nothing could ever possibly be protected from inflation. It's just a thing that you can buy and sell if you want, and I'm curious as to how you would attempt to ban that.

Sorry, just being a little flippant :) No offense intended.

If you mean at the time of his demise, Abbottabad is located very close to Kashmir, where the state of national borders is muddled to say the least. It's definitely closer to Indian-administered Kashmir than to Afghanistan, though. The Wikipedia page has a pretty good map.

Now, If you mean where was he since the invasion, my impression is that the best available answer is that nobody really knows. It seems to be commonly accepted as fact that he was present (and nearly captured) during the battle of Tora Bora in late 2001. Since then, reports on his whereabouts are a mishmash of obituaries, wishful thinking and he's-definitely-anywhere-but-here-dear-god-stop-killing-us pleas. Here's a summary. MSNBC is running a story that indicates he might have been holed up in Abbottabad for a while, (Possibly since 2005) but I can't verify any of that.