You thought wrong.

Syria has chemical weapons, and has declined to sign the chemical weapons treaty, so they have every right to keep them. What they have denied (quite credibly) is having *used* them.

You are simply wrong. In common usage, race comes out nearly the same as ethnicity, but it is not an exact synonym. The distinction is that race carries with it the notion of biological division, which ethnicity does not imply. And it is precisely that element of biological division which does not, in fact, exist among humans today.

" (And indeed, the trick of adding a spurious "h" on the beginning of "aitch".)"

So you are saying the 'h' 'haitch' is silent? ;)

In fact we dont know what RdRand does. It is completely un-auditable. THAT is why it should never, ever, be used as a sole source of entropy for any operation.

Yes, Matt did the right thing there and Linus' responses on the RdRand issue have seemed entirely out of character for him. So out of character I am sure I am not the only one wondering if he is being blackmailed somehow.

It's a helicopter if the writer pronounces the haitch. If he says 'an 'elicopter, mate' then he wrote it correctly.

"It's all the same." No, actually, it's not all the same. Racism is unique in that it is prejudice based entirely on delusion. Men and women really are different on a biological level - I am not saying that excuses sexism, but sex itself is not something we just invented and assign arbitrarily, it's a real biological distinction. Race is not.

"Are you really going to ignore my point because of semantics?"

I am really going to point out when the point you thought you were making is inaccessible or unclear at best, because of your lack of semantic hygiene. You bet.

Semantic hygiene is extremely important if you wish to be able to think clearly and communicate clearly. If you think that semantics is somehow trivial or unimportant? You need to rethink that and find your error.

Unfortunately you may have to improve your semantic hygiene before you will be able to think clearly enough to realise how important it is. Kind of a chicken and egg problem there I guess.

No, actually, 'race' is a flat out delusion. It is distinct from ethnicity and implies a biological connection (between members of a purported race) as well as biological separation (between the purported races) neither of which actually exists.

It's not impossible to have multiple human races on the planet - it's happened before and it might well happen again. But the last human race besides our own, the Neanderthals, have been extinct for quite some time now, and all living humans are clearly of the same race.

"Let's face reality here - so long as there are obviously different races, there will be racism; it's an inevitability."

Let's face reality here - all humans are clearly members of one race. Racism is the *delusion* to the contrary. Apparently it is a delusion you have yet to free yourself from.

You need to set your own mind free before you can help others with their own.

The e-cig just has a battery and an 'atomizer' which is really nothing but a heating element and a liquid reservoir. The juice should contain nothing but PG, VG, water, flavor, and nicotine.

Nothing is "completely safe" but this is about as close as you can get. One thing to remember is that taste varies greatly, and nothing you will get out of a vaporiser is going to truly taste like burning vegetable matter. So it can take some sampling to find a flavor that you actually like.

It is a sad and shameful fact of American society that we have become more, not less, tribal since the Constitution was written, and a large number of us today do not seem to understand that other people have rights to.

Apparently your English is not as good as you think it is.

Many, many Americans speak only Spanish. The vast majority of them live Central or South America, of course.

Iiiiiiiin theory.

In practice, written Chinese still reflects Mandarin - the phonology isnt encoded, but the grammar and syntax are. Word choice is affected as well - some words have direct equivalents often cognates with the same meaning but others do not.

In practice literary Chinese encodes Mandarin and some familiarity with Mandarin is needed for speakers of other Chinese 'dialects' to become fluent with it. In practice it is not felt to be a complete method for encoding non-Mandarin speech either. Although it's very convenient for the central authorities to believe otherwise.