Water ... I've been saying for years that I have too much blood in my alcohol stream.

I guess different people have different definitions... From Dictionary.com (my 20+? year old Merriam-Webster dictionary has something similar.)

belief
/blif/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [bi-leef] Show IPA -noun
1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
4. a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

When someone asks me if I "believe in Evolution", I answer something like "Do you beasulzub in fricken-fracken?"

The response is always the same, "Huh?!?!?"

At this point I explain that belief is acceptance of something without evidence, therefore their question is as nonsensical as mine! I then say that I understand the basic tenants of evolution, have seen enough evidence to prove to me that evolution is a fact.

Usually, various stupid statements later, I tell the reader to search for The Onion article titled "Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory" http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512 > and tell me how the arguments against gravity and evolution differ. And how the arguments against things like (a) women voting, (c) abolition, (c) mixed "race" weddings are in any way shape or form different than those currently used against evolution.

Not one has taken me up on the challenge.

Stupid evangelicals

And, yes, I was raised one.

One company I worked for (a now-defunct .com) had a requirement that servers be named after geographic features.... the companies first 5 servers were Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic. I started the practice of "clustering" server names. Countries in Asia were for finance, North America were for web servers, and the like. Another company (another now-defunct .bomb, what a horrible place to work) named servers kind-a in the same sort of manner. Barn animals (horses, sheep, etc) were the web servers, range animals (cows, bison, etc) were the servers that ran the business. Individual PCs were named after the person's favorite breed of cat/dog/fish/etc. Mine was "Wolverine", NOT a reference to the comic.

Two words. Pelican Cases. "Guaranteed for life against everything except bears and small children". No, I'm not in any way associated with the company. I've just had a LOT of sensitive equipment (cameras, phones, ipod, laptop, laser measurers, etc) saved because of the company's product (drops, drop-kicks [ex-girlfriend], flooding, TSA). Any time I'm transporting or storing personal electronics I use Pelican Cases. Must have 40 of them around the house.

Who needs Maglev trains?

I'm currently in the 2nd week of my 2 week vacation in Germany. I've gone 300 kph on a conventional train powered by electricity from overhead power lines (ala SanFran Trolly lines). In fact, the only lines I've ridden on that weren't electric were "the last mile", and they were diesel electric (a middle diesel generator providing power for adjoining electric trains). Wonderful system. Never want for a car (maybe a bicycle though).

The US needs to start building high-speed rail between cities and funding those rail systems at the same (or higher!!!!) levels then they currently fund the interstate system. If so, maybe in 20 years we'll have a public transportation system that matches Germany today.

Pissed that I have to return to the congestion and pollution in American cities in a couple days...