How can I avoid direct confrontation?  I just looooove to argue.  I like it.  I like philosophy, and unlike your narrow "religion" (a name given to a specific type of philosophy), the philosophy I like can draw on all the evidence of science - all of it.  From social anthropology to biology, paleo-anthropology to linguistics - physics to geology, even.  Everything can be used in explaining the universe - why choose to ignore some of it?
 "Childish mockery":  On the subject of this particular statement, I shall try and poo-poo it with all due respect - that is to say, none.  I have used pure, scientific argument from the beginning, and when that seemed to fail against the solid brick wall of your misguided "faith", indeed, I resorted to a decision to kill each and every fundy.  However, neither course is that of a child.  Children have faith in simple, direct authority, and in God. They don't know advanced science, and they certainly don't know how to hunt people down.  If simply stating that there are two known types of coelacanth is childish, then call me Benny-pick-my-nose.
   You call me a child, a kid, a lad, a "disturbed teenager", a "contentious brat" - all to avoid accepting that I might be right.  You are condescending, and if anyone's literary style here is for public viewing, it's yours.  If you wish to raise religious messages via PM, then feel free - but when you begin in a public forum, accept that answers will also come via public forum.  Similarly, you state that you can easily avoid my posts and threads.  However, this is quite clearly untrue, as you have demonstrated by posting in "Flat World" et al.

(I wrote this after I had read about halfway through this thread ... so if it seems out of place ... it IS!)

Aw, come on, people ... how many threads in here do you know of, that didn't get hijacked halfway through?  NONE of the threads I have read, have stayed entirely on the original topic all the way through.  Except for a couple that never drew enough responses to get hijacked.

I admit, Leeds_Lobber, your example condenses a hijack down to the minimal example ... but has TechStuf actually ever done that? Point me to an example!  Or point me to an example where he took over someone else's thread to discuss religion/politics/whatever? or point me to a thread that he started on such a topic, in the General Discussion (i.e., SLINGING) forum?  (That last you may be able to do, any number of us have put something there that a moderator later moved to Administrative/Other/FlamesEtc...)

I do enjoy that we all seem to be able to take a light approach to such things.  Leeds, your reply to Taiki's accusation was hilarious!

As for repeating the same information ... that has happened with a lot of topics.  How many times has a thread been started about thin versus fat cords?  Sling length?  Range?  Braiding?  Kinetic energy of a stone versus a bullet? (I just re-did that one myself, day before yesterday)  Such is inevitable in a forum like this; we have new members all the time, the current crop of newbies ask the same questions I asked a year ago (or you, however long ago), we keep discussing the same topics (and don't stop, by the way, new information pops up when we do so, even on old topics -- this is a DISCUSSION forum, not a research archive!)

Anyway ... let's see, what was I saying?  Forgot ... guess I'm getting old ... off the soapbox, Dale!

Perhaps one of english's cohorts would care to help keep his filibuster meltdown from losing steam?  


TS


P.S.  'Cracker'.....is this a reverse racism thing.....are you black? Or is it simply hip pejorative slang against we American pizza connoisseurs?  I don't get it.

No, it has the same meaning.  I've always understood that it comes from "whipcracker" - ie, a white slave owner.  I merely meant that Tech seems to have the morals of the early 19th century southerners - that is to say, a devotion to Christianity - and as we all know that Tech is a fan of Marion "the Swamp Fox" it seemed only natural to assume that Tech is/was anti-abolition....

 In any case... the Coelacanth......?  Come on!  You brought it up.  Now the fish just doesn't want to dive... it's hanging around, smelling up the joint...  No more BS, no more semantic arguments (those are for people who lose, and lawyers.  I don't know which is worse.)  Just answer - how can it be?

I love these guys! It's like watching a bad Star Trek episode.

Sorting is one of the things He does best.


http://www.christianinconnect.com/sheepfromgoats.htm

perhaps, because crackers tend to be light colored, and not made of dark grain wheat, therefore a white person might be considered a cracker. 



(just between you and i, i think that the other theories make more sense)