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Pretty much everything you say in your comment is wrong. Heroin is much more addictive than alcohol. (That same link shows that a survey of medical experts rated heroin as twice as physically harmful as alcohol.) People do die from heroin withdrawal. The long term effects of heroin use include gangrene near the injection site.

Before this discovery, they used to inject rabbits with the substance being tested, and measured if the rabbits got a fever. It was obviously not a great way to do things. Wasn't very quantifiable or sensitive. Source.

Another bit of trivia: one of the other major commercial uses of horseshoe crabs is cutting them up for bait. Works well for that, but you obviously use up the crabs quickly. So we can inconvenience them for a life-saving medical wonder, or we can kill them for a few pounds of fish to eat. Naturally, using them as bait has not been outlawed.

One last bit of trivia: this isn't really news. I mean, I obviously find it cool, but seriously, 1960 was the discovery. Beta isn't bad enough, now they're altering the content too?

This was interesting:

What are the causes of World War II

http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/depthsoundersh_secb.htm

In past times, ascertaining the water depth involved a difficult process called "sounding," which was done by throwing a weighted line over the side in an attempt to find the bottom. This line, called a "lead line" was knotted in increments that allowed the user to measure the water's depth in feet or more commonly, in "fathoms" a nautical unit of measure equal to 6 feet. Using a lead line from a moving vessel was of course problematic, and subject to inaccuracies. The user had to stand on the bow of the ship or boat and toss the line, wait until the lead weight hit the bottom, and then haul in the line and count the number of knots that were submerged. All the while the vessel was still moving and the bottom contour could, of course, have already changed by the time the sounder called out the depth to the captain.

Today's electronic depth sounders have changed all of this. Depth sounders provide instant and continuously updated readings of the water depth as a vessel speeds along. Depth sounders work by the principle of "sonar." A sound signal is emitted from the bottom of the hull and this signal travels through the water until it reaches the bottom and then bounces back, to be picked up by the depth sounder's receiver. Since sound waves travel at a known rate, the depth can be determined by calculating the amount of time it takes for the sound waves to hit the bottom and return to the vessel. This is all done automatically and instantaneously by the instrument.

So it was called sounding before we had sonar, and it's just a coincidence that the term "sound" is involved.

Go read
http://www.essortment.com/all/libertarianwhat_rcrx.htm

You could have googled. it's the second link.
 

Let me try a few excerpts from this article:

It is very hard to be able to establish a true date on the first marriages although the Old Testament in the Bible does mention a little about marriage as it was considered a family and household affair...there is no mention of a formal exchange of vows or of a preacher or priest being present at this union.

There were Romans who were very wealthy who would sign documents consisting of listing property rights and letting all know that they wanted this union to be legalized and not to be thought of as a common law marriage. Thus this began the official recording of marriages as we do today. Roman men could dissolve the marriage any time as it was a male privilege, not one accorded to females.

In A.D. 527-565 during the rein of Justinian lawyers drew up laws called the Justinian Code and this was a regulation of their daily life including marriage. Up until the time of the Justinian Code just saying you were married was enough.

Until the ninth century marriages were not church involved. Up until the twelfth century there were blessings and prayers during the ceremony and the couple would offer their own prayers. Then priests asked that an agreement be made in their presence. Then religion was added to the ceremony.

They vote in the primaries (which are not mentioned in the constitution), but not in the presidential election (which is). The District of Columbia had the same problem, and we had to amend the constitution to give'em their 3 electoral votes (and they went >90% Obama).

Like most citizens, I'd be happy for Puerto Rico to become a state of the USA, or an independent country, whichever they prefer. Unfortunately, polls show no clear consensus among Puerto Ricans as to whether they want to be a state, nation or commonwealth.

But at least it gives people something to complain about. :-)

Hey now, Puerto Rico at least, votes on statehood every so often. They always vote 'no' though. I wonder why that is? Perhaps they enjoy the freedoms and free money from the US but don't want to pay income tax? I suspect that is the case elsewhere as well.

http://www.essortment.com/all/puertoricansta_rdla.htm

Currently, Puerto Rico receives the protection of the United States in time of war. They also receive the benefits of being U.S. citizens without having to pay taxes to the U.S. government.

In a list like this the writer upgrades the commas in the names to semicolons. You do respect the comma and use them in their more important role as list separators. It's not pretty, but it's right. It's not easy being an English Major.

I call shenanigans. Yeah, I have a writing degree too, and what you're saying contradicts Strunk and White, and just about every other style guide I've ever read. And it contradicts every English textbook I've ever read. I can't find a decent copy of The Elements of Style online -- the only versions I can find are the original written by William Strunk, before E. B. White jumped in and expanded the book. However, I found plenty of other grammar-related sites online that agree with me:

• Wikipedia (yes, I know, but bear with me): Use a semicolon between items in a series containing internal punctuation: "There are several Waffle Houses in Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Gainesville, Florida; and Mobile, Alabama."
• From Grammar Monster's English Grammar Lessons: "Items in lists are usually separated with commas (as in the first example below). However, if the list items themselves contain commas, then semicolons can be used as separators."
  Interestingly enough, this article does discuss "promoting" commas to semicolons, but indicates clearly that the commas being promoted are the ones in between the list items and not the ones inside the list items themselves.
• Grammar Girl's blog: "I don't want to confuse you, but there is one situation where you use semicolons with coordinating conjunctions, and that's when you are writing a list of items and commas just don't do the job of separating them all. Here's an example: 'This week's book winners are Herbie in Milligan College, Tennessee; Matt in Irvine, California; and Jan in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.' Those are the real winners in this week's special Scott Sigler book giveaway, and they've each won a copy of his novel Earthcore, but the list also provides a great example of using semicolons in a list. Because each item in the list requires a comma to separate the city from the state, you have to use a semicolon to separate the items themselves."
• How to use the semicolon properly: "When you have a series of three or more items that normally would be separated by commas except that each individual item already has a comma in it, you use the semicolon between items."
• The University Writing Center at UCF: "Semicolons also separate elements of a list, if those elements contain internal commas. Semicolons replace commas in a list if using commas would make the list more ambiguous."
• And finally, this terse guide from LEO at St. Cloud State University.

So since you're hiding behind Anonymous Coward, either (a) you're not really an English Major, or (b) you are one, but apparently lack the conviction of certitude in your answer to sign your "name" to it. And that list I gave above isn't even comprehensive, it's just what I managed to find after a few minutes of searching with Google. I will, however, point out that at least two of the citations I gave are from respected educational institutions.

You, on the other hand, indirectly claim to be an authority when it's not at all clear whether you're truly an expert or not.

There is evidence that both populations in Southern Asia and the Americas are genetically related. One is the fact that both are susceptible to alcoholism.
When Han Chinese settlers first arrived in Taiwan, they used alcohol against the aboriginal population there as means of control:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan#History
and now we know why:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=9066994&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google

In the United States, pioneers and frontiersmen always brought whiskey with them on meetings with Native American chiefs to sign "treaties".
now we know why:
http://www.essortment.com/all/nativeamerican_ragq.htm

Possible link or coincidence?: http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v17n3/p18.html

The real question is will courts extend the logic set forth in cases like Amalgamated Foods to the modern day equivalent "virtual" properties, perhaps controlled by the type of activity (allowing passively posting otherwise innocuous content vs activism vs hosting vs commercial) or the site (destination sites like Yahoo or Facebook being more likely to be considered public forums than a storefront like bestbuy.com). In any event, should Amalgamated Foods be extended, private web sites that operate forums could very well be considered limited public forums with some First Amendment protection, despite being private property.

PS. Before you start believing statements like this which imply Amalgamated Foods is no longer good law, read the cases referred to (Hudgens v. NLRB was looking at the applicability of the NLRA, while Pruneyard was applying California's more liberal freedom-of-speech rights).

PPS. None of this should be considered legal advice, nor have I shepardized anything.

There were a lot of loyalist families burned out of their homes and cold blooded murdered too, to keep the other loyalists in line.

Washington kept thousands locked up in prison with no charges for years after the war because they had been loyal to their king. Approximately one hundred thousand and perhaps as many as 250,000 United Empire Loyalists left the newly-founded republic, most settling in the remaining British colonies in North America

The American Revolution.

The British were more than happy to lock up whole families on prison ships.

We Americans actually paid the Indians for other white mens scalps. They hadn't practiced the concept much until then. History of Scalping.

Not something they tell you in history class.

Alligators aren't crocs.

Actually, there ARE studies showing that kids that grow up in super clean environments have weaker immune systems. The immune system does in fact get "stronger" with exposure to moderate amounts of bacteria and viruses.

Anti-bacterial soap sucks
Anti-bacterial soap sucks
Immune system
More immune and hand-washing

Being American of British descent, I'd never heard of a version of draughts played on a 10x10 board. According to this history of checkers, the 10x10 variant was not actually introduced until the 18th century (the 8x8 version having been popularized around the 12th). If Wikipedia is to be believed, however, it's apparently become the most popular version, in terms of raw worldwide numbers. Who knew?

here you go.

You think that was a bad design? I have two words for you: Cephalopelvic Disproportion.

Let's say you have 2 people, one with $50K and the other with $10K, and you take away $20K from the first person to give to the second person so that they both have the same amount. Now, taking into consideration human nature, what will be the motivation for the person who only has $10K to work any harder when they know they will get more money by doing nothing? And what will be the motivation for the one making $50k to CONTINUE working when they know any extra money they make from their work will simply be taken away and given to somebody else?
This is an inherent FAILURE of most communist systems. They don't take into account that the majority of the population is NOT filled with self-sacrificing ascetics eager to contribute all their dough to the great commune.
The U.S. has it's problems, but one of it's most endearing qualities, and why so many poor immigrants WANT to come here, is the availability of class mobility. They CAN make it just off their hard work. If you need examples, please see:
Chris Gardner
Oprah Winfrey
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Anna - some Mexican chic I knew through my dad who made it over here, worked by cleaning houses and selling ice cream and STILL managed send $1000 month back to her family in Mexico after her own expenses. She is now married, with kids, still working. Luckily, she got smart and stopped sending money to her ingrate family back home who would berate her when she didn't send MORE money to them.

So, please, PLEASE, don't tell me how helpless and unfortunate "poor" people are, when the biggest obstacle standing in their way is often their own lack of motivation and mistaken belief in their own inadequacy.

http://nj.essortment.com/airconditioning_rvht.htm

will give you a basic description of the main problems: it acts as a trigger for various ailments, it reduces your general resistance to a) illness and b) temperature, it's brought about various new diseases. And for a lot of migraine sufferers (and I'm one of them), it acts as a trigger for migraine. Quite honestly, anything that can trigger people's arthritis, sinus problems or migraine should be used as little as possible, because it's obviously doing something other than just cooling the air...

Perhaps you should closely examine the means of assimilation the Romans used. Perhaps you have a different view of history to say "Not even the Golden Horde or the Nazis were simply murderous"

I'd like to point out that the correct and least ambigous choice here would be a semicolon...probably the most incorrectly used punctuation mark.

Yup. Click here or here for information.

Offered with an intent to help, not criticize...

You say you had him on a "leash" but you don't seem to really mean it. 3yrs old ... large, open public place ... use a real leash like other parents have learned to.

http://ks.essortment.com/childrenleashes_rvjf.htm

http://www.epinions.com/content_106201976452

http://www.babycenter.com/dilemma/toddler/toddlerb ehavior/1149656.html

and on, and on, and on...

Been there (on the leash side ... as a kid, not an adult), can't remember squat from that young, so didn't mind.

The blacks and asians didn't found this country did they?

Actually, yes. The first permanent settlement in the US was built by black people. A black man died in the Boston Massacre. Which, in case you didn't know, was the beginning of overt hostility in the American Revolution.

LK

"One example being them using IE instead of Firefox even though I've told them a hundred times to use Firefox."

Simple solution: Change all the shortcuts with the big blue "e" and point them to Firefox.

You have to look at users like Pavlov looked at dogs

Anyone know if Samuel Colt was shot to death or not?

No. He wans't.

Samuel Colt, however, did not live to truly enjoy the rewards of his genius. He died on January 10, 1862, 11 years before the Company he founded, came up with it's most famous creation, the Peacemaker. His death, of natural causes, came at the age of just 49.

Wrong. The smallpox vaccine was invented in the 18th Century dude... Fact!

Dr. Jenner researched and experimented with the Cowpox disease for several years. He found out there were actually two forms of the disease, but only one form could possibly provide a human body with an immunity to Smallpox.

On May 14, 1796, a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes visited Dr. Jenner for the treatment of Cowpox. Dr. Jenner decided it was time to test his vaccination, and he tested it on his gardener's son, an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps. (He got the term "vacca" from the Latin word for "cow.") The boy did contract Cowpox, but he recovered from it within a few days. Dr. Jenner then waited eight weeks for the boy's body to build an immunity. To complete his experiment, Dr. Jenner exposed James to Smallopx. Amazingly, the boy did not contract the deadly disease, and the doctor claimed success.

Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine

I guess the Cherokee don't count, huh, since they weren't protesting, just being forcibly marched from South Carolina to Oaklahoma during the winter? Just to pre-empt your objection to that comparison, the supreme court, at least, did not consider them a foreigners at that point.

Then there was Wounded Knee. No, the one in 1973.

Oh, and let's not forget about those WWII Japanese interment camps. Please. That wasn't so long ago. But I guess we didn't just shoot folks there, we just took all of their stuff, land, separated them from their families, and put them in camps.

Right, we don't shoot our protesters, generally we just tear gas them, shoot them with "non-lethal" pellet/bag guns, and lead covert ops against their organizers, arrest them, and in many cases, they just end up 'mysteriously murdered'... that is a little better, I suppose...

Don't get me wrong, we're not quite to the point of having a ruthless dictatorship in this country, but... I don't know, I mean, those guys killed in China weren't just protesting, they were calling for something akin to revolution. Do you really think a serious bid at revolution or basic government restructuring or even large grassroots protest reform movement in the US would be treated kindly right now?? I'd like to think so, but an awful lot of protesters in the US have been injured, and yes, more than just a couple killed by police in the past 4 years...

Anyway, my real point? Don't think it couldn't happen here. Prevent it from happening here. At least, be aware that it could happen here, and check your historical knowledge of some of the events found in responses to your (IMHO) not-terribly-insightful post...

Buddy, are you in for the "-1, flamebait" of your life...

I realize you're just trying to be funny and everything, but the fact of the matter is that CS is a male dominated game, and the men prefer it that way.

I would expect that a lot of those guys who got pwn3d by his wife would feel a lot like this guy did.

Just for comparison.

See here for specs.

If concorde had carried 300 people, then it would have running across many airports now instead of being mothballed.

But Terrorists-Under-The-Bed have been used as an excuse for blocking public access to lots of critical safety information, particularly in industries like oil refining, chemical manufacturing, and anything nuclear, where there can be serious risks of toxicity, chemical spills, and even major explosions (I'm not ranting about nukes here - fertilizer plant explosions are much more likely.) The Feds, who used to force public disclosure of lots of this information are now banning it, and databases that used to be accessible are being closed to the public, because Terrorists and other enemies of American Industry (like anti-pollution activists and various other NIMBYs) might abuse it.

While I am overall sympathatic to your point, it is far over-stated:

From the websites you mentioned:
"Arabic" numerals were developed in India. It is highly speculative that they were even inspired by something in China.

Rice: "If these assumptions are correct, then domestication most likely took place in the area of the Korat or in some sheltered basin area of northern Thailand, in one of the longitudinal valleys of Myanmar's Shan Upland, in southwestern China, or in Assam. " From this how did you conclude rice developed in china?

post office, restaurants & umbrellas??? That's very speculative.

You did forget the compass which was invented in China. :http://nvnv.essortment.com/compasshistory_rumo.ht m

Also the I think there was the water clock or something like that which was an important chinese invention.

I agree that there is an euro-centric tendency to claim everything was invented in Europe. But balacing that with a Sino-centric is hardly any better.

i can't think of a single thing to date the chinese have ever created that has benifited humans

• movable type
• the printing press
• paper (as well as paper money)
• meritocratic civil service
• 'gaussian' elimination
• so-called 'arabic' numerals and the base-10 number system
• gunpowder and rocketry
• the post office
• restaurants
• umbrellas
• porcelain (also called, simply, 'china' or 'china-ware')
• ketsup
• silk
• rice
• and soybean (including tofu and soy-sauce)

The Texas City explosion of 1947 (see also here --- 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate.

No it doesn't. This is a nonsense myth that has at best marginal basis in reality. See, for example:

here

here

here

Many places perpetuate this myth, and some even try to explain it. The notion of driving cartilage through bone into the brain may be theoretically possible, but is sufficiently inefficient that anyone capable of doing that would be better off smacking the target somewhere else.

*cough* Bullshit.

The black-footed ferret is wild in North America, though severely endangered. At this point in time, there may no longer *be* any wild black-footed ferrets (though there are several captive -- but, I emphasise, not domesticated -- populations intended for replenishment of the species), but they were at one time the dominant Mustela species in western North America.

Pet ferrets were domesticated about a thousand years ago or so, and are a completely different species from the wild ferret.

And black-footed ferrets in the wild are just as mean-tempered and vicious as weasels.

Which really makes me wonder if you *are* indeed a chimpanzee typing from your cage.

By the way, this guy explained it well too.

p

I realise that you're not associating "jake brakes" with SUVs, but that may not be clear to others. In fact, most folks may not even know what that means. So read here about jake-brakes.

I am more worried if it is paba free or not.

> democrats are the party that defends Jeffersonian ideals,
> the republicans are the party of the Whigs, who were
> originally rich land owners

Hmmm .. time for some history friend:

From here:
the rise of the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1856 put an end to the Whig coalition. The Whigs' lukewarm position on slavery, supporting the Compromise for the sake of holding the Union together, appealed to neither side of the increasingly polarized debate: Anti-slavery Northern Whigs deserted the party for the Republicans, while pro-slavery Southern Whigs defected to the Democrats.

Now from here:
The modern Republican Party was born on March 20, 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin as an outgrowth of the dissolved Whig party, choosing the name to recall to mind the founders; no matter that the aims were now different. ...
In the beginning largely a regional party of the Midwest states, the Republican Party's major issue was opposition to the spread of slavery to the western states. ...
The Republicans therefore became strongly identified as the party of Lincoln, the party that freed the slaves, and the party that won the war. As a result, few Southerners joined the Republicans for over a hundred years-the memory of losing the war provided a strong impetus to remain with the Democrats.

More here:
Continuing to take advantage of their majority, Republicans proposed the 14th Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1868, stating: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

And here
Historically, the party has supported

The abolition of slavery
The right of free speech
Support of women's suffrage ...


Hey, I don't think the republicans are flawless - they have corrupion in there - but they seem more principled overall than the Democrats. The Democrats _seem_ to sway much more with what they assume is popular opinion.

For those of you just tuning into this soap opera, here is a brief summary of the plot so far. Ken Brown, president of a Washington think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has written a book claiming open source using GPL is a bad idea and that Linus Torvalds stole Linux from MINIX, which I wrote. Linus, the alleged stealer, responded. As the alleged stealee I also felt the need to respond. Now Ken Brown has reacted to my responses. I very much doubt that when he came to visit me, he was expecting me to (1) defend Linus in our interview and then (2) do it fairly publicly later.

I was planning to spend my Sunday afternoon doing something useful, but since Brown has directly challenged me in his posting cited above, I feel I should respond. I will do this in the form of commenting on his posting. His comments are set off typographically like this:

"Samizdat is a series of excerpts from an upcoming book on open source and operating systems that will be published later this year. AdTI did not publish Samizdat with the expectation that rabidly pro-Linux developers would embrace it."

I have to give credit where credit is due. Brown got that one completely right.

"The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency which contributes to the worldwide effort to protect and govern intellectual property."

***EVERY*** country has a patent office. The United States is not unique in this respect. Furthermore, many people think that patenting software is a terrible idea. The subject of software patents is a very controversial issue in Europe right now.

"The Samizdat report recommends that the U.S. government should invest $5 billion in research and development efforts that produce true open source products, such as BSD and MIT license-based open source. Government investment in open source development will accelerate innovation."

I can live with this. Professors are always on the lookout for new sources of research funding.

"The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary software. Much of this questionable borrowing is a) not in the best interest U.S. corporations ..."

Excuse me? A Finnish student writes some software (in Finland) that a lot of people like and he is accused on sponging off U.S. corporations? And last time I checked, quite a few U.S. Corporations, such as IBM, seemed quite happy with Linux. And a very large number of U.S. corporations seem to be using the (open source) Apache web server. And even if open source weren't in the best interest of U.S. corporations, where is it written that all activities everywhere in the world must be done with the interests of U.S. corporations as their primary goal?

"Linux is a leprosy; ..."

This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct. Does he mean "Linus has Hansen's disease"? I hope not. But if he does, fortunately, it is highly treatable these days. If he means Linux is wasting away, the facts speak otherwise. If he means "Linux is very contagious" this is true, but a better wording could have been chosen.

"... and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector. Software is also embedded in hardware, chips, printers and even consumer electronics

things that have been a direct result of the space program (like ball-point pens)

Huh?

The history of the ball point pen

"By 1950, Paper-mate was making good, cheap ball-point pens, and in 1954, the Parker pen company, which had stood aloof from the fray, brought out a quality ball-point. In 1957, the badly wounded Eversharp sold its pen division to Parker, and Eversharp assets were finally liquidated in the 1960s."

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Ballpoint Pen by Ladislas Biro in 1935.

History of Office Products: Ballpoint Pen

Linus wrote MINIX or so it says herebr>

No, nothing so rude, the common French word for byte is "octet". :-)

Arbitrary search result: http://mimi.essortment.com/computertermsi_rrgh.htm

B.F. Skinner, a famous psychologist, demonstrated that you can create superstitious behavior in animals. When an animal is placed in a Skinner box, that contains a device which can automatically dispense food and food is given to the animal every five minutes regardless what the animal does; the animal will typically develop a superstitious behavior. This will occur when for example the animal happens to pick up its right foot just as food is delivered: the animal will then repeat this behavior, which will be intermittently reinforced. In this manner the superstitious behavior will become well established.

Earlier, in World War I, the US Army utilized members of the Choctaw tribe as operators near the end of the war. This, however, was due to a decision in the field (a captain noted that he had several members of the tribe in his battalion), rather than a formal program.

We have a cloth shower curtain, and it goes in the laundry every week or so. They cost more, and washing is a hassle, but there's a lot less grunge to tolerate.

Cleaning Instructions: How to clean a shower curtain to shine like new

You don't watch many cop shows...

Perp: Am I under arrest?
Cop: No, we're just taking you in for questioning.

If you're detained somewhere and can't leave, that's imprisonment or detainment. "False imprisonment" and "false arrest" are very closely related and often confused.

...false imprisonment could occur if a retail store manager suspects you have stolen some items from the store and takes you to a back office for detainment. During this time of confinement, you are refused a chance to go to the bathroom or get water and the exit to the room is repeatedly blocked by the store manager who wants to keep you detained until police arrive.

If the cops showed up and didn't arrest you, you'd still have a possible claim of "false imprisonment" against the store, and possible additional claims if physical force or the threat of violence were used to make you comply with the imprisonment.

nefarious characters to create some very large explosions

Screw the bad guys with some nukes, I vote 'NIMBY' on those death-trap grain elevators!!
Or, at least anyone with storage sheds full of fertilizer.

Turns out they didn't check for ID either. I hope I feel safer in November.

is this a troll?

*KGB VOICE* Comrade, where are your papers? */KGB VOICE*

NOBODY checks ID when you go to vote. See, back in the day, like 40 or 50 years ago, we didn't like them minorities to have a say in their own futures. So what we did was come up with these "literacy tests," on the theory that you had to be able to read to be able to understand a ballot. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and character vouchers were used to disenfranchise voters throughout the US, but especially to deny the vote to blacks in the south, where the Klan still claimed much of the white elite (who end up working the polls on election day) as members.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a reaction to a heinous act of police violence against black voters engaged in a march for civil rights in Selma, Alabama. The Act says that states may require a citizen to present reasonable identification upon registering to vote in that voter's first federal election, but that no state can make additional demands on citizens to prove eligibility to vote. Most of the time this is interpreted to mean that when you show up to vote, if the name you give is on the list of registered voters, it's against the law for them to ask you for your ID, or for any other proof that you are who you say you are.

Take off your tinfoil hat for a minute, and try on the shoes of Fannie Lou Hamer-- this is a Good Thing.

"punt", from American football, "to give up on a failed offensive drive and kick the ball to the other team"



"American Football" - Football historians, those who have studied the game and its origins, place the game's beginnings in rugby, an English game played with many similarities to football. Rugby began in eighteen twenty-three at the famous Rugby Boys' School in England. (from here )

Punting is definitely prevalent in Rugby...so, we are back to Great Britain.