And yet, Megatokyo's still one of the most popular comics on the web.
Truth is, people love a good soap opera, which it is. What's more, I don't think they planned a bait-and-switch (start off as one of the better gaming gag comics and become one of the better melodramas), but it never would have become what it is without it.
And that's really the effect of losing Rodney's writing -- a bait-and-switch.
I happen to like MT still. But it's not the MT that I first liked.
Getting rich was never about working hard as much as about finding a way up first, THEN working hard, and not fucking up on the way by selling drugs or something.
If you're just working hard and you haven't found the way up first, you may just be digging yourself deeper, y'know?
You can still do that in America, and it's still easier to do it here than there.
But the real problem is that all of these people who are working hard didn't start by looking for the way up at the very first, or they fucked up, and they have to fight bad credit card debt, that drug conviction, goofing off in high school, picking Art History as a major in college, and not quitting their job when they should have quit their job.
Perhaps a more accurate way to state it is that in America, you are valued for how hard you work, not for who you are. Outside of the USA, it's the other way around.
The truth is, most people are not willing to do what is necessary to become rich. It is not that they lack the talent or the luck. It's the cold truth, but it's so much easier to blame a failed system than to take the blame yourself.
That was pretty much my feeling, too. I had classes exactly like the ones he described, and I did badly at them, too. But the difference is, I'm a better engineer because I had the drive and desire to keep going anyway.
Yeah. Agree with your points so far. On modern-day Communists, it's just following a pattern in history, that no idea ever dies, no matter how bad it is. That's why we still have the Flat Earth nuts, the Man Will Never Fly guys, the Klan, Neo-Nazis.
Once in a while one of these Dormant Proven Wrong Ideas will gain resonance with the times, and come back to life, the way Young Earth Creationism (the bane of modern Christianity) has lately. That's the challenge we always face.
And as we've discovered with Young Earth Creationism, merely mocking the ignorant only seems to fan the flames. We have to always remember why these ideas are false, and to teach why, we must remember not to stomp on people's pride when we do so. We have to treat them with kindness and allow them to save face, or else they'll only become more entrenched.
China wasn't communist before Mao died. The current Chinese administration is just the next iteration of the same authoritarian imperial system that has ruled China for 5000 years, under a different name. "Communism" is the state religion, used to keep the masses well-opiated (ironic, no?).
"The 100 million internet active Chinese are represenatives for the rest of their population."
Considering the rest of the population is living in rural areas, lacks access to any of the technology or money that the 100 million internet-active Chinese have, and is in a state of near-revolt over this disparity, I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the 100 million internet-active Chinese are representatives for the rest.
There may be a substantial minority speaking on behalf of the poor rural Chinese, but in my experience, most of China's new middle class spurn the rural poor and would rather not have anything to do with them.
Business is about getting as much as possible for as little effort as possible. In such an environment, if you can get and keep the world for the cost of just a little whining, why wouldn't you? If it were less expensive for Microsoft to make their product better, they'd do that instead.
In the business universe, Word/Excel/Powerpoint is the de facto standard. If you don't have access to these formats, you're going to have trouble working with others.
This is why Firefox is a true success. It has changed the market so that Microsoft's best cost/benefit option is to actually make IE better, which makes life better for everyone.
What's more, by doing so, Firefox either drives up Microsoft's operating costs, prevents those resources dedicated to fixing IE from doing other things, or both. And by doing that, Firefox creates opportunities for Microsoft's competition.
It gets worse for Microsoft: As investors see that Microsoft is having to spend more to make the same amount of money, real questions about the value of the company's stock happen. That sounds ridiculous, right? Oh ye of little faith:
I "get" to use Windows Explorer (who doesn't?), Konqueror (KDE 3.4) and Finder.app (10.3) all regularly.
I always, always feel like I'm fighting Finder.app. I've tried using every view. I've tried changing options. I've reconfigured the toolbar. It just doesn't do very easily the thing you'd think it would do best based on the name -- find things. One thing that would improve it instantly is a folder tree on the left-hand pane. After three years of daily iBook use, I'd think I'd be getting good enough at doing things, but it always seems like an uphill climb to get what I want.
All three file browsers have (as the default) split panes. The right-hand pane is always a view of files in a particular directory; the left-hand pane is always a place for shortcuts.
Finder.app's left-hand pane is only one thing: A shortcut to mounted filesystems and directories. There is no tree expansion (for rapidly dropping a file into another directory that may not deserve a shortcut -- the spring-loaded files option allows you to do this, but it requires holding that mouse button down for an extended period of time). There are no other kinds of shortcuts.
XP's context-sensitive shortcuts are neat, and you can manually switch to a Folders/History view, although there's a bit of UI inconsistency in how you switch.
Konqueror's left-hand side is consistent and the buttons for switching the view are right where they ought to be. Once I started using it, and the oft-mentioned-on-slashdot protocols (my favorites? man: and info:), I never, ever wanted to go back to Finder.app.
Finder.app is painful for me to use now that I've used Konqueror 3.4. I've tried to make it more Konqueror-like, but it is no Konqueror, and it never will be.
Right now, I feel like KDE 3.4 is the best GUI there is, and Konqueror is the reason. The Mac and XP are about the same overall -- Apple makes up for the suck of Finder.app with Exposé. KDE needs no Exposé; multiple desktops are a different means to the same ends of making limited display space work with multiple apps.
Shit! I forgot one other, and since my post was based on that whole point I can't see how I did:
4. Throw variety into the mix to prevent boredom. Pac-Man sped things up, changed the fruit and added the first "cutscenes." Katamari Damacy does all kinds of different things within the simple structure of rolling things up into a ball. Warcraft and FPS's have the infinite variations of other human player's strategies and reactions, plus different maps to play on, and some random elements (where you start the map, for example).
What makes a game fun is the pattern it forms in your mind as you do things and get rewards for them.
Building a business around these patterns is tricky, because the only certain way to do this reliably (without, say, getting a PhD in psychology) is to repeat what's been fun before. At first you have a successful game, then you have copycats, then you have a genre.
The problem is that the patterns formed in the mind eventually become desensitized to the same stimulus over and over again. The genre must continually evolve or die.
It gets more and more difficult to find new ways to trigger that positive response while still remaining within the confines of a known successful genre.
The reason genres (such as FPS or RTS) developed in the first place was because the difference between each technological graphical breakthrough was significant to the player.
What's happening now is that the graphical breakthroughs are no longer adequate. The calls for "creative" games, for genre-busters (e.g. Katamari Damacy) that are coming about more and more, are based on the fact that we, as game consumers, are starting to get bored.
But until game designers find a formula to make a game fun that transcends genre -- meaning that it doesn't just copycat an earlier fun game -- this pattern will repeat.
I am no psychologist, but I have an idea of what these principles would look like:
1. Provide positive response for the basic activity of the game. Pac-Man slows to eat each dot, and you see and hear happy feedback with each successful dot eaten. Items in Katamari Damacy are plentiful and make happy sounds (and controller vibrations) as each gets sucked up. With an FPS, there is the flame and the sound of each blast you fire. Warcraft units click, light up and give you one of a number of obedient greetings as you select them.
2. Scale reward with effort. You can finish each screen without eating a single ghost, but if you really want the big points, you gotta try and eat all four! It's one thing to have a big enough Katamari, but let's try and really blow the king away with a BIG one... and how do you get that cat over there? It's fun to play Counterstrike and Warcraft, but it's more fun to win.
The player must be allowed to do what he is trying to do. In other words, controls must be responsive, but Pac-Man (for example) takes this even further, to where you can turn into a tunnel even if you've gone a few pixels past it, without having to turn the other way. If there's a split-second delay between clicking the mouse and knowing that your weapon's going to fire (there may be a delay in firing it a la BFG, but you hear and see feedback as soon as you say to do it), you're going to get frustrated.
Know what games follow these principles better than any others? Slot machines. Because they have to.
In addition to writing code, I've been on a few sales trips in my time.
When you're on a sales trip, there are certain things you say and certain things you do not say. If the company is halfway decent, this is very easy to do.
Hilf is not here to give you his honest opinion. He is a paid employee, and his goal is to sell Microsoft products and services. The reason he's agreed to this interview is because the powers that be have given him permission to do so (or asked him outright), because they know he's a true blue believer in Microsoft.
If you re-read his answers with this in mind, you will see that at every point where a concern is raised that sounds something like, "I don't want to buy Microsoft products," he gives an answer where he says, "I understand your concerns and here's why you should buy Microsoft products anyway."
He always begins with agreement. He never says "but/yet/however," those evil signposts that would have you raise your defense shields. He always provides the evidence of his point of view before telling you his point of view, so that you're right with him (or ahead of him!) as he tells you his ideas. This is how you disagree with someone agreeably.
It certain feels better than a good old-fashioned straight-faced flame. People aren't logical creatures; we are vain and self-centered, all. Being smooth doesn't make his points any more valid nor does it excuse the gaping holes in his reasoning. It sounds reasonable, yes. The flaws and inconsistencies and problems we all know about are still there.
Unfortunately the "sorry bunch of wankers" is having a negative effect on Linux's reputation. Founded or not, their claims just add to the FUD that Microsoft puts out to combat Linux's spread, and it's having a significant effect.
It did for the first 6 months of the case. But recent studies have shown that pretty much nobody cares about it any more; if anything, it's accelerated adoption, because the continuing lack of evidence from SCO is making Linux look more stable, not less.
Now, since we're getting along so well, shall we next try to solve the problems of the Middle East?
My wife and I are exact opposites on everything; she's a socialist atheist (and took the theory route in CS) while I'm a libertarian Christian (and took the practical route in CS). We figure if we can make our relationship work, then nobody has any excuses for fighting any more. On the other hand, Bush and Saddam probably weren't able to fall back on sex when other things weren't working in their relationship...:)
I agree with most everything you say, especially that this extends beyond sexual politics. My big problem with sexual politics is that the idiocy reigns on both sides of the debate; there is no room for thoughtful discussion because the issue has split into two points of view which deny the existence of any other possibilities, much like abortion's pro-death and anti-choice sides.:)
At one point you refer to the religious right's dogma, "...which by the very nature of the matter cannot be the subject of rational debate."
Among a certain group of American Christians, you're spot-on. They have chosen a large set of beliefs that they will not question, and find comfort and security in being with people who agree with them and never challenge those beliefs. (This can be said for any number of belief systems, including libertarianism, communism, democracy, monarchy, atheism, islam, and my favorite: Sports fans.)
I would like to emphasize that anything is up for rational debate. Including doctrine.
In fact, I grew up in a church (First Presbyterian, Amarillo, TX) where, at the time I attended, the congregation expected its members to have different points of view on scripture and different interpretations. We could all agree that there was a God and that Christ was the promised Messiah, and beyond that everything else (including "Who Is This God Person Anyway?" and "What Do You Mean By 'Messiah?'") was up for scrutiny.
In Sunday School, teachers encouraged us to scrutinize even those first two points as well.
To put it bluntly, do not confuse Faith and Blind Faith. The latter is just another term for "I've found my belief system and I will not question it beyond this point," a ubiquitous form of laziness and arrogance. The former is the act of choosing to believe something where certainty is difficult or impossible and the probability of it being true is greater than it not being true, and is perfectly reasonable behavior.
For example, we don't have absolute 100% certainty that we humans evolved from simple single-celled organisms; however, the probability that this is the case, based on the evidence uncovered, is greater than any proposed alternative. If this is your reason for believing that we evolved, then that is Faith. If your reason amounts to little more than "Evolution is Scientific and Science is Fact," then that is Blind Faith.
This also opens up a possibility that we didn't evolve from single-celled organisms. It is such a slight possibility that in order to remain reasonable you have to have extraordinary evidence or reasoning. If you have such a thing (and you don't*), then you can claim to believe we didn't evolve, and have faith that you are probably right. If your reasoning amounts to, "But Genesis 1 says such-and-such," then that's not a very good reason unless you can demonstrate that Genesis 1 actually says what you think it does (it doesn't*) and how it follow that because Genesis 1 says something, it must be so (you can't*). That's Blind Faith.
* Of course I say these things based on Faith -- that the probability that they are true, based on what I know of logical analysis, the Bible's text and the Bible's history is greater than the probability that they are false -- because I couldn't possibly be 100% certain of any of them. But I defy anyone to prove otherwise.;)
Slashdot Mirror
And yet, Megatokyo's still one of the most popular comics on the web.
Truth is, people love a good soap opera, which it is. What's more, I don't think they planned a bait-and-switch (start off as one of the better gaming gag comics and become one of the better melodramas), but it never would have become what it is without it.
And that's really the effect of losing Rodney's writing -- a bait-and-switch.
I happen to like MT still. But it's not the MT that I first liked.
What is this "getting a job" thing and since when has it ever had anything to do with getting rich?
You will never get rich working for someone else.
Getting rich was never about working hard as much as about finding a way up first, THEN working hard, and not fucking up on the way by selling drugs or something.
If you're just working hard and you haven't found the way up first, you may just be digging yourself deeper, y'know?
You can still do that in America, and it's still easier to do it here than there.
But the real problem is that all of these people who are working hard didn't start by looking for the way up at the very first, or they fucked up, and they have to fight bad credit card debt, that drug conviction, goofing off in high school, picking Art History as a major in college, and not quitting their job when they should have quit their job.
Perhaps a more accurate way to state it is that in America, you are valued for how hard you work, not for who you are. Outside of the USA, it's the other way around.
The truth is, most people are not willing to do what is necessary to become rich. It is not that they lack the talent or the luck. It's the cold truth, but it's so much easier to blame a failed system than to take the blame yourself.
That was pretty much my feeling, too. I had classes exactly like the ones he described, and I did badly at them, too. But the difference is, I'm a better engineer because I had the drive and desire to keep going anyway.
Or maybe it's just stubbornness.
Yeah. Agree with your points so far. On modern-day Communists, it's just following a pattern in history, that no idea ever dies, no matter how bad it is. That's why we still have the Flat Earth nuts, the Man Will Never Fly guys, the Klan, Neo-Nazis.
Once in a while one of these Dormant Proven Wrong Ideas will gain resonance with the times, and come back to life, the way Young Earth Creationism (the bane of modern Christianity) has lately. That's the challenge we always face.
And as we've discovered with Young Earth Creationism, merely mocking the ignorant only seems to fan the flames. We have to always remember why these ideas are false, and to teach why, we must remember not to stomp on people's pride when we do so. We have to treat them with kindness and allow them to save face, or else they'll only become more entrenched.
China wasn't communist before Mao died. The current Chinese administration is just the next iteration of the same authoritarian imperial system that has ruled China for 5000 years, under a different name. "Communism" is the state religion, used to keep the masses well-opiated (ironic, no?).
"The 100 million internet active Chinese are represenatives for the rest of their population."
Considering the rest of the population is living in rural areas, lacks access to any of the technology or money that the 100 million internet-active Chinese have, and is in a state of near-revolt over this disparity, I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the 100 million internet-active Chinese are representatives for the rest.
There may be a substantial minority speaking on behalf of the poor rural Chinese, but in my experience, most of China's new middle class spurn the rural poor and would rather not have anything to do with them.
Business is about getting as much as possible for as little effort as possible. In such an environment, if you can get and keep the world for the cost of just a little whining, why wouldn't you? If it were less expensive for Microsoft to make their product better, they'd do that instead.
In the business universe, Word/Excel/Powerpoint is the de facto standard. If you don't have access to these formats, you're going to have trouble working with others.
This is why Firefox is a true success. It has changed the market so that Microsoft's best cost/benefit option is to actually make IE better, which makes life better for everyone.
What's more, by doing so, Firefox either drives up Microsoft's operating costs, prevents those resources dedicated to fixing IE from doing other things, or both. And by doing that, Firefox creates opportunities for Microsoft's competition.
It gets worse for Microsoft: As investors see that Microsoft is having to spend more to make the same amount of money, real questions about the value of the company's stock happen. That sounds ridiculous, right? Oh ye of little faith:
Stock chart for MSFT
I "get" to use Windows Explorer (who doesn't?), Konqueror (KDE 3.4) and Finder.app (10.3) all regularly.
I always, always feel like I'm fighting Finder.app. I've tried using every view. I've tried changing options. I've reconfigured the toolbar. It just doesn't do very easily the thing you'd think it would do best based on the name -- find things. One thing that would improve it instantly is a folder tree on the left-hand pane. After three years of daily iBook use, I'd think I'd be getting good enough at doing things, but it always seems like an uphill climb to get what I want.
All three file browsers have (as the default) split panes. The right-hand pane is always a view of files in a particular directory; the left-hand pane is always a place for shortcuts.
Finder.app's left-hand pane is only one thing: A shortcut to mounted filesystems and directories. There is no tree expansion (for rapidly dropping a file into another directory that may not deserve a shortcut -- the spring-loaded files option allows you to do this, but it requires holding that mouse button down for an extended period of time). There are no other kinds of shortcuts.
XP's context-sensitive shortcuts are neat, and you can manually switch to a Folders/History view, although there's a bit of UI inconsistency in how you switch.
Konqueror's left-hand side is consistent and the buttons for switching the view are right where they ought to be. Once I started using it, and the oft-mentioned-on-slashdot protocols (my favorites? man: and info:), I never, ever wanted to go back to Finder.app.
Finder.app is painful for me to use now that I've used Konqueror 3.4. I've tried to make it more Konqueror-like, but it is no Konqueror, and it never will be.
Right now, I feel like KDE 3.4 is the best GUI there is, and Konqueror is the reason. The Mac and XP are about the same overall -- Apple makes up for the suck of Finder.app with Exposé. KDE needs no Exposé; multiple desktops are a different means to the same ends of making limited display space work with multiple apps.
Do "the right people" get their due compensation here in America, with the way the RIAA treats artists?
Shapely Apple-designed top?
Try using Konqueror 3.4 for file management and compare it with OSX Finder.app.
It's one of the minor reasons why I'm putting Kubuntu Linux on my Mac Mini this weekend.
That doesn't man that Judge McMahon can't have a neanderthal attitude towards stay-at-home Moms.
Shit! I forgot one other, and since my post was based on that whole point I can't see how I did:
4. Throw variety into the mix to prevent boredom. Pac-Man sped things up, changed the fruit and added the first "cutscenes." Katamari Damacy does all kinds of different things within the simple structure of rolling things up into a ball. Warcraft and FPS's have the infinite variations of other human player's strategies and reactions, plus different maps to play on, and some random elements (where you start the map, for example).
What makes a game fun is the pattern it forms in your mind as you do things and get rewards for them.
Building a business around these patterns is tricky, because the only certain way to do this reliably (without, say, getting a PhD in psychology) is to repeat what's been fun before. At first you have a successful game, then you have copycats, then you have a genre.
The problem is that the patterns formed in the mind eventually become desensitized to the same stimulus over and over again. The genre must continually evolve or die.
It gets more and more difficult to find new ways to trigger that positive response while still remaining within the confines of a known successful genre.
The reason genres (such as FPS or RTS) developed in the first place was because the difference between each technological graphical breakthrough was significant to the player.
What's happening now is that the graphical breakthroughs are no longer adequate. The calls for "creative" games, for genre-busters (e.g. Katamari Damacy) that are coming about more and more, are based on the fact that we, as game consumers, are starting to get bored.
But until game designers find a formula to make a game fun that transcends genre -- meaning that it doesn't just copycat an earlier fun game -- this pattern will repeat.
I am no psychologist, but I have an idea of what these principles would look like:
1. Provide positive response for the basic activity of the game. Pac-Man slows to eat each dot, and you see and hear happy feedback with each successful dot eaten. Items in Katamari Damacy are plentiful and make happy sounds (and controller vibrations) as each gets sucked up. With an FPS, there is the flame and the sound of each blast you fire. Warcraft units click, light up and give you one of a number of obedient greetings as you select them.
2. Scale reward with effort. You can finish each screen without eating a single ghost, but if you really want the big points, you gotta try and eat all four! It's one thing to have a big enough Katamari, but let's try and really blow the king away with a BIG one... and how do you get that cat over there? It's fun to play Counterstrike and Warcraft, but it's more fun to win.
The player must be allowed to do what he is trying to do. In other words, controls must be responsive, but Pac-Man (for example) takes this even further, to where you can turn into a tunnel even if you've gone a few pixels past it, without having to turn the other way. If there's a split-second delay between clicking the mouse and knowing that your weapon's going to fire (there may be a delay in firing it a la BFG, but you hear and see feedback as soon as you say to do it), you're going to get frustrated.
Know what games follow these principles better than any others? Slot machines. Because they have to.
Does it still work if you use the Ubuntu PPC Live CD?
Sessamoid, and other slashdotters:
In addition to writing code, I've been on a few sales trips in my time.
When you're on a sales trip, there are certain things you say and certain things you do not say. If the company is halfway decent, this is very easy to do.
Hilf is not here to give you his honest opinion. He is a paid employee, and his goal is to sell Microsoft products and services. The reason he's agreed to this interview is because the powers that be have given him permission to do so (or asked him outright), because they know he's a true blue believer in Microsoft.
If you re-read his answers with this in mind, you will see that at every point where a concern is raised that sounds something like, "I don't want to buy Microsoft products," he gives an answer where he says, "I understand your concerns and here's why you should buy Microsoft products anyway."
He always begins with agreement. He never says "but/yet/however," those evil signposts that would have you raise your defense shields. He always provides the evidence of his point of view before telling you his point of view, so that you're right with him (or ahead of him!) as he tells you his ideas. This is how you disagree with someone agreeably.
It certain feels better than a good old-fashioned straight-faced flame. People aren't logical creatures; we are vain and self-centered, all. Being smooth doesn't make his points any more valid nor does it excuse the gaping holes in his reasoning. It sounds reasonable, yes. The flaws and inconsistencies and problems we all know about are still there.
Cross their legs???
Weird.
Welcome to the USA.
I set this up at work. At first I got several emails per day. Now I'm not getting more than one a week.
Interesting, no?
Unfortunately the "sorry bunch of wankers" is having a negative effect on Linux's reputation. Founded or not, their claims just add to the FUD that Microsoft puts out to combat Linux's spread, and it's having a significant effect.
It did for the first 6 months of the case. But recent studies have shown that pretty much nobody cares about it any more; if anything, it's accelerated adoption, because the continuing lack of evidence from SCO is making Linux look more stable, not less.
If you're doing BACnet, for the love of your own sanity, get the 2.6 kernel.
You do not want to try to implement MS/TP with 2.4....
If Rockstar actually left the content in that wasn't the smartest thing they've ever done, but it's not like they killed a puppy.
You're not too familiar with the United States, are you?
Remember, this was the country initially founded by Separatists, the country that put the "duh" in "fundamentalism."
The country where you can have all kinds of death and explosions and only get a PG-13 rating, but show one human penis and you get slapped with NC-17.
The Argument Sketch rules.
:)
Now, since we're getting along so well, shall we next try to solve the problems of the Middle East?
My wife and I are exact opposites on everything; she's a socialist atheist (and took the theory route in CS) while I'm a libertarian Christian (and took the practical route in CS). We figure if we can make our relationship work, then nobody has any excuses for fighting any more. On the other hand, Bush and Saddam probably weren't able to fall back on sex when other things weren't working in their relationship...
I agree with most everything you say, especially that this extends beyond sexual politics. My big problem with sexual politics is that the idiocy reigns on both sides of the debate; there is no room for thoughtful discussion because the issue has split into two points of view which deny the existence of any other possibilities, much like abortion's pro-death and anti-choice sides. :)
;)
At one point you refer to the religious right's dogma, "...which by the very nature of the matter cannot be the subject of rational debate."
Among a certain group of American Christians, you're spot-on. They have chosen a large set of beliefs that they will not question, and find comfort and security in being with people who agree with them and never challenge those beliefs. (This can be said for any number of belief systems, including libertarianism, communism, democracy, monarchy, atheism, islam, and my favorite: Sports fans.)
I would like to emphasize that anything is up for rational debate. Including doctrine.
In fact, I grew up in a church (First Presbyterian, Amarillo, TX) where, at the time I attended, the congregation expected its members to have different points of view on scripture and different interpretations. We could all agree that there was a God and that Christ was the promised Messiah, and beyond that everything else (including "Who Is This God Person Anyway?" and "What Do You Mean By 'Messiah?'") was up for scrutiny.
In Sunday School, teachers encouraged us to scrutinize even those first two points as well.
To put it bluntly, do not confuse Faith and Blind Faith. The latter is just another term for "I've found my belief system and I will not question it beyond this point," a ubiquitous form of laziness and arrogance. The former is the act of choosing to believe something where certainty is difficult or impossible and the probability of it being true is greater than it not being true, and is perfectly reasonable behavior.
For example, we don't have absolute 100% certainty that we humans evolved from simple single-celled organisms; however, the probability that this is the case, based on the evidence uncovered, is greater than any proposed alternative. If this is your reason for believing that we evolved, then that is Faith. If your reason amounts to little more than "Evolution is Scientific and Science is Fact," then that is Blind Faith.
This also opens up a possibility that we didn't evolve from single-celled organisms. It is such a slight possibility that in order to remain reasonable you have to have extraordinary evidence or reasoning. If you have such a thing (and you don't*), then you can claim to believe we didn't evolve, and have faith that you are probably right. If your reasoning amounts to, "But Genesis 1 says such-and-such," then that's not a very good reason unless you can demonstrate that Genesis 1 actually says what you think it does (it doesn't*) and how it follow that because Genesis 1 says something, it must be so (you can't*). That's Blind Faith.
* Of course I say these things based on Faith -- that the probability that they are true, based on what I know of logical analysis, the Bible's text and the Bible's history is greater than the probability that they are false -- because I couldn't possibly be 100% certain of any of them. But I defy anyone to prove otherwise.
I mean, that's really what sexual politics are all about nowadays, isn't it? It's just a bunch of people screaming at each other.
Your post is a nice breath of fresh air in all that.