VT doesn't appear to live up to it's status as the least-churched state in the country. This would be more interesting with ratios (color blending) than straight one-or-the-other. Also, if they included mentions of weed, Vermont might turn dark green.

I'd like to watch the experiment again with an ultra-high FPS camera to get a better sense of what was going on, but I'm pretty sure it was the steam-flashing explanation. If thermolysis of the water was taking place, the resulting oxygen/hydrogen combustion should have produced visible effects, but it mostly just…

Sure, that was fun. But it's not the thermite exploding. It's the ice exploding. They suggested some silliness that maybe the thermite was "aerosolized", but that doesn't make sense from the footage (have you ever seen a fuel-air bomb? the explosion doesn't look like that) or the chemistry of thermite (it doesn't…

No.

The goals of the SVR are pretty admittedly a thought experiment; but the more interesting (and realistic) thought experiment is to look at what Vermont would do (and how it would function) if it were actually to go about secession in a serious fashion. I do occasionally see the SVR flag hanging around town, but it…

Actually Vermont is in a unique position in a lot of ways as far sustainability and independence is concerned. We do quite well in the food industry, and have the biomass resources to probably be energy independent in the home heating sector (transportation is actually the only big slice of the energy pie where we're…

I've been hitting refresh waiting for it as well.

When I finger count, it's in binary...

When the credits started rolling people got up to leave. I hollered at them to stay put so they didn't miss the last two scenes.....then after the first one they all started leaving again. 2 second attention span, or what?

I didn't say "best". I said "most messed up", ala the title of this article ;)

Totally different beast than creative writing. For (most) technical writing, you want your prose to be as close to a formal language as you can manage.

I disagree. The author has clearly never read Fondly Fahrenheit. THAT is the most messed up book about robot consciousness ever.

Also, writers are allowed to change language to suit their purposes. Standards are nice for technical writing, but for creative purposes, you are allowed to, well, get creative.

The proportionalities are much much different.

Because Canada isn't part of America?

Selection bias. I suspect if you did this study in any other (industrialized) country in the world you would get different results. If you talk to Christians in most other countries, they are baffled as to why their American brethren are so anti-intellectual.

Oh, I know :) A member of my immediate family is a reasonably successful Tolkien/Lewis scholar. (that was @Tsathoggua, for some reason the replying mechanism seems to be off-kilter tonight)

You also couldn't write the Silmarillion if you tried. ;)

Everyone whining about "Formics" vs "Buggers" needs to stop complaining and take an etymology class. Seriously. I'm looking at you, @The Sneak, and you @Madeline Ashby

I cam here knowing Tolkien wouldn't be on the list, and wanting to make sure he got a mention. In a league of his own for linguistically inspired fantasy, and he defined the direction of high fantasy for the last three quarters of a century.