Darth Fluffy

I think you mean gratuitous. That means free, but is also used to mean putting it out there or excessive, depending on your tone. Gratuitous fan service would be boldly displaying fan service, and/or using it a lot. Gracious means full of grace, kindness would be in the same vein.

The one about big hair?

Way to lower the bar, man.

Birds are definitely odd. Mice I'm not sure about; mostly unrelatable. But if your basis of comparison is a cat, I'm not sure you're making your case. 'The odd cat' would be one that isn't. And then it would disappear in a puff of logic. Damn good thing they're such cute little fur balls.

It smells like a what's inside a dead bird, maybe?

I am curious how they fair here. Probably both use RDU airport, which is within 20 miles. Seems like everyone references RDU in my area.

Sorry, man. It is tough times. I'm even avoiding the grand-disease vectors.

If you mean, "not every fit person is an exhibitionist", mostly, yeah, although being fit would tend to lower inhibitions due to poor body image. It you also mean, "not every fit person frequents a gym", I'd say there's probably a high correlation, but yes, not all. Especially for fab abs, which general over all cardio fitness will not necessarily get you.

I've been binging Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on YouTube. I feel rather down from it; despite the good intentions to motivate, it's all rather depressing.

Right, Buran. I did not know Buran had actually been built. The article lists five space planes that have achieved actual flight. Buran was larger than the Shuttle. Someone, Japan or the EU, maybe both, had plans for one smaller than the shuttle. A much earlier unsuccessful program was Dynasoar.

Well, I have more trouble with the label, 'heresy'. It's kind of an intellectual shut down from someone(s) currently holding the reins, the implication being that their knowledge is perfect and complete and they are in a position to judge others. I'm not buying it. The topic is nuanced and complex and most of all hidden and mysterious, unobservable, for the most part, so dogmatic finger pointing is not really warranted. If our alleged God exists, I think we can agree that he is essentially incomprehensible. Powers that be, stop deluding yourselves and pretending you comprehend him. So you and I are arriving at the same point, perhaps by different means; or maybe more similar than it appears at first glance. It might be useful to link to the Wiki article on Gnosticism. The fundamental core is that knowledge will save you. I think there is some truth in that, but that take to an exclusive extreme, you are back in the first paragraph, pointing the finger at others. Which would speak favorably of a balanced approach where knowledge was held to be significant, but other factors were also important. Now, I have not read The Gospel of Thomas, but the Wiki article about it seemed to be pointing this way. The Gnosticism article says the same thing I did, Gonstic writing suppressed, Gnostics have motivation to slip their notions into works. Which is kind of what you are saying, or maybe better stated as overlaps; later folks modifying the content to represent their views. Did Thomas write it? I don't think there's a compelling case, nor do I think it's particularly important. You point, however, that he would have valued knowledge, is a good one, I think you're right, he seems to have that fact checking angle going on. He did it twice in the gospels, and he is contrasted with 'have faith', but I don't see the particular merit of naivete; perhaps I'm missing something. Paul later praises the Bereans (believers from the town of Berea) for fact checking. Paul is Gnostic slanted, he is very educated and erudite, argues in the learned Greek debating centers, but he himself walks around 'it's not sufficient'. Jesus's spin, I'd call it difficult to follow. He refers to his disciples as 'sheep', but whether that's positive or negative seems to vary with context. As in the Bible at large, he seems to view the rejection of knowledge as dangerous, but again comes back to 'insufficient'. And that is a fair point. Having the knowledge is important, but so is what you then do with it. That's true of so many things. Isn't one trope having book learning, but no practical sense of how to apply it? Or well educated, but no common sense? Perhaps that's why Gnosticism was viewed as a heresy, maybe too focused on one aspect of what is needed for character? Albeit, the Roman Catholic church in particular, but all churches do it to some degree, seem to say, "We (clergy) will be educated for you, you don't need knowledge for yourselves." That's a dangerous viewpoint, easy to abuse. Has that ever happened? I'm pretty sure I've previously posted on this forum, the first thing in any Bible is not Genesis. There is always translator notes, reassuring the reader that when choices had to be made, the translator slanted the translation toward the reader's viewpoint. How is this not a disclaimer that that the translations are biased? I've read key verses in versions of the Bible that the mainstream does not like, like the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible and the Mormon Bible, and the highlighted omissions or changes do not significantly change the overall message. It's like a blemish on the wall, it's annoying, you want to paint it, but the wall is still there. Nor am I. I think it's clear that what we have today are consensus works, and while we attribute them to an individual, they would have had at the very least a form of peer review; which also explains why there's some variation in the texts, some anecdotal sections added in some manuscripts. I think that's in conjunction with The Book of Revelations aka The Revelation of John, which is a recount of a vision he had, 'he' being a dude named John who is said to be the same John that wrote The Gospel of John and the Letters aka Epistles of John, but there were a lot of Johns. So yeah, what you said. There were a lot of Jesuses too, probably why he's often referred to by some other qualifier, like the Nazarene (from the town of Nazareth). There are fewer Thomases (then). It means 'the Twin', so is slightly uncommon. If mom calls, "Thomas" do they both come running? Or is one the designated spare. I guess for inheritance purposes, one is the elder. These people affect our nominally secular text books, ('teach the controversy' <eye roll>), so it's kind of a big deal here. Google 'Monkey Trial' and be amazed at how long we've been dragging this dead weight around. There is a saying, "Never mud wrestle a pig, you'll both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it." One of the problems with debating these yahoos is that it's giving them a measure of credence to even do so. Bear on mind, they're not even wrong. As an engineer, I'd say, 'It's close enough'. That .002 seconds is not going to matter when you are covering your tomatoes for the night, against the frost. In his discourse, Jesus expected his first century listeners to be able to follow multiplying two numbers, so it wouldn't be much of an excuse. In spite of what you might think many of the Creationists are well educated. Follow the Monkey Trial link. The prosecutor was a big name lawyer, successful at his profession. The law under consideration was passed in a sate legislature, and while there is no test to qualify to be a legislator, you have to be somewhat savvy to complete; Forest Gump does not win a seat. True, it was only innovative in the context of their own culture. The Greeks were far ahead of them, which they knew and they valued Greeks for their knowledge. Literally. Slave culture. I don't know why mathematical knowledge did not bleed over from one culture to the next more efficiently than it did, because surely the Romans had access to Greek knowledge. I suppose different number systems and systems of calculating was a hindrance. Probably cultural resistance to change. We still have this today, and it can have expensive consequences. I drive miles, buy pounds of produce, and drink cups. My billion is different than your billion. My space agency crashed an expensive probe into Mars because of the differences. Well, you've got to scream something during sex. Do you say, "Oh, my lack of God"? Bad time to be a comedian. The jokes are writing themselves, you're just the delivery boy. I don't think it's going away. In a few years, it will be one the the shots you get.

I disagree. Gnosticism is a known entity. Considered a heresy by what is now viewed as mainstream, is has distinguishing features. That a Gnostic might want to make his views known and feel like (s)he has to resort to a subterfuge seems likely. The flip side, did Matthew write Matthew, Mark write Mark, and so on, does not seem to have the same compelling reason. Why would it matter? They are in some sense going to be collaborations anyway, as the group realizes, "Hey, maybe we need to record this stuff, so our kids will know where we stand." Luke was a Greek physician, a well educated man; he was not an apostle, seemingly not Jewish, though I guess he could have been both, so likely not even an eye witness. He is said to have transcribed Paul's account. Paul himself was a late arrival; he was a trained Pharisee named Saul during Jesus's ministry. His account must have been sourced by others. Paul is thorough and studious, so it's not surprising that he collected a lot of detail. He was also literate himself, but had vision issues, mentioned in one of his letters. He considered himself 'an apostle to the gentiles', to the Greeks in particular, and Luke has a factual slant that would appeal to an erudite culture. Matthew was the tax collector that Jesus called; having to report to Rome, he would have been quite literate. He would have been an eye witness, and has a fair bit of detail. He;s an accountant, a detail guy, it fits. He is also a Jew, writing to Jews, and includes Jewish touchstones in Matthew. Mark is said to have transcribed Peter's account. It is much more terse than the other versions; it might be viewed as the management overview meant to appeal to the Roman rulers. These three are in substantial agreement. There are glaring differences, such as the geneologies in Matthew and Luke. Jewish culture is matrilineal, Greek and Roman, patrilineal. They are addressing their target audience. Anyone that says the Gospel of John is not weird isn't being honest. It was written well after the others; likely many of the apostles were already dead. There were several Johns involved in the early church, notably a favored apostle and one of Jesus's brothers. I've heard John was written by the apostle, but is doesn't say so internally, and I don't think it's so clearly cut and dried as religious folks make it out to be. What is clear, is that it takes a much more, uhm, mystical tact. It is grounded in anecdotes, similar to the other gospels, but the actual stories are mostly a different set; similar in character, but there's a somewhat different flavor; where the other three are more like books about Jesus, John strives to be a portrayal of Jesus; to reveal his character, like a biopic instead of a documentary. But the beginning is pure blue sky genesis talk. Since I don't know any of these people personally, I don't have a whole lot invested in exactly who said what to who when the record was actually put to paper. It was pretty clearly a record from followers, details vary, that's not surprising. If I read a half a dozen articles about a current event, they will focus on different stuff. Your experience is much different than mine. Catholics here are not particularly vocal about such nonsense, here it's the Evangelical fundies, and they are rabid. We have a Creation Museum. In Kentuckyt, there's a Noah's Ark Park. The Creationists disagree; to them, 'a day' is 24 hours. And logic has nothing to do with it, so don't bring up, 'but the length of the day changes daily'. Anyway, your definition is one definition out of several. Let me rephrase that; your definition is vague enough to cover a lot of ground, but there's 'faces the sun', and there's 'faces the same direction against the (relatively) "fixed" background of the stars'. They are not the same, and in one year, you will have one more sidereal day than solar days. We don't notice it, because our moon is tidally locked, but you can also have a 'day' where a satellite faces you the same way that is yet another 'day'. If it was spinning rapidly, you might not even call it a day. Thinking toroidal space habitat, if it rotated in minutes, you probably would not want to count that as a day, since culturally, you want days to equate to work periods. Then to, we have the solar day, the time it takes the sun to spin; it is a rotation, but has nothing to do with illumination of the sun. It also occurs in two flavors, relative to the background, and relative to facing us, third sense actually, since the first has no meaning for the sun. Which one is right? They're all correct, in context, they are functionally selected. A farmer needs solar days. A navigator might require sidereal. In the Bible, even God disagrees with them. "A day is like a thousand year, and an thousand years is like a day", speaking of God's point of view, and I'm convinced that the only reason it says 'a thousand' is that these folks were not big on math. Seriously, 'a myriad', meaning ten thousand, was a Roman innovation. They even came up with a special symbol, an M (one thousand) with a bar over the top. Jesus blew the disciples minds a couple of times by squaring numbers. We have a constitutional amendment which prohibits the US from supporting a state religion, but that does not keep folks from promoting the notion. Regularly. Like water flowing down from the mountain. Because it's obvious we need to support my religion. I used to think the atheist were obsessive about fighting this, but they have a good point; it's insidious. There's never enough. The only recourse is to draw the line at 'none'. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, in a "May you live in interesting times" sense. Typo. I got sucked into reading, read about the artists, missed the spelling error. I thought it started with a 'C' saw the 'K', so that one I fixed.

Your link is not working; it may be overwhelmed at the moment. A search on YouTube shows an incredible number of recent tribute posts to Kenny. I love this song, it's one of my top ten. It is basically a concise metaphor for the Book of Ecclesiastes. I saw Kenny Rogers on some show deny that The Gambler was a metaphor for life, but I'm not buying it. Maybe he was embarrassed that people saw him in a more thoughtful light after he wrote it. That said, there is an error in the lyrics. "Every hand's a winner, and every hand's a looser," should be, "Every card's a winner, and every card's a looser", and I think that's what he meant, but the words don't match the idea. The notion is, if you are holding two pair, and are going for a full house, even a nominally crappy card can make your hand, and an ace can bust it. But if you consider actual completed hands, they have an intrinsic rank order, and their odds of winning are not equal. I'm not a fan of the bit of lyric you quoted. It jars my belief system. My view is, you don't break even. I'd have gone with "cashed his chips in". That's what you do; you play the game, you win or loose, then you cash your chips in. Nice and indeterminate and mysterious. None of this feel goody 'broke even' crap. Yes, I'm nit picking, I still love the song.

Then be glad cats have good night vision, or instead of hearing, "scamper, scamper, scamper, skid, scamper, scamper", you'd be hearing, "scamper, scamper, scamper, thud ..., scamper, scamper".

But, how could you? Nobody expects that! I think they're a shade nastier than the 'invade your neighbor' variety. Some lean more toward genocide. Ours, the French, and the Russian had elements of 'show no quarter'. Ours had a lot of irregulars slaughtering neighbors in contested territories. Ours had troops that refused to honor the surrender and became notorious outlaws until killed. Our split our country to this day, the French and the Russian led to brutal slaughter of the other side, and others, well, genocide. (Sam is local news, I've driven past this statue.) As notes before, ours shoved our technology forward to where we became a formidable industrial power, linked our coastlines, and had the where-with-all to become the ultimate immigrate problem for the indigenous peoples. The US is full of 'interesting mixes', as are many other places. For example, much of US was not initially settled by the English, and we have regional variations based on heritage, as do you, but it is significantly noteworthy that much of the US was settled by Spain long before the English - Florida, and our entire Southwest. And, due to the ignorance of many of my countrymen, the people who have lived there the longest as settlers are viewed as immigrants. "Why can't they adopt the culture." Hey, you're moving into their culture, why don't you adopt their culture. To be fair, many Americans in the Hispanic areas learn Spanish, and Latino food is very popular, also music and some pop culture. But Latinos are often treated as second class citizens. Americans have a reputations for being insular and ignorant of other cultures. I believe it is a bit unfair; near as I can tell, it's a pretty universal issue. Although, counterpoint, I was asked several times about my passport and visa, and how I would communicate, and "Will they take American money?" when I moved to New Mexico, which to be fair, had only been a state for just under seventy years at that point. Oh, and 'immigrants from Puerto Rico'. Or Guam. Or half a dozen other territories. "You know Puerto Rico is a US territory, an its people are citizens, right? There's more Americans in Puerto Rico that in several smaller US states." You can immigrate from lots of places to the US, but Puerto Rico isn't one of them; you are just moving. (Sadly, you likely gain the right to vote in national elections. That's another story.) Yes, it is; Indians have many regional languages, so, to speak to each other, they all learn English, and their thickly accented version is actually the norm. A bit of conflation there, I think. The Gospel of Thomas is also attributed to the same Thomas, but I don't think the indigenous Indian church holds it as anything; they only share alleged source. For what it's worth, I think the founding of the church sounds likely; the authorship of various apocryphal gospels, less so. Spreading the word is what the apostles were allegedly commissioned to do, so it would have been in character, whereas variant religious tracts had numerous authors, many of whom were not above using the cachet of a big name to promote their work. Wiki agrees: "The text's authorship by Thomas the Apostle is rejected by modern scholars." It seems to have some core Christian doctrine along with some Gnostic ideas. I haven't read it. Twenty years ago I would have said, "and I wouldn't know where to find a copy", but it's probably available online. Come to think of it, you know that, you quoted it. They're not that old. Good point. There is a religious tenet that the whole hangs together. I think there is truth in that, but also a level of fog from the fact that it was sourced through people, who wrote what they did in the context of their culture. You really can't take much of it at face value; often, it means the opposite of what it seems to say on the surface. Not the least contributor to that is the Hebrew poetic writing style of the earliest books, where hyperbole seems to be the norm. '... was the greatest prophet/strongest man/wisest man/biggest flood ever' is highly suspect. "Oh, really? Did you meet all the others? What about the ones that haven't been born/happened yet?" And a lot is lost in translation, especially when the translator has a doctrinal ax to grind. Don't get me started on the 'week of creation'. "Really, seven day, huh? And how were they measured? No eye witnesses, you know, not human ones. Hmm, this appears to coincide with an outline of cosmology, are you sure you're not reading too much into your interpretation of the word 'day' in the Hebrew poetic version of creation?" <face palm> All good points. Capital punishment is unpopular, for good reasons; it is too easy to abuse. Places that have it tend toward authoritarian, and use it to eliminate opposition and/or cow the populace. A callous system can execute many innocents. I'm not a fan, but unfortunately, I think it's necessary. Some time, for some people, your best contribution to society may be as an object lesson. It is like your immune system. Too aggressive, and it will kill you. Not aggressive enough, and you're ripe for infection. (For you engineering types, this smacks of control theory.) Thank you, right? If you are a guest in someone's home, you respect the host. If you are a guest in someone's country, you respect your hosts. If you can't do that, please don't visit us. Stay in your glorious cultural paradise. I'm not sure where you're going with your test, but I would view it as provocative if you served someone something against his faith as a test. I mean, if the Nazis had said, "Here, eat this shrimp, then you can go", that's cool, it beats the alternative, but it's still provocative. The closest predecessor I can think of is Pravda, which is in name truth, but was primarily propaganda, and in an odd twist, manages to still be propaganda. Then they had Krokidil, which seems to be a print analog of The Daily Show; a trustworthy news source. I think you could add, 'wielding considerable power and influence'.

I'm definitely pro Bono. I think he and Cher did some good work together.

The US has a history of ant-Catholicism. So, the 13 original colonies were a mix of English royal grants to various people, and Britain had it's own recent history of breaking away from Catholicism at the time. Unlike Luther, and Huss, and Menno, the English break was about royal succession, Henry VIII needed an heir. The pope wouldn't grant him an out, so he broke away. Then Britain has internal conflicts between Catholic factions and Anglican factions. Down the timeline, Cromwell consolidated Anglican power, and invaded Catholic Ireland. Then further down the road, the royals are reestablished, and there's a general cultural acquiescence to Anglicanism; other religions are not given much tolerance. Many, if they have the favor of the king,, often in lieu of a debt being repaid, receive a grant in the Americas for a colony of their like minded folk; out of sight, out of mind. Quakers, unpopular for their pacifism, settle Pennsylvania. Lord Baltimore receives Maryland as a Catholic refuge. The Pilgrims flee here as well, aiming for the Virginia colony, but get lost and found Massachusetts. The the Puritans come and take it over. They are kind of dicks, they are the ones famous for the witch trials. A couple of centuries later, many Irish flee a famine in their homeland. They are easily identified and Catholic, so they are hated as our immigrant problem. Also we have a Civil War (so to speak, it was not particularly civil). The south is largely flavors of Protestant, so when they loose, and the southern veterans form the Klu Klux Klan to attempt to klandestinely retain control, they make one of their tenets "hate the Catholics". Fast forward another century, and there is a huge influx of immigrants fleeing various European conflicts, coming here for industrial jobs, and various flavors of Catholicism become normative in the north east US. Onion domed churches were notable, but not all that unusual. Then, late in the 20th Century, the US South attracted industry from the Northeast by being anti-union. So I have Catholic friends here, and as long as we stay in the urban areas, they might as well be in the Northeast, but stray outside of town, and you'll only see century old tiny Baptist and Methodist churches, along with the occasional Confederate flag. It's worse in Britain. "The troubles" in Northern Ireland are all about Protestant, mainly Anglican, possession of the upper end of mainly and historically Catholic Ireland. Scotland has much reason historically to hate England, and was the home of the Catholic faction in the internal struggles. This is still an issue for them. An interesting side effect of colonialism; India is decidedly not primarily a Christian nation, yet, they have so many people, they are said to have more Anglicans than England, they have a massive number of Catholics, and they have an indigenous church, said to have been founded by the apostle Thomas, the "I won't believe it unless I see him." guy. Yeah, pretty sure that's true. Funny thing, one of the few Christian radio personalities that I can recall that was not always money grubbing was a Catholic priest, J. Vernon McGee, who had a show, Through the Bible, where he would explain his take on what some passage or section was about. He was on for years, and they played tapes of him long after he died. I recall him being reasonable and polite, not particularly controversial, which may have been intentional, perhaps he avoided mentioning controversial topics, and I don't recall him ever asking for funds. Witch test The Bible is published as a single book, generally, but is in fact a collection of works spanning hundreds of years. Even individual books within the Bible are controversial for maybe having more than one author over a period of time. The canon, this list of books to include, varies a bit by faith; obviously Jews do not include the New Testament, but there are several books excluded by some and included by others. Some read like history, and some, the ones no one includes, read like bad fan fiction. The pieces are reasonably consistent over the millenia but not 100%, in part due to being translated and re-translated. The collection of pieces for the New Testament has some "not all manuscripts include the following" places, where perhaps someone recalled details later, of possibly someone embellished. And that's just the mainstream. There are outliers, like the Mormons, who have whole books they add. (It's a long story, ask, and I'll post some half-assed account.) Personally, I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. There's some really deep stuff there. Real or not, Jesus is a genuinely interesting character. I have my doubts that any author is competent enough to have invented him. Then some stuff, like Noah's ark, it has to be a paraphrase; it's in too many prior cultures, it has to be local, the biosphere does not evidence a worldwide flood of the magnitude of the popular image of Noah's flood. Allegedly written by Moses, he was hundreds of years later, so obviously not an eye witness. Your link was news to me, I don't know how I missed the event(s). There were more at the bottom of the article. And here's the thing; clearly there is an issue, small numbers, but horrific in context, of Islamic persons who don't want to assimilate aka 'be defiled by the culture around' them taking offense at those that do want to assimilate, particularly younger people, and often female, who may find not being viewed as property attractive. This can sound like Islamophobia, to buy into it wholesale as realism is overreacting. Again, small numbers; as Ecclesiastes puts it: "Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." I do think refugees should be given refuge. I've heard that in Europe, some of the younger men of the current generation of refugees rape European young girls, who they view as whores. I do hope this is not true, but if it is, it seems it would be incumbent on the populous to hang the stupid $#!%$. Everybody benefits. The right thinks our mainstream news has a liberal bias, but this is not true. There is biased left wing news, and it is generally labeled as such. The mainstream is quite centrist. The conservative news has been taken over by loonies, seriously. In fact one of Trumps more damning aspects is he embraces some of the off the chart loons. But Fox News is special, because they are a polished turd. They are very professionally presented, skilled at what they do, but it is not news. It is propaganda. They won a court case saying so. Not, "some one else won a court case saying they are not news", Fox News used the fact that they are not news to have their way about some issue. It may have been, "We don't fall under the equal time requirement", that seems to ring a bell. They were never intended to be news, they were intended from their founding to be a propaganda mouthpiece. Dig down the Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdock rabbit holes if you want to know more.

Trump's just figuring out, "Hey, maybe this is serious." Who's this Cui guy? I remember Sonny. A handful of catchy songs, Cher dumped him, did some politics, then wrapped himself around a tree while skiing.

We have different types; the Minuteman is basically a very big skyrocket firework. It's smallish so that it can be easily transported. The crawler was for the Saturn, for the moon shot. There may well have been an equivalent for the earlier shots. The crawler is weird, as is the whole setting. It is enormous, like small fleet of bulldozers coupled together, but I've seen it up close, and it doesn't look big. You mind can't get a handle on it. Even worse it the freaking Vehicle Assembly Building. It's so freaking big, there's nothing around for your head to compare it to. Put it this way, as you approach, about an hour out, you'll see a yard shed, standing alone. It will slowly grow in your vision as you drive towards it, but there's nothing around it. When you get pretty close, you'll notice a dusting of toy cars and trees and such around it's base. In maybe ten minutes, you are pulling in and parking with them, and this huge building is looming over you. The crawler was still intact in the late 80s, as was the building, but some parts of the Saturn infrastructure were discarded, burning their bridges to ensure the Shuttle went forward. Aluminum is a questionable material to use for several reasons, although it is widely used. Titanium has an elastic limit, like iron and steel, and can withstand a bit of deformation. It's light as well, though I think aluminum may be lighter. Aluminum has no elastic limit, and develops growing fractures every time it is stressed; a really bad choice for an airplane. That's why they have to be constantly inspected and are often grounded for fractures. The C-5 fleet was having issues within a couple of decades. OTOH, the Buff and the Russian bomber are both geriatric, roughly 60 years old, so it can work. If you really want light, I believe magnesium has been used in a few aircraft. All the risks of aluminum, plus a spectacularly bright burning. I like the idea of the shuttle, but the reality didn't live up to the expectations. Maybe that's why no one else pursued it.

Interesting. We are being told "six feet", essentially two meters.

The V-2 is fairly heavily constructed, for a rocket. Modern rockets require a structure to hold them up until full, even then the gantry is only removed in the last seconds. I think everyone's designs are similar. The Shuttle was different, in that it had to support itself as an air frame during re-entry.

Could use a transition panel between 2 and 3.

Not to mention, sex and panic can be a bad combination, hazardous to Mr. Winkie if you are getting a BJ. I tend to forget that the RC church is the large phenomenon that it is. Here, it's easy to ignore if you aren't one. But yeah, some places, it's the default mental picture when you hear, "Christian". I've been some flavor of Protestant all my life, with mild exposure to Roman Catholic beliefs. I've come to the conclusion that they are not really better or worse than other flavors of Christianity, just a different set of what they do well and what they do poorly. I skimmed your linked article, and props to him for trying; he's way more reflective than thoughtful than I would expect a pope to be. That said, some of the statements are just weird. Can't have gay clergy? Seems to ignore the history of the monastic system in Europe through the centuries, or so I am led to believe. Priest and Vatican theologian Priest Krzysztof Charamsa was stripped of his posts after announcing he was in a homosexual relationship? Well, that's consistent with their stance that priests must be single (which they toy with rolling back sometimes), so I guess they would have done for a heterosexual relationship; he's kind of grinding his heel in on that one. Personal opinion here, it's the stuff you make up as you're going along that tends to be dangerously off mark. I don't know when the whole notion of priests can't marry was introduced, it was early on relative to today, but the earliest church did not practice that. Recall, they were Jews. Jewish rabbis marry. Taking a basic human need and denying it in that fashion is asking for trouble, and they've had theirs. But, like I said, just a different sett of what they do poorly. Interesting article. I think you make a fair point, but remember, the whole point of the Reds was to change the way things were being done. Also, to be fair, Fascists reacting badly to people who think differently is consistent with who they are and what they do; for them, this is not an outlier. Every culture has influences, historical and external. That just explains how they get to where they are; it's not an apologia for the beliefs and practices. "We used to be Christian" seems a bit lame; "You also used to be Monarchists". Although, as the article points out, not within the mainstream scope of their philosophy, but hey, how can you say you have an encompassing philosophy of society yet ignore a side of basic human function? I'll add my own quirk to this; I don't buy that the Soviet Union and their satellite states were essentially Communist. Briefly, maybe, in the early 1920s, but after that, not so much; they persecuted unions. Their brand of totalitarian was an awful lot like Fascism. There are states that are Communist, but they aren't them. I guess we'd call it CINO. (Modern Russian oligarchs have more or less owned up to this). What are you talking about? Where did this happen? I cannot think of any essentially matriarchal culture; I can think of many that have some matriarchal component. Tribal societies, essentially cultures of extended families, have aspects of their culture dominated by the women. I guess it's like two cultures overlaid, one male, one female. Rarely, the females will get pissed off enough at the males to live separately. That appears to be a function of settling down and building towns. Becoming something beyond tribal. Having property beyond the immediate, then treating women and children as resources to be exploited. I don't think it was a major factor. Today, because of how it's used, it is a major factor in justifying numerous kinds of cultural wrongs. It is very flexible in that regard; it is easy to read in what you want to see. This is a major theme of the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish powers of his day. If he's a fictitious character, he's at least an icon of doing what's right in spite of the surrounding religious culture. Recall, his own followers were flabbergasted that he would talk openly with a woman as if she were a person, rather than chattel (John 4). I think your perception is based on how weird what passes for news is here. You've had equivalences to Fox News, but they are historical relics at this point, aberrations that have passed. We are still living in this bullshit, and it isn't collapsing yet. Here, we don't kill women for speaking out. That happens in places.

I think they'd count this as an emergency. You'll likely need a crown, they aren't cheap. Two visits, one to order the crown and get a temp plastic tooth, and one to install the crown. Insurance will cover much of it, if you're under your max. This early in the year, you should be.

Hence, "... she has some hanky panky related knowledge", deliberately non-specific. That one is a bit much. Even toddlers know something is up when they walk in on mommy and daddy (or whoever), and Rhoda is mature enough to have hormonal urges. She may be an innocent temple vergin, but she seems to have an idea about how to remedy that. Christianity embraces Judaism, not necessarily in healthy ways; but it was initially viewed as a sect of Judaism. Islam derives from both, but rewrites much. The rationale is "greatest prophet"; some might see him as self-serving to make this claim. As far as Christianity being anti gay, I know why you think so, indeed, the hypocracy of the stance and of the hard core believers who centralize that as their belief system; I've heard Ted Haggard speak in person in the 1990s, years before his anti-gay tirade, he was talking about reaching unreached people in isolated places around the world, and hew was dynamic and innovative. And, to be fair, at the time, if he had an anti-gay tirade, I would have been on board. Then hearing of his tirade, not Fred Phelps level, but still adamant and long term, then him getting caught with a male hooker, ... Dobson is another one. Why the #$%& did you stop focusing on your family and start focusing on being a dick to gay people? Because, the one thing that is clear is that if you do buy into the Christian belief system, it's all about grace. Your shit stinks as bad as everybody else's. That is the one piece you have to own, or you are totally #$%&ing wasting your time. I mentioned why I changed my mind, an overview, really. Contact with reasonable people who were not straight. Pretty much this movie. I have family and in laws and friends that are LGBQTXYZ. And, yes, I've met some that are assholes, but so are many straight folks; many, many straight folks. So yeah, I get that the fundies are quite vocal and visible and you can smell their stench, but there are Christian churches that are gay friendly; something you might want to make note of, because I've seen videos of LGBBQ young people grieving feeling cut off from the God they've been raised to understand because their church has rejected them, and their community suicide rate is high; pointing them toward a place where they can get some affirmation could be a life saver. I don't know all that much about how non-monotheistic cultures are in this regard; but WW II Germany, which was oddly religiously endorsed and hostile to religion targeted gays for extermination, and the atheistic Eastern Bloc, maybe particularly the Soviet Union, also outlawed homosexuality. <shrug>, Maybe it's in our DNA, and it requires education to overcome it, just like so much of culture, like not stealing from your neighbor. I suspect that is indeed the case. Women are treated as property in much of the world, which reflects our heritage, and the Bible reflects that. Our modern, enlightened culture is not so far removed that women have equal pay and freedom from harassment, at least not here, nor in Latin America, nor in Russia, nor in China, nor in the few Islamic states where they are not property. Is Europe better in this regard?