Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

chit (n.) - (chiefly British) a note; short memorandum.

From The Daily Show's coverage of the India elections.

peen (v.) - to strengthen (a metal surface) by light hammering or by bombardment with steel balls or shot.

This poem has really interesting images. I like the idea of having them illustrate the lines. Note of course the nine lines and nine syllables in each line corresponding to the nine-month gestation period. But I'd probably move past the riddle aspect of the poem and look more closely at the construc...

irredentism (n.)
a member of a party in any country advocating the acquisition of some region included in another country by reason of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties.

Came up in some discussions about Russia/Ukraine

Adynaton
hyperbole that insinuates a complete impossibility (ie, "when pigs fly")

paronomastically

by means of a play on words, esp. a pun

arthrous:
Of, pertaining to, or being the use of a term together with a grammatical article.

It came up during a discussion about The Gambia

Ward missionary = the calling people get if they don't have a calling (especially if they are new to the ward)

No Dice wrote:But apparently this all means God's sexist? I am lost also.

In the same way God was a racist, but apparently He changed His views on that. So we can have hope that God will cease being sexist sometime in the future.

mic0 wrote:I watched Mobsters and Mormons with a bunch of not-even-religious friends last night. It was pretty fun.

I saw that one on the big screen!

The vasectomy thing very few people know about. Plenty of people who have gotten vasectomies who never thought to bring the topic up with their bishop (because why would they?). I'd imagine the same is true of surrogacy. I think the positions taken in the Church Handbook of Instruction on these issu...

I mean in terms of the theology. Motherhood is a divine role, so does the surrogate mother have a link to the child due to the spiritual bonding that takes place during gestation? Does an unmarried woman have the right to be a surrogate mother, when the church proscribes reproduction/parenthood outs...

Because it complicates things.

chyron - television graphics that occupy the lower area of the screen

(due to the popularity of Chyron Corporation's Chiron I character generator, an early digital solution developed in the 1970s for rendering lower thirds)

My wife jokes with me about how she almost didn't say yes to our second date because of the ugly plaid flannel thing I wore to our first date. Anyways, I think there is undoubtedly a level of judgment that takes place based on appearances, but in terms of getting the right man, well, I don't think w...

I've walked out of a good number of clean-flix edited films. I have high aesthetic standards.

Katya wrote:

Cindy wrote:It looks like they both are based on the Latin root pugnare, meaning "to fight."

Huh. Like "pugnacious" and "pugilistic"?

And pug dogs?

And that mother should have put her foot down and said, "I'm going to the hospital. This can't be safe for my baby." But it sounds like in this case it was the mother who said she didn't want to go to the hospital. The question becomes, at what point should a midwife put her foot down and...

I did see the movie and it really opened up a new perspective for me that I really appreciate having. I think it does a good job of showing some of the issues that arise when you treat birth as a de facto medical procedure rather than a naturally occurring event. My wife and I still chose to go the ...