Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Watch it again, there's an obvious edit immediately before the response. Without raw footage, we have no idea what question was being called a "clown question". It may well have been that particular one (edit removing pause or unrelated outburst or some sort), or it could have been a compl...

I do what I can to participate, either vocally or internally. If the lesson/talk is less than participatory, it usually at least sows seeds of thoughts of what to study to fill in the gaps. I'm teetering on the edge of wanting to buy a notepad or something to access the Tanakh without having to pack...

Marduk wrote:People aren't objects? Then why do I keep treating them like objects?

....

Especially women. Women are totally objects.

Objectivism at its core.

TheBlackSheep wrote:Imma cut you.

And the obvious response thereunto.

mic0 wrote:Is it obsolete if they're all using it?

/so deep.

It may well still be. It's just that we are as well.

Of course libido is not in and of itself selfish. It just is what it is, and how individuals address it determines how it affects others. To say "I'm not marrying you unless we get to have sex X times per unit time" sure comes across to me as a dangerous proposition. And considering the nu...

Also, the part of that show that disturbed you for days actually had no graphic visuals whatsoever. It was all in what was implied, and the details your mind filled in. Which is interesting, because I think most of us usually think much inappropriate activity is OK in media as long as it's off-scre...

Maybe I'm way outside the norm here, but at this point in my life, sex certainly isn't everything, but the drive for it is up there with food, water, air. Yet while the sex drive can (and to some, often) feels like a vital one, it is not. And there are times that we are asked to fast and postpone e...

I am far more tolerant of the more graphic crime-scene violence than any form of sexuality in the media. As long as it is done well, the CGI up close and personal scenes made popular by shows like CSI can be actually quite educational (Both academically and experientially; I learned of some of the d...

Other potential cultural influences that contradict out of the same desire: prayer with hats off/on (maybe hands folded vs upraised vs other as a sister to this), respect of Diety by avoiding / seeking out the use of his name, quiet somber hymns vs energetic spirited songs, striving to be spiritual ...

Wait, so you and yours are the formal ones? Weird... Yep! Look at them in terms of Indo-European cognates: English German French Welsh Russian Informal thou du tu ti tyi Formal ye Sie vous chi vyi Notice that the informal pronouns all start with a dental sound (t/d/th). (The formal pronouns aren't ...

The Ashkenazim (middle European Jews, roughly) shy away from lamb on passover, out of respect of the temple that is lost and the sacrifice that can no longer take place. On the other hand Sephardi Jews try to include it out of remembrance of the same.

My brother mocks the practice of eating lamb on Easter and Christmas, the holidays which we celebrate the life of a Jewish man. Why would this be mockable? And recipes aside, getting the right lamb is huge, older lamb will have more lanolin and taste more 'sheep-y'. Generally when people dislike th...

I'm a little surprised anyone would think size doesn't matter. Would you be comfortable having the same rules and structure at a national level as are in place in your home? The government would fall apart within weeks, methinks. Yet I'd call my home pretty dang close to ideal, when it comes to rule...

Finally got my hands on a copy of Hunger Games, now to find time to tuck it away....

Aye, I agree about my tone, which is one of the big reasons I try to avoid political conversations. Politics as currently situated is a very adversarial medium, and at least one study has shown evidence to the effect of a near-total drop from frontal cortex to limbic, roughly meaning that when a top...

Eh, not a big deal either way, just always a shame to see otherwise intelligent individuals acting (in my opinion) contrary to their norm. Fred: the paragraph at the end of my last post with the suggestion of three focuses was a direct paraphrase of the bill that was passed, and now vetoed. We are b...

If you take the slope (first derivative) of a position vs time graph you get velocity. Taking the slope of a velocity vs time graph gives acceleration. Which makes sense: slope is rise over run, if rise is position in meters, and run is seconds, your slope is in units of meters per second, or veloci...

Hmm, ST:TNG (mostly), Firefly (sans Serenity). I'm maybe a handful to a dozen episodes shy of seeing all of The Pretender.

ooo! and the first season of Top Shot on the History Channel! (yay for free shows online!)

Honestly, I just like Frankincense's smell. Boswellic acid is supposed to be anti-inflamitory, which would likely help with headaches when boosted by lavender's vasodiliation. most of the scientific studies I've seen on Boswellic acid deals with apparent apoptosis of certain cancers, which has plent...

Quick question for everyone interested: how many people here have actually read the bill and know what it is that everyone is in a froth about? Do people realize that the "abstinence only" portion of the bill is referring to the only way to prevent STDs? That and allowing local school dist...