The Tanakh was written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

There is a small group that thinks that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic. The supporting evidence is that some books in the NT might have originally been written in Aramaic. Some books (2 John, 3 John, Revelation) clearly were not originally written in Aramaic.

A much smaller group claims that the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

Forty years ago one could buy an electric car that had a 500 mile range for under US$20K. I don't remember how long it took to recharge the battery though. :(

Literally everything in that vehicle was covered by an NDA. If you bought one, you had to sign an NDA.
The ultimate insult was when one of those vehicles was involved in an accident, and the manufacturer insisted that the traffic cop that took the accident report sign an NDA.

Other than that stupid NDA, it was a pretty good vehicle.

I've occasionally wondered what would have happened, had the owner of the company that made those vehicles been willing to distribute without requiring the NDA. (Ironically enough, he also taught new age classes on why the universe requires one to give everything away.)

The united states has not formally declared war in almost sixty years.

However, the united states has participated in over one hundred wars since then, and in most of them had the crap beaten out of them.

Amber

If your pretax gross income for the taxable year is zero dollars and zero cents, and you fail to purchase health insurance, you are automatically fined, with the state having the option of also sending you to jail.

Amber

Here is a challenge for you:

Write a defense of creationism or homeopathy. Or, if you sympathize with those, write a paper that criticizes it.

In each instance, cite the scientific research, and use the chain of logic and reason that supports whichever stance you take, on whichever position you select. Take a long hard, critical look at the citations, research, and evidence you utilize.

You get a pass on the paper, only if nobody realizes that it advocates and supports a position that you neither hold, nor accept.

Until you can do that, you are utterly clueless about the position you allegedly hold, and even more clueless about the position that you allegedly reject.

Amber

You have to install the grammar checkers for OOo as extensions. Which grammar checkers to install depends upon which languages you want to do grammar checking in.

Amber

>I don't know what books you've been reading, but aside from "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", I can't remember the last time I read the kinds of errors you describe. Outside of a self-published book, that is.

Pick up _any_ mass market paperback that was published in the last five years by any publisher and you will find spelling errors and grammatical errors in abundance.

>A nationwide advertising campaign would only need modest tweaks per state.

For the united states, try tweaks per school district, sewer district, fire district, EMS district, and various other government agencies, over and above those for the county, and the township.

amber

>f you have an unlimited plan, why would you need the text message?

So you don't hit the limits in the unlimited plan.

(And yes, those unlimited plans do have limits. Limits that the carriers don't usually bother to tell you about, until you are hit with the overage fees.)

Amber

>help the people in their communities get better access to books?

Try finding a copy of the first translation of _The Gospel of Judas_, into English, at your local library.

This might be an edge case, because the odds that your local library ever had that in their collection are virtually zero. Furthermore, one can legitimately argue that the later translations are of much higher quality. (The translation sponsored by National Geographic was published more than a decade after the first translation.)

In passing, I'll point out that the book scanner would miss that first edition, whilst the book scout would pick out that first edition. (If you can find it on the Internet, it has a low price. It does, however, even factoring in the pirated copies --- which most of the distributed copies are --- fit the category of what is described as "extremely rare".)

amber

>Thrift stores generally operate as a form of social program.

In your dreams.

The local non-profit running a thrift store with a volunteer staff is a thing of the past.

Thrift stores in the united states are owned and run by for-profit corporations. for their profitability, not that of the non-profit charitable organization that they allegedly help. (Virtually all thrift stores are part of a for-profit chain.)

That there are any books, videos, DVDs, CDs, or albums that can be sold online for more than the store lists it at, is due to management problems. (All of the chains of thrift stores require their managers to sort the donations, and pull whatever can sell for more on the Internet that way, and sell the rest in the retail store.)

Amber

Book scouts look for books that are either rare, or scarce.
Scanners look for books that they can sell today at a higher price than they paid for it.

Scanners invariably miss the scarce books.
Scanners invariably miss the rare books.
Scanners invariably miss the books that will be worth something tomorrow.

Those are the gems that the general public will find in the library sales.

Amber

A line item tax in most countries that succumbed to Napoleon, is for the upkeep of the state church.
Those countries have a set up a specific method of opting out of paying for state church upkeep.

With the general rise of taxes in those countries, even those faithful to the state church are opting out of paying that tax.

Give Europe another decade or so, and that line item for "state church upkeep" will be history.

>The only religious organizations that go door-to-door are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Those are not the only religious door knockers.

Mormons will be two males in dark suits. Regardless of where they are from, their clothing comes from Mormon Casting, branches of which are found through out the world.

JWs will be two women, or a man and a woman, or a man and two women. (A team is training might consist of two men, or two men and one woman.) Their attire is appropriate for a professional office.

The Scientology advocate will be one person, of either gender, in attire that might be appropriate for casual Friday at the office. (On second thoughts, HR will probably write them up for failing to adhere to the casual Friday dress code.)

2x2's will be either one man and one woman, or two men, in attire that is appropriate for a professional office.

Groups of more than three are either leafleting or pamphleteering the area, and not knocking on doors. Typically they have no idea what to do, if you open the door when they put their material on your door.

The other religious groups that go door knocking are extremely rare, and have no consistent patterns.

Amber

>pick up a random set of bible studies. See if they advertise that they are designed for a particular denomination

Whilst you might not find the name of the specific denomination that the Bible Studies are targeted for, in the advertising, the publishing house is usually enough to tell you which denomination it was designed for. For content labeled "non-denominational", it is only slightly harder to tell which denomination is intended, than stuff that is labeled for a specific denomination.

Amber