Probably the best explanation I've come across in quite some time.

I've lived in the Sahara with no air conditioning. Hot? Yes. Livable? Yup. Is it worth our time and effort to pour billions into politicized science, when we will in nearly every scenario do better to invest those dollars elsewhere? Not. A. Chance.

You're missing the whole story. There's the issue of the 'Old Covenant' vs. the 'New Covenant', and how Christ fulfilled the law (this being God's plan all along: see Old Testament discussions of the Messiah). The idea is that there are repercussions for breaking God's laws, and Christ ended up paying the price for us through His sacrifice.

Perhaps a better understanding of what exactly the Old Testament represents to Christians would provide a better understanding of these conundrums? And perhaps the logic of a being that exists outside even time wouldn't necessarily have the same basis as our reasoning?

Damned Straight. I'm sorry, but who we elect as our leader is up to us, not Norway, or Sweden, or Africa for that matter. I'm not saying it doesn't affect them, I'm saying it's not their choice, and I don't need their approval. In fact, I could give a crap whether they approve of who I vote for or not.

While I'm glad the Nobel Peace Prize committee seems to like our current president, if he screws up now, he (and they) will have all sorts of mud on their faces.

Unabashedly American, EaglemanBSA.

Seconded. I haven't actually said anything about up 'til now but I'm not going to buy a game I have to log in to their specific server to play. The fun is in the LAN parties where it takes no time to set up and play a bunch of people at once.

If they're going to be Microsoft-esque in making sure my copy is genuine, I'll just go play something else. There are plenty of games out there that can be just as fun without the bullshit.

Not only that, but the ability measure longitude at sea was pretty much nonexistent until at least the 15th century, and latitude not that much before. The idea that a map from any time before that could be remotely accurate for absolute distances on Earth from a ship at sea is ridiculous.

The _readable_ transcription of Mark in this copy (if you look at the page, you can see that there are illegible marks at the end of the book) ends before discussion the resurrection, but Matthew Luke and John all describe the resurrection. FTFY.

A pretty good approximation for a society that usually measured them using their forearms, if you ask me. Round 3.14 to the nearest cubit, what do you have? Very closely, 3.

Personally, I don't have a lawyer like the rest of you snobs.

Savage just doesn't sound like the name of a guy who would go into law, you know? My gun is rather loud and intimidating though :-D

Incidentally, my hard drive is virtual.

Really? Come on now, I own a rifle, does that mean I shoot people? I have strong encryption on my hard drive, does that make me a terrorist?

In all honesty, my rifle, my 4096-bit encrypted hard drive, and the idea that I choose the best operating system or combination thereof that suits me as a consumer do nothing but support the idea that I am a law-abiding, dutiful citizen.

People fear what they don't understand.

Not trying to flame here, just trying to put the perspective straight - we've been in Iraq since 2003. That's longer than our involvement in World War II (1941-1945) , but less than the 16 year Vietnam Conflict - In fact, if you don't count Vietnam, this is the longest major conflict we've been a main aggressor in since the American Revolution (8 years).

The congressional budget office studied exactly this (distributed generation) in 2003 after the blackout, and determined that there would be significant economic and infrastructural benefits from such a system - it would, however, require a significant overhaul of our existing grid to control all the variable power being added. In the end, it's been largely ignored, Heaven knows why. There are a lot of merits to a system like this, among them energy independence, as well as infrastructure security. If each city block or even city for that matter is generating its own power, how can you attack that infrastructure on a national scale?

Lame indeed! This basically exploits the fact that you can easily write and execute code - find me an operating system where you can't do this.

The whole scheme hinges on the user being an idiot in terms of what they open in their email - seems to me there's little in the way of guarding against such 'vulnerabilities'...build a more idiot-proof system and the world will build a bigger idiot.