Nightingale

Very true. Guns don't make you safe. They can make you safer. Without proper training, they can put you in more danger.

I really hope you never need to know how to defend yourself and never need a gun either, Bill. I'd love to see a time come when self defense wasn't something we had to worry about. Unfortunately, I've seen far too many people come through my karate classes who thought they'd never need self defense, thought they'd never be victims, because most people aren't victims, they're always careful of course, and violence happens to people on TV, not to you and me... and they found out they were wrong. And they ended up in my class when it was too damn late to do something about what had already happened. Then, I see things like this and realize that those victims aren't nearly as rare as we'd like to believe: The odds of being a victim of a violent crime during adulthood are greater than 2 to 1. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Youth Violence Research Bulletin — February 2002) In 2003, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced an estimated 24.2 million violent and property crimes. (U.S. Department of Justice, National Crime Victimization Survey — September 2004) One in six American women are victims of sexual assault, and one in 33 men. -Purdue.edu Persons age 12 or older experience an average of more than 140,000 rapes, 109,000 attempted rapes, and 152,000 sexual assaults and attempted sexual assaults per year (strangers or acquaintances). (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention, 1992-2000 — August 2002) Approximately 1.5 million women and 835,000 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. (National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence — July 2000) Except for rape or sexual assault, college students are most often violently victimized by someone they do not know. Victims of rape or sexual assault are about four times more likely to be victimized by someone they know than by strangers. (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violent Victimization of College Students, 1995-2002 — January 2005) The odds of being a victim of a violent crime during adolescence are greater than 2 to 1. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Youth Violence Research Bulletin — February 2002) Nearly 70 percent of adolescents are estimated to fall victim to violent crime. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Youth Violence Research Bulletin — February 2002) More than 503,000 women and 185,000 men are stalked by an intimate partner annually in the United States. (National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence — July 2000) My martial arts and my gun are like my reserve... I'd much rather have them and not need them than need them and not have them. I remember seeing a statistic that reserve rides happen about 1/500 times... and looking at the above statistics, which say I've got a 1/2 chance of being a victim of a violent crime, it seems I'm less likely to need my reserve than my self defense skills.

He did his job. Therefore, I don't care what kinds of drugs he did in his spare time.

so in your vocabulary - you refuse to even come up with a secular definition of either 'evil' or 'sin' sounds a bit frustrating to me and turns this part of the discussion away from substantive talk and into a semantics contest I don't see it as semantics at all. "Evil" and "sin" are vocabularies of the Christian faith. "right" and "wrong" are from the vocabularies of mankind. ... There are varying degrees of "right" and "wrong," which in my opinion, closely echo the degrees of "sinfulness" of Christians. Where my difference lies, is that I think it's beyond utterly ridiculous to assert that we're born in sin or as a result of sin. That's just a silly scare tactic that can be philosophized or debated to death, and still end up with no valid conclusion. ... Exactly.

So if someone raped and killed your mom, that wouldn't be evil, just a poor choice that you wouldn't have made? Evil implies that there is a higher power other than humanity at work. I'd say that kind of action would be awful and horrible and warranting either severe punishment or treatment depending on the situation, but not evil.

Go to apple.com and make an appointment online with the mac genius at your local store, then show up at your appointment time. if they can't get that file to work, they can probably authorize a new download for you. Mac customer service is wonderful. =)

I guess you get what you pay for.

I can't make it up there to see her, but if you post her hospital address (or PM), I'll send a card, and I'd bet a lot of other people would too. There's something nice about having your hospital room covered in cards from people who care.

No. I don't believe in sin. I do believe in mistakes. I believe that under any circumstance, the person will make the best choice they can under those circumstances. Sometimes it's a good choice, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's a selfish choice, sometimes selfless. Sometimes things turn out well, sometimes not. Regardless, a person will do what they think is the best thing to do. What people see as the "best" choice for them isn't always what society sees as the "right" choice. We then either take the opportunity to learn from those choices, or we ignore the opportunity and continue to make the same mistakes. We all look at the world through our own lens, using our own experiences and abilities to focus. I don't know what choices I would make if I was in someone else's situation. I'm not. It's easy to talk about what you would do or could do, but until you're actually there, you really don't know. Sometimes what I see as the right choice isn't what someone else would see. I try to make good choices because I've seen what happens when I make bad ones. I've seen what happens when other people make bad choices. I try to learn from their mistakes too. So, I don't believe in sin, and I don't believe in evil. I do believe in humanity.

If he got it for christmas, it should still be under warranty. Make an appointment with a MacGenius at your local apple store and take it in. They will make it work and show you where you went wrong, or they will fix the ipod if it is the problem.

Cancel the order. My mom and brother both have Dells, and they've been a nightmare of hardware failures. LAFD used to have Dells, and they sent every one of them back because of issue after issue and horrid customer service (customer service has been outsourced to India, and they don't communicate well with the main offices, and they never seem to have accurate info about your warranty). Dell used to make high quality machines. They don't anymore. Don't risk it, and don't put up with their issues. Then, go to www.apple.com and buy a mac. You can apply for credit online (I pay $40 a month for my iMac), design your machine custom online, and when they give you a ship date which is usually only a few days out, they meet the deadline. Pretty much all the software you need is included, AND you can get programs like boot camp and parallel that will let you boot up or run windows and windows based programs. Then, you buy the apple care 3 year extended warranty and they cover you for everything from dropping the thing to software issues to grape jelly in the keyboard, and for customer service, you can take it to your nearest apple store and deal with them face to face if you want to, or you can just send it out. Apple customer service has been awesome. I've got two macs that have needed service once each (once for the power cord... they just handed me a new one, and once for the power supply on the iMac. they fixed it in the store and had it back to me in 24 hours!) I had an iPod go out on me five days post-warranty, and since it was given to me on Christmas, and it was a few days before that, the manager just gave me a brand new one, even though it was technically out of warranty since it was purchased three weeks before Christmas. No hassle, no stress, just "here, let me take care of that for you."

When you've had a conversation with the other person and discussed your expectations for the relationship and whether you both agree to not date anyone else.

In a sushi roll... Philly Roll recipe: http://www.sushilinks.com/sushi-recipes/philadelphia-roll.html

No, I didn't get a photo. I was driving.

You know that paint that people put on cars when they're trying to sell them, or want to write about their high school football team or whatever? The paint stuff that people put all over the windows and rear windshields? I saw one a few days ago. Ford Excursion. White. Silver Jesus fish on the back. Dark tinted windows. Someone had painted yellow ribbons all over the back windshield. And then, there was white writing... "Prey for our troops." ...

Streamline administration. Fix special education. An example: About 1/4 of the budget of LAUSD goes to special education, for about 1/10 of the students. This doesn't even account for all the legal fees for special education lawsuits filed by parents (about 1/3 of the budget of PYLUSD last year). (I'm citing data I acquired from the districts for a special education law research project) Sure, there's enough money. They're just not spending it in the right places. LAUSD, with its multi-level management and huge administration overhead is just ridiculous. Also, I'm not saying special ed is the wrong place, but there's just something wrong with forcing school districts to defend lawsuit after lawsuit using taxpayer money. That's millions of dollars that should be going to educate kids that's ending up funding legal battles instead. Education funds shouldn't be paying lawyers until every kid has a textbook. Accepting IDEA and waiving our 11th amendment sovereign immunity rights was one of the dumbest things California has done.

Kewl.. plenty of new witches to burn after the Theocracy is declared. Sir Bedevere: There are ways of telling whether she is a witch. Peasant 1: Are there? Oh well, tell us. Sir Bedevere: Tell me. What do you do with witches? Peasant 1: Burn them. Sir Bedevere: And what do you burn, apart from witches? Peasant 1: More witches. Peasant 2: Wood. Sir Bedevere: Good. Now, why do witches burn? Peasant 3: ...because they're made of... wood? Sir Bedevere: Good. So how do you tell whether she is made of wood? Peasant 1: Build a bridge out of her. Sir Bedevere: But can you not also build bridges out of stone? Peasant 1: Oh yeah. Sir Bedevere: Does wood sink in water? Peasant 1: No, no, it floats!... It floats! Throw her into the pond! Sir Bedevere: No, no. What else floats in water? Peasant 1: Bread. Peasant 2: Apples. Peasant 3: Very small rocks. Peasant 1: Cider. Peasant 2: Gravy. Peasant 3: Cherries. Peasant 1: Mud. Peasant 2: Churches. Peasant 3: Lead! Lead! King Arthur: A Duck. Sir Bedevere: ...Exactly. So, logically... Peasant 1: If she weighed the same as a duck... she's made of wood. Sir Bedevere: And therefore... Peasant 2: ...A witch!

The fastest growing religion (in terms of percentage) is Wicca -- a Neopagan religion that is sometimes referred to as Witchcraft. Numbers of adherents went from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001. Their numbers of adherents are doubling about every 30 months. Wiccans in Australia have a very similar growth pattern, from fewer than 2,000 in 1996 to 9,000 in 2001. 10 In Canada, Wiccans and other Neopagans showed the greatest percentage growth of any faith group. They totaled 21,080 members in 1991, an increase of 281% when compared with 1990. -http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm I do agree with you that many people celebrating the solstice are marking the season/event. Pagans who celebrate, ime, are more likely to call the day "Yule" or "Midwinter".

Has HairyJuan ever actually posted anything at all about skydiving?

National Geographic a good enough link? This article briefly discusses modern day solstice celebrations and their connections to ancient times. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1220_021220_solstice.html If you want some specific information on the ancient Celts and solstice, google Newgrange. And yes, wicca/paganism has become much more mainstream in the last 20 years. Just as an illustration, most of the bookstores around here have more pagan books than christian ones, if you go looking through the spirituality section, even though I live in probably the most conservative and christian area of California.

Wishing you a joyous solstice, Kallend.

That's the thing about macs.... you don't need to load them up with much of anything. They come with so much software. So far, the only things I've installed on my mac have been MS word and World of Warcraft. The iLife suite is incredible. The mac comes with: iPhoto iMovie iWeb iCal iDVD GarageBand and a ton of other stuff. You'd spend a ton of money buying programs that do all this stuff for the PC. Way more than the cost of a mac.

I have noticed that a lot of the problems "switchers" encounter are often caused because the user tries to turn a one or two step process into a four or five step process. LOL! That was me. Me: I can't figure out how to install this #$%# program! James: Just drag and drop. Me: But where's the setup file? Him: there isn't one. Me: then how do I install it? Him: Drag it to your hard drive. Me: How do I do that? Him: Me: That's it?! They made it too easy! I didn't even think to try that! It makes too much sense. Computers aren't supposed to be that easy! Him: welcome to mac. There's a good reason why PCs have "users" while Macs have evangelists.

Warcraft runs better on my ibook and imac than it does on my toshiba laptop and pc desktop systems. I haven't shut down or rebooted my ibook in a year, at least. I've just never needed to.

MacBook. Best of both worlds. You've got all the amazing music and video capabilities that macs are so well known for, plus a more secure operating system and no crashing or bluescreening or rebooting. And, if you REALLY want to run windows (dunno why you'd want to do that, tho) you can run windows IN a window using Parallel, or just boot up the mac in windows mode using Boot Camp.