birdlike

Interesting idea of what a human endeavor is. Controlling a horse is at least as difficult as controlling any other 2,000 pound mass; more so in that the object has a mind of its own you're also trying to control. It's not like the horse is doing all the work all by itself! Give the greatest rider a shitty, broken-down horse; is he going to win? No. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

My dad sent this to me. A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time. So she went to the Western Wall to check it out and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site. She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview. 'Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name? 'Morris Fishbien,' he replied. 'Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?' 'For about 60 years.' '60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?' 'I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims.' 'I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop.' 'I pray for all our children to grow up safely, as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man.' 'How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?' 'Like I'm talking to a fuckin' wall!' Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

More importantly, I FLUSH the fucker before I go depositing. If I'm gonna get a splashback, I don't want but it should be the freshest possible water, with the most diluted possible concentration of other-people-shit that I can get! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Yeah, there's one in Stony Brook on Long Island, near the duck pond. I walked it with my dad, but like the one in your picture, it's not the kind with walls like in the Greek myths. You can't get "lost" because you can just walk right across it. I would love to do the real kind, like the hedge maze in The Shining! But I don't know where there is one. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I was thinking about this as I read the newspaper recently. I was reading an article that could not refer to blacks as "African-Americans" because the blacks were, I think, Canadian. So it got me thinking, ok, America is the only country where we feel like we are "doing the right thing" by going along with the black preference (is it even universal among black people in the first place?) to use "African-American" instead of "black." I mean, it has to be the only one, because you would not refer to blacks in England as "African-American" (duh!) and I can't imagine they call them "Black-Brits" or something dumb like that. I don't know that they call them anything but "blacks" there. Or Canada. So given that America is the only place where PCism demands that we can no longer use "black" and have to use "African-American," can't we say definitively that it's fuckin' stupid? If the kind of black person who prefers and demands "African-American" goes to Canada and hears "black," does she get offended? Let's hear your views about using this euphemism, please. I'm serious, I can't see how, in light of this hitch, it can even have survived as long as it has. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I was at work listening to music on my headphones today (iTunes yay!) and decided to go with a bit of a somber mood so I punched up Jewel's "Pieces of You." I want to know who's listened to it in earnest, and what you think of it. It's got some seriously dismal subject matter in it, very emotionally wrenching stuff. I really have no use for anything she has done since then (and I know the album is like over 12 years old). I just really want to know who else goes for that deliberately-let-some-music-jerk-your-emotions thing once in a while. Another one is Natalie Merchant's "Tigerlily," which also has incredibly sad songs on it ("My Beloved Wife," "River"). What do you get from these albums? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

There have been many documented cases where people have confessed for various reasons (pressure, not understanding proceedings, mental illness, notoriety, etc...) and have been found to be innocent later on. I just cannot see anyone being willing to confess to a capital crime because of "pressure." If you didn't do it, the words, "OK, I did it," should never come out of your mouth. And if there was no pressure, and some nutball just wants to confess, who am I to tell him he can't take the rap for the crime? Sorry, it's not society's fault some people are the sick "confessor" types. But who said I was talking strictly from a confession standpoint? How about the guy who shot that DNC guy, or Colin Ferguson from the LIRR in '94 or '95? NO QUESTION about guilt. If the DNC shooter had not been killed, but instead faced trial and execution, where would the ambiguity be? What cause would death penalty opponents have to say, "We could be making a mistake and killing the wrong guy"? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I would love to read in depth what a person in your position (you're a cop, I take it?) feels ought to be done, or could be done, to remedy that situation. I mean every possibility would be on the table, from a Nazi-esque "You contribute nothing, so you die" kind of thing all the way to the "Oh, let us throw educational opportunities and remedial classes at you until you manage to graduate with a degree" feelgood socialism. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

And essentially unavailable in MOST of the country. http://www.abortionisprolife.com/statistics.htm (6) physician shortage in many counties so that woman must travel to major cities to have an abortion (84% of all counties in the U.S. have no abortion provider, and 94% of rural counties have none), Supply would not be expected to follow demand? I somehow doubt that if there was sufficient desire for abortions in more places that no one would end up showing up to perform them there. Besides, I don't really guess that the places that really need the kind of "service" that abortion provides really concentrate out in the sticks so much as in the inner cities and metropolitan areas where no, I don't think there is a shortage of abortion providers. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I'm interested that your solution is to bump a prisoner off, rather than the pretty obvious alternative of making the prison secure in the first place. Don't you think that prisons are already an attempt to keep criminals securely inside and away from the public? You make it sound like no one's thought of making prisons secure and that's why these dangerous criminals escape to kill more people. For what it's worth, JohnRich did not suggest "bumping off" anyone. Execution is done with the legal authority of the state. "Bumping off" is an illicit killing. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Ummhhh....they don't care, or maybe they get paid for each child in some states? That's partly my point. I wasn't asking, it was rhetorical. I was getting at the point that nothing is currently stopping these unfit people from not having kids. There are free condoms, there is abortion, there's even adoption, but instead of choosing any of those three, they are still going ahead and raising little monsters in horrible homes, teaching horrible values. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Maybe they'll give winners the option of bronze, silver and gold "grillz" soon? Wait, maybe they already do: is there Olympic "Double Dutch"? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I saw a funny political cartoon today by Walt Handelsman (sp?) the guy who does "Zits," and it shows Michael Phelps on the podium and he's saying, "Hey, wait a minute, these are chocolate coins!" (Somewhere in the frame is the headline about the fake fireworks and the fake singing. Hey, did you realize that I started the "was it a mistake giving China the olympics" thread before any of this fraud/fake shit started breaking?!) Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Sort of like if you were going to sell a gun to someone as a private seller at a gun show. The law (what some call the "loophole") does not obligate you to do a background check but will hold you accountable if the person you sell your gun to is prohibited from buying firearms. Now, is there a law that mandates employers (of anyone) checking to see that they have legal status, or is it just like with the guns, where nobody makes you check, but making a mistake can get you into trouble? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

You sound like a Republican person who obeys the law and uses logic and reasoning. Fixed it for you. "Can you dig it?! I knewwww thatcha coulllld! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

You sound like a Republican. So did Amazon. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Stick with JohnRich. I don't think I've ever known him to end up wrong about things. At least, not in the threads I've read. The guy just doesn't open his mouth unless he knows what the fuck he's talking about. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

You are just evil enough that I'm starting to like you, Billvon. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

That's what is so truly fucked up about advocates for illegal workers. They have to contort into paradoxes just to get what they want for people who have no right to even be here. So at their own expense, these businesses have to provide safety and dignity to people who are criminals just for being there. They have to give up their control of their own private property, and by extension give up control of a portion of their own fortune to give this stuff for free to the laborers. What the fuck is this guy talking about regarding "dignity"?! These are people who have given up their dignity willingly. Or are the neighbors who complain about them pissing and drinking beer and fighting and stuff all lying? What a sickening state of affairs. If I were the owner of such a business, I'd tell the legislators to fuck themselves, I'd call the cops and swear out trespassing complaints on the illegals on a daily basis, and if they wanted to haul me into court, I'd say, "I'll see you before Justice Alito, motherfuckers!" Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

It's useless because if person already believes in God, they do not need any revelations or proofs of his existence. If a person gets that kind of revelation, he then believes in God because of knowledge of God instead of FAITH in God. I think that kind of screws with God's plan, actually. Isn't he really big on people putting faith in him, and it's important to him that they believe without needing proof? --- Shit, if God gave me a convincing revelation, I'D believe in him, and yeah, I'd do the worshipful, "live my life for God" thing. Hell yeah I would, because if I came to be 100% convinced there's an afterlife in Heaven I could earn, I'd bend over backwards to earn it! Now, I'd be unable to prove that I was not simply delusional, but that's different issue. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Exactly, Billvon. To claim to know with confidence and certainty that your GUESS as to what kind of coin is in the box is a fallacy. One must admit that to make a selection without knowing is a guess. By nature, a guess can be wrong. So if one chooses to follow one of a dozen gods, forsaking the other 11 which all have the exact same amount of evidence to support their existence and supremacy (which of course is Zero), one must be guessing; therefore there is a chance that his God is a nonexistent thing--really just a concept of an entity without any such entity actually existing. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Whereas if you don't want to believe in ALL of them (which is a reasonable decision), and you PICK ONE, you're being ARBITRARY, which to me is the same as an admission that you can't guarantee you got the right one, and your God might be pure bunk. No one who GUESSES can claim to KNOW that he guessed right until someone in authoritiy reveals the correct answer, yes? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Man, it's very frustrating that I have to spend most of my time in SC chasing down and explaining why bad analogies are bad. We can fairly assume that there is matter in other parts of the universe because WE occupy a part of the universe and we can use our scientific knowledge to see the matter around us, and see the evidence of matter in far-flung parts of the universe. For example, we know about stars because hey, we live near one. We know what it does, and we can tell what it's made from. Hence, when we see stars in the distance, in other galaxies, we can say hey, ours is made of matter, theirs probably is too. But we have NOT seen comparable evidence or proof of a GOD here, so we can't say that there's a likelihood of a God anywhere else. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

When everyone knows what any other euphemism they might have employed actually meant, does it really make any difference if they substitute some P.C. bullshit like "destructive landing event"? Are we that thin-skinned? Are we about to see a poll on SC: "Does the use of the world 'CRASH' in aviation parlance OFFEND you?" I find this interesting: "Unbeknownst to the pilot, an emergency evacuation slide had inflated inside the tail of the jet, affecting control cables there." Holy shit. Who designs an aircraft where this is even possible? "Let's see, where to stow this inflatable doohicky? Oh, I know! Let's put it where IF it inadvertently inflates, it'll rob the pilot of pitch authority!" Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Yeah, except when they ESCAPE and MURDER MORE PEOPLE, like in the example of the "Texas Seven," which was raised in the "Texas executes American" thread. No living murderer = no escapee murderer. Execute them and you will never again have to worry about what they might do, in or out of a prison. That, to me, is worth extra expense, Bill. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire