Zixar

krys: Now for the fun part of Firefox. Hit Ctrl-T and you'll open up a new tab in the same browser window! Now you can have one site open, check another momentarily, then click back on the first one's tab to go right back to it. Or, you can put your top few favorite sites in a Bookmark folder then open all of them in separate tabs with one click when you open your browser. Very cool.

The one FireFox extension you simply have to have is Adblock. While Firefox does a great job at handling 95% of all popups, Adblock can kill banner ads, Flash animations, or anything you tell it to nix.

Krys: Firefox. :)-->

Long Gone: Good point. Guess that answers that question.

Thanks for catching the typo. An "inevitable downhill slide" is the gradual decay of an entity from its peak utility/function to increasing obsolescence.

Chuck, I find that highly offensive. You don't have to believe it, but I'll thank you to keep your bigotry to yourself.

Our mission is to provide information and our hope is that connections with people and information will support their process of recovery. If you look at percentages, you will never get a clear picture. We can see all the friction and asst fights. We don't all see the lives that are being put back together post-TWI hopefully with some help from the info here. That's just it, Paw. Mike is just as convinced he has some invisible audience for his PFAL idolatry. Doesn't mean it exists, either. No real way to tell unless those folks speak up. "Jumped the shark" is a phrase used in a community that is constantly looking for something new and intriguing -- The young new star. I don't think that it can apply to a community. This community, hopefully, evolves. Different people with diverse stories, yet common elements. There aren't always going to be new episodes and new characters. Sometimes the familiar is good enough. I've never heard that definition, and I don't know where you got it. I didn't think the question was that unclear, but I'll rephrase it. "Has GreaseSpot passed its peak and started the inevitable downhill slide?" Remembering birthdays IS part of a community. Never said it wasn't. It's just sad when there are so few "real-life" (non-controversy/non-joke) threads that most of what's left is just birthdays. Arguing is one of the healthiest things we do here. Too much of anything is not necessarily a good thing. Take the "irritating" items and you have the ingredients to a return to the general population after living under a micro-managed cult. It ain't always pretty. Nor is it always as therapeutic for some as we'd hope. So YES we "jumped the shark". Hopefully we do it often. That makes no sense. It has either passed its peak, or it has not.

Some friends here have remarked to me that GreaseSpot has really gone downhill lately, and I'm hard pressed to disagree. 90% of everything posted recently has been either a) political grandstanding, b) religious acrimony, c) joke threads, or d) birthday announcements. So what do you think? Is it all just par for the course? Or is GreaseSpot finally on the way out? All references to shark-jumping have been removed, since too many people seem to get hung up on the phrase.

Oak: And in the very, VERY end, he becomes a NYC cop. Read the Earth X/Universe X/Paradise X trilogy for details. Wraps up all the loose ends in the whole Marvel Universe.

Well, yeah, Oak, those are the three, but do you think spoiling the ending was a good idea?

P-Mosh: The reason that it's impossible to have any sort of meaningful, intelligent discourse with you is that you are intellectually dishonest. If it is possible for you to distinguish between the subjective and objective, you hide it with great skill. You assert without support, you declare without basis, and you cheat the conditions when you cannot concretely address an issue. I cannot say for certain whether this is primarily due to immaturity, ignorance, stupidity, or some other mental defect, but I can say that there is no point in continuing this argument with you.

Because they don't even twitch much.

If it weren't for a mismatched histocompatibility complex on the short arm of chromosome 6, I'd have no problem with them, but... ;)-->

Def59: I think you need a new map.

Zixette and I won tickets to last night's taping of Jeff Foxworthy's upcoming sketch comedy show, "Blue Collar TV". We had a blast! I'd never attended a live-audience tv production before, and it was quite interesting to see how they did it. It took about three hours to shoot four live sketches, two opening monologues, and three closing pieces. While the sets were being swapped, we were shown taped segments so the producers could record our reactions for the laugh track. We were pretty far back in the audience, but perhaps we made it into some of the reaction shots. Since they were taping for several episodes at once, we have no idea which ones we'll be in, so I guess I'll just have to Tivo them all. (Which I'd do anyway. There hasn't been a decent sketch-comedy show in prime time since Carol Burnett went off the air.) It'll start the end of this month on the WB network.

Because you seemed to have appointed yourself the spelling monitor a page or two back. I was being sarcastic. --> Well, if I stay in the house the pit bull will probably attack Adolph when he begins to make his obligatory speech. The Copperhead will bite the dog when he investigates, doggy fashion. I'll let the Copperhead scare off the punks that are bouncing a basketball off the side of my apartment building and save the bullet for myself to save me from more of your analogies. Evasion. That's what I thought. If you were just wanting to be a smartass, then why didn't you make that a little more clear in your original post?The underlying notion, that a human life has no absolute value, is quite a serious one, and one that bears discussion without faux outrage and flip suicide jokes. The circumstances under which the relative value of a human life varies are fundamental to every society, like it or not. Perhaps that's a good topic for another thread.

Why isn't this in the Doctrinal forum by now? God knows we've been through all this before...

Why ask me? www.dictionary.com should help you out there.But since you seem to take offense at what I've said, let me ask you this: A copperhead snake, a pit bull, and Adolf Hitler wander into your yard, but you only have one bullet. Who do you shoot? Let's see, if I shoot the human being, I can save the lives of six million Jews, plus a million or so soldiers on both sides... Or I could shoot one of the animals, saving two or three people at the very most.... Gee, what a tough call to make... -->

We saw it at the midnight Sneak and it was amazing. Only a couple of minor quibbles, but the rest was a cut above the usual mindless action fare. There's a lot more character work in between the action sequences, the interplay between Peter's life and Spider-Man's responsibilities, the on-again off-again with MJ...it was all very well done. I also liked the way they set it up for there to be three villains in Spidey3, although only those familiar with the comics will know who two of them are (both have small, but important parts in this film) And yes, Stan Lee does make another cameo, again saving the life of a little girl in a quick shot. Best superhero movie ever? Quite possibly. If not, it's in the Top Two for sure. Zixette loved it, and she's not a comic fan at all.

What you heathens blatantly fail to appreciate is the subtle truth that Spider-Man™ is a conduit through which we lowly mortals can vicariously decry the circumambient ennui that has enervated our zeitgeist. Ow! I think I sprained my brain! Anyone got Bactine?

Here's the justifying verse: Romans 7:8a But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. "Concupiscence" means sexual lusts.

There is no way to compare a doctor to a god because doctors can not prevent problems in the first place, So that polio vaccine is, what, exactly? nor do they have infinite power. The point (which you have completely missed twice now) is that they have sufficiently MORE power than YOU do to make the decision for the given problem. Therefore, anything you THINK might be a better or more humane solution has no valid basis. It's just your own wishes, not any equally valid medical deduction because you simply do not have the skill or background to second-guess him. Neither do you have the equipment to second-guess God, no matter how many isues of Skeptic's Quarterly you might read. That's why the argument is very important, in my opinion. Then quit dodging it. Great, but there are people who adamantly believe that drinking their own urine cures cancer as well. That doesn't mean I have to believe it. Also, I can find stories of non-Christians who say their faith, whether Islam, buddhism, etc. saved them just as much. That contradicts the idea of biblegod saying, "Thou shalt put no other gods before me." So either the bible is wrong, or all of the other religions out there are and their adherents are liars. That's too egotistical of a statement for anyone to really say and believe, since as you agree there's not much proof as to the existance of any gods. I never said YOU have to believe it. You asserted there was no proof that Christianity ever saved anyone from anything. I demonstrated that to be another false notion. As for the rest, it's just anti-Christian strawman fodder. I base it on common logic, which if I was created by an infinitely powerful god who lives outside of time and space, would have known I would come to these conclusions based on the tools of reasoning that he gave to me. Therefore, my logic of questioning of the existance of biblegod would be exactly what he wanted me to do, since he would have seen in his foreknowledge that this is what I would say when he created me. The same would apply to you as well, which would mean that if your god is real, and the information in the bible is accurate, he created both of us in such a way that we would be opposed on issues like this and he would have purposely set us up in a way that we would argue. It would also mean that our free will is a joke, unless he found some way to limit himself, which would mean that he is not all-powerful. Again, you are not arguing from "common logic", you're arguing from what you fervently wish to believe. While your over at dictionary.com, look up "solipsism". If he didn't make the rules, then there would be one higher than him and thus the bible would not be accurate. If he did make the rules and still allows bad things to happen to innocent good people, then the bible is not accurate in stating that he is just. I am happy though, because with that statement I think you're starting to understand where I am coming from as to how it is not logically possible for an omniscent and good being to create something like the world we live in. No, sorry. There's nothing (yet again) in your statement that is axiomatic upon which you can draw your conclusions. You may be dressing it up to sound nice and logical, but all that's coming out is your manifesto on what YOU would do, were you God. If that happens one day, you have my permission to smite me with a lightning bolt, or whatever. Until then, try to recognize that what you would like to happen does not always coincide with what does happen. Game theory would not apply to gods. Says who? True game theory is a highly abstract form of predictive mathematics. It's not just learning how to play Parcheesi. If you are incapable of mistakes, and write a computer program that would play chess against you using a specific pattern of moves, you would always be able to beat it, and if not, you could simply rewrite it and recompile, but if you were perfect you would have gotten it right the first time. Oh, please! That's just a variant of the old philosophical chestnut "Can God make a rock too heavy for Him to lift?" Give me a break. Is this not your post stating that? No, it isn't. That's my post saying that everyone will be judged. It's your own theophobia that causes you to infer that means "most won't make it." I don't know if you're plagued by a guilty conscience or what, but if you tend to think you won't measure up and therefore very few others will either, then that's quite conceited. The pit is a fiery place which is what most people think of as Hell. You know as well as I do that the bible says that biblegod is no respecter of persons and that the conditions of being "good" according to the bible all wrap around and start with respecting some diety from a branch of Judaism, whether it's Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. The rest of us fail the 1st commandment test as well as other areas of the bible, so the rest of us would go to Hell. Now you're assuming that the orthodox dogma is absolute truth. That makes one of us. I know it's convenient to project that upon me to rail against it, but I'm not so arrogant as to believe I know the precise criteria for who makes it and who doesn't. What I do believe, however, is that it will be far easier for those who accept Christ than it will be for those who have been taught and still choose to be wise in their own conceits and reject him. Little Xiao Ming off in Hunan might have the excuse that she's never heard of Jesus. I don't know what in the world you're going to tell him. It had better be good though. He could spot hypocrisy a mile away.

Have you ever given thought that maybe, just maybe, at least some of these 'egocentric preconceptions' just might be based on the same rules of right and wrong? From the same bible that you learn about what God expects of you in how to behave in life? Or is it just 'egocentric preconceptions' that is motivating people when they expect God to play by His own rules? Just our own arrogance? No, just your own immaturity. I don't mean that in a nasty or insulting way, I'm just being descriptive of the problem. I would have thought this was painfully obvious, but it looks like I'll have to be blunt: You aren't God. You are not capable of being God. Therefore, you are not capable of objectively judging a higher being's actions or motivations. Consider the following: "Why is it that children get sent to bed at 9:30 while the parents get to stay up as late as they want? Why don't they play by their own rules? Wait--they have DIFFERENT rules? Waaah! That's not FAIR!" Immaturity often leads to irrational conclusions that are little more than an intellectual or spiritual pout. Sorry about your pony.

Sorry about that, Radar.