George Aar

For what it's worth (probably not all that much), I've always thought that "Dog" was just a bit full of himself and more than a little on the loony side. Maybe it's the hair, I dunno, but I've never really taken the guy all that seriously. Yeah, I think he would have done well in the pro-wrestling industry if he hadn't heard the call to do bounty hunting...

There are some good "home bluing" kits available. I've used the one that advised warming the gun in the oven (not super hot, maybe 140 degrees or so). I've forgotten the name of the product, but it's always sold at gunshows and the like. But if you want that deep, blue/black color and have a gun that's worth the expense, I'd have it professionally done.

Yeah, I would reiterate that Confuscious is not really in the "God" or "man/God" mold that most of the other religious icons are. In fact Confuscionism is much more pragmatic and concerned with the here-and-now than any religions I can think of. It can be downright Machiavellian at times. I find it odd that you think the responses are "curiouser and curiouser" though. To me they're pretty straightforward explanations. I would think "rational and more rational" would be closer to the mark. Anyway, then there's this: http://skepdic.com/nde.html

Sorry for the derail, but Cynic, I LOVE the video. Geeze, I hope it wasn't put out by the Boone County Tourist Bureau (!)

It's hardly surprising I guess. Just around my area (Seattle and environs) there's probably a couple of dozen local "Mega" churches that have larger congregations than the entire current membership of WayWorld. It's just not big enough to register on anybody's radar anymore. Even as a cult, TWI is second-rate...

Kit, That's funny, the first thing I thought of when I started pondering scenic routes was Hwy 1. It's not for the faint of heart, though. There are sections of it where you're hard-pressed to do much more than 20 mph for the curves and loops. But you can't get closer to the coast without getting wet. A beautiful drive. If you ever get up Washington way, the North Cascades Highway is pretty hard to beat for mountains, lakes (all tourquoise green from the copper in the area) and rivers. It wasn't even completed until the 1970s. The terrain was so rough that it took modern earth-moving equipment to finish it.

Gawd, why do I always have to be the bad guy? Yes, it HAS been around quite awhile. Here's Snopes' take on it: http://www.snopes.com/glurge/infoplea.htm#glurge "Glurge", I kinda like that...

Put me down for an early "bah humbug"...

"We could have been practicing an innate ability of the human mind all along" That's been my conclusion for quite some time now. All those years of devoting ourselves to some bogus MLM for Jeezus, simply because we fell for a parlor trick. Isn't that just special? Ah well, there's worse that we could have done...

It's Exodus, Rhino. I think about chapter 23 or 24...

Head fer the root cellar!

Well Lindy, the only logical explanation for your son's ability is that - he must be born again! That's the ONLY thing that could possibly explain that. The only thing...

"What is unique about this rehearsal take?" Uh, that it's George that's singing? I think Paul was the only one I've heard sing this one before...

What are my beliefs currently? I think this sums it up pretty nicely: "Here is what I believe: There is no god, there is no messiah, there are no prophets plugged in to some divine will. There are no saints or holy men. If there is a heaven or a hell or any other kind of afterlife, we can’t know anything about it while we’re in this life, so it’s useless to speculate and foolish to believe. Faith is an empty box. To believe in Christ is to believe in a rabbit’s foot. To believe in the Buddha is to believe that pro wrestling is real. To believe in Mohammed is to believe that the groundhog can predict spring. To believe that the Ten Commandments came from some god on a mountaintop is to believe that television psychics can talk to your dead grandmother. Allah, Jehovah and the Trinity are elves and Tinkerbells. They are no more than desperate hope given a name and anthropomorphic shape by the imaginations of frightened men." WEATHER REPORT, MEMPHIS FLYER Geeze, I remember a time when I would have rebuked somebody who said anything like that. Now, I dunno, seems pretty logical...

A bit of trivia about Kirby Grant (Sky King), He died in an auto accident on his way to see the launch of the space shuttle "Challenger". Geeze that was really not a good day for aviation, was it? Oh, and Paw, Interesting about the Beatles writing those songs. I had no idea. What a lame performance by the "Stones" though. Egads, I was never a fan, but they are really awful on that cut...

I dunno, is this really that far removed from thinking that some huckster has discovered heretofore unknown truths of God, and is His only real representative on earth today? And somebody that was want to call his followers his "keeds" and have them call him their "father in The Word"? Anytime you have a field of endeavor where there are no clear boundaries or checks and balances - like religion, alternative medicine, or espionage, it's GOING to be rife with abuse. Hell, even if there IS a genuine article in the lot, there's no way to know for sure.

Sudo, I actually sorta liked "Mr. Wizard". Well, sorta. I mean, I wasn't on the edge of my chair waiting for it to come on, but it beat "Fury" or "Sky King" by a mile. Did you know that Mr. Wizard just passed away a week or two ago? And "Pee Wee" Herman always creeped me out, from the first time I saw the guy. There's something inherently unhealthy about that boy. Trust me on this one, STAY AWAY!

Piper, It depends on what you want to call "crossover". "Species" is a somewhat arbitrary term, used to help categorize but hardly an ironclad line of demarkation. And the "theory" proves it's veracity in that it can be used to predict thing like in Sushi's article, or in even things that have long since happened that are in the fossil record. And it really doesn't have to get down to an "either - or" debate, but were it to: "Noah's Ark" vs. an evolutionary explanation of the fossil record - not a difficult choice for me...

Wow! Now you can take a bath EVERY Friday!

I don't think you can fully appreciate this until you've had to deal with some of the ding-dongs that frequent eBay auctions. Lordy, but there's some strange folks out there...

I don't share your enthusiasm. This is just another in a looooong string of programs that have little or nothing to do with history (the bogus JFK assassination theories and UFO nonsense being some other egregious errors, IMNSHO). And I'm sorry, but you can't go to the Bible to "get the facts". You can only get those by going to factual, verifiable, reality-based sources. If they want to have a religion channel, or a superstition channel, fine, just call it that. But I wish they'd quit putting dubious nonsense on channels with names like "The History Channel", or "Discovery", or "The Learning Channel". Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine...

No, I don't think it was all that different Sudo. We'd been having a glut of "space-age" styled crap since the sputnik, 5 or 6 years prior to that. Disneyland had it's "Monsanto Home of the Future" and every amusement park in the country had some sort of "Trip to the Moon" ride or "futuristic" adventure ride of some sort. It was horrendously commonplace even by '62 (the year oi the fair). If I could come up with just one word to describe the era, it would be "tacky". Even at the tender age of 10 I realized that. Everything was plastic (and Wobbly) in construction and design. I remember the early '60s as a time of paranoia and an overwhelming social pressure to conform and be "safe". Outside of Kerouac and his gang and a few other outlaws, we did our part and got a "flattop" ( like Gary Moore) and moved into a split-level in the burbs. But, on a brighter note, then the late '60s came along. Yee-haw!

Well, geeze, Even with the lyrics t doesn't sound the least bit familiar, well, other than the fact that it sounds kinda like "The Teaberry Shuffle". And no, it's not cool. At least not to my ears. A little too "jingly" for me, as in "advertizing jingle". But, then, there's no accounting fer taste. That period of time was overall a tremendously vapid, sterile, completely uninspired era, culturally speaking, whudn't it? Yee gods, I remember going to the Seattle World's Fair about then and seeing all the egg-shaped furniture, plastic cars, and plexiglas houses and thinking "Oh F#$K, is this what we're in for?" I've always been a shade on the cynical side though, even as a kid...

All I can think is "Oh GAWD, do we HAVE to?" What the hell does Stone think he can bring to this story that we haven't had roto-hammered into our brains alteady? For the life of me I can't think of a single reason to even consider going. I'd find more enjoyment in eating a razorblade sandwich. PUHLEEZE! Ease off the "9-1-1" rhetoric for a couple of minutes, O.K.?

I never watched this show, and the theme is entirely unfamiliar to me, but I seem to remember a show called "Fireball XL5" or something like that...