Oakspear

Reiklilady & I will be getting married on September 17th, which is a Saturday. It is also a football Saturday, so we need to get hotel rooms reserved ASAP! If you are planning on attending, please let us know yesterday so that we can make sure that you are not sleeping on a park bench when you get here :D--> If you fly into Omaha, my son has volunteered to help shuttle people back & forth.

That's Wicca, one of the groups within the umbrella term "neo-pagan". "Neo-paganism", or simply "paganism" encompasses a variety of groups, from attempted reconstructions of Druidism; Asatru, a continuation of pre-Christian Norse religion; shamanism; and goddess worship of various kinds. It's practicioners come up with their rituals from a variety of sources, some documented historically, some claiming to be chanelling dead people or spirits of some kind (revelation anyone?), and some just made up on the spot to be cool.

Didn't know Phil Chen was still around. Top-rate bassist

Answering the door in the nude to door-to-door missionaries seems like one of those urban legends where everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who has heard about it, but nobody actually owns up to it. Until now. Funny, I've never had a door-to-door JW not go away when asked, or be rude, or come back when told not to. Unlike some of us old wayfers! :D-->

The whole Mad Max series. Or the first Billy Jack movie, "Born Losers" perhaps? Or maybe put 'em together: post-apocalyptic Australian karate-kicks rednecks on motorcycles. :D-->

Repo Man! (feelin' 7-Up, I'm feelin' 7-Up!)

What was the movie with Roddy Piper and the sunglasses that let you see the aliens? "They Live" maybe? Oh yeah, that's screaming for an update

Saw the preview before "Sith" - looks good Special Effects-wise.

I had thought Lucas was going to leave that alone. My previous standing theory was that Anakin's father was a Sith who used the Force to blank parts of his Shmee's memory so she didn't remember him. When Sidious made his comment in the movie, I connected the dots also. Glad it wasn't just me. I really missed this...what are you referring to?

And President Nader would flying oversees in his electric hybrid airplane

Wow. Sounds to me like a local leader was trying to skim. I was "in" at that time (early 90's) and never heard of a situation where checks or money orders were not accepted. As I recall, the Advanced class was $250. If you stayed "on campus" it was another $200. When they started requiring that you arrange your own lodging, there was an additional fee for meals.

Yeah, I do go on more than that TH. And sometimes I even bring my own table :D-->. "My comments and questions refer to what was posted" would have more clearly stated what I meant. I'm now in the position of referring to a post that no longer exists, but I believe my earlier post accurately reflects the information that was given. If there are facts that I am "not privy to", of course my comments and observations will be lacking. I "don't know what happened" because apparently only part of the story was included in the now deleted post. My opinions on the incident can only be incomplete in this case. Here's my take on healing & miracles, part of my take, anyway: There is without a doubt things that happen that seem to be unexplainable by our current understanding of the physical laws of the universe. I'm not going to be the one to claim that every story about miracles and healing is a delusion. I really have no problem with the concept of the supernatural being possible: including miraculous healing. What I have a problem with is ascribing this to God healing people as an answer to prayer, or as just a grace thing (i.e. God healed or did a miracle without being asked, or paryed to about it). BLASPHEMY!!!! Why do I have a problem with this? Because it is obvious that despite fervent prayer, not everybody who asks to get healed, gets healed. Not everybody who is in a car accident gets spared serious injury. Bad things happen. This is beyond (IMHO) the "I didn't get my pony" syndrome. What does it take for God to answer a prayer to heal you? No one seems to know for sure. For every story about how God healed someone there are dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of times when prayer yielded nothing, sometimes for the same person. What's the difference? Seems to me, that if that's really the way things work, then God is awfully capricious about who he hands out healing to, or else he isn't at all clear on what the prerequisites for healing are. It seems to me that if there are such things as miraculous healings, then I find it much more plausible that it is "healing energy" or "the law of believing". Why do I find that more plausible? Because when it doesn't work (and nothing seems to work 100% of the time) I find it more believable that a mere human can screw up his manipulation of whatever "healing modality" they are using, or fail to believe or what have you. Much more plausible to me than an omnipotent, omniscient, LOVING FATHER passing me up for healing without any hint of why, while healing the guy next to me, without any indication of why there is a difference ("respect of persons" anyone? Okay, if you believe that something that happened to you is a miracle, fine with me...I can't argue the facts (although I can argue the interpretation of those facts)...I just don't get it why God would behave the way he does. That's all for now...laundry beckons

...and grind

Isn't Colloidal Silver that radical Rabbi in Brooklyn?

Just going by what was posted.

I used to own an LP of West, Bruce & Laing. I always thought that they were the ugliest rock band in history based on the album cover I like Clapton, but I thought that Bruce, as Cream's bass player, was one of the better bassists of the era. I believe he had jazz training, and did time with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. That looks like a 4-string that he's playing in the pic above. I thought he mainly used a 6-string?

One of the things that is emphasized is Anakin's loyalty to individuals, not necessarily institutions, despite his protestations that his loyalty is to the Republic and to the Jedi. He is fiercely loyal to Obi-Wan, to Palpatine, to Padme. Padme loves him, Obi-wan trains him and teaches him to be a powerful Jedi, Palpatine feeds his ego and sympathizes with his frustrations. Anakin's horror that his friend Palpatine is a Sith Lord is overshadowed by his personal loyalty to him, and by his need to have what Palpatine can give him to save Padme from the death he has visions of. Even though he initially does "the right thing" and reports to Windu that Palp is a Sith, his action does not carry inner conviction and quickly is swept away. Anakin's anger at Obi-wan is fueled by Obi-wan's opposition to Palpatine and also by Anakin's perception that he has turned Padme against him. Earlier he not only risks his life, but the rescue mission itself to save his mentor. At first I thought that his actions in killing the Jedi, especially the "younglings", was too quick of a change in action. But he had begun compromising a long way back, including his marriage to Padme, and by sharing Jedi confidences with ol' Palp. Giving in to killing rages with the sand people and later with Dooku paved the way for what came later. Seeing Windu about to execute Palpatine seemed to cause him to snap. Everything that came after was natural to someone who had gone over the edge and was under the influence of a master manipulator.

There certainly is a lot of hand-lopping in these movies :D-->

well...?

David, are you following me? :D-->

Doesn't matter if anyone believes it or not, does it? There was a definite problem (broken bone, attested to by the bone sticking out of your skin) and a definite solving of the problem (bone sliding back in, puncture closed).Usually the "healings" consist of: I prayed and my cold went away...seven days later. :P--> Things like that are different from believing or disbelieving someone's account, it's more along the lines of "yeah, so what?"

Nothing wrong with having a little structure, chaos isn't that attractive a theme for a meeting ;)--> I went to a charismatic group one time; everybody was talking at once, mumbling in tongues while other people were talking; mumbling "praise Jesus" or whatever while others were praying...I found it very irritating, and disrespectful to whoever was talking. On the other hand, Way meetings in the nineties could be too structured. I recall having to call or email my fellowship coordinator or his wife with the "order of service" if I was going to "lead the meeting". I would have to list every single thing that we would do, what songs we would sing; what we would pray for and who would do the praying; who would be called on to manifest, including which ones would S.I.T/interpret and who would prophesy and in what order. The slightest deviation from what was considered proper was vetoed. I was reduced to leading Sing Along The Way songs with different tempos and time signatures than normal just to mix things up a bit. God himself could have told me audibly to pray for something different, or call on someone else to manifest and the twig coordinator would shoot it down.

By the way...yes, I do believe that the supernatural can and does occur (hey, I can get my skeptic's card taken away for that) and yes, I have been in a car wreck where I thought I was going to die and walked away unscathed.

outofdafog: Let me see if I got this straight, and really, I mean no disrespect to you, just want to understand what you're saying. The Driver: "Every bone in his face was crushed...parents came and hired the best plastic surgeon in the country to put his face back together from a picture. That is all they had to go by" Driver's Wife: "a broken neck and ruptured spleen" Driver & Wife: "both seriously injured and required extensive hospital care and rehab" Other Guy: "died from his injuries a day later" You: "I got some good pain pills from the hospital that night and the next couple days discovered bruises all over my body that I never even knew I had. Up one side and down the other. I had to soak in a hot tub for relief" and "The very first anxiety attack that I suffered was in a car. It was horrible. It grew to agorophobia...triggers my panic attacks...I am currently on medication for that and am still very fearful of driving. I hate the interstate or any highway that is fast. I will find the country route" I'm sorry, I'm missing the miracle. Okay, I know that you are alive, and didn't sustain any major injuries, but one out of four people in the incident died, one had to have his entire face rebuilt, which was so bad that they needed photos to tell what he looked like; and you still have lingering effects of the accident. And the guy who died wasn't even the one responsible for the wreck like the driver was, he was just a poor schmoe who wasn't the recipient of a "miracle". Too bad that those TWI b*st*rds claimed that he "wasn't believing, put the blame on the victim...it's always your fault that bad things happen...unless you're a MAN OF GAWD, then you are "tired of the fight", or whatever. Hey, I'm sorry that that happened to you, sorry that TWI tried to make you all look bad in the aftermath, but where's the miracle?

Even when "in" I viewed those who voted according to what TWI said as idiots. Study the candidates and issues and make up your own mind. One-issue voters are usually not too well-informed, in my opinion. There was always a problem in TWI politics anyway. Wierwille and Martindale were essentially conservative, yet most conservatives were against abortion, which TWI was for; many conservatives were also pro-Israel, which TWI was against. Republicans also tended to be "anti-cult", former Senator Dole being one prominent example. The craziest example of mindlessly toeing the TWI line was when Clinton was President: Martindale mentioned in passing that we'd be better off with one party in the White House and the other controlling Congress. One woman in our fellowship, who despised Clinton, voted for him because of that remark.