Mister P-Mosh

It's also Labor Day for many countries around the world. It was inspired by the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in 1886. That riot and subsequent protests were carried on by the people you can thank for your eight-hour work days.

I think my next laptop will be a Mac. We were over at some friends' house this weekend and I saw something that made me instantly fall in love with the Mac. Their power cable connects to the laptop magnetically, not via any sort of plug in. The reason this is so important is because you can accidentally pull the wire and damage the laptop to where it won't be able to be plugged in anymore. This is especially important if you have small children that like to yank on cords. So my next laptop will probably be a Mac. If Apple puts that much attention to detail in their power cables, I assume everything else must be just as good.

I have one for my garage, but I've developed a bit of paranoia and press extra buttons first so it's harder to figure out the combination if someone wanted to break in. If you keep the same code for a while, you will wear down those numbers faster than the others, so it will make it easier for someone to brute force your combination and get into your house.

Also the original caller said she was 16 at present, but either 14 or 15 when she became pregnant by her 50 year old "husband."

Ummm...you expect people who give their 14 year old daughters to be impregnated by 50 year old men to be thinking clearly? These people are brainwashed and blinded, so they weren't really able to think much. However, Texas does have a lot of land, where you can do all sorts of things and never get caught. West Texas in particular is sort of a no man's land where you can do a lot and nobody else would ever know about it. I have a friend from El Paso and some of the stories he's told me are shocking. This state is also known for protecting religious beliefs more than many others. The Waco thing wasn't the Texas authorities, but rather the federal government so it could have happened anywhere. Texas is a haven for crimes of all sorts too. If I look out the window behind me at work, I see a strip club that always gets busted for prostitution and never shut down. There are whorehouses all around, at least three or four within a mile radius of my office that are obvious (they say "Asian massage" and other obvious things) and I work in one of the nicest, most expensive areas of Houston. There are at least two stores to buy sex toys and porn within a mile of here, one of which is at a major intersection in front of an expensive mall that people come from all over the world to shop at. There are places to buy bongs and crack pipes all over the place, and I know of a restaurant where you can openly smoke weed out on their patio. I've called the cops for various things I've seen, such as a kidnapping up the street, and one time that my truck was hit by another driver that I assume was drunk and was told by the 911 operator that they couldn't do anything about it. So, Texas wasn't the worst place for the polygamist cult to settle. The people here are not as crazy as the people in Ohio, but there is a much more live and let live attitude here, and if nobody knows a crime is going on in your secluded ranch, who would bother you?

I'm hoping one day to have a good Way-Disciple-mobile. I think a McLaren SLR would do nicely. I know a guy that knows someone that owns one, and he says it handles better and goes faster than his Lamborghini Diablo.

Worse, if they marry children off to 50 year old men. While there are problems within TWI, you don't hear about Way Corps being given 14 year old wives and such.

I read the first book of the Earth Chronicles series, and although it seems impressive, he made a lot of stuff up. A lot of the "facts" he quotes are either pure lies or are pulled from another source that is out there and not taken seriously by scientists, historians, or archaeologists. If you want a source to begin debunking that dogma, check out this site. It probably goes into more detail than you would like. As far as the 2012 thing goes, a lot of cultures supposedly picked that year as the end of time, a cataclysm, or some huge event. That's weird, but who knows whether there is some reality or not. The ancient people had a great understanding of the stars, and perhaps they knew some indication of a supernova exploding that would wipe out life on Earth in 2012. Perhaps they studied a comet that rarely comes towards the inner solar system, and know that it will hit the earth in 2012. Or, more likely, perhaps it's just a coincidence with a lot of people trying to shoehorn some reason into disjointed ancient legends that are no more real than the tooth fairy. Who knows?

I don't post here a whole lot lately, but those topics would be interesting to me. They shouldn't be limited to the framework of atheism though. Anyone interested in the roots of religion should want to understand those things.

I almost misread the topic of this post as "WARNING WARNING GUN SWALLOWING IS DANGEROUS !!!" and thought, "well duh!"

HAPe4me, I remember learning something in TWI that still sticks with me today. Matthew 7:6 You're wasting your time by using logic and science here. Arguing with these people who have made up their minds is like trying to teach a paraplegic to become an Olympic gymnast. I know it's difficult to let people post nonsense here and make it seem like everyone believes what they do, but the majority of Americans believe in science and understand that climate change is a threat. This site is one of the few refuges angry anti-intellectual bullies have left, because anti-science views are laughed at in most public places anymore. Just let it go, and wait for either the anti-science crowd to grow up, or to go the way of the dinosaurs. It's simply not worth it to argue with people who are brainwashed and unwilling to think for themselves. It's also unfortunate that this got posted on the Open section of the site instead of politics. Some people enjoy starting threads to create strife and arguments, and I guess the Political forum is too full of junk and they needed to try to stir up anger in other areas of the site.

For all those who want the Guitar Hero III game but can't get it (or have kids who want it but can't get it), I present to you the next best thing: Handbell Hero. Just in time for Christmas. I can only play Jingle Bells without screwing up too badly.

Mine may not be that funny, but here goes: ...if you live north of I-10.

Make this a third confirmation then, because although it never happened to me, I know of it being done as well.

Home schooling in and of itself is not necessarily bad. However, people who do it often home school because they want to control the information their kids have to insane levels, and present propaganda for them. You would not be happy if you knew people were homeschooling kids with textbooks like "The History of Communism, Mankind's Greatest Achievement" yet the Christian equivalents are being used in some cases of home schooling. Also, home schooling parents have to be careful to make sure their kids are in a lot of activities outside of the home involving other kids. Parents who isolate their kids via homeschooling and don't have any other activities end up with really weird kids. When I was younger I was in the Boy Scouts, and we had a few home schooled kids for whom it was already too late. I remember we would play pranks on this one kid, and he would scream bible verses at us.

I think you and I agree to a point. I'm not saying that everyone raised in a religious cult is going to go crazy. I'll never murder anyone and I was raised in TWI which was probably worse. There are many other people raised in cults that never go on to commit violence against anyone else. However, things that are taught in strict religious households do lead to mental illness, or make existing ones worse. For example, TWI's belief that we are constantly under attack by devil spirits is a pretty crazy thing. You often hear about insane murderers claiming that they got revelation from God to kill someone because they were a demon disguised as a person. A lot of what this type of Christianity teaches results in creating mental illnesses in kids. Also, as far as the religious group his parents were associated with, I thought it was Ted Haggard's church. If you watch the documentary "Jesus Camp" they are brought into it because those kids attended his church. These people are even more isolated from reality than we were in TWI, the kids are homeschooled with only religious books, they are raised to be "soldiers for Jesus", and were taught in their summer camp to admire and adopt the dedication of Muslim suicide bombers.

A gay friend of mine is always talking about working on his hobby car, so I'd guess that his "gay" Christmas list would include tools, car parts, or gift certificates to Napa or Autozone.

Unfortunately, the level of insanity and hatred required to commit murders like these are often caused by growing up in a cult like this guy did. There is no excuse for the murders he committed and all the suffering he caused, but we should look at the causes of these tragedies to see what we can do to stop them in the future. Having grown up in TWI, I can understand why he wouldn't like Christian groups. If TWI was my only exposure to Christianity, I'd probably hate all Christians too. Religious cults including fundamentalist Christian groups like this guy was apparently raised in cause people to adopt extremists behavior, even if they are extreme in their rejection of the fundamentalism.

I hope she scrubbed her mouth good afterwards. Supposedly the locals .... on it and have a laugh at tourists kissing it. Ireland is so rainy that I'm sure it gets as clean as a stone can, but still I wouldn't touch it.

I too have an addendum. I just returned from Mexico yesterday, and I did drink tap water and have ice from tap water. However, the glasses I drank from were clean, so everything was cool.

Exactly what I was saying. I was not minimizing his experience, just saying that things were even more bizarre under LCM's reign that really freaked out kids to a greater degree. However, based on what he wrote I do think he was in TWI some during the early 90's and such, but that he was no longer a kid.

Interesting stuff. Some of his writing really speaks to me and I connect with his thoughts well, other things just appear to be train of thought braindumps that lack the energy of a rant. I can identify easily with some of his TWI-inspired writings, but I think he would have had an even greater source of writing material if he had been a kid in TWI in the late 80's and early 90's.

I'm just trying to decide if I should move my savings account over to Euros or CAD. Right now, I do have foreign investments as part of my retirement, but that's about it. I know if the U.S. goes into a big recession it will hurt foreign markets too, but not as bad as it will hurt those of us in the U.S.

This is a complex topic that many thesis could be written about. However, just to try to put it in simple terms, I have a few ideas that I won't elaborate on here but feel free to ask questions if I say anything that doesn't make sense. To start, we do have a solid foundation of religious freedom since the early days of this nation. Since the founding fathers basically provided for an anything goes society when it comes to religion, we have the groundwork for new religions and ideas to spring up. Not only that, but we also have a strong belief in freedom in general, combined with a constant push for improvement and innovation. The result is that we don't focus as much on traditions as other places will. We are also a fairly religious nation. While the U.S. was "in no sense founded upon the Christian religion", religious people have been here since the beginning, and religious extremists from Europe came here to be able to practice their religions openly. That sort of extremism offers another factor that leads to a fertile foundation for cults. The U.S. is a melting pot of ideas as well as people. Immigrants bring new ideas and values, some of which are good and attractive to people here. The merging of those beliefs often do create new religious organizations. However, there is a dark side to what allows cults to exist. Many people are isolated because our nation does not really have a unique identity, and people are looking for something to latch onto. It doesn't help that many people are very poorly educated, and even those that are well educated are often lacking in terms of training in skepticism. Anyway, I'd write more but I have to do some work then go to lunch. Ciao!

Actually, if Pakistan does fall, I predict Bush would declare Iraq a success and move our military over to Pakistan and bring al Qaeda back up again. Additionally, we would actually be able to get a real coalition to go in there, and the Indian military could probably take most of the brunt of it on the ground. Nobody wants renegade nukes out there. The only good thing is that Pakistan is incapable of producing missiles that can reach the U.S. If anything, terrorists would attempt a dirty bomb, and that is far less devestating than a real nuke attack. Still, you have to keep all of this in perspective. You're more likely to die in a car accident today or by having a heart attack than you are by an act of terrorism. You're more likely to die by being struck by lightning than you are by terrorism. It does no good to worry about any of that stuff, although we should make sure our government does it's job in securing our nation against groups like al Qaeda.