Mister P-Mosh

It's an observation of society and double standards. There are plenty of old men that are viewed as attractive by women -- George Clooney, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, etc. Women, on the other hand, are pretty much forced to try to appear the same as they did in their 20's. I'm not saying that it's fair, but that is how our society operates.

I don't see how something like this is possible or even a good idea.

If I had not met my wife until I did, I would have waited until my 30's to get married. We men don't have the problem of age that women had -- we become sexier as we get older. He should go have some fun and he'll meet a good woman. I don't know how your church is, but limiting yourself to the pool of ladies at one particular church is a bit stifling. I would think that he needs to get out more and away from the church too just to check things out. He should sign up for dance lessons somewhere. I have a friend that used to go to a few dancing studios in Houston where he met all kinds of girls. My wife and I took lessons at one, and we had fun and made a few friends. Had I been single, I could have easily gone out with at least a few of the women there. If he wants to get a girlfriend he needs to think outside of the box (no pun intended.) As far as the women suing because of the lack of matching gays, it's a tricky subject because it does fall afoul of some anti-discrimination laws, but at the same time they should be allowed to operate however they want. I think it's a dumb business move, but I don't own stock in them so I have no say.

I heard also that eHarmony is used as a recruiting tool for evangelical Christians. They were initially tied together with Focus on the Family, a Christian dominionist group, and I think they still have some issues with rejecting non-Christians. I had a Catholic friend sign up for the service and she complained quite a bit about how they always matched her with people who simply wanted to "witness" to her. I don't know if this is a universal problem or not, but I wouldn't trust eHarmony.

There are plenty of idiots in the U.S., plenty of whom would answer simple questions incorrectly. On the other hand, there are plenty of intelligent people as well. I don't see what the controversy is over videos like this, or how anyone could interpret it to represent all Americans if it's like the Jay Leno skits. There are also plenty of stupid people in other countries. I've seen similar comedy shows from other countries, some in other languages. I remember one from Mexico where they would ask people for definitions of nonsensical words, and people would try to answer it and embarrass themselves.

It is human nature to focus on negatives. For a clear example, look at your electric service. Do you call up the electric company every day and say, "Thanks for keeping the power on!" or do you only call when there is a problem? In a relationship, can you remember the last time a person said "I love you" more easily than you can remember when someone says, "I hate you" instead? Some of us do have happy relationships. Obviously, my wife and have only been married about four years now but we have seen friends and family divorce in that time or less, and we're still happy with each other. There is no perfect, blissful, happily ever after marriage. However, there should absolutely be love and respect. You're coming out of a marriage that crashed and you are depressed. You can find love and be in a happy relationship in the future. However, right now the most important thing for you to do is to focus on yourself and making yourself happy. You need to work on doing the things you wanted to do and try to get to a place where you are comfortable as an individual first.

I sleep in boxers and an undershirt lately. My wife got mad at me for sweating while sleeping sometimes and requiring the sheets to be changed daily. I can't sleep naked because if I'm in bed with a beautiful woman and I'm naked, there's no way I would let her sleep. ;-) As far as running around the house, even if I'm alone, I like to keep the windows open and get lots of natural lighting, so I don't want people to see in from the street.

I agree that it's a long term investment, and I have my 401Ks and some of my money put into stuff for the long term. I also do options trading and sometimes make big percentage gains as a result of that in the short term. My concern though is for the overall health of the economy. I don't see why stocks are rising while other economic indicators are saying, "DANGER WILL ROBINSON!". What I think is that as other sectors of the economy fail, more people are putting their money into stocks. More specifically, the rich have to put their money somewhere, and if real estate is failing like it is, the stock market is a safer bet. The problem though is that most people don't adhere to the old adage, "buy low and sell high." Your giddiness over the Dow's increase is a good sign that it's time to sell. When people start complaining on the media about how poorly the stock market is doing, it's time to buy. The way to make short term money on the stock market is to treat it like a sociological game where you do the opposite of what everyone else does. That's pretty much how Jim Cramer made his money, along with many other successful investors. So my negative take on it is due to seeing stocks overvalued as people don't know what else to do with their money. Once the smart people start selling it all off, the less smart and the huge investment companies will start buying all of it up, which eventually results in a big selloff and makes the media criticize how stocks are doing. Personally, I like toying with options because they are cheap to get into, and it's easy to make big money in a short amount of time, considering you are ok with taking a few small losses between every big win. I didn't have time to do anything because I was in training all of last week, but GM would have been a great stock option to buy the minute that the union went on strike. When the strike was over, they rebounded. If you would have had some options set for next month, you should have been able to sell for a double digit gain (providing your options weren't set at some crazy number.) Unfortunately for me, I often miss being able to take advantage of opportunities like that, and sometimes get it wrong when I do and miss out on a huge gain.

It's only a matter of time before this bubble bursts and we're all in 1929 again.

Unfortunately, cellphones have nothing on the Blackberry. My first encounter with them was in 2000, when I was working for a phone company. It was pretty shocking to see how disruptive those things were. Picture it like this -- you have a device that you get emails on. Only, your boss expects you to give immediate answers, and he has the ability to see at what time you read the email. So every time you get an email, you read it and reply. You interrupt anything at any time that you are working on because you don't want to get into trouble, making you unable to actually do any work. Whenever we would have management in a meeting and try to discuss something with them, they would always be busy on the Blackberries and our meetings would drag on until we gave up. My old boss told me that he wanted to go on vacation somewhere that would be out of range, otherwise his boss would email him the whole time and expect answers...even while on vacation. He would also complain about people on the west coast emailing him at 2:00am and expect immediate responses, then he would have to get up to be into work by 8am on the east coast. Truly, the Blackberry is a mark of the beast. So I'm going to get one soon because I'm changing jobs.

You're correct. Anti-semitism was always a big problem in Europe. For example, a lot of people were shocked when Mel Gibson was accused of anti-semitism for making "Passion of the Christ". The reason for those accusations is lost on those that aren't aware of the historical significance of the movie. It was similar to "passion plays", which were brutal portrayals of the death of Jesus which were usually meant to stir up hatred against the Jews. There's really no way that Mel Gibson could have made such a thing without being aware of them, so it seemed very strange. Don't forget that the Spanish Inquisition was not just for Christians that supposedly lost their way, but also for Muslims and Jews that refused to convert. The hatred of Jews in Europe took place long before World War II, it flourished under the Roman Catholic church, it flourished under the Roman empire, and the Jews were not well regarded during biblical times either. For various reasons, they seem to have always been history's "read-headed stepchild".

Why did they have to send a cute dog up there? Why not alligators? The world would be a much better place if we knew that there were hundreds of frozen Alligators in space, locked in suspended animation by the deep freeze, just waiting to fall from the sky and be re-animated to eat all of us. They recently said that germs sent to outer space come back more deadly -- can you imagine what would happen with an alligator?

I watched another episode, where they were talking about B-17 crews and what they went through. I knew my grandfather was on one, but I didn't realize what it was like. It was pretty amazing hearing the stories those guys told. My grandfather never said a word, I think partially because his family was German, and he was criticized after World War II for bombing "his own people." It would have been nice to know of his sacrifices and experiences, because while I've always admired my grandfather, I didn't know how truly heroic he was back then. Now that he's gone and I've learned so much about him, I'm amazed. Additionally, the fact that high school graduates don't know that Russia was on our side was not surprising. In school it was never mentioned that Russia was on our side, but we did get a load of cold war propaganda. I think the first I learned about Russia being on our side was when "Patton" came on TV and my stepdad watched it when I was around. History pretty much ends after the U.S. Civil War, at least the way I was taught it in public school.

I would not give up the internet voluntarily. What I can and have done for periods of time is give up "recreational" usage, such as visiting this and other sites that serve no purpose in my life other than to entertain me. I use the internet for work, for personal business, for investments, for paying my bills, for getting information about business, for shopping, for pretty much everything normal you can use it for. So I see a great disadvantage in me disconnecting it altogether. However, each person has their own life and if it is causing you more problems than it is helping, then by all means get rid of it. The internet is a tool, just like a hammer. If you become so obsessed with your silver hammer that you go around hitting people on the head with it, then it's time to get rid of your hammer.

I am younger than both of you, and have a different point of view. It is informing me about stuff I wasn't completely aware of, despite the fact that I'm a fan of history. In my case though, part of it comes from being the grandson of a WWII vet who never talked about his experiences, and finding his photographs after his death and really wanting to learn more. Those of us under 30 really don't know much about what happened. In fact, I would say to a 20 year old, WWII is as far away as the U.S. Civil War is to you. Vietnam is even considered ancient history by today's youth. So from my standpoint, it is interesting. It could have been better, but I think that it will help those that have no personal link to WWII to gain some perspective on what happened.

I hear you. I hope all the people can get to work, and that they get the money that would have otherwise gone to their CEO as a multi-million dollar bonus, as CEOs often seem to do. As to those that complain about unions, you can thank unions for your five day work weeks, your company healthcare and retirement plans, your safe working environment, the lack of child labor, and your decent paychecks. Prior to unions, Americans worked in sweatshops. A strike is often a necessary evil.

I actually haven't looked into it, but it's one of those things where I'm making good money now, and am used to what I have, so I haven't felt a strong need. If I go get a 4 year degree it would just be a personal pride thing. I'm applying for a new job this weekend that would ordinarily require an MBA or something similar, but since I know the guy I would be working for, he would waive that requirement. So I might go finish at some point, but I think I'll wait until I have enough money saved up that I don't need to work, should that ever happen.

That would be an interesting question as well. In my case, I basically grew up in TWI and got out after I was already working, but there was a lot of pressure for me to go Way Disciple (the "new" WOW program) and I never succumbed. The only things that really screwed me up financially were 1) TWIs focus on savings, which didn't really teach you how to save and thus failed, and 2) the absolute no-debt policy, which meant I went to community college instead of a four year school, despite the fact that I was within the top 10% of students in the nation when it came to my standardized tests. I'm still very successful, but I think I would be even more so if I could have gotten the four year degree instead of a two year degree. Could I go back? Sure, but then I'd have to quit my job, and my wife doesn't work and we make very little other income. Could I do night school? I am lucky to get 5 hours of sleep every night because I'm so busy, so there's no way I could make the time. Well he probably got what he deserves then.

That's definitely the truth. I don't hold resentment towards my parents, but I have observed the differences. I just think it's funny that you are getting the teenagers to be careful while the young ones may turn out to be more foul-mouthed than the older ones. There are advantages and disadvantages to the "rank" of kids. Being the oldest I am a better leader and more self-sufficient. Additionally (according to my wife, who is the youngest of her siblings) when you are the youngest you effectively have older siblings as additional parents to keep you in line.

Well, we did build a device that would let us vaporize every living thing in a city from halfway across the planet, and if a large enough amount were set off it would pretty much end most life on Earth. You can't get much more cruel than that.

I was never allowed to curse in front of my parents, and still don't do it. Obviously, sometimes things slip out, but that was a big deal. Then there is my brother. He cusses like a sailor in front of my parents and gets away with it because he's the "baby" of the family. It's amazing how the same parents can raise two different kids so differently.

Actually yes. I assumed that since most people within TWI seemed to be not very well off financially, the trend would continue outside of TWI. People are making a lot more money than I expected. Of course, the poll was not very specific. People earning six figures could have counted both themselves and their spouses, and there was some confusion over whether I meant the pre or post tax amount of money (I meant before taxes, by the way, since taxes are a form of expenses.) Some interesting polls that could come after this would be things like building a matrix between income and whether or not the person still believes in tithe/ABS, income and political views, etc. Anonymous polls are a good way to understand the demographics of former TWIers. Some time maybe we should run a poll of how people left TWI, but I am not sure what all the options would be other than M&A and left on your own.

I didn't break down the numbers above $200,000 on the poll because as far as I know, we don't have any TWI BOT here.

That's definitely a possibility. I think the best insults (or worst, depending on your perspective) are from the Chinese, specifically in Cantonese as Mandarin is a more gentle language. In Cantonese you tell people "Death to your entire family" when you are really mad at them.