The Hall of Fire

Hehe, the random Edo hip hop was...different. ;) I can tell that the two girls are acting slightly differently...but I can't tell which one is which. In retaliation, I give you...rapping hobbits ;) Lords of the Rhymes SERIOUS language warning on this one. I'd say Samurai 7 is fantasy with a strong c...

I've always viewed the quote in vison 's opening post as a quip not unlike, 'Growing old is awful....but it beats the alternative.' Or, as my grandfather liked to point out, 'The first hundred years are the hardest.' Meaning, a tacit recognition that suffering, quite frankly, sucks, but then again.....

Jewel , I certainly appreciate the adventuresomeness of humans. That's the positive side of the some of the darker aspects of rebelliousness, but yes, I agree that all of that is part of human nature and I wouldn't want to give any of it up. I mean, my own 'next step' is to move to Ethiopia ;). And...

Heck, I don't think there was even any sex. Milton disagrees. :D Surprised the heck out of me the first time I read Paradise Lost. As does Pope John Paul II. Mystery of Man's Original Innocence In this wide context the reasons are all the more visible for discovering in Genesis 2:25 a particular tr...

It doesn't seem strange to me that people disagree in fundamental ways about the nature of God. I can see how...mysteries like that lend themselves to all sorts of viewpoints and interpretations. Like the blind men trying to describe the elephant. But it always shocks me when people have fundamental...

Merry Christmas!

The Shroud of Túrin was carbon-dated to the Middle Ages, which certainly counts as debunking. Certainly, there was nothing fishy about the carbon-dating procedure - it was done by multiple labs along with other samples of linen, and the researchers were not told which sample was from the Shroud. Som...

Jesus is the Son of God. Or, to go along with this conversation, that is certainly something he claimed frequently and got himself accused of blasphemy over according to the gospels. According to the Nicene Creed: For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was ...

Yes, watch Samurai 7! It is worth it :). It's also on Netflix (well, the dubbed version, anyway). The history is such that a warring era ended not that long in the past, and the emperor came out on top with his nobuseri (giant robots or 'machine samurai') and the merchants have all the power in peac...

I am sure there are plenty of anime and manga that have samurai in them but I only know of two. Samurai Deeper Kyo and of course Rurouni Kenshin. If anyone knows more about samurai armour and weaponry, feel to add stuff. My knowledge on this aspect of military dress altogether is extremely limited....

yovargas wrote:Catholic are supposed to believe that the bread and wine in communion is the literal body and blood of Jesus, no?

Of course, because it is

The expectation within the Church is that a priest would not break the seal of confession for any reason, up to and including incurring personal legal liability (up to and including the death penalty). So, should a law be passed that obligates priests to break the seal of confession, the bishops wil...

This is the classic internet question: In a fight, who would win, Mormonism or Scientology? (With a sideshow of atheists taking on whoever appears to emerge as the winner, but as everyone knows, those never have clear winners anyway, so what we are really left with are....atheist spectators.) And my...

Billie Holiday The house she lived in as a girl was recently put on the market in Baltimore. From what little I know of her childhood, I'm not sure she'd have had fond memories of the place. But it is interesting to think about the lives of the people who lived in our houses before we did. (It's of...

Hey, I'm named after that goddess. No wonder my family's so fertile!

V-man is correct. The statistic is for 2006, and - in 2006 - there were over 160,000 women in the US (excluding CA) who reported having their 3rd+ abortion. That would be 3+ over the woman's lifetime, not in a single year. The reason I brought up the possibility of multiple abortions in a single ye...

Yes, I did notice that. Noe was charged with (and convicted of) murder. To be sentenced to house arrest suggests the judge gave her a free pass rather than throw the book at her. I don't know enough about the case to know if statute of limitations considerations were an issue, but it certainly seeme...

Prim , only about 55% of abortions (each year) are performed on women who have never had an abortion before. The rest are repeats. And I realize that, yes, this group may come back year after year, but it's still about 45% of all abortions performed. That's a pretty significant subset of the demogr...

But on another level, even if his depiction of events is accurate, how much should we care about what someone was doing thirty-odd years ago, unless they've kept doing it since? It's a question bigger than this particular case. I suspect most of us old enough to recall the 70s can think of things w...

Not all women try to hide it. Some just claim an accidental death - SIDS, when they have really smothered their own child. The police report of a woman (most likely suffering from postpartum) who smothered her 6 month old. What she did is clear, and she gave her reasons why, but I'd say figuring out...