The Hall of Fire

People are canonized to recognize that they are saints in heaven. Thus, the main requirement is being dead and in heaven :). But no, more seriously, there are a few other requirements. One may be a martyr, giving your life for your faith. In the absence of martyrdom, one may live a life of heroic vi...

My grandmother miscarried before and after her pregnancy with my mother. Her siblings referred to her as 'the abortion' at one point, because she would not have existed had the baby immediately before her not died. (Siblings are so nice that way....) My mother also got pregnant immediately after she...

I haven't seen the ad, so I don't know how it's handled. There are good and bad ways of telling stories, and of course you're going to tick off people who don't agree with whatever 'point' you are trying to make. I mean, this isn't the first ad of this type. Here's one people considered putting in t...

Well, yes, it is nepotism. He's supposedly front runner for the next president of Kazakhstan, so this is very much a family dynasty. I mean, it's not clear who owns all the oil fields in the country, but it's certainly thought that the first family has their fingers in most of them. I wouldn't call ...

Not "good for the neighborhood" in the sense of being a good addition, but rather it does bring money into the community in the form of the tax from the property sale (as you mentioned earlier). Encouraging burglars is extremely annoying, though. Yes, I certainly understand the issue of co...

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, it tells you what your rank is. So, you can be in the top 4%, but still be 200,000,000th wealthiest person. (Or something like that) Basically, if you live in a developed nation, you are wealthier than almost everyone who lives in the third world. There ...

I'm with Lord M and nel - if we're here having this conversation, we're probably considered wealthy by good chunks of the world. And, whether or not we are, we still have responsibilities to our fellow human beings. I'm the one who raised the question of whether or not honestly obtained wealth carri...

Of course, a miser neither spends the money nor uses it for philanthropy. I didn't say spending was bad. I was saying that wealth should be considered something you have stewardship over, and thus your decision about what the best use of the money should be takes on a broader picture than just "...

I did try to differentiate between dishonest gain and honest gain. Certainly, Gates earned his money properly. It is his, by any legal way you look at it. And he may therefore do whatever he likes with it. This thread is certainly not the place to launch into a criticism of his business model. But, ...

No, huge amounts of wealth are not fair. Ill-gotten wealth is, of course, even less fair than earned wealth, but on some level, so what? Why does Bill Gates get to have billions while most of the rest of the world has practically nothing? That's not fair by a long shot (though it is legal, of course...

No mortal man can kill him? No... Mahima - yeah, imagine that...some insecticides kill bees, huh? But to be fair, people are well aware of the hazard to helpful wildlife, so they do test to see whether or not pesticides are toxic to honeybees quite frequently. Many herbicides have no effect on the b...

My coworker lost her father in the earthquake

Part of what's neat about the story is to consider what it would be like for two people to figure out what it means to be human in the absence of any culture. It's very much a, "hey...you're like me...we can talk...let's make up some words!" Starting from scratch. It would be a different e...

I'm pretty sure we have people who post here who have joined a religion which is fairly alien to their cultural heritage. I don't find that 'weird', but just that life can take a lot of different directions for folks. Converting to a different faith is a big step, and may be daunting, but it certain...

I agree that it looks painful, 1/3 g or not, standing still or not. I mean, just to move your body at all, a slight twist to look over your shoulder for instance, would be a form of torture. It's like having a bra where the underwire pokes through and digs into your skin...but a lot worse. But the p...

Demonstrating that there is no real difference between "really cool" and "really whacked", here's a snapshot of some of the people I spent time with this summer. They are all really awesome. Of course. Can't you tell?

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I might be completely misremembering things, but there was some sort of sleeping bag harnessed to the walls for zero-g in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 sequels. I can't remember if it was used for sexual activity or just sleeping in the books, but either way, I imagine it would solve most of the problems....

I'm not concerned about particular techniques, necessarily, but I am concerned about intent. I don't exactly want to be...erm...hunted. Meaning, if it's about winning a game (or at any rate scoring), then...no thank you. If it's about potentially starting a relationship with someone who might be of ...

If we were all perfectly honest in all ways with each other at the beginnings of relationships, we'd be extinct in a generation. :D That level of intimacy is very difficult to achieve when first meeting or at the start of a relationship. It really does take time for the walls to come down, and they...

Winning things is fun :) Dishonesty is...well, dishonest. I think the ethics are pretty clear there. People sometimes play with 'intent to deceive' versus an actual lie - you can make a statement that is factually true but intentionally very misleading. In the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, a...