Search Results for 'Sl'

[HolyKow]

I have to point out that the seperation of church and state is NOT specifically present in any form in the Constitution. It was an idea that was supported first by a sitting president in 1802 in a letter to the Danbury Baptists by then president, Thomas Jefferson.

This is one of the primary places where we devise that the Founding Fathers were in favor of non-theocratic form of government, unlike the Christian Extremists that are attempting to further hijack our government in the name of god and “HIS” teachings (so far as their selective readings of those “teachings” are).

The letter to the Danbury Baptists below,

hk

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To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” *thus building a wall of separation between Church & State*. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Th Jefferson

Jan. 1. 1802.

[redblack]

semele: DSL speeds aren’t that slow. i have the slowest DSL – fine for my uses – and it’s $20/mo for qwest and $16/mo for my ISP. i can bump it to 1.5 Mbs for $30/mo for qwest and the $16/mo for my ISP.

the reason internet is more expensive without cable is because comcast has to prevent the teevee signal from coming down your line, instead of leaving it as-is, with the whole spectrum intact.

then again, following that logic, you’d think it would be more expensive to not have HBO, showtime, and everything else.

you’re right. comcast… leaves a lot to be desired.

[redblack]

can’t you? :) (read datamuse’s post, #8, then follow the link to wikipedia.)

[JanS]

redblack…I can’t resist…that would be Murphy’s Law, not Muphry’s law ;-)

[Ken]

Bible based marriage laws:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

— Hunter

[Ken]

“*Atheism, therefore, is the absence of theistic belief.* One who does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is properly designated as an atheist. Atheism is sometimes defined as “the belief that there is no God of any kind,” or the claim that a god cannot exist. While these are categories of atheism, they do not exhaust the meaning of atheism– and are somewhat misleading with respect to the basic nature of atheism. *Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief.* An atheist is not primarily a person who *believes* that a god does *not* exist, rather he does *not believe* in the existence of a god.”

— George Smith

[Sonoma]

Thanks for the information, Anonyme! I only wish spiders would devour snails (mmmm-sidewalk escargot) and slugs (homeless snails, also known as Seattle sushi).

[RarelyEver]

HATE. SPIDERS. SO. INCREDIBLY. MUCH.

seriously, this thread is killing me, and somehow i can’t not follow it! somebody explain this! i don’t care about whether spiders are poisonous or not, i scream and run and/or faint just seeing one… i think it’s the legs… so many legs, and they move so fast… CAN’T. HANDLE. SPIDERS!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

[waynster]

I’m not so much disapointed about spelling and gramer as such. Its when a email is sent about a subject and one gets no answer back I do know you get volumes of mail its the no replie when somethings do or should be other then that no issues

[dhg]

Anonyme: One of my favorite stories, ever, told here highly abbreviated:

Mark Twain, hanging out in Nevada with silver prospectors, described staying in a boarding house with one large room, some 26 beds. Many of the men kept tarantulas in jars above their beds. The jars were not covered. A mild earthquake hit in the wee hours and tumbled all the jars. When they lit the lanterns, they couldn’t find a single one of those tarantulas. No one slept that night.

[JustSarah]

BigPhil, I have to admit that when you mentioned in your initial post that you moved here from Colorado Springs, I was the slightest bit… curious, we’ll say, about how “Colorado Springy” you are. I have read a lot about how conservative that city is, and yes, how evangelical the population tends to be. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, of course, but I came from a decidedly non-religious background (not atheist, but certainly not devout), so I don’t generally relate well to people with very strong religious convictions.

[BigPhil]

I must say the non-religious glut in Seattle is still throwing me off guard. I just moved here from Colorado Springs, where everyone and their neighbor is a brow-beating evangelist keen to judge you for your sinful behavior. I drove by New Life Church (of male-prostitute-hiring meth-snorting evangelist Ted Haggard’s fame) and another mega-church just to get to work every day! I wouldn’t dare let my own beliefs be exposed, and I had an Atheist pin or t-shirt that I’d only wear if I had two or three friends around. If my employer(s) had known my disbelief, I would have immediately been distrusted, because atheists are clearly shady and will lie and steal (per them).

If the mega-churches and massive evangelical population wasn’t enough, we also had the conservative Air Force Academy and the headquarters of many evangelical organizations, including Focus on the Family.

Here, I mention that I don’t buy into the nonsense that is Christianity and Islam and I get looked at like “yea, so?”

Refreshing doesn’t even do it justice.

[maplesyrup]

1100 retains the liquor taxes that are already in place.

But yeah GenHillOne, if the effects of the “lost revenue” from 1100 are really all that dramatic, the legislature will find a way to make up for it.

[DP]

JoB: Welcome back. (As a matter of fact, we did miss you.)

I wish I could give you my full agreement as a homecomeing gift, but on this one, I’m afraid I have to go with SarahScoot, who obviously cares about this alot.

While I don’t think it’s wrong to tax something like alcohol in order to provide health care for people, I do think it puts the state in a difficult position, morally. It’s like: “OK, we’re going to sell you something that could be bad for you. But then we’re going to tax it to offset the cost to society.”

It’d be like buying OD insurance from your local heroin dealer.

Kind of.

I feel the same way about the Lottery. While Lottery revenue is good for the citizens, problem gambling is bad for them. Therefore, while I agree with the state taxing gambling, I don’t agree with the state promoting gambling. I know several people whose lives have been ruined by problem gambling, so every time I see a billboard where my government is promoting the Lottery, it makes me kind of mad . . .

Fortunately, there’s an easy way out of the quandary as far as liquor is concerned. With private liquor sales, the state can still tax it, and the citizens can get their booze at times and places that are convenient for them.

Frankly, I don’t see a problem here . . .

Oh, and one more thing. I’ve noticed that nobody’s talking about the money the state will save by having hundreds of fewer liquor store employees on the rolls and fewer buildings and business operations to look after. Shouldn’t those savings be factored into any equation of how much I-1100 will “cost” the state?

Seems like.

[redblack]

charlabob: oh, i know what an antecedent is; i just don’t know what an antecdent is.

you know, one of the corollaries of muphry’s law is that the perpetrator of the mistake will often fail to see it, even after multiple editors and proofreaders explain it.

dood: thanks for that link. the haiku is priceless.

[goodgraces]

Seriously? You have got to be kidding me. I have tried not once, but twice to even get a call-back from these folks. I waited several months after my first failed attempt, thinking that it might have been a fluke. But, nope, once again when I left a message stating clearly that I wanted to make an appointment for a massage on X date, and did they have any openings? — no response. I came to the conclusion that they really don’t need my business.

[inactive]

A tad belated, but still…hoping your Punctuation Day was grand!

http://www.nationalpunctuationday.com/

[JoB]

ok..

i can put up with a little bad punctuation and misuse of words…

but i really miss content.

[StringCheese]

AT WHAT COST? The money you will be saving on your liquor will be coming out of the funds for services for those in need.

I don’t mind paying extra for something I don’t really need if the funds are going to worthy programs. With few exceptions, they are. From the WSLCB website:

**Each year, revenues earned through the sale and taxation of alcohol are returned to the state. In Fiscal Year 2010, the WSLCB sent more than $360 million to the State General Fund, cities and counties, prevention programs, and research.

Cities and counties receive more than 18 percent of this money. The money returned to local governments is used for prevention programs, law enforcement support, affordable health care coverage and health benefits for children and pregnant women, and many other related programs and services.**

I was listening to a KUOW conversation about this. Some guy called in to support these initiatives. He was irate because it was “inconvenient” that he couldn’t get a special brandy for a recipe at any hour of day or night. Wow. Let’s slash funding for protective services so he can avoid having to think ahead…

NO! NO! NO! on these initiatives!

In this outrageous time of unemployment and budget woes, do you really want to stand up and say that paying less for your whiskey is more important than funding the social services that are only needed more than ever?

[johnnyblegs]

Seriously. I got some the size or quarters all over the trees out back. I saw one that built a web at face height right smack in the middle of a sidewalk with no visible trees around. Don’t know what it was strung to. Floating web?

[christopherboffoli]

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but virtually overnight I’ve fallen into a new career as a spider rancher. I’m not sure why I worked so hard all year to nurture the plants in my garden when the real cash crop this year is spiders. Seriously. They’re the new white meat. I’ve got lobster-sized monsters hanging around in every inch of my garden. It looks like some kind of 1950’s Sci-Fi/Horror mash-up. I’ve got a couple that are close to rivaling the tarantula that tried to kill Greg Brady in one of those Brady Bunch go to Hawaii episodes.

Conversely, I’m moving on from my previous career as a fruit fly farmer. I’m beginning to suspect that the decline of that industry is related to the rise of the new one.

[Semele]

my problem with Comcast is we are stuck with them for internet access. When I tried to cancel cable earlier this year since we don’t really watch TV, found out it would have been MORE expensive to only have internet versus the basic. That makes no sense to me. So, now we pay $75 mth for internet and cable when all we want is internet, when if it was only internet it would be a couple of dollars more. I really don’t get it.

DSL is not an option as the speeds are so slow and that only leaves Comcast. Frustrating!

So, BBGuest, unless you have the slowest internet connection through them you will pay just as much or slightly more by canceling the cable portion.

[jollyroger]

Pics here:

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/fuo/1970288186.html

[Ken]

Really Stupid Newspaper Headlines

http://www.oddee.com/item_96156.aspx

[Ken]

Really Stupid Newspaper Headlines

http://deanhunt.com/dumb-and-dumber/

There are more in my collection but I got them by email and have not located the source yet.