Vort

A .44 is probably 0.44 inch (0.44"). A .22 is probably 0.22". Just looked it up. A .22 is indeed 0.223" (or 0.224"). A .44 is actually about 0.429"; the designation ".44" is based on the original brass case diameter.

That's funny. Although I have consciously adopted the American spelling, I have always thought that grey looks somehow grayer than gray.

Brit wannabe. Remember, kids: Gray is a color. Grey is a colour.

I don't buy it. God does not give temporal commandments. All of his commandments are spiritual.

SMH

Maybe JAG can weigh in. I understood that Supreme Court cases often hinged on standing and other procedural questions.

Lawyers always file motions to dismiss on procedural grounds before attacking the meat of the case.

Yeah. Revenge is a dish best served cold, buddy.

I am not particularly sensitive to perfumes and like scents. But back 20 or so years ago, when we lived near Seattle and would go to the opera, my wife and I were seated a few rows from an older lady who seemed to have bathed in lavendar perfume. It was so strong that it gave me a headache, first time ever getting a headache from a scent. We asked to be reseated in another section, and we weren't the only ones. I have never been so incensed. But seriously, I look back on that event and wonder at my own reaction. I was literally angry—angry with an old woman (in retrospect, not all that old, perhaps about the age I am today) who had done me no harm or insult, and whose only crime was to go into public wearing too much lavendar perfume. I also wonder how God maintains perfect charity toward someone like me. I'm sure she was a lovely lady, yet my gut reaction was to be angry and take offense. At her perfume. If it happens, the greatest miracle I will ever see will probably be Christ saving me despite myself. ...aaaaaand, I just rescanned the thread and found that I already mentioned this event. I'm almost 62, so cut me a break. I'm going to go put on some lavendar cologne.

The joy is not in the answer. The joy is in the discussion. Relish the journey.

Yes, and we see how effectively those arguments ended.

FTFY.

I quickly lose patience with such individuals, though my own impatience is itself a type of pettiness. God suffers (allows, tolerates) such individuals and their twisted and self-serving views, so why should I bristle at such? Just teaching my own children and those I love not to fall victim to such silly and trivially false teachings should suffice. No teeth-gritting needed.

That Shakespeare and his ribald humor. He did enjoy spicing up his plays in ways that we modern English speakers don't get.

I was introduced to this idea of Nephi's "colophon" two or three decades ago. Made sense to me then, and makes sense to me now.

You sure it wasn't the second or third chapters of 4 Nephi?

Then look for it yourself. Seriously. [...] That's about the extent to which I'm willing to go to help you find the pond scum in the GOP pool. If you really want to find it, happy hunting. The days of me digging through the trash for you are done, respectfully. 2025 debate technique: Make any assertion you want—literally anything, the more far-fetched or absurd, the better. Then, when someone asks you for evidence of your ridiculous assertion, simply tell them that they need to get off their fat butt and go find out for themselves, because you sure as heck aren't going to do their work for them. This technique is really brilliant. Not only do you get to make your unsupported point without having to defend it (a huge win when your point is indefensible), but you also get to preach most righteously that you "are done" finding the information for them that they should rightfully have already found for themselves, the lazy bums.

Interestingly, the scriptures seem to have no compunction about speaking evil of the dead. "Do not speak evil of the dead" may possibly be a wise course of action in general (and small-scale) society, but as a rule I think it fails. Unless it's talking about the creeping, idiotic presentism that infests modern historical discourse, in which cas I wholeheartedly agree.

I can't really argue against this viewpoint. But in my view, Jimmy Carter showed a sort of personal integrity that many other US presidents of my lifetime, especially other Democrats, seem to have lacked. Despite his apologetics for abortion and his ever-present naivete (or foolishness) regarding foreign policy and the treatment of hostile foreign powers, Carter demonstrated a working moral compass in his personal life. His restraint in the face of constant embarrassment at the hands of his family, especially his brother but including his mother and even his wife, made him a laughingstock in the short term but earned my adult respect. His post-presidential activities seemed largely consonant with the Christian ideals he espoused.

RIP. I suppose it's appropriate that he died while a Democrat was president. Not a very effective president in my estimation, but seemed like a truly decent human being.

I sometimes rue my fate of being born after the period where hat-wearing was a practice. (Real hats, not baseball caps.)

I loved Utah. I loved living there. I loved the land, I loved the weather, and I very much loved the people. But one of the things I most definitely did not love was the widespread idea voiced among the Saints of whether one would "make it into heaven", as if exaltation and eternal life were a prize awarded to those students who scored best on their homework and exams. As much as I dislike and disagree with the non-Mormon caricature of Latter-day Saints as people who somehow believe they're earning their way into heaven, I have to admit that doctrines like "making it into heaven" very much give that appearance, and probably mindset.

I think fence-sitting is sometimes the only honest alternative, when you have no good way to distinguish between two possibilities. Fence-sitting gets its well-deserved bad reputation from people who ignore or even reject what should be solid evidences of truth because they're more concerned with their reputation or what their friends think of them than they are the truth.

Because unbelievers seek to establish that "miracles" are just normal (if rare) occurrences, while believers seek to establish that there's a clear way God might accomplish some miraculous thing, and therefore it's reasonable to believe. Latter-day Saints are especially interested, because we believe God to be a God of Laws, a Being that works within the laws that He has established (or perhaps that are eternally self-existent, as He, and we, and the elements themselves are -- depends on the Latter-day Saint what the particular belief trying to be justified is). Somehow, finding a possible non-supernatural explanation makes things more believable. Or something. Which is not unreasonable; just think of how far scientific endeavors would have gotten had every question been answered, "Because that's the way God created things." It's a true answer of absolutely zero explanatory value.

Through the centuries, all sorts of scientific and pseudoscientific explanations have been attempted for the new star at Christ's birth. None of them has proven particularly convincing. The ancients knew of comets, so surely a comet would be called such and not by the more generic term "star". Plus, comets were typically seen as evil omens, not heralds of Godly doings. But a "new star", bright enough to be noticed by most people (with decent eyesight), could have been the result of any number of events, such as a distant supernova or even the "unveiling" of a nearby asteroid whose albedo suddenly increased and remained easily visible until "reveiled". The Nephite night of brightness is not so easily hand-waved away. Note that during the day, even if the sun is hidden behind a cloud or a hill or something, it's still very bright outside. The sky itself is a bright azure color that lights the world for us, as much as or perhaps in some cases moreso than the immediate brightness of the sun. I could imagine some sort of atmospheric interplay, something perhaps akin to the aurora borealis, that kept the sky bright even after sundown. Pure speculation, of course. No scriptural account talks of a "second sun" or anything like that, so the bright sky idea appeals to me.