Jamie123

Nebbish. I don't remember ever hearing that word before. Dictionary.com gives: "a man...who is so mild and submissive that other people tend to feel sorry for him". Perhaps I'm a bit of a nebbish myself. I've certainly always lived in existential dread.

I love Anne Murray. She's my favourite of all ever.

It's a long time since i saw him, but if I remember rightly, he comes over as the sad little nobody/loser that everyone is afraid that they are. Like: "I asked for a dog for Christmas, but my parents gave me an ant. They told me he was a dog, and I thought he was a dog. Until I set him on a gang of kids who were bullying me, and then he got squashed."

Ok I found the reference. Sleeper. My bad. I've watched some Woody Allen movies, but never that one.

Sorry. Perhaps it's the kebab... P.S. Or Starmer...

Well we could be on the brink of some great paradigm shift whereby our "knowledge" that the earth is round will be exposed as a misconception. Like the miasma theory or the effectiveness of leeches in medicine. But that doesn’t really alter what I was saying. My point was that no dialogue on the shape of the world could have preceded the concept that the earth has shape. But for what its worth I think we can "know" the world is a sphere as much as we can know anything. (Unless we are really in The Matrix!) Pictures of the earth from space show clearly that it is a sphere. And even if you think NASA is a conspiracy theory you can see ships disappearing over the horizon, or the earth's rounded shadow on the moon during an eclipse, or the different altitudes of the sun at different latitudes. Yes I know some crazies on YouTube think otherwise but they are so easy to debunk that I'm surprised people bother.

There is only one kebab shop within walking distance of my work, and up until now I have found them brilliant. Even a "small lamb doner" (which is what I normally have) is well worth the £7 you pay for it. Lots of meat. Lots of salad. And they heat the nan bread up for you and cut it properly and put the meat and salad inside in the PROPER way. When I went there today it was a new bloke, and I didn't like the look on his face. A bit self-satisfied. The equipment was all different. The counter was in a different position, closer to the door. Presumably it was "under new management". When he gave me the kebab it felt suspiciously light. Got it back to my office and found that the meat was nothing like as plentiful as usual. The salad was little more than lettuce and onion. And....IT WAS ALMOST COLD!!!!! AND IT STILL COST £7!!!! Absolute RIP OFF!!! I'm not going back there again. Grumble, grumble, groan. I blame Starmer!

It's a long time since I saw Hamlet so I could be missing something. But it just occurred to me... How can Hamlet say that death is "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns" when he has previously seen his father's ghost beckoning to him? At least one traveller has returned to him (Hamlet)!

I'm not inclined to get too worked up about this. A gut reaction of many is "It's a sin, and you can't legalise sin." Which is total nonsense. There are plenty of sins which are not against the law. Nor should they be. It is a sin to "take the Lord's name in vain", but I don't think many of us would want blasphemy laws reintroduced. I don't want assisted dying to be a thing, but neither do I want poor old Mr. Harris who for years watched the misery of Mrs. Harris' slow decline, and finally helped put her out of her misery to be put on trial for murder. It used to be that suicide was a crime, and people sometimes were sent to prison for trying to kill themselves. The first reaction of many people upon finding a half strangled man dangling from a rope having failed to kill himself was not to call the ambulance to have him treated (and hopefully counselled) but to call the police and have him arrested. Thankfully those days are now over, but critics will point out that suicides have become more common since then. It's all swings and roundabouts.

"39 and holding (but starting to lose my grip)" My favorite though is "21 and a bit"

It's often said that in Jesus' time, for a man to have reached the age of 30 without getting married would have been so unusual that it would have been remarked upon, and since it is not remarked upon we can reasonably assume that he had a wife. One tradition is that he was married to Mary Magdalen (who may or may not have been the same person as Mary of Bethany) and had children by her, whose descendants are still alive today. Back in the 1970s there was a big stir when Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln wrote up this theory in a book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail which, though it was quite famous for a while, sank into obscurity until Dan Brown resurrected the idea in The Da Vinci Code. Most people (who had never read the earlier book) then assumed it was a new and blasphemous idea. For what its worth, it doesn't bother me one bit if Jesus' descendants are alive today. Another thought though: who's to say he - or Heavenly Father for that matter - have only one wife? There could be any number of Heavenly Mothers.

"Lo he comes with clouds descending, once for mortal sinners slain" - Great hymn by Wesley. I just love the imagery - the majesty of the churning clouds etc. "Onward Christian Soldiers" - Encourages you to show a bit of backbone. (Something I badly need!) The song is mostly banned these days for "warlike imagery". "When a Knight Won His Spurs" - another "backbone" hymn, with the lovely phrase "let faith me my shield and let joy be my steed". Faith defends and joy propels. Nobody apart from me seems to like this hymn. People quickly change the subject whenever I mention it. (Probably because it's about killing "dragons of anger and ogres of greed" - killing is wrong dontcha know?) A few more: "O thou who camest from above, the fire perpetual to impart" "Had Christ that once was slain ne'er burst his three day prison, our faith had been in vain, but now is Christ arisen!" "Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down" "The spacious firmament on high..." "O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee, I give thee back the life I know...etc." "All my hope on God is founded, he doth still my trust renew..." "O Holy Ghost our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire..." Can't forget "To be a Pilgrim!" - Bunyan's original lyrics and the newer version - I love them both. So many more...

I've always had a soft spot for John Newton. I've often thought "I'm a terrible man but I never did what he did, so maybe there's still hope for me". There's a story that during a storm at sea, Newton prayed to God promising to change his ways. Nevertheless, after the ship did not sink, he made several more slaving voyages before he quit - showing that if you have difficulty living up to your covenants you shouldn't despair.

The age of majority in the UK is 18, and has been since 1969.

Haha...I can just imagine some cheeky kid calling his mother "woman" and when scolded for it saying: "But didn't you say we should follow Jesus' example?"

I hope you're right Vort, I really do!

I wasn't going to respond any more to this, but having thought about it a bit I think I will. (Though it does more-or-less still come down to "fair enough". 😉) There are basically three kinds of "things": there are things we know, things we don't know, and things we don't know we don't know. For example, we know now that the earth is spherical. Our distant ancestors didn't know this, and hypothesised that the earth was flat like a table. Then Aristotle and Pythagoras and Eratosthenes found that the "flat table" hypothesis didn't fit their astronomical observations, and proposed instead the "sphere" model we now know to be true. However, the discussion could not have reached that point had there not have been a preexisting concept that the earth is an object (something like an enormous stone) and like any other object it must have a shape. Do you think that our most distant ancestors - I'm talking pre-Ice Age here - had such an understanding apriori any more than polar bears or alligators do, or did it emerge over many generations? Until it did, no discussion of the shape of the world would have meant anything to anyone. Not only did they not know the shape of the world, they did not know that they didn't know. They had not yet reached a point where the question was meaningful. So returning to the matter in hand: the Latter-day Saint religion is either true, or else it is not true. If it is not true then the matters Carborendum is efusing to clarify have about as much importance as the number of arms Ganesha has. (I mean of course to a Christian. I daresay our Hindu friends might find that question very important.) However, if it is true, then I think we can accept there may be things about it which a nonbeliever (or even a newbie believer) will not only not know, but not know that he/she does not know. I daresay Carborendum feels that trying to clarify his statements to me would be like trying to explain compound interest to a raccoon. And he may well be right. Either way, I agree that it "wouldn't do any good to clarify" so it still comes down to "fair enough".

Ah...but what about when AIs start designing their own successors? And those successors design their own successors? The growth would not be linear but exponential!

We're still really in the foothills of understanding AI. How do we know that the "desires and passions of people" are not emergent properties of complex systems, once they reach a critical complexity?

That sounds good! My wife used to make good zucchini bread to bring to church and pass around! 😀 I had almost forgotten about that!

Thanks Zil - maybe send me a cake with a file in it?

Much as I hate the expression "fair enough".... "Fair enough". 😀

Starmer is an awful Prime Minister, who hates free speech, pooh-poohs all criticism, thinks he can control the judiciary (which isn't helped when the judiciary allows itself to be controlled), but who has one of the biggest majorities in parliament ever known. I mean, just look at the lower picture below. (The reds are Starmer's party) And it's not that surprising. People wanted a change and they got one. Just not one for the better. No one was expecting the new government to be EVEN WORSE than the last. So what can we do? Sooner or later someone is going to hit on the idea of having an AI government. After all, it could hardly be much worse than the human governments we've seen. And what then? Humans enslaved to machine masters? There'll have to be a Butlerian Jihad!

I've been fascinated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the sisters randomly visited my house 33 years ago, and - though I clearly know less about it than actual members do - I think I'm more knowledgeable than the average nonmember. But I still occasionally learn something new that throws me through a bit of a loop. I had always taken it for granted that all serious LDS members (I'm not talking here about nominal or non-practicing members) have either been through the Temple endowment ceremony, or else were working towards it. Why would I assume such a thing? Well...I suppose because the Temples are so central to the Church, that you would expect members' lives to be focused towards them - even as an aspiration, if they are not yet ready to partake of what the Temple ordinances offer. However, I recently watched a video by ****** ******** which made me think. It's enough to know that ****** ******** left the Church after being endowed, serving a mission and being sealed to her husband. (I'm guessing ******** must be her maiden name, because she often appears on her YouTube videos wearing a missionary badge with the name "Sister ********" on it.) I shan't write out her name because that would probably get me suspended from this forum, but I think many people will know who I'm talking about. Anyone who doesn't will not find out much by Googling "****** ********". Anyway, she said that most people going through the Temple endowment are either preparing for a mission, or else for marriage. Occasionally (she claimed) other people went through the endowment, but this was rare. Now I'm well aware that LDS members are encouraged to marry (in order to have children and thus provide mortal bodies for the premortal spirits waiting to be born) but is it true that a non-prospective-missionary with no prospect of marriage would have nothing significant to gain from receiving the endowment, and should not necessarily aspire to it? I did a bit more Googling and found an article by a lady (this one a faithful member) that somewhat confirmed this. She had never been a missionary, was not married and had no intention of marrying, who had nevertheless been endowed. She said that both her Bishop and her Stake President had advised her against endowment because (i) the whole process is geared towards married people, and as a single woman she would feel horribly out of place, and (ii) if she ever broke the law of chastity after being endowed it would be a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible (x 100) sin, far worse than if she had not been endowed. Despite this pushback she was eventually given a Temple recommend and went through the ceremony. Now I know there are "proxy endowments" (just as there are "proxy baptisms" and "proxy confirmations"), so presumably a faithful member who dies without having sought endowment is relying upon an endowed member performing the ceremony on their behalf later. But I have never heard of anyone who is a true believer deliberately delaying baptism until after death. I don't doubt there is a good reason for this - I'm just curious.

Mah haha hahaaa!