Jamie123

I always pronounced Pyrrhic to rhyme with "lyric" - maybe I've been saying it wrong all these years. It wouldn't be the first time: for years I only encountered the word "paradigm" in print, and had I ever been called upon to say it I would have probably said something like "para-dijum". A colleague of mine was surprised when I told him how Persephone was pronounced (he had always imagined it was "Persi-fone"). My father tells me that when he was young he used to talk about "Jung" (as in Carl Jung, but pronounced with a hard J) and people would have no clue what he was talking about. On the other hand, what about "quixotic"? For years I imagined that was pronounced "Kee-hotic" (I knew how "Don Quixote" should be pronounced because of the song by Nik Kershaw). I was surprised later to learn that it was actually "quicks-otic". P.S. Another word is "Vigenère". About 3 years ago I was called upon to teach cryptography - a subject I then knew almost nothing about, so I had to bury myself in books for a few months learning about one-time pads, block ciphers and elliptic curves. The first year I taught the class I had no idea that Vigenère is pronounced "vision-air", so I told the students all about the "vig-ner-aye" cipher. Luckily none of them knew how it was pronounced either so I got away with it!

Another thing about the KJV is that when a word is written in italics like this it does not mean that reader should stress the word. It means (so I understand) that the word was inserted by the translator and does not appear in the original Greek/Hebrew.

You may be a long way from where God wants you to end up, but does that mean you are not where He wants you to be now?

You're not seriously telling me that Grumpy Bear is "grouchy and cantankerous" by the standards of anyone other than the Care Bears? Grouchy Smurf would be more of a warning!

I totally agree. I think we all admire Martin Luther King - even though he was (i) a serial adulterer, and (ii) an academic cheat. Philip Yancey paints a very warts-and-all picture of him in his book Soul Survivor but still explains why he finds King an inspiration in his life. I've done enough things "worthy of disgust and rejection" myself over the years without worrying about what other people might or might not have done. Though that doesn't always stop me feeling cross and judgmental though...

One I heard about once is that the Smithsonian uses the Book of Mormon as a reference on pre-Columbian America. This is obviously untrue (if it were true then the Smithsonian would be a bastion of Mormonism, which it isn't) but whether this idea was ever seriously believed by Church members I don't know.

You mean Mormons *don't* try to pass themselves off as Amish? Seriously though I didn't spot that in the OP (hangs head in shame! )

"Mormon" is another word for "Amish" "Mormon" is another word for "Quaker" All Mormons are Freemasons Mormons are banned from being Freemasons Mormon men can have as many wives as they like but cannot drink Coca Cola Mormons believe that God communicates with the saints using tachyons Sir Richard Branson is a Mormon (I actually believed this for some time before I looked into it)

Ditto. I guess I'm not that phallically minded! A thread starts with Downton Abbey....and now it's about the symbolism of sand worms! Interesting :)

The last season has just finished here. What happens at the end is that Lady Mary tries to...... [only joking - no spoilers here!] The story's not quite over yet though - the upcoming Christmas episode will be the series finale. On the earlier discussion of normalizing homosexuality: you're right Thomas is not a nice man, but his not-niceness is never really linked with his being gay. The fact that writers are now allowed to create gay villains without being screamed at for homophobia shows how normalized homosexuality has become. Coronation Street is another case in point: there are no fewer than four gay characters: two of them, Billy and Sophie, are portrayed Christians (Billy is even an Anglican priest, though his bishop doesn't approve), Todd is an underhand conniving backstabber (similar to Thomas in DA) and only Sean really fits the classic, camp "gay-best-friend" image. P.S. I've just been thinking - its a few years since I last read it, but (if I remember rightly) in the original novel version of Dune the only homosexual character is the loathsome Baron Harkonenn - the worst villain! (And no one could ever accuse that of being normalizing!) This was of course in the mid-1960s, but I can't remember if there is any reference to his being gay in the David Lynch movie of 1984. Can anyone remember?

I find it difficult to make sense of this argument because they both seem to be talking about wealth owned (capital) rather than wealth produced (profit). The young lady says that 1% of the population owns over 50% of the wealth. (I don't know whether this is true or not, but no one seems to object to the figure.) Cavuto retorts that the entire 50% wealth of the 1% would not pay for Medicaid for 3 years, which is clearly not sustainable. But this would mean that if the entire country's wealth were put into Medicaid, it would only last 6 years - which is not sustainable either! In Britain we have had the National Health Service since 1948. I grew up with it, and I've always considered the NHS as much a part of the state apparatus as the army or the police*. That is 67 years, which was not funded by a single mass confiscation of wealth from the rich, but by taxation of wealth produced during that period. Produced by rich and poor alike - but yes, mostly by the rich because (let's face it) they have more to spare! Cavuto may have come over as having aced the argument, and the girl may have come over as an "airhead", but as neither has really considered the relevant facts, neither has made a valid point. P.S. OK I take that back - he does make one valid point which is that the rich, if taxed too much for their liking will either leave the country or else squirrel their money somewhere were the IRS can't touch it. A lot of this "tax avoidance" goes on here in the UK. * And if you're about to knock me in the dirt and stamp on my head for daring to think that, I'd suggest this has less to do with the superiority of your own arguments than the fact that you grew up with a different set of assumptions.

My wife (who is American) thinks it very strange that British people don't fly the Union Jack* outside their houses the way Americans fly "Ol' Glory". The reason is of course that our national flag has been hijacked by far right: anyone who flaunts it in public is presumed to be a racist skinhead only one step away from wearing a white conical hood with eye-holes. Another two words that have been hijacked are "hacker" and "troll". A hacker used to be a person who was uncannily good at computer programming. Such people would get top marks in computing assignments but struggle to pass any of their other exams (mostly from sitting up all night playing D&D), get their degrees with the lowest possible grades and go on to get highly paid jobs in the software industry. Nowadays though, a "hacker" is someone who attempts to breach firewall security to get their hands on vital financial information. And a "troll" was originally someone who posted silly messages on bulletin boards in order to enjoy the angry responses of people clueless enough to take them seriously: a somewhat naughty but generally harmless activity. Nowadays a "troll" is someone who defaces obituary websites with obscenities and otherwise engages in "cyber bullying". And another thing (this rant is getting as long as Vort's) The word "Cyber" comes from the Greek "Kybernisi" which means controlling/guiding/governing. It's where we get "cybernetics" - which is the science of control systems (natural and artificial). It has nothing inherently to do with the Internet. Nowadays "cyber" has become a synonym for "electronic" or "computer-related" - usually in relation to crime or crime prevention (e.g. "cyber terrorism", "cyber security" etc.) I think this may be partly down to the "Cyber Men" in Doctor Who. *Well OK then the Union "Flag" you annoying pedant!

So sealing after death is only available to people who married in life? That goes against what I was led to believe by the missionaries many years ago when I was an investigating the Church. Having recently learned that eternal marriage was necessary for "salvation" - in the Mormon sense of the word - and having previously been told that "everyone would have a chance", I asked them about the many Cambodian women who would never find husbands because so many men had been executed under Pol Pot. (This was not so very distant history back then.) Their response to that was ask "Do you think that God is just?" The only thing I could infer (assuming the Sisters knew what they were talking about) was that the transition from the single state to the married state must be possible after death.

I was actually talking about a googol, not a googolplex, far less a googolplexian. (And less still a googolplexiantantiddlyumpumpum.)

A googolplexian maybe but numbers much bigger than a googol are used in public key cryptographic algorithms like RSA. What's more these numbers need to be prime numbers - or at least very strong pseudoprimes.

According to this website http://www.googolplexian.com/ the largest number with a name is a "googolplexian". To explain: a "googol" is 10^100, or 1 with 100 zeros: 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (I may have missed the odd zero - or added 1 too many - but if you're planning to count them to make sure then you're as sad as I am! Having said that, anyone who thinks numbers of that size have no practical purpose needs to read up about RSA.) A "googolplex" is 10^(1 googol), or 10^10^100 or 1 and a googol zeros. (And if you watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos back in the 1980s you'll know that is unwriteoutable. Sagan ran around Trinity College Cambridge with rolls and rolls of paper with zeros on, but eventually admitted that the paper needed couldn't be stuffed into the known universe.) A "googolplexian" is 10^(1 googolplex), or 10^10^10^100 or 1 and a googolplex zeros. (Don't even think about it.) OK.....so I'm now going to make history.... A "googolplexiantantiddlyupmumpum" is 10^(1 googolplexian), or 10^10^10^10^100 or 1 and a googolplexian zeros. Time to re-write the maths books!

This reminds me of something that happened to me when I first graduated from college. I was interviewed and recommended for a technical post at GCHQ (similar to the NSA in America). Of course they have to do a lot of background checks on prospective employees - which I assumed was just to make sure I wasn't a Soviet spy (this was at the tail end of the Cold War). And since I wasn't a Soviet spy I naturally assumed this would be a formality. However, the investigation dragged on for quite some time, during which I bummed around doing occasional warehouse work and gradually lost interest in working for GCHQ. Finally a letter arrived from GCHQ saying that as a result of their investigations they would not be able to employ me. By now I was determined to reject any offer of a job from GCHQ anyway, and was already making arrangements to go back to university. But the letter still bugged me: it was laconic to the point of rudeness, giving no indication of what they had against me. If there was something nasty in my background I wanted to know about it! However several letters and telephone calls left me none the wiser. After a few days I let the matter go and concentrated on preparing for grad school. But it still left a nasty taste in my mouth. I still wonder now what the skeleton had been discovered in my closet!

Or alternatively the smarter you are, the less money you spend to do the same amount of work

Yesterday morning, my wife (lovely thoughtful lady that she is) brought me a nice big cup of coffee to me in bed. I put it on my bedside table. However I had failed to notice two things: (I) My beloved iPhone 5s was on the bookshelf above the nightstand, and (ii) about half of said iPhone 5s was projecting over the edge of said shelf. I think you can guess what's coming... I removed iPhone 5s from cup, dried it and turned it off. Later I tried turning it on again but it wouldn't work. I tried plugging it into charger but still no joy. I looked up online what to do - it suggested putting it in uncooked rice to absorb the moisture. But when I came home yesterday the thing was still as dead as a doornail. You'd think that Apple - with all their advanced technology - would make an iPhone that is waterproof. This sort of thing easily happens, and the things cost about £200 to replace or repair. What a life! Prophecy or not, there seems to be something to be said for WoW!

Just to satisfy my morbid curiosity, would you feel the same about tea and coffee?

Injuries from defective whoopee cushions? I can honestly say I never thought of that before!

Evil definitely has intelligence behind it. The way temptation has worked upon me over the years has certainly been quite organized and cunning. I can very often see after the event what the devil's plan was - but that doesn't always make it easier next time. I suspect C.S. Lewis' depiction of devils in The Screwtape Letters is quite close to the truth - though of course I'm not suggesting that Hell is really organized along the lines of the British Civil Service. That was just a bit of satire on Lewis' part :)

On the subject of school bullying, consider the wisdom of that great sage Nigel Molesworth, reported (as any fule kno) by Wiillans and Searle. "Every skool hav a buly who is fat. There are 2 kind of buly: the buly who can run and the buly who cant run for tofee. The first sort is hardly satisfactory but bulys who cant run are beter. You see one swanking up the corridor and you whiz by shouting 'Look at the clot-faced wet!' Buly run after you but you are already disapearing over the horizon. A few days later buly come up to you at yore desk and sa 'You caled me a clot-faced wet what do you mean by it?' You sa "Honestly I would never sa something so uncouth" (fingers crossed) "someone else must think you a clot-faced wet too!" WAM! But you have nimbly skipped away and buly is left cursing. Bulys are pathetic objects I diskard!" [P.S. Spellcheck is a menace when you're trying to quote Molesworth verbatim!]

I think I agree with Eowyn: you need to understand the other person's worldview (*) before you can really ask questions and understand the answers. Otherwise you just end up arguing with them on cross purposes. James White (of Phoenix Arizona) for example says that Mormonism has no meaningful doctrine of Grace. And his arguments make perfect sense - so long as the only "doctrine of Grace" you understand is that espoused by the Reformed Baptists. Other evangelicals rubbish Mormonism by suggesting that Mormons think they can put God in their debt - an idea which they claim is nonsensical. And it is certainly is nonsensical in the absolute sense. But what about within the context of a covenant whose very existence is an act of Grace on the part of God? I remember once talking to an Anglican colleague (who knew nothing of Mormonism) about how the Mormons baptize for the dead: he said the idea was ridiculous because dead people don't have agency. I asked him how he knew this and he didn't have a reason: he just knew that they didn't. It was an assumption he had always had and never questioned. And some Mormons do the exact same thing. A few years ago I had this conversation with some Elders at my door: Elder: You do know, don't you, that we are the true restored Church of Jesus Christ? [A ridiculous question to ask a non-member: if I did know that I would already be a Mormon.] Me: I know that's what you believe. Elder: We don't just believe it. We know it! [Another stupid thing to say: demanding the other person accept a-priori that you're right is no way to start a cross-faith discussion. It's just a conversation-stopper.] Me: (Silence) Elder (realizing his mistake and trying to rescue the situation): Do you believe that the Church of England is the True Church of Jesus Christ? Me: No. I don't. Elder: (genuinely surprised) You don't? Me: No. The True Church of Jesus Christ is invisible. Then came some bluster about "Did Jesus Christ found an invisible church?" but you could tell they were floundering. They had not been expecting me to say "no". If I had said "yes" there would doubtless have been a lot of "gotcha" points about Henry VIII's unsuitability as a Church-Founder and Prophet. But those would only have worked if I had held the same sort of ideas about the C of E as they held about the Mormon Church. Yes...yes...I know I'm speculating about what these two young men were thinking, but I reckon I'm not too far off the truth. My real point is that you need to think outside the box: the sort of "gotcha" questions that Eowyn mentioned are usually rooted in the asker's worldview and are either unanswerable, or else a truthful answer would not be meaningful to the one who asked it. (*) I think I should rephrase that a bit: you don't necessarily need to understand the other person's worldview; you need to be open to having your own worldview challenged. I apologise: that is an important distinction.

What a lovely, lovely song :)