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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Doublethink gives very wise advice on developing a specific sexual technique:

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Originally posted by Doublethink:
Surely, you just point the aspirant at half a pomegranate and tell them to eat it without using their teeth ?

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If you can't figure it out, I won't tell you.

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Do make sure the pomegranate is the right way round

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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"

(Paul Sinha, BBC)

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

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Originally posted by a shipmate who apparently runs a bakery:
Doesn't mean I think every bakery should be forced to bake cakes in the shape of a penis. In fact, I'm pretty sure forcing one of my employees to do that against their will would constitute sexual harassment.

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Has anyone tried to force you to make such a cake? Your customers should acknowledge your expertise and ask for cakes that look like a straw man.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Justinian (to Dark Knight):
You know a little about logic <snip>

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Well, that's one of you.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
So, you would accept "Go see Big Mama, she'll give you a sign" as a valid translation?

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Depends. Does it come with a blues accompaniment?

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Ahaz was down, he was feeling really blue,
Yeah, Ahaz was down, felling really blue.
Then enemy was all around, there was nothing, no thing he could do.

The prophet came to Ahaz, he said he had a word,
Listen to what he says, listen, yeah listen to the Lord.
"Go down to see Big Mama when you're feeling blue,
Go down to see Big Mama that's what you've gotta do.
Big Mama'll show you a sign, and then you'll feel just fine"

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Originally posted by Penny S:


It doesn't matter what us Morlocks think, and we don't even have the Morlocks' sanction over the lizard class. They do anything that enters their tiny minds, and claim the mystical mandate even if they did not have a majority in the election, and never mentioned it in the manifesto.

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Originally posted by orfeo:

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Originally posted by RuthW:
Why are you so exercised about this, orfeo?

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It's either this or doing the ironing.

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Originally posted by Doublethink.:
The smoking slightly oozy body of one of your companions lies at your feet. I assume the total silence is because you are all in shock ?

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Originally posted by georgiaboy:
All Glory laud, etc' reminds me of the gadget-happy old curmudgeon/f*rt RC priest in my former city:
Palm Sunday. His first opportunity to use his new radio mike. Blessing of Palms was in school hall, procession across parking lot to church. My friend the organist waiting to start the hymn when the procession entered the church (IIRC). Fr. was 'having a wonderful day,' chatting to his deacon as the trotted along, to wit:

'My God, these new red vestments are gorgeous! Wonder what those Baptists across the street think of all this, bet they'll just sh*t!'

All of this booming into the ears of the faithful waiting in the nave. My friend said that he never kicked on full organ so fast in his life.

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
The 'Manager of the Year' award is well deserved, but not within a single club. It's about as good for a football club as the Year of the Four Emperors was for Rome.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
We are not descended from apes, but magpies. We see something new and nick the shiny bit without regard to what it does.
The important thing is that it is new.
And because that's what culture is. a syncretic structure. That is the nature of us.

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It's just as well we Brits don't get the vote. Based on the OP, the Democrats are putting up Mrs Clinton, Carcetti from The Wire or the bloke who ripped off one of Neil Kinnock's speeches when running for President. So I think it's a toss up between Mrs Clinton and a write in campaign for Omar.

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As an atheist pagan hedonist, I will happily join the festivities of any god, prophet, guru, sage, emanation or ascended master you happen to have - seeing them not so much as aspects of the divine, but of humanity.

Except possibly for Bank Holidays: I draw the line at celebrating bankers.

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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

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This pretends that if only human interactions were as they should be then this universe would turn into a paradise. This is naive to the point of being nonsensical. You can be the nicest person in the world, and still be eaten up by cancer or a lion. Death (and illness, and pain, and disability, and ...) may lose its sting - but not in this world, where it is the law as punishment for Adam's sin. And most other human conflicts can be traced to that other annoying feature of this world, namely that it gives us little without sweat, blood and tears. The world does not bend to human wishes naturally, it has to be bent to them, and in the process often ends up broken. But more significantly for our purposes here, this endless struggle to eek out an existence is the most fundamental driver of human conflict. The rat race that leaves the weak and the poor perish on the sidelines isn't just an evil human invention. It is a direct result of humans trying to cope with an indifferent or even hostile world, where some are more successful at dealing with this by making it more of a problem for others. This, too, is a punishment for Adam's sin. The dominion over this world is given to the devil, it is not a friendly place that is just waiting for us to come to our senses, whereupon all will be a global love fest. Christian life in this world is an over and against, it is sacrifice in order to foreshadow an other-wordly ideal. We are not trying to harmonise with nature, because it really is a dog-eat-dog world out there. Capitalism is much more "natural" than Christianity. And yes, we do find the remnants of human goodness in ourselves, and we enjoy the remnants of the beauty and harmony of nature. Still, we are ruins struggling in a universal ruin, and it is only by grace and sacrifice that we regain some of the wholesomeness that ought to be there.

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Originally posted by Yorick:
I very strongly believe there is no god and no supernatural anything, yet I really love Christmas, with full churchy trimmings. I love and admire and appreciate much religious music, art, buildings and indeed many religious practices. The idea of God is plainly silly guff to me, but the cultural heritage of religion is often beautiful, inspiring and profoundly uplifting to me. And I really enjoy the way some Christian people sometimes actually practice their religious philosophy, especially with regard to kindness and charity. For this atheist, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Christ, even though He obviously doesn’t exist.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha about a Person Who Shall Remain Nameless:
Factual claims?! Doc Tor gave you this link but you jumped away to another topic.
Prat on a hot tin roof.

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Originally posted by RooK:
The search tool imbedded in the Ship's software sucks so much it has an event horizon.

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Mousethief, in the Remove a Letter game thread:

Liver!

Please, sir, says the orphan boy, may I not have any more? This stuff tastes like sh*t.

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I had my aortic valve replaced with a mechanical substitute last year. I haven't noticed much of a shift in personality towards the unemotionless megalomanical killer cyborg end of the scale. Which I confess comes as something of a disappointment.

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Not being embodied, angels have no gender. Their names are grammatically masculine (as is the word 'angel' in both Hebrew and Greek), but that doesn't mean they are.

The difference between angels and fairies is not gender but existence.

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Originally posted by Martin60:
Gnosticism is dead and well.

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Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:

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Originally posted by Adeodatus:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
... your liturgical arse! ...

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Oh great. Now I have a grotesque image stuck in my head of spending the next three weeks with a purple arse.

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Shouldn't it be rose for the third Sunday?

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It's like the universe was irritated that I was considering hope.

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Originally posted by Macrina:
If I'd have known fucking punctuation could erase people so easily I'd have learned how to use the bloody semicolon years ago.

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Matthew didn't write his gospel by pulling letters out of a scrabble bag

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One is familiar with the old 'better inside pissing out than outside pissing in' argument: but this is about keeping people inside so that they can keep pissing in.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Eliab, squashing leo, suggests the "Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (Ultimate Question) doctrine of Biblical inspiration:

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Matthew didn't write his gospel by pulling letters out of a scrabble bag

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Originally posted by Gwai:
One problem with a hell thread that is ostensibly between two people is that it encourages the assumption that one of the parties is right.

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Outbreaks of mince piety

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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music

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Isn't it interesting that religious references to virgins all seem to concern women instead of women and men?

No?

Maybe not.

After all that is the way God wants it to be. Virgin women having only in a lust-less act of procreation after marriage.

Wait a minute. God wants women to have sex with their husbands whenever the husband wants.

Nope. God wants men to have several wives - just in case the rocky shores of one of their wombs will not allow purchase for the mans holy seed.

As long as all these things are what God wants it's all good. It could have something to do with men writing religious texts and perhaps - I dunno - projecting their desires into their own special vision of God.

Or, maybe - just maybe - God wants us to quit judging others and leave that to God so that we pay attention to our relationship with God instead.

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Originally posted by venbede on the "stop staying pure" thread:
As a gay man, I find it very encouraging that Christ was born without heterosexual being involved.

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
If 'Not having a capital-T Tradition' is not itself a capital-T Tradition, I'd like to know what the heck is.

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Tesco reduced Yule logs from £6 to 30p. By my calculation, that means proportionally, the calories come down from 2780 to 139.

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If only she were right ...

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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music

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Well, he does have the right to express an opinion, in the same way an asshole has the right to express a fart. It's just that both resulting outputs are of equivalent worth.

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... However, as both a Rev and a civil servant, it may just be possible that I have on occasion and when faced with a situation of perhaps less than optimal confidence been heard by those of especially precise auditory skills to have used one or two of the above-mentioned circumlocutions in preference to a more precise and one might say straightforward comment that might be thought to lead more quickly to a full and total comprehension of the situation pertaining at that moment in time ...

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Is he/she possibly Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes, Minister in Real Life?

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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
I don't know - was Sir Humphrey a closet cleric?

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Originally posted by IngoB:
If Erin's scale is like the Richter scale, then it is log10, but normed to some "background" activity. Consequently, 0 would mean "not registered above background", but 1 would already be 10 times stronger than "background".

Mathematically, for A and A0 real and positive

0=log_10(1)=log_10(A/A0) => 1=A/A0 => A=A0
1=log_10(10)=log_10(A/A0) => 10=A/A0 => A=10*A0

rather than Mertseger's "joke" which stops short at

0=log_b(1) for any base b (other than b=0, b=10 above).

You are welcome.

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Originally posted by Ariel:

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Originally posted by leo:
The Muppetts were on TV over Xmas.

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Yes - the Muppet Christmas Carol, saw part of this for the first time. Some good lines, but I did feel the whole thing would have been a lot better without the Muppets.

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