Whatever... he's the guy that is stuck living in a stupid looking house.

I'm not big into onerous zoning laws and neighborhood deed restrictions, et al, but if you buy property and move into such a place, you deserve what you get.

oops, yes, I missed Miss Cellania's comment... mea culpe!

@Jacques-
I can understand if you don't necessarily believe that Christ is divine. OK, that is an article of faith which not everyone will believe... I'm not big into prosletyzing -- people should read and decide for themselves without being pestered and annoyed by me or anyone else.

Where I am taken back is that it sounds like you are questioning the existence of the historical person Jesus, though. Is my understanding accurate? How do you discount the contemporary secular discussions of Christ & his followers in Roman (pagan) and Jewish texts -- Tacitus, Josephus, et al? These accounts didn't come from Christ's followers or anyone who in any way believed in His divinity -- in contrast, they came from those whose best interest would be sevred by them denying his existence entirely -- if that wese at all plausible (which apparently it wasn't!). Why did they report on his life and doings (along with those of his follwers) if that was all a myth? Were Herod the Great and Herod Agrippa both myths as well? How about the Roman procurator Pilate?

Believe it or not, there are actually was real history being recorded 2000 years ago... Julius Caesar, Cicero, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, &c. were not myths either. I'll leave theology out of it, but anyone denying history so blatantly is obviously hasn't read much of it. The Romans were brutal, but they kept pretty darned good records.

There are bibical scholars (Bart Ehrman comes to mind, but there are probably others ... wiki him) who are themselves agnostic, but don't dispute the existence of Jesus the man. They either don't know or don't think he was God, but know he was real. You would do well to look into that a little.

Math "whiz"? Yeah, figuring out the square root of 9 is pretty challenging.

I'd say it's geeky and suitable for a math teacher's classroom, but not quite "whiz level". It's probably beyond about the top 5% of U.S. government school teenagers, though. Cute.

Somewhere I have a "Free Kevin Mitnick!" bumper sticker...

Yeah, NYC got cleaner under Guiliani, but it's kind of a Singapore authoritarian style way of cleaning things up. He's not what one would call a liberty-minded Republican in any event.

Nonetheless, if you are a pro-gun control, pro-abortion, illegal alien amnesty, big government, low civil liberty kind of Republican, he may be your man.

Orthodox (and not just Russian, either) Christmas is celebrated 13 days later on account of the Julian calendar behind currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. In another hundred years or s, though, they will have slipped another day and will celebrate on January 8th. This is because the Julian year is 365 days whilst the Gregorian is ~365.25 days. As the years go on, the calendars get frther and further appart (which is the reason for Gregory fixing the calendar in the first place -- Christmas would eventually wind up in the Spring).

Epihany is a different holiday ENTIRELY and commemorates the Magi's visit of Christ. In the Western Church, it is celebrated on January 6th of teh Greogorian calendar. Orthodox Churches celebrate it on January 6th also, but it's January 6th of the Julian calendar; again, on the Gregorian calendar most of us use, it's 13 days later, January 19th.

It is unfortunate that the closeness of Western Epiphany to Orthodox Christmas causes the confusion, but Christmas for both celebrates the birth of Christ, whilst Epiphany celebrates the wise men's visit.

@Ick

I won't get into an argument over the morality of abortion, but a couple of your statements made little sense.

1. You said - "No one aborts to avoid childbirth."

That's part of it, but mostly it's to avoid the hassle of being pregnant.

2. Your comment "It’s not the childbirth that’s 'inconvenient', it’s the lifetime of strife and resentment." is logically unsupportable. If that were the main reason, there would be lots of babies up for adoption and few aborted ones.

I had a humorous putdown in mind for this piece of krap, but VonSkippy's is better.

nobody offers the possibility that everything is real, EXCEPT the final connection isn't made to the wall outlet. So quickly people scream "photoshopped!", when there could be a much simpler explanation -- they staged the pic as a joke and didn't plug the cord in.

In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the chocolate river Augustus Gloop falls into is made from the blood of other gluttonous predecessors.

Sounds like the bride has a pretty high opinion of herself!

My wife and I went to a wedding recently where they had displayed a quite large photographic portrait of the bride in her wedding dress. The groom was not in the pic nor was there a matching groom portrait. We thought that was pretty odd (as did others), but the bride was telling people it's all pretty trendy now. Yeah, whatever... I can understand a portrait of the 2 of them (or separate portraits, if they are kooky about being together in dress before the "big day"), but the bride all by herself in portrait or cake form seems pretty self-serving. Somebody wants no mistakes about whose "big day" it is. The poor guy better prepare himself for a lifetime of serving his princess.

Like Alex, over the years I have changed my mind about capital punishment. Our reasons may be slightly different, though. Alex's reason seem to lean towards possible ambiguity in guilt. That is a valid argument, but I'm not sure it is the only one. On occasion, there is absolutely no ambiguity (say somebody assassinates somebody in view of hundreds of people and is immediately apprehended). Regardless of certainty of guilt, I no longer feel it is man's moral perogative to take life as punishment (blowing away thine enemy in a just war is another story of course).

I have a few supporting arguments--
1. To be "fair" to the accused, there is a very long appeal process, resulting in punishment being ultimately metered out decades after the crime. I'm not sure what it buys at that point other than vengeance.
2. I think a lot of criminals would prefer to die and thus we are ultimately granting *their* wishes. Rather, I'd like to see them spend their lives hard at work in a serious hard labor prison in a small dark cell-- someplace in which they would not enjoy life. No TV, phone calls, weight rooms, conjugal visits, or other "carrots" dangled in front of them to keep them docile.

oops... I hit "enter" too by mistake.

@Sasha, I am interested in your perspective on the ADD/ADHD meds that are pushed into increasing numbers of our kids yearly. I think it's an absolute digrace as well. Where we differ is in where the blame is laid. I would rest it with the pediatricians that prescribe it, the schools that pressure the parents into doping their kids, but ultimately responsibility must rest with the parents.

The benefit of such powerful psychoactive medications may be there for a *tiny* fraction of the populace (which is why I do not blame drug companies), but not 10% or more as it is in some government school districts. Parents dope their kids because it makes them easier to control. What a poor message this sends to them as they continue on through life.

1. Christophe- I have some sympathy for your views & agree that the use of drugs can spiral a lot of people out of control -- better to avoid them all together. Unfortunately, what has long been proven is all these aims to reduce the supply simply raise the price & profits and makes it all the more attractive for new people to enter as "supplymakers". In my view, you decriminalize it all and spend 1/100 the effort convincing people it's stupid. You'll never "win" the war on drugs anymore than the US was able to "win" the war on booze during the Prohibition Era. As long as there is demand, there will be a supply.
2. VonSkippy - spending the $500B on healthcare is not a good alternative -- besides resulting in a crappy product, it only provides the gov't a plausible rationale for having its hooks into people's personal lives re: their consumption of fatty foods, soft drinks, alcohol. whatever. How about just tax people $500B less in the first place and allow that $ to enter the economy in a rational manner or to support private investment? Stay out of our lives.
3. Sasha- Vioxx didn't kill 20,000 people. That's bloody crazy. WHat it did do was greatly improve the quality of life for a lot of people with debilitating pain. There is a small risk for some very dangerous side effects in a very small % of the population, most of whom could be easily screened out. Drugs like Vioxx, Accutane, and even Thalidomide can have very positive results and be an absolute godsend to those who really need them. Side effects are a risk and indeed, some can show up after the product is in commercial distribution. The liberals and socialists like to pin this all on evil money grubbing drug companies hiding the side effects, but this is pure krap. Only a tiny fraction of new drugs developed ever makes it to the market and it usually takes decades. Depriving the private companies of profit potential only ensures that nothing new will ever be developed. We wouldn't even have aspirin without private drug companies.