Thoughts at large

[rb336]

Fresh Steps cat litter comnmercials -- they say "your cat may need help finding her litter box"

Cat lovers -- is that really what you want?

[eriedearie]

Ok, thoughts at large?

Commercial for Cialis - what's with a medication that gives couples the desire to sit in separate bathtubs on a beach? What's up [[no pun intended) with that?

[rb336]

Makes it difficult for the drug's purpose to be acted upon

[Pam]

Commercial for Cialis - what's with a medication that gives couples the desire to sit in separate bathtubs on a beach? What's up [[no pun intended) with that?

Related thought- why are there so many Cialis ads on the Weather Channel?

[Flanders]

The HD on my ancient IBM Thinkpad bit the dust for good several days ago. I don't have a spare, so I used my neighbor's desktop computer to burn about 8 Live Linux distros from their download mirrors. The very last disk that I tried, was able to detect my wireless card and router, so I can once again browse the internet, even without a hard drive installed, as the OS runs completely on installed physical memory. You rock, Puppy Linux!!

[DetroitDad]

The Saturn ads about making your payments if you can't pay... isn't the Saturn brand facing discontinuance, and isn't GM facing bankruptcy? Won't everday Joe think; "yes, you'll make my payments IF you are even still around, yeah you're taking a big risk there GM". Was this the best promotion to start right now?

[Detroitej72]

The Saturn ads about making your payments if you can't pay... isn't the Saturn brand facing discontinuance, and isn't GM facing bankruptcy? Won't everday Joe think; "yes, you'll make my payments IF you are even still around, yeah you're taking a big risk there GM". Was this the best promotion to start right now?

Saturn is to be purchased by Roger Penske, so it will still be in business.[[just a little FYI)

[Gistok]

Ok, thoughts at large?

Commercial for Cialis - what's with a medication that gives couples the desire to sit in separate bathtubs on a beach? What's up [[no pun intended) with that?

It's because after you hear the long list of negative side effects.... sharing a tub is the last thing on their minds....

.... and among those side effects... has ANYONE ever sought out medical help for the "more than 4 hours" scenario??? I think not!!

I also want to know why on earth an Irish Setter would want the Bush's Baked Beans recipe...

[Lorax]

I want to know if Dick Cheney's heart is in Davy Jones' locker.

[ccbatson]

I hope Penske takes the ball and runs with it.

[rb336]

I want to know if Dick Cheney's heart is in Davy Jones' locker.

i always though he was more of a micky dolenz type [[sorry, mick)

[Omaha]

Quite clever rb336.

But I am particularly fond of “an army of one� and “be all you can be.� Both focus on the importance of the individual. The first is of course ridiculous. Army’s are groups of individuals organized in a bureaucratic command and control system. The armed forces are a collective and it reflects collective values: we're all in this together; we are looking out for one another; we stand together; we can do collectively what we can't do individually.

Thanks goodness they stop short of "be thy brother's keeper." The armed forces almost sounds socialistic!

Just like there is no “I� in TEAM, there is no room for disobeyers of orders [[individualism) in a fighting force [[My Lai, Abu Ghraib, et. al., being understandable exceptions).

So what’s needed to entice enlistment…is to turn a government run organization that is collective in its very essence into “an army of one� or a place where you as an individual can “be all that you can be.� That my friends is a BRILLIANT use of spinning to both deny the obvious and glorify the individual.

Let’s just remember that E Pluribus Unum [[out of many, one) really means that you are on you own in this dog-eat-dog society where any hint that a collective approach can actually go some good must be smashed into nothingness. In a conservative worldview this is a pull yourself up by your bootstraps, it’s all about me, pull the ladder up after you kind of competition where only the strong survive…like Gordon Gekko. He’s still alive and well all these years later.

Boy it’s great to have this kind of insight. Thank goodness for all the Colbert Conservatives and Social Darwinists out there. We see and explain the world as it really is.

[Omaha]

In the previous post, I was quite busy with working on the Colbert trait of "misdirection" and wrote: "Let’s just remember that E Pluribus Unum [[out of many, one) really means that you are on you own in this dog-eat-dog society where any hint that a collective approach can actually go some good must be smashed into nothingness."

Sorry, I've got to proof these better before posting them. I meant to write "can actually DO some good..."

[mjs]

.... and among those side effects... has ANYONE ever sought out medical help for the "more than 4 hours" scenario??? I think not!!

I didn't realize that warned of a negative side effect. I thought it was a selling point showing how well it could work.

[Omaha]

How about those 10 Commandments? They were a God-inspired set of rules for how people should live together. But unlike government regulations, following the 10 Commandments is optional. But there are consequences for not following them...spending eternity in Hell.

Do you suppose that God put the 10 Commandments in their order of importance? I do.

If you were God, is it an accident that the first four Commandments deal with how to worship and honor You? Then coming in at Commandment #5 is "Honor thy Father and Mother;" those five cover one entire Tablet that Moses carried down.

And next at the top of Tablet two, coming in at #6, is "thou shalt not kill." That shows you how far our society has moved away from Godliness.

Yes, I know that all of the 10 Commandments need to be followed, if you are a Christian, but I do like their order of presentation!

[eriedearie]

If you were God, is it an accident that the first four Commandments deal with how to worship and honor You? Then coming in at Commandment #5 is "Honor thy Father and Mother;" those five cover one entire Tablet that Moses carried down.

And next at the top of Tablet two, coming in at #6, is "thou shalt not kill." That shows you how far our society has moved away from Godliness.

Yes, I know that all of the 10 Commandments need to be followed, if you are a Christian, but I do like their order of presentation!

I believe that the order of presentation is perfect for the way God would have us live. I think the first five are in the order they are so that if you follow them, the next five will easily fall into place.

IMO - This site has a good up-to-date explanation:

http://www.allabouttruth.org/what-ar...dments-faq.htm

[gnome]

At-larege thought:

When you find a body, do you call someone right away or do you light up first?

[ccbatson]

Contest and perspective...The Bible, and religion that follows, are/were incredibly ingenious and comprehensive stories loosely based on life experiences of some real people who lived thousands of years ago [[incomprehensible for a modern person to understand). This was the vehicle for conveying knowledge at the time, and it took the form of story telling [[and documentation of those stories in the Bible). These are moral/ethical homalies, not literal events, whose purpose was to generate a cohesive and "law" abiding society. The threat of supernatural punishment was the manner in which to enforce the "laws" of the time.

These laws were based on ancient man, prior to philosophical concepts such as right and wrong, and certainly way before economic paradigms like capitalism. With these limited resources, the Bible did a fantastic job of molding what would become our present day societal framework. Some of the lessons therein transcribed still have core values that can be applied to modern man [[others cannot). The point is that this was the foundation of what would become a "civil society". Based on these principles, but then greatly expanded upon in modern terms, is the philosophy that became the foundation of our [[US) society in the form of another incredible document[[s), the US Declaration of Independence, Preamble, and Constitution.

This led to the philosophical perspective that the core value, based on religious seed ideas, of individual liberty and property rights as the most important ethical principle and proper basis for the function of our government [[to protect individual liberty...at home and abroad).

G-d is not a sentient being, but a symbol representing the totality of reality...synonymous with, if not the same as, the world "existence [[or reality, if you like)". In this sense, the question of whether G-d exists, becomes the primary of does existence [[existents) exist....of course they do, and therefore, G-d exists. If, on the other hand, G-d is defined as a mystical sentient being, well, the only rational [[and therefore correct) answer to the question of whether G-d exists, is no....just as gremlins, fairies, and...gasp...Santa Claus do not exist when the question is framed by the absurd and mystical definitions of these entities/characters.

Apply this to the world around you, and things become very much clearer.

[Lorax]

I don't disagree with your perspective, as I share it as well, however, what America's governance is based on could be construed as a blending of these ideals with those of the pagan Greeks, whose democratic philosophy was the foundation for our own.

We even developed a government sanctioned imperative to copy classic Greco/Roman architecture as the official architecture of our capital city, it's monuments, offical buildings, museums, libraries, as well as most banks and court buildings across the land.

[ccbatson]

Trivialities....The big picture perspective is what matters.

You? Lorax, share the belief that individual liberty and property rights are the most important ethical principles forming the basis of the constitutionally limited proper functions of our government?

[Locke09]

ccbatson,

Whether you believe in God or not, the bible does not place greater importance on individual liberty and property rights over the "common good" and responsibility to your fellow man. In fact, the bible isn't very much interested in individual liberty at all and constantly calls upon man to set aside perceived "rights" to achieve some greater good. Example: Property owners were required to instruct their workers not to harvest everything that grew in the fields. They were to leave some for the poor to come along and glean. And people who made loans were forbidden from charging interest to their fellow countrymen [[all interest was considered usury). And all debts were to be forgiven in the Year of Jubilee. Another example: Paul instructed Christians that if there was something they were doing, like eating pork, that offended others that they were around, they should avoid doing that, even though they were "at liberty" to do it. Too many examples to list that set aside individual rights and property interests.

[Detroitej72]

Well, the Bible does say give to Cesar what is his, in reference to taxes. That can't be disputed, so one could say the writer was a tax and spend liberal!

[ccbatson]

Agreed...because the men/women of that time, who wrote the Bible, hadn't even a basic understanding of the concepts.

The industrial revolution led to the giant leap forward in prosperity resulting from the large scale practice of capitalism. This was possible based on the founding of the US and the constitution. Which, in turn, was possible based on the foundation of the Bible [[after many intermediate steps...but you get my point).

By analogy...algebra does not make a world class innovator and inventor...however, it leads to higher math, physics, applied physics, chemistry, computer science......you get my point.

[Locke09]

What concept did they not understand? They understood greed and charity. They understood wealth [[great wealth) and poverty. They understood loans and interest rates - they even understood collateral and had rules about what you could demand as collateral. They understood individual vs collective guilt, individual vs. collective liberty and individual vs. collective responsibility and all those concepts are covered throughout in detail.They understood many forms of government: patriarch, monarchy, theocracy, judges, military leaders, republics, puppet kings, etc.

I suppose "democracy" would be a foreign concept to them though.

I believe that the primary foundation that would have been built upon is "promoting the general welfare and common good". Individual liberty is subservient to the common good in the bible.

[mjs]

From Kingpin-

Brother Thomas, you know what it says in the Bible about not forgiving people.
Why don't you tell us all what it says?
Well, it's against it.

Just like the movie, you can't pick your favorite words out of context. Matthew 22:15-22 from the New International Version:

Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"

But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

"Caesar's," they replied. Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

Some Jews believed the new Testament promised the Messiah would lead the Jewish insurrectionists in a war to drive the Romans from Jewish lands so being against such a war would prove he wasn't the Messiah. Others just wanted a reason they could use to get the Romans to arrest him so the Jewish leaders figured they could use any answer he gave against him. Alot of incidences in the bible show Jewish leaders trying to get the Romans to arrest and kill what they considered a false Messiah and his disciples. It was exceedingly difficult to do to the Roman citizen Paul since the Roman beuracrats kept trying to avoid the question by sending it up the chain of command.