This little witticism is pithy yet meaningless without further explanation, so what is the “way more” my comment says about me? Hopefully there’s something I’m unaware of despite having been myself for quite some time. Unless you don’t actually have anything to contribute to the discussion.

That certainly belies their “nice” image. According to Ancestry DNA I’m actually related to some of the original Mormons. I never knew who my biological father was until then so I may have dodged a bullet. Not sure if he or his family were members but plenty of their relatives are.

I don’t know that they have, I was using them as examples of clearly intelligent people who follow rather dogmatic faiths. They may privately disagree. Which Judaism leaves room for but I’m pretty sure if Jennings stood up in Tabernacle and said he was thought Joseph Smith made up the golden plates in order to…

I’ve read that as well but I wasn’t sure how to take it. Without going back to sources taking any science media at face value is getting to be difficult.

It was meant in a friendly spirit but in hindsight I can see how my crude attempt at humor could be seen as aggressive and insulting so I apologize. The Internet encourages a sense of false familiarity with strangers I often succumb to.

I probably wasn’t specific enough. I can understand belief in a creator because we don’t have all the answers and even logic and philosophy tell us that some questions are unanswerable. I can understand tradition and community. The same with the emotional comfort religion can provide, especially when coming to terms…

It's like the water cycle; money that goes up to the wealthy has to come down to the people eventually or you end up with huge, swollen thunderclouds in the sky with a dry, dusty desert below and a hell of a mess to clean up when the storm finally breaks.

I’m guessing these unapproved sources are Chinese labs that make it by the kilo and sell it for dirt cheap. Clearly they cut costs with their cheaper labor and by not having to obey FDA regulations but the price disparity makes you wonder what kind of profit margin our pharmaceutical companies are working with. Many…

studying...how it tastes.

This is something I’ve wondered about before. I always scored well on standardized tests and got a high IQ score (I’m aware that those measurements are biased and flawed but they’re what we have a large set of data on) but I’ve also recognized that a lot of that has to do with my ability to retain and recall…

Thanks for the response. My parents were an avowed atheist father and a non-practicing Jewish mother so I got very little in the way of religious instruction. Thankfully Dad wasn’t an anti religion type of atheist but he was also a conspiracy theorist so he may have had an inkling that people who live in glass houses…

So it sure seems like falsifying arrests inorder to continue getting federal funding for these checkpoints is some type of attempt to defraud the federal government, a serious federal crime. What's wrong, the FBI doesn't have an office in Honolulu? Or maybe the cops in suits don't feel like busting their brothers in…

Don’t pretend billionaires are nice, that’s what their PR people want you to do. If she was really nice she’d give away all the money now, not when she dies, and keep just enough to fund a decent middle class lifestyle until her death. Seriously, stop thinking the extremely wealthy care about anyone but themselves.…

It’s funny to me that these two, both smart people on paper, are devoutly religious. Not only religious but in specific, dogmatic ways. Jennings is a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormons. The “Saints” referred to? Themselves.) Bialik is a follower of Orthodox Judaism. Both of them have the faculties to…

I think we should have some sort of system where workers have a stake in the management of the company. Greater transparency should mitigate the risk that a powerful union could acquire benefits for its members that cause the company to be at a competitive disadvantage. That would refute the main objection to unions…

If the bull was used to being herded on horseback it might respond accordingly and become less aggressive. Not a rancher so just a theory.

We should all go lavish praise on that Jonathan Ross guy for managing to reference something properly. Not because he deserves it but because it will piss off Elon and drive him to some new attention getting actions. Eventually he'll actually hit himself in the nuts on camera and then croak out "Ow, my balls!", hoping…

I’ve toyed with the idea that people should be able to voluntarily take a Singaporean-style corporal punishment in return for a reduction or elimination of a prison sentence. Of course that would have to be for non-violent crimes otherwise we would simply be making worse violent criminals then releasing them early. I…

An old friend of mine was murdered a few days ago, shot to death in his yard in front of his mother over some stupid fucking argument. He was five years younger than me, the little brother of a high school friend. The brother my age passed away after being hit by a drunk driver just after we turned 18. And now the…

Seems like it would be impossible to quantify that number with any certainty. The variables concerning how often people call the police or otherwise report a use of a firearm that didn't involve death or injury alone would confound the whole thing. Then there's the problem of how to tell a "legitimate" use from…