Anthony C wrote:
"Accordng to the Catholic church, even unbaptized babies are damned. This creates a whole host of interesting debates all its own."

Ummm, simply put, no, this is not current (or past) teaching of the Catholic Church. The teaching is along the lines of "we do not know and have to trust that God is merciful and just in such issues". There had been in the past some Church theologians (notably Augustine) theorizing on the *potential* existence of a "Limbo" (which is a nice place, not damnation, but not heaven either) for unbaptized babies, but this has never been official doctrine.

There was a papal document in 2007 called 'The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized' which includes the following " ...give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision. We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge." Google it if you like...

So Anthony was speaking from his rectum.

So the women can have BIGGER waistlines? How whack is that?

The "artist" sounds like a moron to me. He even went through the trouble of copper plating it so it more closely resembled a real penny? Why? With $1000 and time to burn, this guy must have been operating on National Endowment for the Arts funds.

Hey, I've been the one at Kilmacduagh Monastery about 5 years ago. Pretty cool! I honestly don't remember it leaning, though :-)

There's a very oddly parallel story about a Nazi party member Siemens businessman named John Rabe who was stationed in Nanking, China when the Japanese invaded and committed thousands of atrocities against Chinese civilians. The Japanese massacred hundreds of thousands in the Nanking area, but Rabe's efforts in establishing a safety zone (as well as personally keeping hundreds of civilians on his own property) is estimated to have saved >200,000 lives.

When he left China, he went back to Germany and lectured on the Japanese atrocities, something that did not endear him to the Gestapo. Nonetheless, he survived the war and is remembered as a hero in China today. There's a few films on him and he's also covered in Iris Chang's best-selling "The Rape of Nanking"

I got "Common Cold" for our 2 year old a while ago and he really likes it. It's named "Ah-choo"

A little freezerburned, but still tastes like chicken. mmmmmmmmmmm.....

Nonsense. Somebody wants to write "Boys from Brazil II". Proclivity for multiple births is genetically influenced and it is no surprise that a small isoloted community can, over time, have an increased twin rate. Twins begat at least somewhat more twins. I'd bet if one could trace birth records, the trend would happening have been so for generations, not merely since Mengele's supposed visit 40 years ago.

Yeah, I'm a little curious too. The guy's service is commendable and his death indeed terribly sucked.

But why is his father on the hook unless he co-signed the loans? And why would he do that if his son was only going to enlist anyhow -- clearly the son wouldn't be able to pay. You don't need $53K (plus the other loans... that was just Sallie Mae's chunk) in education just to enlist in the Marines. A high school education works fine. If you *do* want to go to college, ROTC would have picked up the tab.

Question for Josh: You said you are now welching on $1400 a month student loan payment, giving them only $350. Were the loan terms a surprise to you? Didn't you know how much you would have to pay and how often? Why take out such onerous loans if the education they provide won't return that sort of income? IS Sallie Mae suing you now or somehow attempting to garnish your wages? Sorry for being nosy, just curious. I went to engineering school -- lots of folks had loans upon exit, but they all got jobs sufficient for them to pay. Why take a $100K loan to get an art degree?

LESSON: If a gorilla asks you to pull its finger, DON'T!

For what it's worth, I have in the past paid annoying charges in $2 bills. Those have printed right on them "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" so there's no arguing with anyone over that. Maybe they aren't as annoying as giving somebody 20 pounds of pennies, though.

One coin people generally hate is Susan B. Anthony dollars, the "Carter Quarters" of the late 1970s. You could really bug folks by giving them a pile of those. They are getting harder to find now that the "ersatz Sakajawea" dollar coin has replaced them. ALthough the same size, the newer coins are gold colored and harder for dopey clerks to confuse with a quarter.

My big problem with most astronomy pictures is that they are essentially fakes. NASA (and astronomers in general for that matter) were masters of photoshopping before there was even a Photoshop. While the basics of an image may be factual, the stuff the space and astronomy industry (and it is an industry) puts out for public consumption is VERY HIGHLY enhanced/sharpened/colorized/etc. to make it much more exciting to the public, i.e. both taxpayers and politicians controlling the purse strings.

So, unfortunately, you can't really have much faith in any of the publicly released images. No doubt that good research is being done, but everything is so tinkered with by graphic artists it's not really science anymore. The real (more raw) scientifically valid images (and they exist) don't frequently see the light of day because they have a lot less WOW factor for people weaned on Star Wars, Star Trek, and the like.

Not to be too picky, but no Tang was used on Apollo 11.

Think how cool it will be when far into the future, somebody digs up a can of Silly String ®.

ted writes: "An MA in Fine Arts must be pretty easy to get."

so it seems!