fra59e

Who delivered the mail in the CSA? Did the US Post Office continue to function in the South? If there was a CS Post Office, where are the stamps with Jefferson Davis on them? does any philatelist know?

I was surprised to see Charles Colson write " ... original sin, the Trinity, or the divinity of Christ. And to deny those truths (sic) is to deny the Christian faith." What nonsense! The Trinity doctrine was not established as orthodox until 325 AD. Original sin was denied by Pelagius who, although declared heretical by Jerome and Augustine, was never called anything but a Christian. And there are several other heresies that deny the divinity of Christ. Who does this Charles Colson think he is to pretend that he has been elected to draw the line on what is and is not Christianity?

Is there no limit to the ignorance and arrogance of fundies?

If you are baptized with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, what are you if not a Christian?

When drivers are smoking a cigarette, how can they give full attention to driving safely?

If smoking while driving is banned, will that help solve the problem of careless smokers throwing their waste butts out of the window, which litters our highways and starts fires?

And isn't it desirable to do everything possible to make smoking cigarettes less and less attractive, so smokers will have more incentive to get free from the dirty habit and end the waste of America's resources they cause by their illnesses and their litter?

Or is that report just a malicious rumor?

The British suffered a retreat - maybe a rout - at Dunkirk yet they celebrate it. What gives?

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a stunning military achievement by Japan against America, yet America celebrates it by such acts as by the naming of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Highway in Santa Monica CA. Why?

America has achieved some amazing successes yet they are seldom mentioned. The Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Germany was a remarkable achievement. General Douglas Macarthur's designing of the modern secular Japanese state in place of the religious militaristic religious theocracy was a great moment in America's history which Americans should be proud of. Why don't more people celebrate the things we have done RIGHT?

The attack on the WTC of September 11 2001 was a disaster for America. Why is it commemorated as if it were a victory?

The bloodthirsty taking of civilian life characterized his career, from Iraq (1922) to Dresden (1945). What do today's British military people think of Arthur ("Bomber") Harris?

Was the planned statue of him erected? If so, where is it in London today?

Since you don't pick your nose in front of others on the street, why should this other dirty personal habit be acceptable?

Do smokers think their waste smoke should somehow be tolerated by the people around them - yet they would not spit on them? Isn't cigarette smoke just another bodily waste like farting and spitting?

Can't the addicted smokers do their smoking in their own homes?

Has Al Qaeda trapped us by drawing us ever deeper into a conflict on soil which is more theirs than ours?

Is this what Mikhail Kutosov did to Napoleon?

Do today's Arab world militants find inspiration in the success of Islam in driving out the Crusaders?

Is the weakness of the Arab world today their lack of a unifying leader? Do they need a Saladin?

Napoleon was defeated in Russia in 1812 after Kutusov drew his army ever deeper into Russia. Is this a model for what Al Qaeda has done to America in our time?

Is there any historical model for an American achievement of its goals (whatever they are) in Iraq by the invasion and occupation?

No, I'm not a student too lazy to do his own research to write a term paper. I'm a writer with an interest in the war years and would like to hear your stories. Do you have some memories to share?

Was the speed limit 35 mph nationwide?

Did you have metal (there was no plastic) shields over your headlights to block all the light from shining out except through a little narrow slit?

Was your home blacked out at night with no interior lights visible from outside the house?

Did you have paper tape pasted over your windows to prevent the glass from shattering?

Did you carry your food ration coupons with you at all times, or did you store them "safely" somewhere in the house?

Which foods were rationed, and what was your weekly ration?

How many gallons of gas did you get per week?

Did anyone in that era have more than one car?

Were there restrictions on travel in trains and streetcars?

Was your use of the telephone rationed?

Do you remember military traffic speeding?

Aren't we more free today because the Stuarts and their "divine right of kings" was stopped by William and Mary?

Nobody can excuse the oppression of Protestant Irish against the Catholic Irish, but in the larger context, Ireland as well as Britain and America are all more free societies today because of the defeat of the Stuarts - so shouldn't we ALL celebrate the Orange triumph?

Would anybody - whether in Ireland or anywhere else - prefer to go back to the kind of society in which priestly power controls the way you think and speak and write?

Irish people can take pride in a culture that produced Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and George Bernard Shaw - and isn't it only within a free society that such genius can arise and flourish?

If it had not been for the victory of King William at the Battle of the Boyne, wouldn't Ireland today be just another pathetic sinkhole of Roman Catholic-ruled misery and squalor like some Latin American banana republic?

They used to be sold in little shops which sold nothing else. the oysters were fresh caught and the shells were opened up only when you placed your order. The little buggers were still alive when you squeezed lemon juice onto them, plopped them into your mouth, right off the shell, and slithered them down your throat. so delicious. No oysters anywhere in the world are as good as those fresh Sydney rock oysters. Are they still being sold there?

A relative was employed by a firm dealing with environmental problems. He had to dive in and take samples filthy toxic sediments from the bottom of badly polluted rivers. The company provided him with a protective suit but he is a good swimmer and preferred to dive fast without protection, counting on his ability to get the sample quickly and return to the surface and shower off.

I once worked for Der Wienershnitzel. Could hardly believe what I saw. Maggots crawling over discarded rag soaked with bloody drippings from the table where the hamburger beef was prepared. Also heard stories from a friend who worked in a Texas McDonald's. I now stay well away from all fast food places. working in one of them has to be the pits among jobs.

Egypt today passed a total ban on all female circumcisions, toughening up an ineffective 1997 law. Will it work?

Or will it drive the practice underground? It's hard to eradicate a social custom that has been in place for thousands of years.

When female circumcision was banned in America, it just led some Muslim parents to take their daughter abroad to get the operation where it is still legal.

When California hospitals stopped routinely agreeing to circumcise boys without medically necessary indications, the circumcision rate dropped drastically and today most baby boys escape this needless surgery.

But who knows how many Muslim families are still circumcising their baby boys and young girls in secret.

American has millions more Muslims than Jews. The Jews have proved that they do adapt to changing circumstances and improved knowledge, and often do well. Are Muslims more often than Jews stuck in antiquated social customs and bad ideas?

Will circumcision disappear? How soon?

Don't say "life after death;" the phrase is oxymoronic and meaningless as well as non-biblical.

"Immortal soul" is not biblical. Egyptian religions, on which Judaism and Christianity are largely based, taught that the afterlife required food and drink buried with the mummy, since body and soul were transcended by the "khu," which had characteristics of both body and soul but had potential to transform into an Osiris (c.f. "the likeness of Christ").

Are there theologians who emphasize the adjective "eternal" while conceding that "life" refers to life in the here and now of reality? In that reading of the phrase, the point may be that the life you are living right now is to have the characteristics implied by the adjective "eternal." Who are the theologians who are putting this concept forward?

The phrase "post mortem" survival of the ego" is more precise than "eternal life" etc., however it seems regrettable to have to lean on Latin etc. instead of clear English.

Is James Joyce's importance only in literature, or did he also affect the rest of society?

Joyce's "Ulysses" and other works certainly changed the way literature was written in the twentieth century, and influenced many writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. Language affects the way people think, as George Orwell pointed out. Did the works of James Joyce have effects outside literature? If so, what are some examples?

Somebody jumped to the false conclusion that I am asking this because I am a lazy student in school. Wrong. I am a writer responsible to produce a paragraph on Joyce for Bloomsday, with focus on his contributions to Humanism. Since my degrees are in physics, not in the humanities, I need help.

She has been under house arrest for almost two decades, for daring to speak out for democracy. But Myanmar (Burma) is no longer on the map for oil, so the West ignores what goes on there under the tyranny of military dictatorship. Is there anything we can do to recover freedom for this remarkable woman, winner (I think) of a Nobel Peace Prize?