Veritatum17

Consider this hypothetical situation: a family runs a local print shop, normally doing things like pamphlets and signs for local businesses, baseball cards for local little league teams, and election materials for local politicians.

Yesterday a customer came in to order 11" x 17" posters to be made of a proof showing a silhouettes of three camels with riders under a night sky. The poster's headline reads "You know it's a myth. This season, celebrate REASON." Smaller print at the bottom indicates sponsorship by an atheist group.

The shop owner identifies himself as a Christian and says he and his family celebrate Christmas. He refuses to take the job, but gives the customer the number to another print shop a few miles away. The customer promises he'll return with his attorney.

Should the print shop owner have printed the sign? Should he face legal consequences for having refused to do so?

In six months or so I'll be building a new rig, but for now I want to keep up my 6-year-old HP with Vista 32-bit. For the past six or eight months it's slow to shut down - I've replaced the HDD but the problem is that Vista is full of gunk. I don't have the backups from first installation (it was OEM and I put off making copies for four years until it became a problem ... not doing that again).

Is there a setting I can do in the registry to tell Vista to shut down after a certain time, or something to help processes terminate upon shutdown? The problem is that, I'll tell it to shut down when I'm done at night, and in the morning it's still on, still shutting down.

I'm looking to build a semi-budget ($600 or less) gaming PC in the next six months or so that will play Guns of Icarus online, Sanctum 2, Shogun 2, Medieval 2, M&B Bannerlords, stuff like that.

I have no idea what video card to start with - it has to be air-cooled with fans (not comfortable with liquid cooling), support Dx 10, carry 1 GB VRAM and shader support, and ideally cost $150 or less. The type of chips available and the number of generations on-market now is a little daunting. Any advice?

I'm also planning on building with a Quad 2.5 GHz, 8 GB RAM and supporting Win 7 64-bit.

I've an HP a6230n, 5 years old. Performs great but I want to sup it up for gaming. I'd like to play Mount & Blade WarBand, Call of Duty: MW2, and Empire: Total War on high settings.

I've replaced the HDD and added a video card, it's otherwise stock:

* AMD x2 5300+

* 3 GB DDR2 RAM, PC2-5300

* XfX GeForce 8400 GS 512MB (I know...)

* 300 W PSU

* 500 GB SATA HDD with Vista 32-bit

Thoughts:

* MoBo can't take a more powerful chip (I checked specs)

* If I upgrade Vista to Win 7 64-bit (chip is 64-bit) I can upgrade RAM to 8 GB (4 240-pin slots)

* If I upgrade the PSU to 500W I can upgrade the GPU

Both of the above options will run between $170 and $220.

Or should I just save my money and buy/build a new PC in a year or so?

While researching Silver Eagles I have come across some contradictory information on whether 2013 US Silver Eagles have actually been released. I know the mint sold out for a time in January, then resumed sales. I would assume this is of uncirculated or proof-grade coins, not bullion coins. Yet I find 2013 silver eagles on eBay going for a few dollars above spot, which suggests bullion, rather than graded, coins.

I'm going to the coin shop today to look at their eagles. If I find a 2013, is it authentic, is it a copy, is it a counterfeit, or is it an ungraded coin that had been ordered as a proof?

We're invited to my cousin's wedding. He (well, really his wife's family) doesn't want kids at the reception so they've arranged a sitter in the hotel. This is mostly for our extended family, all of whom are out of town, while his fiancee's family is mostly local. I've never heard of this - having a sitter at the wedding - but i know all families are different. The family I share with my cousin is large and loves kids - at our weddings its expected that children are well-dressed but will run around and play and dance and eat too much cake. I gather that's not what the bride expects or wants, and I respect that, but I've gotta figure out what to do.

My wife and I are torn about whether to go. Our children are the youngest among the extended family I share with my cousin - our littlest is still nursing. I'm actually a little disappointed about kids not being at the reception because my toddler loves to dance and she loves weddings, but I understand the cost and the desire not to have excess noise. All the same, rather than submit the kids to a really long drive so they can hang out with a babysitter, I'd rather leave the older ones with my wife's parents for a night, but then have to make a 6 or 7-hour drive with the baby, and come back the next day (two overnights for the older kids is rough on all involved).

I did ask my cousin about having the baby at the reception (since she is still nursing and won't do at all well with a strange sitter) and he hasn't gotten back to me, a week later. He mentioned at the time that his in-laws refuse to pay the $50/plate for a kid, which I think is lame since I've never heard of a place charging for infants but maybe that's just the policy there. In any event, if we can't bring the baby, my wife's not going, and I don't feel right leaving my wife to fend for herself for an entire weekend so I can party with my cousin. And at $50/plate, I'm thinking this is just too svelte a party for us.

So should I send regrets and a gift, go by myself, bring my wife and baby and maybe incur the wrath of the bride's family, or bring the whole group and try to squeeze in an extra day to make the trip bearable?

A male narrator voiceover who talks about the mission to rescue a princess, then he dwells on how beautiful the princess is, and a girl's voice interjects "Who is princess <name>?" The commercial cuts from game footage to live action, the narrator in bed with his girlfriend staring awkwardly at him, then cuts to black with the game title and you hear a slap.

It was a console game and would have come out probably in 1998 or '99 in the U.s.

I'm a statistician but not a medical researcher by any stretch. After reading through vaccine labels before our youngest's next round of shots, I was struck by how often the side effects appear to be inflammatory in nature, and did some follow up reading on how cytokines, which play a key role in inflammatory immune responses, are suspected to link to brain and heart damage.

So is it possible to prevent cytokines from being activated in brain tissue, or from crossing the blood-brain barrier, during the immune response that's triggered by a vaccination? Granted, most vaccines are safe (at least statistically), but if the risk of side effect can be further minimized it's worth looking into isn't it?

Online research isn't helping much anymore - the sites seem to be out of date as more manufacturers have moved overseas. I've also noticed quality has suffered tremendously.

Are there any American companies still making boxer briefs in the U.S.?

After last night's amber alert, I read up on some other missing children cases in the area, including two teens. One was 17 and had a job when she went missing four years ago, and it's possible she ran away according to the police report. If this is the case, would the parents be allowed to look up SSN activity, either in a credit report or through the Social Security Administration, in order to find out if her name or number has been used? The case was closed and unresolved a few years ago (again, police considered her a runaway), otherwise I'd figure the police would be looking at this information every so often.

The law was nominally passed to eliminate taxes on the exchange of gold and silver coins that are minted by the U.S. Treasury, but it doesn't seem too friendly on actually using the coins as currency (ie a 1 oz coin is worth the face value of $50 even though the market value is closer to $1800).

Some background:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/29/news/economy/utah_...

I hit construction traffic this morning, with signs and warnings marking that the right lane would end and drivers should merge left about two miles before the merge occurs. Most drivers move left, many go to the right and speed ahead. A pick-up two vehicles ahead of me moves right so that he's partially blocking both lanes, preventing any other vehicles from passing on the right. He kept driving with traffic in the left lane, though, forcing the right lane to merge with traffic earlier.

This isn't something I'd thought of doing before (I drive a compact - not really able to block lanes) but it seemed to work. It's easier to merge earlier than right up at the end. But is it legal to block a lane? If you were trying to pass on the right and a vehicle blocked you from merging ahead of traffic, would this tick you off or would it remind you to merge?

We didn't get to plant tomatoes or basil in the spring, as usual, but are planning on broccoli, lettuce and beans in late August. Is there anything we can start now when the air temperature is triple-digit and the ground is >80 degrees?

The County's assesed value of our home has dropped almost 30% in the past two years due to the weaker market, and we're now considerably upside-down on our mortgage. We intend to continue paying as usual (our mortgage is still cheaper than renting a similar home), but should I be concerned about repercussions from the bank that holds our mortgage? Can they demand that we pay down some of our loan so that we're not so upside-down?

A year ago, silver was $17/troy oz. In December it was $25/troy oz. Today, it's $46/troy oz, and if you calculate the per troy ounce price from online mints it's between $65 and $70/troy oz, before shipping.

Is there sufficient industrial demand to support this price level, especially considering that increased price may encourage relatively less expensive or more chemically preferable alternatives? Is demand from speculation and fear about inflation sufficient? Or will this come crashing back down to $12 to $15/troy oz when political events stabilize?

What do you think?

Obviously, many are hurt by higher wheat prices - particularly consumers but also food processors, cattle farmers, etc. With poor harvests the past two years and fears of a drought across much of the Bread Basket, is there anyone who will benefit from the scarcity of wheat?

In theory, producers of alternative grains should see a gain, but we don't really have a functional alternative, and many of those same producers will face the same weather conditions.

There's a voiceover sample on the "endless noize" remix, it sounds like it's from a movie and the voice almost sounds like James Earl Jones. What I can make out is:

"I checked into the 20-year-old boy who killed his parents and his four brothers and his sisters, and when he was at trial he testified that he heard voices in the house. He heard voices in the house, and the voices told him to do it. Now I was in the house and I heard the voices, too, and I also felt the presence in the house. I tell you, there was a presence in that house!"

At first I thought it was from Exorcist II, but I don't think he played a character that would have been discussing trials in that movie. So maybe it was a different actor, or it was James Earl Jones in a different movie.

Anyone know?

I built a file in excel 2003 that uses a Wingdings font for the data labels of a series in order to show up and down arrows. Now I've upgraded to excel 2007, and when I make ANY changes to that file (including hiding a tab or something unrelated to the chart), the up and down arrows instead become the characters that they represent, as if Wingdings has changed to Arial or Verdana. Note that this change is only evident to excel 2003 users - users of excel 2007 still see the up and down arrows?

If I ask an excel 2003 user to make the changes instead, we all see the up and down arrows.

Why does this happen?

Is there a way around it other than having an excel 2003 user implement the changes?