DiRTy D

My wedding band is made of high palladium and I forget what they said it consists of. I know what palladium is but what makes it "high"? Mixing in platinum? Mixing in gold? How pure it is?

Let's say, over 20 years ago, a man shot his mom and then himself, but you have no idea what either of their names were. All you know is the story and the exact address where it supposedly happened.

Is there a way to look up a crime based on a house address, and can that be done online without having to go to the local hall of records?

Maybe local news paper history?

What would be the best email hosting and email client solution for an all Macintosh office?

Ideally they would like their email, calendar, contacts, and tasks all in one application. They do not own Entourage and they have their eye on Google Apps as a solution, but I am having a tough time finding an email application that has all of the mentioned items that will sync with Google Apps. Google Apps does not support Entourage so I don't want to tell them to spend $400 on Office only to find the calendar will not sync. I'm wondering if having them use Entourage with Hosted Exchange might be best? This is a small company so they do not want to have an internal mail server.

Is there anyone out there that works in a Mac office that could offer some advice here?

I'm not so much interested in the Phillips house really. What I'm trying to do is find out for sure that it was not at 414 St. Pierre Rd. Supposedly her father rented this house for 2-3 months while working on a musical named "Man on the Moon" but I don't believe this was the residence where they were living when the incest happened. Rumor is that Marion Davies owned the St. Pierre house and that it was rented to Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan). This house also suffered from a fire at some point and I'd love to know the official cause. Anyway, I saw somewhere that John Phillips bought a home at 785 Bel Air Rd (number could be wrong) but I'm looking for clarification. Anyone know for sure?

...do you think that I could then get U.S. backing, military support, and finacial aid?

This is old news to those in the know but here is a recent article covering the widespread death caused by the Catholic belief that using condons is wrong.

This is a perfect example of how bad beliefs can cause horrible consequences. It is also a perfect example of how so so-called "moral beliefs" can actually be horribly immoral, causing extreme suffering rather than doing good.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071023/hl_nm/honduras...

Christopher Hitchens has written, with characteristic candor and eloquence, that "[r]eligion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." This ten-fold indictment needs little support from me, as evidence of its truth has been crashing down upon us for centuries. However, I’ve been asked to provide such superfluities by the editors of this page. There is nothing like racing to the aid of a man who needs none.

Each of my essays for On Faith has highlighted one or another facet of Hitchens’ jewel of blasphemy. I recently argued that religion is “contemptuous of women” at some length. Here, I offer further thoughts on how religion is “irrational” and “invested in ignorance”.

***

Reason is a compulsion, not a choice. Just as one cannot intentionally startle oneself, one cannot knowingly believe a proposition on bad evidence. If you doubt this, imagine hearing the following account of a failed New Year’s resolution:

“This year, I vowed to be more rational, but by the end of January, I found that I had fallen back into my old ways, believing things for bad reasons. Currently, I believe that smoking is harmless, that my dead brother will return to life in the near future, and that I am destined to marry Angelina Jolie, just because these beliefs make me feel good and give my life meaning.”

This is not how our minds work. To believe a proposition, we must also believe that we believe it because it is true. While lapses in rationality can often be detected in retrospect, they always occur in the dark, outside of consciousness. In every present moment, a belief entails the concurrent conviction that we are not just fooling ourselves.

This constraint upon our thinking has always been a problem for religion. Being stocked stem to stern with incredible ideas, the world’s religions have had to find some way to circumvent reason, without repudiating it. The recommended maneuver is generally called “faith,” and it actually appears to work. Faith enables a person to fool himself into thinking that he is maintaining his standards of reasonableness, while forsaking them. There is a powerful incentive to not notice that one is engaged in this subterfuge, of course, because to notice it is to fail at it. As is well known, such cognitive gymnastics can be greatly facilitated by the presence of others, similarly engaged. Sometimes, it takes a village to lie to oneself.

In support of this noble enterprise, every religion has created a black market for irrationality, where people of like minds can trade transparently bad reasons in support of their religious beliefs, without the threat of criticism. You, too, can enter this economy of false knowledge and self-deception. The following method has worked for billions, and it will work for you:

How to Believe in God

Six Easy Steps

1. First, you must want to believe in God.

2. Next, understand that believing in God in the absence of evidence is especially noble.

3. Then, realize that the human ability to believe in God in the absence of evidence might itself constitute evidence for the existence of God.

4. Now consider any need for further evidence (both in yourself and in others) to be a form of temptation, spiritually unhealthy, or a corruption of the intellect.

5. Refer to steps 2-4 as acts of “faith.”

6. Return to 2.

As should be clear, this is a kind of perpetual motion machine of wishful thinking—and it leads, of necessity, to reduced self-awareness and diminished contact with reality. But it is reputed to have many benefits, and once you get it up and running you will be in fine company. In fact, from the looks of it, you will never be lonely again.

Enjoy!

I have personally always found saggy pants (pants that hang below the butt causing you to have to hold them up) to be extremely stupid looking and completely impractical.

Now I have just read on Yahoo News that they are trying to ban them in Louisiana.

Link - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070829/ap_on_re_us/od...

I found this to be funny although I'm against it because I do not believe the state should be able to tell you how to dress.

My opinion... They make no sense. Think about it.... Most of the people who wear saggy pants are

"hip-gangster wannabes" (to borrow from Tool's Maynard). Since gangster types like to think of themselves as gun touting, womanizing, unlawful thugs that are always at odds with the police I have to wonder why they would want their pants falling down. How do you run from the po-po with your pants falling down?!?

I think I understand what it means but I'm not 100% sure. If the hat is wearing me am I complimenting the hat? Or does this mean something completely different?

In the beginning they eluded to the possibilty of useful rewards. Now they're just plain useless.

Great, now that I've hit level 5, which basically means I've spent way too much time on here answering questions when I should have been doing something else, I am now allowed unlimited questions and answers so I can waste even more time on here! What a great reward!!

Everyone sing along.... Yaaa-stuuuuuu-pid!!

Does the Ted Haggard scandal offer proof that being gay is not a choice?

It looks to me like he is gay (or bisexual) and he hates himself for it. Yet no matter how much he hated it; no matter how much he prayed; no matter how much he spoke out against homosexuals in the public eye; no matter how much he tried to fool himself and everyone else; he still could not change who and what he is.

If being gay were a choice wouldn't he have chosen differently given his life and situaltion?

I would like to go to therapy. I've been to a social worker before. I'm wondering if it would be better to go to a psychologist? Are they better trained in counseling? Or would they be too clinical? There is a chance that I have a chemical problem aside from just thinking in negative ways. I know you need a psychiatrist to get medicine. I've been to them before also, but legal drug dealing seems to be all they're good for. They don't want to talk to you. I've asked if there are tests to check what kind of imbalance you may have and they say there aren't any. They just throw different pills at you hoping one works which is time consuming and frustrating.

So I'm looking to talk to someone. I want to do that for sure. I've also been considering Wellbutrin. I've tried Zoloft (couldn't do the side effects), Effexor (made me too speedy feeling so I stopped), and Paxil which had no side effects really but didn't make much difference either.

Any ideas?

Does anyone know why Che Guevara's friend called him "Fuser"? I'm trying to figure out what "Fuser" means?

...but then our panties get in a bunch when Iran (or any other country) so much as enriches uranium for fuel?

...but then our panties get in a bunch when Iran (or any other country) so much as enriches uranium for fuel?