The Arkady

I mean, for some reason that eludes me, the US being a secular country and all, the Almighty Dollar proclaims "In God We Trust" right there, black on white. (Well, greenish on slightly yellowish, but you get the idea.)

That does beg the question what religious significance the declining dollar (down by over 1/3 as compared to the Euro exchange rate on January 1st, 2002) has.

Did god loose 1/3 of his power?

Is god a lousy financial analyst that shouldn't be called on to do a banker's job?

Or is this merely another argument for why having a currency proclaim that "In God We Trust" is ludicrous?

Okay, to clarify, I'm not looking for small, everyday surprises like "oh, wait, I actually do understand trigonometry" or "hmm, that statement went real well considering I was unprepared".

It's the big, "gee, I didn't think I had that in me" type surprises I'm interested in.

I had an experience like that once, and I must admit I don't want to share, so if you prefer to skip the "how" part of my question in your answer, by all means do - fair is fair.

A few days ago, the question of bible contradictions came up, once again, in a very general sense; as it turns out, faithfuls didn't actually see any.

So here's two details that strike me as odd (quoted from King James):

Leviticus 20,10: "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." (note it is the Lord speaking to Moses)

John 8,7: "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (Jesus pressed to condemn an adultress)

In the latter, the adultress will surely not be put to death, for no man is without sin; Jesus teaches giving her another chance in what appears to be a direct contradiction of the Lord's words toward Moses.

Please explain this apparent contradiction away logically if you can.

Something occured to me the other day, and I'd really be interested in hearing a good answer to this.

Basically, to Christians, Jews is a lost sheep: They follow the one true god, but sort of missed getting up to date when the latest prophet came to Earth and laid out the new covenant.

That's nice and well, but one thing should lead to another. In fact, to those who follow the teachings of Muhammed, it did.

Muslims claim the exact same thing, except of Christians and one prophet further down the road.

Now knowing from experience something like that has happened before, Christians couldn't possibly be stupid enough not to consider the possibility that it happened again.

On the contrary, they'd have to make sure they don't unwittingly annoy their god the way Jews did.

So they'd have to have proof that they're not the lost sheep these days.

But for the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out what exactly that proof is. Can you tell me?

Will it be the Coming of The Antipasta?

Specifically, I've been going through questions up for voting over in R&S, and something really bugged me. There's so many questions over there where not a one answer truly pertains to the question.

So obviously, "no best answer" is the thing to vote for.

However, that nets 0 points as opposed to one point for just picking a random best answer.

I perceive this as direct encouragement of abuse - would you agree, beg to differ, or maybe consider something else more problematic?

Okay, from Physics, we know there's matter, antimatter and dark matter - a matter trinity, so to speak.

I've been thinking whether this principle is applicable to subtypes of matter, and came across pasta.

So far, we know there's pasta and antipasta. Do you think there's dark pasta, too?

Okay, assuming for a moment I'm not British or from a Commonwealth Country. I have nonetheless figured out how various strange sports work and even what the difference between Rugby League and Rugby union is.

But now: Aside from a "pun intended", I'm stumped.

Cricket - a sport with seven seals.

Please explain to an outsider in 1000 characters or less how exactly the sport with the five day test matches, the white suits and all the other stuff Douglas Adams ripped on in his books works.