RickySTT, EAC

Lately when someone responds to my comments on Facebook, I get a huge pop-up that interrupts what I am doing. I don't want to turn off notifications; I just want the damn pop-ups to go away.

This is something new. I used to just get a little unobtrusive bubble in the corner. But now, it just cuts off whatever I'm doing, I cannot type or read anything until I deal with it.

I don’t live in Malawi. I’ve never been to Malawi. I live in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where we spell like Americans.

I keep changing the Firefox spell checker back to English (United States), and Firefox spontaneously changes it back to English (Malawi), or occasionally English (Zimbabwe). It started doing this a month or two ago, and now it switches me all the time. How to I get it to stop?

Vanilla extract is pricey. Vanillin is cheap.

Pope Benedict XVI said, "The horrors of the concentration camps reveal with utter clarity the consequences of God's absence."

The pope grew up in Nazi Germany. He knows very well that the Nazis were Christians top to bottom. Why is he blaming the concentration camps on "God's absence"?

(Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_VATICAN_... )

I keep getting these invites to a Web site from one of my e-mail contacts. She says that she knows nothing about them; apparently, her e-mail info was forged onto the message.

The e-mails have an unsubscribe link, but I don't trust the link, since I never subscribed to them in the first place. The message claims to be from 66.248.166.1, and the links in the message all go to l.brizzy.com.

Does anyone know if it would be safe to click the unsubscribe link?

Go to http://www.americancatholic.org/ and look at the search area. Note who powers the search.

Now do an article search (the rightmost field). Scroll to the bottom of the page and note who powers the search.

Is St. Anthony really haunting Google's servers, pushing electrons around, opening and closing NAND gates, directing Google's algorithms, and reading magnetic media? Exactly how is he involved?

1.1 billion Catholics with all their rosaries, Hail Marys, and novenas--that's a lot of prayer requests! How does a mere human like the Blessed Mother field all those prayer requests?

There are way too many of them to be a coincidence. Is it a miracle, or is there another explanation that I missed?

(Assuming he existed, of course.)

Exhibit A: Matthew 27:46

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" --NIV

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? --KJV

Have at it!

Genesis 30:37-39 reads:

"Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted."

--NIV

It is a scientific fact that inheritance does not work this way. Accordingly, the NAB (Roman Catholic) commentary explains this as a "widespread notion among simple people"; but this effectively acknowledges that man's error somehow got into the Bible. How do inerrantists explain this passage?

There was a discussion about it on TV. They were saying that in addition to [list of notable "authentic" black males], we'll have to add President-elect Obama. But I never quite understood what they were talking about.

This also seems to imply that there are inauthentic black males. I've always thought of myself as black and male, but now I need to know whether or not I'm authentic! Is my identity at stake?

I have a DSL line that is capable of around 60KB/s. However, more often than not, it runs around 2KB/s. That's right, this DSL line *usually* runs at less than half of dial-up speed! Even 500B/s or slower is not unusual.

My PC receives service through a household wireless router. There are others that share the line, but I get slow service even when no one else is on the line. Of course, the ISP assures me that I am, in fact, experiencing stunningly fast transfers.

It's as if there were some phantom load on the line sucking up 95% of the bandwidth. Sometimes resetting the modem and router patches the problem. (Sometimes it doesn't.) But this involves interrupting another household member's privacy, and doesn't really fix the problem. I have no idea how these things work. How can I find out what the problem is and how to fix it?

Seriously, I love cats. For example, I'm trying my darnedest not to hurt the little furball. But the furball is making it seriously difficult.

And would it be significantly different for other beverages such as coffee or fruit juice?

I tried observing directly, but could not get a visual fix on the meniscus. I tried searching the Web, but all the relevant sites seem to require a physics degree to understand.

Would glass give the same (or similar) results as a ceramic mug? Glass would be much easier to measure.

That's all I remember of the lyrics, and I'm not even sure that I didn't mishear them. Much to my chagrin, it's a very popular song title, so a Web search was useless.

But then I heard it on the radio a couple of months ago. It seemed to feature a violin interlude... or was it synthesizers...? Then it was gone... again--except for vague fragments that won't quit popping into my head. I can't request it, Google it, YouTube it, buy it, or steal it. Help!

Sorry, the blood loss is making me irritable.

Is this all Adam's fault?

Does God not keep tabs on people when preacher isn't watching?

Are non-preachers not worthy of our best behavior?

Or have I just fallen victim to a TV sitcom stereotype?

I'm trying to view local documents on my hard disk. They're written in straight, bland HTML 4.01 Strict--no Flash, no JavaScript, no nothing. I even got rid of the CSS. M$IE still flashes a warning bar that it has blocked the page from running scripts and Active-X. What scripts? What Active-X?

This question is inspired by 2 sections of Richard Dawkins's book, _The God Delusion_:

- Chapter 7, "The 'Good' Book and the Changing Moral _Zeitgeist_," in which he argues that even religious people base their morals on a standard greater than that of holy books.

- Chapter 10, subsection "The Mother of All Burkas," a very inspiring essay that uses the burka, a symbol of religious oppression, as an allegory for our limited biological senses, with modern sensory technology as our liberator.

The Bible is a very old book, and pretty gruesome by modern standards. Since 1/3 of the world believes it to be the word of God, the challenge is to make the old work for the new. Non-believers' constructive input is welcome.

I ask specifically about the Old Testament because Christians still hang onto it, and freely consult it for concepts such as the 10 commandments.

The drug in question is selegeline HCl (Carbex® or Eldepryl®).

- Selective

- Irreversible

- MAO-B inhibitor