Cap'n Refsmmat

The point of the parable is not to say "Be obedient to your masters! Slavery is good!" The point of the parable is to say "Be like a slave, waiting for your master to come back, when you wait for the Second Coming!" There's a difference between using slavery to make a point and endorsing slavery. In context, being enslaved and waiting for the master to return is a metaphor for being on Earth waiting for Jesus to return. Jesus says that being watchful and ready is good. This does not mean that he says that slavery is good. On the other hand, if Jesus truly disapproved of slavery, I suppose making a metaphor out of it would have been in bad taste.

What books should be mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in reading?

And why is angular frequency required there? Can't frequency be measured rather than angular frequency? (Also, you might check swansont's blog)

I think you're referring to tachyons. They're hypothetical, as for as I know; nobody's ever detected one, or set up an experiment to detect one. But I don't really know much about the physics of them past that.

You hang out with some interesting women.

There once was a woman named Jude Whose skirt by the wind was much strewed A man came along And unless I'm quite wrong You thought this last line would be lewd.

What verses does this refer to specifically, and in what Bible translation? The ending of Mark 13 is the closest to what you've stated, but in context, it's not an endorsement of slavery, it's an admonishment to be ready for the Second Coming. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2013:32-37&version=NIV It's a metaphor.

It'll be the same for me in a few days. For the moment, finishing up class. Agh.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20corinthians%207:21-7:23&version=NIV 1 Corinthians 7:21. I'd take this more as jryan does; he does not endorse slavery, and in fact wishes slaves would free themselves, but he acknowledges that slavery exists.

Sure it is. Again, there's more than one way to literally interpret a text. Context can be taken into account when reading literally, as can numerous other things. To be literal is to follow the meaning of the original words, rather than to assume they are metaphors or figures of speech. But you can differ in opinion on what the meaning of the original words is. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Where did Paul endorse slavery? I seem to recall otherwise.

As I've pointed out, that's not what "literal" means. But whatever. There's a far more cogent point to be made. Christians believe that Jesus was God. Jesus taught people what the Commandments meant. Jesus clarified their meaning ("Was man made for the Sabbath, or was the Sabbath made for man?"). He did not rewrite them, he just stated what he meant. Who are Christians to believe? The Pharisees, who took the commandments in the sense that you think "literal" means, or God? In short, they're following what they believe the Commandments to believe, based on what God told them. Don't blame them for thinking something different. You missed the sequel, after all.

Well, he didn't. He just disagreed on what constituted "work." You really, really should read the New Testament before judging what you think Jesus did or said.

But they are following the Ten Commandments. They just disagree with you on how one should go about doing so. Jesus clarified the Commandments in the New Testament. (He did not rewrite them, but merely clarified their meaning.)

No, it doesn't. It is possible for a sentence to have several possible literal meanings, or for the original intent of the author to be unclear. Christians do not interpret the commandments figuratively; they just have a different perspective on them. You really ought to read the New Testament to see how Jesus deals with the Pharisees.

If that were the case, bloodletting would work. Salt does not absorb bacteria or viruses. It doesn't even absorb liquids -- it gets dissolved into them.

Hmm. I dunno what I can do. I'll check if there's a better anti-spam plugin I can use. As for the emails, I set up a filter on my account to move forum email to its own folder. (I now receive all the Contact Us emails, so I get several emails from SFN daily.) It prevents my inbox from being too cluttered.

I don't think anyone intends to "berate" anybody. Or ban anyone.

Sure, it's okay to provide links or quotes, but please do provide the source when you do. The source might have other useful information, and copyright law generally frowns upon unsourced copying, even if you have good intent. I don't think you'll be sued, of course, but sourcing is a good idea.

That's not a function of Apple intentionally trying to keep them off, though, but rather providing different programming interfaces and different features. There are plenty of systems to facilitate cross-platform programming, and Apple hasn't intentionally tried to get rid of any of them.

I think we have a new reality TV show concept.

Surprise! Already done. http://gizmodo.com/5530906/jailbreaking-your-ipad-how-you-can-and-why-you-should

I don't think the New Testament "changed" the rules. Jesus stated that the rules were still in place. What Jesus objected to was the Pharisees and their method of interpreting the law, deciding what shouldn't be allowed based on the law, and demanding compliance with laws even when doing so would be contradictory or stupid. For example, jryan's second example about healing on the Sabbath days: the Pharisees, in interpreting the Commandments for themselves, had come up with a gigantic list of things to be banned on the Sabbath. Jesus turned around and said "That's not the point of the law!" You should specifically note where Jesus states, "Therefore it is lawful to do a good deed on the sabbath days." He's not objecting to the commandment. He's objecting to their strict legalistic interpretation of it. edit: more specifically, Jesus is sometimes referred to as "rabbi" or "teacher." He's there to teach the law, not to rewrite it. He just doesn't interpret it the way the Pharisees do.

That's not what "literal" means. You can literally interpret it as two sentences that belong together. It becomes non-literal when you, say, decide that "idol" is actually symbolic, and the commandment is actually referring to the use of toilet paper in early Israel. It can be possible for a text to have several literal meanings.

I take back some of what I have said in this thread about schizophrenia. I am looking now at this article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which concludes with: The discontinuation was largely due to harmful side effects, lack of efficacy, and the patients simply rejecting the medication. The improvement was among those who managed to stay on the drugs -- not a large group. Another meta-study compared second-generation atypical antipsychotics with first-generation drugs, and found little difference: Stefan Leucht, Caroline Corves, Dieter Arbter, Rolf R Engel, Chunbo Li, John M Davis, Second-generation versus first-generation antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia: a meta-analysis, The Lancet, Volume 373, Issue 9657, 3 January 2009-9 January 2009, Pages 31-41, ISSN 0140-6736, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(08)61764-X. So what about those first-generation drugs? Well, in 1977, it was found that schizophrenic "relapse is greater in severity during drug administration than when no drugs are given", and that symptoms got worse with relapse, with other new symptoms coming in. (G Gardos and J. Cole, "Maintenance antipsychotic therapy: is the cure worse than the disease?" American Journal of Psychiatry 133 (1977) 32-36, and G Gardos and J. Cole, "Withdrawal syndromes associated with antipsychotic drugs," AJM 135 (1978) 1321-24) In 1977, the National Institute of Mental Health funded studies to see if schizophrenia could be treated without medications. In the first, those not medicated were discharged sooner, and only 35% relapsed within a year, compared with 45% of the medicated group. Nonmedicated patients stated they found it "gratifying and informative" to go through the psychotic episodes unmedicated, and the researchers concluded that medication stopped the patients from learning to cope with their illness, and prevented them from doing better over the long run. (W. Carpenter, "The treatment of acute schizophrenia without drugs," American Journal of Psychiatry 134 (1977): 14-20) So first-generation antipsychotics didn't do so well, and newer ones don't do much better. This is not to say they don't work at all; in the short term, they do quite well in studies. (Say, over a month or so.) But in long-term treatment, there's all sorts of wonderful side effects and more medication ends up being required, not less. Hmm.

Yes there is. This should explain how it works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory Also, magnets are not necessarily charged. Static charges do not create a magnetic field. Moving charges do.