Advocatus

Sometimes when I’m watching the news I like to switch over to FOX to see what their spin is.  Cuomo and Lemon on CNN mainly interview people on their shows, even Republicans.  When they’re stating their opinion, they making it clear that it’s their opinion.  I was watching Hannity last night on FOX and he was just doing his best to poison the mi…[Read more]

Amazing!  I still drink my coffee from a mug — a Skeptical Inquirer mug, to be exact.  Too bad you didn’t visualize a dark blue ceramic mug with white lettering.  And I happen to have car keys in my pocket!  Astounding!  🙂

It’s not a coincidence, it’s called retro-fitting.  If you want to, you can fit almost any random image into your life…[Read more]

Yes, “Emergence” was one of the last episodes of season seven. The Enterprise wasn’t what I’d called “sentient”, but it comes “alive” and produces a seed, which it releases into the galaxy. Then it just sort of goes back to normal. It was one of those “high concept” stories that I personally think didn’t made a lot of sense. In fact it was one of…[Read more]

That’s possible except that she didn’t know the nature of his conflict; she only sensed that he had one and offered to talk it over with him.  Picard declined (this was the first season, remember; by season seven he wouldn’t have hesitated) and only later decided to visit the holodeck.

Anyway I stand corrected.  The next two episodes in s…[Read more]

Hey, Catman!  The Drake equation focuses on the existence of civilizations.  It assumes that we are doing the best we can to search for them, but our best is dependent upon the current state of our technology.  At one time SETI only had one radio telescope dedicated to searching for extraterrestrial signals, and that only part time.  Now I thi…[Read more]

If I remember the list of episodes I consulted, the next two in line would be “We’ll Always Have Paris” and “Conspiracy”.  Those were pretty good, too.  I saw the first one the other day on BBC America.  One interesting thing to notice is that at one point, at Troi’s suggestion, Picard visits the holodeck in order to work out a problem which is na…[Read more]

I’m not defending Islamic beliefs, if that’s what you mean.  But I am saying we shouldn’t automatically condemn all Muslims because of what the extreme minority does.

I’m with you about the morality of the series.  For some reason a lot of people complain about the characters being “too perfect”, but to me that was the whole point.  Just the other day I heard about a university that suspended all of its fraternities and sororities because a student was killed in a hazing ritual.  I hope that by the 24th ce…[Read more]

Tee Bryan Peneguy wrote:  “No. I don’t see how. No other group categorized in the area of religion or belief as feared and hated in America like the Muslims are…”

That’s only because people have been stirred up over the past 20 years to associate Muslims with terrorism.  Even though Jews and Catholics are at the top of the poll you cited, there…[Read more]

Yeah, “Lonely Among Us” and “Justice” were both pretty awful.  Although “Justice” did deal with the concept of arbitrary “zero tolerance” laws  that were just handed down from on high as it were, and as such it could have been interesting — in practice it was a pretty silly story.  And those ridiculous costumes the natives wore were the ab…[Read more]

I am enjoying reading the back and forth on this topic, but I don’t know.  Let’s look at a similar word, “homophobia”.  That’s obviously a real thing, and it’s not ethnic.  It’s not even religiously based.  It’s hatred aimed at people for following a certain lifestyle choice, whatever their race, sex, or religious/philosophical creed.  In my expe…[Read more]

I remember the episodes by title and not by the number, so you would have to refresh my memory of which episodes you’re talking about.  Although I do recall that the first season of TNG did not especially appeal to me.  It wasn’t until the second season when Katherine Pulaski joined that I started enjoying it.

Hmmm, an aircraft shaped like a C, fatter on top?  Could it have been a cargo helicopter, carrying something slung underneath?  How far away was it when you saw it?

My guess would be that the windshield of some vehicle passing by on the street reflected sunlight though one of your windows.  That would explain the square outline.

One thing I found interesting was learning that it wasn’t called “Country and Western” music until the 1950’s.  Before that it was called “old-timey” music or “hillbilly” music, or just “folk” music.  About the same time that the term “Country and Western” came into vogue, the music industry also started using the term “Rhythm and Blues”.  Up un…[Read more]

I’m also one of those people who can’t afford a high speed internet connection, not to mention the heavy duty anti-hacking shields you would have to buy these days.  If it weren’t for my public library, I wouldn’t be on the internet at all.  The library also has the community groups and after school programs for the kids as Pi-rat mentioned e…[Read more]

Write4U wrote: “Since when has a scientific (rather than a biblical) explanation been proven to be a logical impossibility?  Can we start with that, please?”

As I understand it, Sherlock believes that the universe originated from literally “nothing”, which he defines as the complete absence of anything having any quality whatsoever. From this he…[Read more]

Having seen two more episodes of “Mysteries Decoded”, it is a major disappointment. In the episode on “Roswell” for example, Marshall takes it for granted that the photographs of Major Jesse Marcel holding the wreckage of the “weather balloon” were a government coverup. The only investigation she does is take photo to a photoanalyst in order to…[Read more]

I would think it depends upon what the post focuses on.  If it focuses on the crop circle as a crop circle, it should probably be under Pseudoscience.  But if it focuses on the religious message you garnered from it, it should be posted under Religion.  Whichever, welcome to the forum.