Been there! We had a small home business after retirement, and while that brought in some revenue, we made the big improvements - like solar panels an...
Making it? That's a terrific craft to learn. But no, not if you work from dawn to dusk; it's too time-consuming. Might be able to find some nice windo...
I'm sorry to hear about your setbacks. Money's always a major obstacle, isn't it? Maybe you're up to some less physically demanding tasks this year. T...
What's convoluted about it? The English upper class owned all the land in England and thus much of the wealth. Traders and ship-builders owned the res...
Look at pairs of paint chips and see which combination is most pleasing to your eye. It sounds like a room that will turn out very pleasant. I'd be ve...
Then you'll have to be careful with the choice of blue for the walls, so they don't cancel each other. I'd go to a darker shade, edging into aquamarin...
Have you tried sticky putty? Once you have a new coat of paint on, that might stick - maybe just for posters or unframed prints, or a panel of fabric ...
That is an excellent choice! Especially if the fabric is not to heavy, so that light comes through it, you have an illusion of sunshine, which lifts o...
Why not? If all you do is endure life (a rather whiny thing for someone in the conditions you describe to say), then maybe you are just a waste of oxy...
Indeed! I didn't actually miss that. The legacy of royal land-grants, aristocratic families and fortunes founded on preferential trade with other Brit...
Might as well. But, no: the concept exists; the institutions exist, the buildings, the organization and agencies, the books, the doctrine. However, Ch...
So, not a fan of the American melting pot? My immigrant ex-compatriots assimilated in one generation and seem none the worse. (In fact, given the curr...
A burden is a burden only if one consents to carry it. When you attempt to burden someone else and they reject it, your only recourse is to have a neg...
They've been more an more resistant to chemical poisons - hence the rise in infestations, presumably, so the experts you need are not pest control exp...
People may have believed it and been browbeaten and brainwashed into believing it, but it never matched that very definition you quoted. When, in the ...
It never was, though its spokesmen have loudly proclaimed the very pinnacle of the democratic ideal. At the moment, nobody believes it. Indeed, a numb...
Why should it need to? In a functioning democracy, if the majority desires freedom of self-expression and respect for the individual, diversity is aut...
It's not my health that's at issue, but the world's. Even the most optimistic medic can do nothing for a terminal patient - but morphine and a faith h...
Because you and a handful of vocal missionaries will convert +/- 7,000,000,000 other people to your point of view? And having each given up their vers...
You mistake me, sir! I am not a future human. I am a past human. You make the extraordinary claim - all empirical evidence to the contrary - that huma...
No. It was a long time ago, makes no never-mind to nobody anymore. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. Instead, don't bother to stay awake w...
Of course it was directed at you. If you've already had such success as you report - far more than I've ever had in reasoning with theists - then dema...
*sigh* I didn't ask you to moderate anything. You can hold any position you choose. You can stand on one foot on top of The Shard and scream you deman...
Nothing you or I do or say make any difference whatsoever. Power and faith, madness and delusion have nothing to do with logic, rationality or account...
Since when? That only applies in the scientific sphere. Nobody ever made a king or president or general prove his pronouncements and no religious lead...
Interesting proposition. Not sure you get to dictate terms, though. In the fiction, such opportunities are a la carte, not buffet. Beats the hell out ...
Nor do I. I was referring to : Presumably, such a person would have life experience useful to people who have less. So I'm asking why such a person sh...
Life is as interesting as you are able to and choose to make it. I've known people well into their 80's who still found new adventures, or volunteered...
The scriptures have to be interpreted. Some bits are true, apparently, while other bits are metaphor, allegory, symbolic... or the ancient people misu...
We can do both of those things in the awareness of mortality. "Humanity" is not something to be particularly proud of, and our minds are, at best, del...
The internet, by several leagues. Books don't do any harm by themselves. In fact, it was reading the bible that turned me off Judeo-Christianity. It's...
I don't understand this. What three 'models' of humans? How does a universal standard of living, rights, freedoms and opportunity not allow for gender...
It was a reference to a comment by then-president DJT. There were a couple of other sardonic references in my post, and you're quite right to object t...
Several reasons. They are actually powerless. Decisions about foreign affairs are made in secret at the highest levels of government - no referendum, ...
I'm not disagreeing. I simply stated some facts around the issue. Yes, it's wrong for them to do the wrong thing or not do the right thing. I do judge...
What I'm willing to concede is irrelevant. My whole point was that none of us have the authority or power to impose our moral outlook on people who do...
Thanks, that's a reasonable assessment. Not exactly desiderata, but I suppose it covers the essentials. The inequality and inequity do rankle some, bu...
Not absolute truth - that's faith. Exact knowledge is about precision, as distinct from guesstimation and opinion: knowing how much weight a girder ca...
I see your point. I'm actually interested in both - what it takes for a nation to functional over a specified period of time, and what we believe to b...
Well, yes, failure is a negative. By that standard, the US qualifies. I'm trying to define what, beyond those basic abilities to maintain sovereignty ...
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