Posts by GrimJack

Wonder what kind of label they attach to a 2000 pound bomb?

If you can read this, you are too close

Where I live, tap water is practically undrinkable. I know a couple of people who get sick on it, and it has a very bad bitter taste and lingering aftertaste. Not only that, but everytime I draw a bath, the water is very noticably green.

It's obviously not just me because most local restaurants (and even fast food chains) don't use tap water. Amazingly, I went into Taco Bell the other day and asked for a cup of water with my Crunchwrap Supreme and was told they didn't have anything but tap and refused to even serve it to me. Makes me suspicious what they use to cook the meals if they refuse to even pour it in a cup.

For most of my life, we've used Poland Spring through a water cooler for everything from drinking to boiling water to cook with.

While I lived in Tucson AZ - they introduced CAP water canaled across AZ - they promised us it was okay to drink but warned us not to water our plants with it or use it in our fish tanks - DUH! The fastest growing business was strip mall distillers; they would use reverse osmosis then double distill it. We did not drink tap water in Tuscon but bought distilled water. I was working as landscaping grunt so I kept 3 2-liter bottles of water in the freezer (there is nothing like pitching cactus into dumpsters in 113 degree heat to make you yearn for a nice …

All your aquarium (And that's how you spell it) fish will die within a matter of minutes if you add tap water to your fish tank without also adding a de-chlorinator to remove the chlorine. Doesn’t that tell you something about the danger of drinking chlorine? Chlorine in tap water results in cancer and many other diseases, according to researchers worldwide. I just thought about it...Your remark about lemon juice...that totally makes since . That's probably why Rest. put a slice of lemon in their water so you won't taste the chlorine.

I kept a buddies aquarium for 3 month while he was off in NYC; all I used was tap water that I poured into the tank. When the temp got up into the 90s in the tank, I floated ice cubes in it that were made from tap water. I lost 2 of his 17 fish even though I had never dealt with fish before. The chlorine is in the tap water to kill the things that normally would, if not kill you, at least make you really sick. lemon juice is acidic and chlorine is basic, they neutralize each other - acids have a low pH and bases have a high pH.

Some newer methods of sanitizing tap water include using ultra-violet light

Actually, GrimJack, as I recall it the 'stone throwing' was the penalty for breaking the other laws. Ergo, if all the laws were obeyed, the stone throwing wouldn't matter. I don't recall the 'sandal tossing' bit; I'll have to reread and see.

Snort - almost blew more B&C onto my screen - heh,heh. Er, let me rephrase - if half the people followed all the laws of the bible half the time then everybody would be throwing stones at everybody else.

It is better to snuff one candle than to curse the light.

Thanks Lard! I guess I read too much into your post (though a link would have been nice). Blind folks aren't the only ones who need help - looks like the mp3 hipsters (myself included) will have to use our eyes more (note the dash, I am NOT implying the blind folks need to use their eyes more but it couldn't hurt, heh,heh). I know that I can often feel the heat from the engine of cars approaching my blindside.

I don't think that attaching noise-makers to a quiet car is much of solution. How about we attach radar to everything so we all know what everyone is doing (hmm, maybe we could put gossips to use??).

and, yes I am a nice guy with a sharp tongue and a hammer for a brain.

I found this exchange - I nearly spit my bourbon and coke all over my screen:
" I think the key here is that the vehicles are near-silent at SLOW speeds, so the safety risk is stuck on the driver.
Sure, it'll be mildly annoying when someone crosses the road right in front of you, but it's a small price to pay for the convenience of Hybrids.

Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by +Berserk87 on 04 Oct 2007 - 01:09
i wouldnt quite call a broken windshield and blood on my hood a "mild annoyance"
Quote this comment #5.2 Posted by joeydoo on 04 Oct 2007 - …

The Gospels were written by four men not the new testament.

Well, Duh!

Actually just because Jesus is big today and almost anyone can tell you who he is does not mean that he would have been that big in the day. You have to remember that most of the leaders at the time would go out of their way to be remembered. Jesus Diddn't. Not only that but the leaders would have had anything to accomplish this at their disposal. Jesus diddn't.

I am not sure what you want to say here

Jesus' record is the gospel. They were all taken from historical texts. Your reference of the other Gospels are yet further proof of his existence especially when it comes to things like the book of Judas which was only discovered in the last couple of years. A historical text.

If you tell a story and all your friends tell the same story and then later someone comes along and says "see this is historical fact cuz see he said this and all these other people said the same thing" - this does not prove anything. What you need is a copy of the census at the time; a signature for a bar tab; some little thing that says this man passed this way. The book of Judas is sort of like one of your friends going off and telling the story just a little differently - it is not independent corraboration.

People seem to think that just because …

Shrillary Rodham Antichrist is the most fitting I've heard her called so far.

I kind of get the Shrillary thing -- shrill is usally a derogatory reference to a woman who speaks her mind and Rodham is her maiden name but where does antichrist come in?
Hey, my license plate reads 666 ??? and I am proud to bear such a license plate - so if you have a biblical reason to associate 666 with Hillary, I would like to hear it. If you are just 16 year old twit repeating what he heard on Rush, that too would be interesting.

chthulu rules!

Licensed to steal is very good. Hilliary the Hog should have one on her forehead as well as her rear end too

So can you explain what this is supposed to mean. I assume that you are referring to Hillary Clinton but I do not understand the 'hog' reference or the license to steal reference. Why should she have one on her forehead? Why on her rear end?

You know that our government's answer to any problem is to attach a label. Just look at your next bottle of beer, wine or stuffed pillow.

The latest news item is a complaint by the association of blind people, that their constituents have a hard time hearing those Hybrid Cars on the road, and are in danger of being overrun.

I wish you had included a link because I really want to see what was really said and not what Rush said it said

to install some sense of what the government is actually spending on things into its own staff.
They spend tax money like water as it is, not caring for the cost of things. The $10.000 cupholder story from the USAF may have been made up, but the phenomenon is real.

Actually this is a bad example The $10k ashtray/toilet seat/cup holder is worth every penny. Notice that it was the USAF - these items cost a lot because when you are in an airplane, taking fire, you do not want anything to shatter and become shrapnel so you spend a little extra to make sure. Also, keep in mind that the cost per item is fudged by including research costs.

I would like, at this time, to point out that no US government official ever threw a 20 million dollar birthday party that had ice sculptures peeing vodka; nor order a 10k shower curtain; and so on.

I know that all you Libertarian/conservative/Republican anti-government types love to castigate the Feds but there is no excess like private sector excess. If you think the phrase "I'm with the government, I'm here to help" is scary think about "I'm with Blackwater, I'm here to help" -- that is downright frightening.

There is no reason why we can't ship nuclear wastes to the sun for safe destruction. Yes it will cost a lot, but probably cheaper than trying to safely store it here on earth for thousands of years.

The problem with this solution is that when you count all the energy used to build the Nuke plant, contain the contaminants, then ship them to the sun we end up with more energy going into the system than we get out. You can't just count the energy produced from the nuke plant, you must account for all the energy needed from mining the fuel, processing the fuel , moving the fuel, building the plant, building the rocket to the sun, getting the rocket to the sun.

On top of that, the cooling towers are moving heat into the atmosphere adding to global warming (though w/o all those pesky pollutants - sort of a clean way towards global warming). All these danged details keep clogging up the beauty of the free energy (in the '50s they hyped the nuke plants as so efficient that the electricity would almost be free or just pennies a KW).

Another couple of <horrid> thoughts: the burying and containment of the waste products that is supposed to last for many millenia will be handled by the lowest bidder. On the east coast (of usa), it is rumored that waste disposal is handled by 'the mob'.

I drink sparkling water (Talking Rain is the Brand); I drink it by the case. Lately I have realized that the amount of petroleum wasted drinking bottled water does not justify using it. The bottle is made from petroleum products and petroleum products are used to move it around. I am in the process of setting up my own carbination system: buying a CO2 tank, some hose, a 2-stage regulator and so on. The calculation is that a 20 pound tank of co2 will produce about 300 gallons of sparkling water and I can use tap water. Saving money, saving the environment and still getting what I want.

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."

omg so kool

I thank Lud every day that that tech was not available on UseNet! Can you imagine what the .sig's would have looked like with that kind of ascii art!?!?!? the internet would have been hell.

But I love it!

Perhaps you should research before you start talking (or writing...:P) let me see... two of the 4 gospels were written by His apostles, John and Mathew, and the other two were written by historians, people who did research about Jesus, so don't start talking about things you don't know... they can make you look stupid...

Wow, talk about looking stupid - sigh, yep they were the dates for when the books were written; Mark wrote his 50 to 70 years after JCs birth, Matt 50 to 100 years after birth, Luke 50 to 100 years after, and John 80 to 100 years. I was doing a quick refresher and mistook dates of authorship for life spans <somewhere in my head I knew at least one of them should have been contemporaneous from when I believed this stuff> Nothing was written during or immediately after his death. Matt, Mark, and Luke, when listed side by side are nearly identical to each other (called Synoptic Gospels); some believe that they cribbed from each other but others say that they cribbed from a no longer extant Gospel of Thomas (the ranges are because various historians differ on when the Gospels were written).

Awwww... come on... you're not going to put all "DaVinci Code" on us, right? plz consider writing facts from trustable sources... go study a little bit and then you can check out tjis thread again... whaddaya say?

DaVinci Code?? Hunh? You will have to explain this comment so I know what …

>Incorrect. As I understand it, there is quite a bit of historical evidence outside of the bible that supports his existence.

Actually, there is no historical reference to Jesus outside of New Testament and the new testament was written by 4 men, none of whom were even born until about 50 years after Jesus died. This makes for a pretty tenuous connection to history. There are no contemporary historical records that mention Jesus during the 33 years of his life and no mention of him after his death. All of the major political figures in the New Testament are referenced in histories, local documents, census records and so on - people like Pontius Pilot, Harode, Caesar; religious groups like the Pharisees (ya gotta wonder at some of my spelling) and Zionists and so on but no mention of Jesus or his crucifiction.

Then there is the question of what about the gospels that were excised from the new testament. It was Irenius around the year 180 of the Common Era who declared the 4 gospels (no more, no less). There are other Gospels - Thomas', Judas', Mary Magdalene's, and the Gnostic gospels.

But all this means nothing, religion is based on belief not on facts or history.

If its scotch its Whisky, if its irish its whiskey

Way Kool! I did not know that (I never had a bottle of each in front of me <nor a frontal lobotomy - sorry, old joke> to see the spelling differences). I wonder where the spellings diverged; maybe after the Irish settled Scotland kind of like we changed the spellings of a lot of our words after we separated ourselves from England (dropping the 'u' from all those words like labour and colour).

Oh, well - thanks mate.

Also, neither bush nor chaney were in the military - at least that leaves out a military dictatorship.

Of course they don't disappear into thin air, they smash through the reinforced outer wall of the outer ring, through the second ring, through the outer wall of the 3rd ring and knocked down the inner wall of the 3rd ring - the engines being of stronger stuff punched deep into the 4th ring, though one did glance upwards and punched out a hole up through the roof.

The plane came in so low, it clipped light poles and bounced off the ground once before hitting the building between the 1st and 2nd floors.

Where is the question? What is the conspiracy? What is the strange thing that does not make sense?

Er, did you think about what happens to aluminum, flesh and bone when they meet brick, concrete, and steel at 600 mph?

You are_completely missing the point. I am not arbitrarily assuming some random situation is true. The entire reason that I am assuming one human learns only one subject his entire life is to prove the limit. That situation is impossible, but shows that some limit obviously exists to the amount of knowledge that we as a human race can acquire. It takes a lifetime for that single person to learn and comprehend everything that is known about a specific subjects, and thus, there is no room for future development of that subject.

What? Either you are trying to say something, and it is coming out really bad.. or you are completely confused. A human_cannot learn an infinite amount of knowledge due to limitations of the mortal body (time for instance).

Some folks mis-construe incredibly large (but finite) numbers with infinity - like the number of possible connections in the human brain. The number is large (about equal to # of parcticles in the univers) but not infinite. One of the better models to use when thinking about memory is the hologramic model (some people do not know the difference between a hologram and a holograph - but that is kind of an inside joke and not particularly germane) wherein all the information is stored everywhere (er, roughly speaking). If you take a hologram of a glass of water and then study the hologram under a microscope, you will find the germs and such you would find in the …

Actually the urban legend that we only use 10% of our brains is false. I read somewhere that we actually utilize the majority of its potential.

Hmm.. your title is a bit confusing. Memory usually refers to RAM... and I seriously doubt hard drives will be commonly replaced by anything in the near future. We need something nearly infallible to store data, and hard drives can be safely connected inside the case without fear of loss of data (for the most part). Hard drives are usually quite sufficient for storing long-term data.. flash drives have pretty much taken over the role of floppies and cds.. an easy and quick way to transfer data between hard drives.

The usb drives that we all know and love (unless one went t-u on you) is actually just a small sub-species of SSDs (solid-state devices) which can last for about 1,000,000 operations per block. Currently, high-end manufacturers are running algorythms to make sure that all the blocks get used equally and stops using blocks that are approaching their limits. SSDs tech is so far above HD tech in speed, life-span, etc that I would expect HDs to go the way of 8 inch floppies soon. (ref http://www.storagesearch.com/bitmicro-art3.html)

Good call on that 10% UL; as usual, the scientists said one thing and the media focused on a number, dumbed it down, then repeated until it inundated the noosphere with an incorrect 'meme' (but at least not a malignant meme).

If the sex laws of the Bible (especially the adultery, promiscuity, and homosexual ones) had been obeyed by everyone, AIDS would not have ever infected more than a few people, and the epidemic would have been over by now.

Midi, There are so many different readings of different bibles, it might help if we knew what the laws against &quot;adultery, promiscuity, and homesexual one&quot; to which you refer. In truth if all laws in the bible were obeyed by everyone, there would probably be a lot of stone throwing and sandel tossing. Just wondering

I am at work and eating from a bag of dried apricots that has some dried plums and samarai peas mixed in. It is pretty odd - samarai peas are dried peas coated with horseradish powder that is colored green to pretend it is wasabi (most American 'wasabi' is actually horseradish as only 2 places in the world can grow wasabi, Japan and a farm in Oregon. the cheap stuff from Oregon cost around $50 per ounce fresh - it may approach $50 per gram dried). Did I distract you from remembering that dried plums are prunes?

My drink of preference is bourbon and coke at home (though sometimes I will drink Canadian <rye> Whiskey). When I go out, single malt Scotch and Irish whiskeys.

Exactly how are you defining the term 'pure of heart' here? The way I see it, Ravenous Wolf is more likely to be correct, although I think I can follow where you're coming from.

I guess where I was coming from is could someone who is pure of heart resist doing good? If the p.o.h. can do good, can the poh resist doing as much good as it in the poh's power to do? Then, if the poh, has ultimate power (ie dictatorship) can the poh resist doing the the ultimate good?

Then - what is the ultimate good? This is the slippery slope that many religious take when suddenly they have power. The Christians who controled different states; the Muslims who controled different states. Both have holy books that speak of doing good; both have histories of not necessarily doing what is best even while doing good. I do not want to point at just those 2 - I mean the Jews, the Hindus, the Shinoto-ists (is that even a word?), the Buddhists each have made the mistake of doing too much good with too much power.

Is this where you thought I was going?

My American Government book says that anarchy and oligarchy both are forms of dictatorship.

Then your book is wrong!
Anarchy: "A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder)."

Oligarchy:
"is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society (whether distinguished by wealth, family or military powers)."

Dictatorship:
"In contemporary usage, dictatorship refers to an autocratic form of absolute rule by leadership unrestricted by law,constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state."

An Oligarchy can be a dictatorship but is not necessarily on; Anarchy cannot, by definition, be a dictatorship.

i would say that dictatorship is the most efficient but i would not opt for it. it puts too much power in the hands of just one man and that one man can be corrupted easily.

sturm said that only the weak can be corrupted. that is debatable. i would rather say that it is very difficult to corrupt the pure of heart. but if one really is pure of heart one would believe that dictating to others is wrong.

I don't agree, I think that the pure of heart would be easily corrupted because the 'pure of heart' knows what is best for everyone and would try his/her best to dictate that everyone also be 'good'; and would try to do what is best for everyone. This would be a slippery slope to an evil dictatorship.

If the sex laws of the Bible (especially the adultery, promiscuity, and homosexual ones) had been obeyed by everyone, AIDS would not have ever infected more than a few people, and the epidemic would have been over by now.

Cripes! You've said that 2 times now - why not post something that makes sense.
What sex laws of the bible?

What do you offer as proof of your statement?

It is not an easy calculation to make - http://tinyurl.com/29l8wm - a simplification is "Unlike charged particles, a certain percentage of gammas will always make it through the absorber and it is useful to consider the half-value thickness of a given absorbing material for the gamma ray energies of interest" -- no matter how good your shield is, some is going to get through.

Can anybody remember when this world of ours ( THE NET ) started to become a place of congregation for profit hungry morons that were never interested in the technology to begin with ?

I got my first "send $5 to the names on the list today and become a millionaire in just 6 weeks" in 1989 when the internet was mostly USEnet news groups and Mosaic had only about 3 web-sites.

Those were the days, we didn't even have color - everything was in black and white, and we had to use the Post Office if we wanted to send messages to each other

no complaining from my side. i initialy posted because the guy who started this thread said that the net is turning into a money thing.

but ventures the size of the internet had always been about the money. even if they start of as a dream they have to sooner or later involve the money.

the only such venture i dont get is nasa. they expand billions and i just dont see the profit(although i do see the point).

i can understand the exploring of the earth by ship some centuries ago because there was the possibility of colonisation and trade. but i cant see nasa's money angle. are they perhaps hoping to harvest solid mercury from jupiter's core?

dont think that i am against nasa. it is just that i dont see the money angle.

Sigh! The idea of ideas; knowledge for knowledge's sake has always provided wealth. I put it up there with music, art, etc. Wealth is not just dollars

The internet was started so that scientist could talk to each other - to communicate, using money provided by the military. It was not started as a method of making money.

NASA has returned something like $1000 for every $1 invested - it is all of society that has benefitted not just one person or corporationl.

It is infrastructure upon which our society is built; similar to the roi of the interstate highway system - almost incalculable because who we are, what we are …

Army of Darkness/Hardcore
Einstuerzende Neubauten
kraftwerk
A death grip on yesterday
Fur Elise (both techno and classical)
Ode to Joy
Moonlight sonata

hbk -- in my youth, I did not search for beauty nor did I search for brains -- long hair was my weakness; how long is your hair?

That tat looked incredibly painful, it is very good photoshop work.

I had a similar problem with people's perceptions, in my youth I took judo and 3 types of karate, then settled on Tai'Chi. Suddenly, people would ask, isn't that just a bit femme? It did not help that I had hair down to where the tip of your dragon's tail ends. It was shiney, black with waves

Yea, but she can't be smarter than me :) There a range of intelligence she must have, not stupid, yet not too smart either ;)

A couple of people have answered this way.

I married brains; she got her PhD in Plant Physiology (we used to fall asleep with her telling me stories of how plants move food and water around). We have fun discussion but -- Well, duh! I just realized she married beauty over brains.

Can I alternate? Like one at night, other during the day? :icon_twisted:

Hmmm! That was the plot of a fantasy novel (I forget the author but his name begins with 'A' and all his book titles are puns) where the 'heroine' was cursed with a cycle that ranged from absolutely knockout good-looking w/no brains to hideous w/iq of 300 or something like that.

ah, well... my senior moment for the day.

How did the HD get totally erased? The answer is important because, depending on the 'how', the drive could be recoverable. SpinRite is probably the most well-known techie's sekret weapon. Unfortunately it costs in the neighborhood of US$70.00. You can read about it at http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm. It works independently of OS, here is the blurb:
By operating directly upon magnetic storage media at a level below any installed operating system, this major milestone release of SpinRite is able to operate on all Windows XP NTFS formats, all DOS FAT, all Linux file systems, Novell, Macintosh (if temporarily moved into a PC) or anything else — it can even be used to repair and recover the hard drive from an ailing TiVo!

While you are there, check out his freebies: http://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm and everyone should check out ShieldsUp just to see how the world sees your computer - it actually checks out the most important ports on your computer. I would especially test the file-sharing and spam me button at https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Cr*p! I just went way off-post again, sorry!

Lardmeister, I had to probe a bit to see if there was enough of an overlap that we could get into a discussion. The only area might be wrt the treatment of scientists by the religious establishment during those wonderfull years when persons of intelect discovered tool with which to observe the univers. It was the Irish monks who managed to save what few books survived that interegnum called the dark ages.
We might have been able to make it to a standoff on that topic.

Falsifiability - there was not much hope.

My wife and I get into serious discussion over superStrings because they are so beautiful and explain so much -- on the other hand, the only reason they explain so much is that they are mallable; with 11 dimension and the possibility to fold and twist them leaves us with almost a different explanation for each phenomenom.

My argumen is that though they explain much - they don't predict for squat; the string theorists have had almost 3o years and they have not made one prediction that was falsifiable

Sorry, it is late at night (the long dark tea-time of the soul - as someone once said) and dreams of grand TOE (theory of everything) has not raised it head. sometimes I despair - could string theory be another phlogistan theory?

I don't know, and I need some sleep

Tomorrow everything will be right with the world

"Sufficiently advanced …

Here is what disturbs me about MSIE vs FF:
MS is a for-profit business and sells ad space - how good is their ad blocker going to be?

The last couple of evil exploits have been using click-through ads.

I use FF at home and I have no ads (sorry csgal - I really will contribute soon <vbg>) -- except that I allow google ads because they actually keep them corralled where I know what they are. When I have to use ie at work, the ads just drive me crazy.

You could just get FireFox and make that your primary browser instead. I don't want to start a religious browser war but I find firefox to be a much more trustworthy way to go.

Are you still having the problem?

After you hear that 'ping', when you look at the active programs (near the clock) side of the task bar - can you find the green disconnect device arrow?

If so, what does it tell you about the device?

If you are running XP, bring up Windows Task Manager (ctl-alt-del), click on processes tab, click CPU 2 times - this will give you the process that is most active, then plug in the device and see what is activated.

I have run into this problem in various forms and usually have to resort to ps/2 mice/kbds -- and I have to dig pretty deep into the 'old tech' drawer to find them. I finall bought a usb to ps/2 bender.

hope this helps

The religio-philosophical worldview wherein only the material world exists, for the most part. Refusing to admit even the possibility of any non-physical reality.

Such as? The only immediate example I can think of that meets your 'imprisoned/executed/banished' account is Galileo, and from what I've read, this was more for his views on the church than for his views on scientific matters, the traditional lore notwithstanding. (That and the one scientific/political argument he got into...the Pope requested a specific statement be made in a book Galileo was working on; Galileo did include it, but had it uttered by a character known as Simplicio. In this case, the name was a descriptive; apparently Simplicio was supposed to be the uneducated moron being answered by the more intelligent types.)

One simple count...exactly what parts of the test for the evolutionary hypothesis are falsifiable?

Here is my definition of secularism:
"generally the assertion or belief that certain practices or institutions should exist separately from religion or religious belief - (one may believe in one religion, many religions or none at all, with little legal or social sanction)"
We have no common ground for discussion on the issue of secularism.

RE: 'imprisoned/executed/banished':
I do not have the time at present to pull together all the sources, dates, and citations - I will have to address this later this evening or tomorrow.

RE: testability of Evolutionary theory:
1)Geologically anachronistic placement of fossils.
2)carbon-14 tests on fossils up to 60,000 …

Exactly how do you figure your logic makes the two fundamentally different? Before the rise of secularism, most scientists believed their task was to discover how God had built the world. And several of the tenets of secularism that are currently labeled as 'science' seem to fail the two tests you gave.

Define secularlism.

Yes most scientists attempted to discover how God created the world but whenever what they discovered differed from what the Word of God stated, they were imprisoned/executed/banished so they tended to have to separate the 2.

Following your definition of secularlism, please tell me which tenets of science are secular and fail the 2 tests.

I have been reading the Feynman Lectures on Physics but I've been told that these books were outdated and that I should buy a current physics textbook for a university level course to read instead.

Please continue reading them! I worked at NOAA and started a movie program. the first movie I got was the Feynman lectures on physics which became the books you are reading (I have a copy myself and refer to them when I need help). The auditorium was filled to overflow with atmospheric and oceanographic scientist who applauded the movie. Those lectures are the basis for current physics, nothing in them is 'wrong' just added to. If you can work your way through those texts, you have all the basics you need to go further.

Thank you for reminding me of them. I would gush about the books all day but probably shouldn't.

There is a problem with attempting to tie god/religion to science - especially to scientific questions that are on the edge current thought. The 2 disciplines are fundamentally different; religion starts with the assumption that there is a god/supreme being and science starts with the assumption that universe is testable.

There were a lot of books written in the 1970's on how Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal 'proved' eastern mysticism (Dancing Wu Li Masters, Tao of Physics to name a few) - it seems each new puzzle that science finds is used to 'prove' the existence of a supreme being. The existence of a supreme being does not require proof, it is accepted as an act of faith. Faith is not testable in the scientific sense and there is no reason (heh,heh - pun intended) it should be.

And on the other hand, statements made in science must be tested. Two of the tests are very important:
1) falsifyability - the test must allow for the possibility that the statement is false/wrong.
2) predictablility - The implications of the statement must predict something that we do not know and that can be tested for.

I hope I did not get too far off on a tangent for this discussion

OOPS! Try this:
http://www.nliteos.com/index.html

Actually there is a way to automate it completely. I found the site (http://www.nliteos.com/). I found it on one of the stickies here - a list of useful programs. Nlite will build you an image that you can burn onto a cd. Installs are start it and walk away.

It was written in the 50's and I am fairly certain that literacy rates were much lower.

.

Google is your friend (or whatever your flavor is):
the 'illiteracy' rate ranged from a high of 3.6% in 1950 to .6% in 1979. Keeping in mind that literacy is the inverse of illiteracy, the literacy rate in 1950 was 96.4%; if you are certain that the current literacy rate is higher, show us any data since 2001.
the click on the appropriate link:
(http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy)

Prequel doesn't automatically imply backstory. I can see where you're coming from; my point was simply that The Hobbit served to lay out vast amounts of information about the world where the series took place, moreso than a normal book would. I apologize if I did not make this clear enough.

As to Tolkien's original intention: J.R.R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and he intentionally 'bled' some of that through to the world he was creating.

The Hobbit was written first but not published until later; after he wrote the Rings trilogy, he had to go back and make changes to The Hobbit so it would fit (can you imagine keeping all that detail in mind writing 5000 pages!?). He was a scholar of Germanic myths; if you look around a little, most of the major character names in the Rings are from those myths.

Back to topic - I am reading the "Children of Chaos" trilogy - pretty cool (and has some pretty deep roots in mythologies also). The 3rd book in the trilogy just recently came out in HB

I also like Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" which is a really interesting (here is the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces).

All of Cordwainer Smiths stories and books - sci-fi stories about the million year history of human civilization and the Lords of the Instrumentality of Man who controlled destiny.

Another foray into mythology would be the recent translation of Beowolf by …