Never underestimate the power of menopause, I say. I was the National Sales Manager for a large corporate at one time, and had a team of around 12 sales people working for me at any one time. The National Campaign Manager and I had been friendly, but I was getting the sense that he was a bit of a bully and wasn't sure where that would lead. One day, we had a little meeting, both of us were there, and my whole team. During this meeting, I said something about upper management not really caring about the team, so we had to care about ourselves. Well, the NCM thought that I was out of line and wanted me to apologise for saying what I had said to the team. I told him no. I said that I didn't believe that I'd said anything wrong, and it was partially to create a sense of us working together against the odds. I thought that was the end of it.

About 30 minutes later, I walked past one of the glass enclosed conference rooms, to see my entire team inside with the NCM. I didn't call this meeting, so WTF? When the first person came out of the room, I asked him what was going on. He said, "Phil was apologising to us for your remark." Suddenly the menopausal brain kicked those hormones up to HIGH. When the last salesperson walked out and Phil was heading toward the door, I stepped in, closed the door and opened a can of whoopass. Basically it went kinda like this: Who the FUCK do you think you are? You're apologising for ME? FUCK YOU! You have a shitload of nerve thinking you can take my goddamned team, people that I got to win after 2 years of losing, and apologise for me. Fuck you, twice, asshole.

There may have been a few more "fucks" in there but that was basically the way it went. I went upstairs, to speak to the Division head, a man who liked me a lot and put me in my role because I made him lots of money, but he was in Aussie that week, so the stupid woman who was in his place, instead of getting us both together and hashing it out, told me that I should go home and think about it. I told her that I quit and that they could send my cheque to my home.

I thought it was a rather elegant way of reporting. I'd leave it as "cursed."

Mate...I went to school with Barbara King!

And so the golden-eyed people, known as the Balang, among themselves, prepared to die for a mirror. As with most things of value, the real value was imbued by those who used it, and so the Balang believed, each and every ugly-ass mother's son of them, sincerely believed that their soul had been shattered into those hundreds of pieces, and would never be whole, or at rest until the mirror was restored. Xerox slipped an axe into a loop on his belt.

On average, each POTUS will sign approx. 140 EOs per term in office. Obama is on target. That said, the deeper question of validity is whether or not EOs are actually legal at all. The Constitution doesn't specifically mention them, and I am unaware of any legislation that validates or authorises them .

I finished my Masters, focusing on theory, linguistic theory for the thesis. I haven't used my education much in work, as we both know, you need the Ph.D. for that, but I have never regretted my study. I use it every day. I no longer live in the country of my birth (USA), and am surrounded by people from a wide variety of other cultures on a daily basis.

Via Anthropology. I was moderately interested in science, but it wasn't until I chose Anthropology as my direction that I actually started understanding and enjoying biology. From that, my enjoyment of science has continually expanded to include other scientific sub-disciplines.

And we will need to be "immortal" for the purpose of space travel and planetary immigration.

Not necessarily a book that will make you cry, but a brilliant book which will make you depressed, is Anthony Burgess' "Earthly Powers."

http://www.sailthouforth.com/2009/12/christmas-memory.html

Every year at the end of the semester, the professor that I worked for would read "A Christmas Memory." When he would get to the last two pages, he would hand it over to me to finish because he didn't want to start crying in front of the class. I made it a tradition to read in my house each year, but now, I can't read it aloud any more either.

I do have to correct you on a couple of details, though. This story is not about his grandmother. It's about a distant cousin on his mother's side of the family. And it's not a balloon, but a kite. They make kites together to fly, and that is the final image.

I sobbed for a good 10 minutes when I finished that book.

Thank you.

Are you guys actually going to let me win an argument that I don't want to win?

They only need to be wrong this one time to mess me up. Why do you think that accepting the word of someone that you think is smarter than you is a form of evidence? It's not. Evidence is evidence. Richard Feinman could tell me that the moon's a balloon just to play with my head. Geniuses are quirky that way.

No. That would be accepting an argument from authority rather than proof.

Further into the interview the author gives 3 distinguishing qualifiers that determine what religion is as opposed to anything else. They are 1. Categorical demands on adherents which are both absolute and non-negotiable 2. Some beliefs that are isolated against ordinary standards of reason and evidence (such as transubstantiation) 3. All religions are discharged by forms of existential consolation. They teach us how to deal with death, loss, pain and suffering.

So, in the example he uses, the Sikh boy vs. the Farmer's son, the Sikh boy's claim to be able to carry a Kirpan is not just a demand made by his religion which rules his eternal life, it is also a cultural demand that proves his manhood. For the farmer's son, it is simply a family tradition. There is more weight on the side of the religion, thus more pressure on the individual to conform and more stress and harm caused by disallowing the knife.

I'd like to get into this bit by bit. In the initial paragraph, the author brings up the fact that religious conscience claims can be used as exemptions from the law, whereas non-religious conscience claims cannot (for example avoiding the draft). Is there an essential difference between these two claims which makes one more valid than the other? The author says no. I would tend to agree, BUT I am happy to argue the other side.

A claim of religious conscience, is made from the conviction that one's eternal life is dependent upon this decision. A claim of non-religious conscience is made from the conviction that you must behave ethically in order to feel right in your own skin. Eternity vs. The Present.