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Why do we always seem to segregate ourselves into the extremes? Fighter/Lover, Democrat/Republican,Pro-Choice or Freedom of Choice? Maybe if we stop placing ourselves at each end of the spectrum, hostility will lessen and we can begin to listen and hear! Extremism arises from a lack of stable identity. When you know who you are, the craving to solidify a sense of self by clinging to ideas diminishes greatly. I can always tell the person who knows themselves the least by listening for that telltale sign -- rigid beliefs and lots of "enemies". This is how they put themselves together when they felt anxious about the eternally...

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Can we only understand the world by understanding ourselves? Welcome back, Highlander! I think a certain kind of understanding of the world can happen in the conventional way -- study and experience. We read, we travel, we discuss, we live our lives and are exposed to a variety of experiences and struggles, and it's inevitable that a kind of understanding emerges for someone who keeps at that for a number of years. What this kind of approach...

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Verizon nightmare..charged for 1 wk before hookup - charged for remote dialup not ordered - no bundle credit given - not informed about billing one month in advance or $79 early cancellation penalty! What was your nightmare? My ongoing nightmare is with Sprint PCS -- they're customer service is atrocious. They made a billing mistake 2 months ago that took 4 lengthy phone calls to get corrected. One operator had the nerve to tell me they were "willing to split the cost of the mistake with me" -- THEIR mistake! I finally got that fixed, the next month they charged me an extra $125 for...

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I have no idea what an X-box is? I thought it had to do with Porn. Is anyone way out of touch like me with today's lingo and gadgets? Well I think you may be on your own in this particular category, Frank. That's pretty far off the main beam :)

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Whtat is the difference between bit, byte and word? A "bit" is a single one or zero. It has two states, and can only represent one of two values. A "byte" is (usually) 8 bits working together, such that each bit is double the value of the bit to its right. A byte can represent 256 possible values. A "word" is some group of bytes working together -- the actual number depends on the computer or language being...

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How can i not be shy around new people i meet? (some helpful pointers or something) First, stop putting pressure on yourself to be any particular way. All those thoughts about how you should be more confident and outgoing are part of the problem -- you can't just relax and be yourself, in part because you have all these idealized notions about how you SHOULD be, and that contributes to the anxiety. Second: give up ideas about "shy" and "confident",...

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How Important is Relationship History? When you start approaching relationship status with someone, how important is it to know the other person's relationship history? How much of their history is important to know? Why? It's neither irrelevant nor all-important: people are likely to repeat the past in their relationships, but this isn't always the case -- we do change over time, and we're each different with different partners. But certainly if there's a recognizable pattern (i.e. he always falls for insecure girls and then dumps them when he gets bored) that's worth being aware of...

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How do you react to the quote "Philosophy is a waste of time"? It's not a waste of time, it's time spent discovering the limits of philosophy. Very important to do, if you ever want to get beyond that.

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Do you believe a lesbian can fall in love with a man or a gay man can fall in love with a woman? Gay, straight, and lesbian are all general categories. Like all generalities, there are gray areas and exceptions which get obscured by the label. So yes, there's a broad spectrum of variations between individuals in sexual preference, and some gay men can fall in love with women, etc.

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MADEA SWALLOWED SIMPLYKATE--:) How do you know, do you know him[david bowie]? And what do you mean by, interesting ones? I don't think she knows David Bowie. Pretty sure she's being tongue-in-cheek about that. If you want to speak to her, the best thing to do is leave comments on her answer, not ask questions with her name. There's no guarantee that she will see your question.

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Would you say yes if the Answerbag staff asked you to become the site's next Community Leader? Why or why not? To the CLs who would answer this question, could you tell us your story? ;) I guess I'm in an exception category, as a former CL. I was reluctant to accept at first, mainly because I thought it would take more time than the job actually required. I quit because I got annoyed with people trying to manipulate me because I was a CL, and also because the expectations of the staff were a bit of an unwanted burden. But I support the CL program, and I think the...

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My voice changes when doing a presentation or speaking publicly in front of many people, along with heartbeat raises, hands getting cold, what should I do to maintain my real self and act like normal and sound like my real voice? You can't "maintain your real self", because the anxiety IS your real self! There's a conflict going on between your ideas about how you SHOULD be in public, and how you actually ARE. Because you don't grant yourself permission to have your nervous reaction, you're left in an endless and self-defeating loop: fighting with your own mind and conditioning to regain...

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Do you ever wish more interesting questions were asked on AB? There's plenty of good questions, you just have to know how to find them. Often the home page is the worst place to go looking... - Pick one of the better question creators, and dig back through their history. Answering one of those questions will bring it back to life on the main page, often it will pick up several new answers besides your own. - Select categories of interest, and...

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If I require any guests to my home to first knock, let me know they are coming in, and respect the rules of our house is that mean? If I lock my doors at night to prevent unlawful and illegal entry to my home does that make me "mean spirited"? It's not a very applicable analogy to the issue of border security. The issues are MUCH more complex there than in this simplistic metaphor. As for being "mean spirited", there's no question that many of the people who are advocating so hard for tightened borders in America have motives that are less than gracious. That doesn't mean we shouldn't tighten up our...

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Do impossible thoughts exist or are they only imagined to exist such that we imagine the existence of an impossible thought and think we are thinking about it when we are in point of fact not thinking about it at all? Just relax, all drugs wear off eventually.

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I am seeing AB users names backwards, help me Obi Wan ? your my only hope.... It's a sinister plot organized by Jodie44 (44eidoj) to pollute our basic bodily fluids by reversing the flow of Chi! Resist!! Fight back!! Do not let anybody talk you into reversing your username!!

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Which answerbaggers name do you like the most? 1. Jenniferocious - so clever. 2. CuriousFrank - reminds me of Curious George. 3. Firebrand - for irony. 4. HanginJudge - Best Use of Gravity 5. Jade - short and sweet 5. lizocat - Don't know what it means, but it purrs. 6. misshell - double meaning, no caps 7. SaraSmile - from the Best of Hall and Oates collection, volume VII 8. Molecule - compact and cohesive ...

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When you hear your name, how do you respond? Depends on whether they are telling me to clasp my hands behind my head at the same time.

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I have a step-daughter, who is 21, and her step child living with us since March 07. We are paying for all their utilities and food and rent. Can we claim both on our income tax? Yes, as long as she isn't claiming herself or the child. Everybody gets to be an exemption on SOMEBODY's tax return, but only one. The person who gets the exemption is whomever is paying for more than 50% of their support.

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How to hack a web content filter We're not in the business of teaching unethical activities. Try google.

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Who wrote, ""If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."? Gary Coleman, at the Rose Parade.

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Isn't forgiveness overrated? To the point where people beat themselves up on choosing wether or not to forgive someone who's brought pain into their life. I think it is. It's not overrated, but there is a problem with how we relate to forgiveness -- there's a tendency to believe that you SHOULD forgive, which is what gives rise to the "beat themselves up over it" phenomenon. It's not true that anybody SHOULD forgive, that's missing the point entirely. If someone has harmed you, you have a RIGHT to see them punished for it....

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Is teaching creationism in public schools the same as teaching evolutionary theory in Sunday school or Church except switched around?The parents that want their children to know will teach them.Leave schools to teach science. I think it's valid to teach an objective view of Creationism -- not as religious indoctrination, but simply as social science... e.g. "here is what some people believe". To leave that information out of the school curriculum is failing to provide a rich background for the public conversation on the topic. That's different than teaching Creationism as a legitimate...

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I just spent two hours looking through the 'what do you look like" question by max power..you ever do that? Yes, I go through the new answers only about once a month. My policy has been to up-rate anybody who posts a photo.

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What does your AB name mean? Stableboy backwards. He is evil, I'm here to destroy him with negative energy.

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Is there any psychological reasoning to why I like and prefer odd numbers? I like odd numbers too, especially 3 and 7. I think it's because you can pick the "center" item, and have balance on each side. When you have an even number, there's no center item -- nothing to grasp. Ok, it's weird, but there it is. :)

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Why is immaturity considered a negative trait? Immaturity is only a problem if someone is behind their developmental curve -- i.e. a 15-year-old who wears diapers is a serious challenge for those who care for him. That behavior is normal for a baby -- you could say the baby is immature, of course, but it's not an insult, it's just a fact. Normally when this word is used as an insult, it means "you're behaving in a...

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What isn't a law that should be a law? Noise ordinances should specify the maximum sound level by FREQUENCY! A car stereo blasting away isn't normally a problem, unless it's equipped with bass-boomer speakers that shake the walls of all the apartments on the street. That low frequency noise penetrates ordinary sound barriers, including earplugs, walls, carpeting, etc. Even in the middle of a busy day, these...

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Me and my boyfriend just broke up out of a ten month relationship. A Lad told mi boyfriend i had cheated on him, when i didnt cheat on him because i love him more than anything. but my exboyfriend cant believe me or trust me, what do i do ? im so confused You might try setting up a meeting between you, your boyfriend, and the accuser (and anyone else who is in on the deal). Tell them that you want to clear up any confusion or misinformation. If the accuser doesn't want to participate, that tends to undermine his credibility. If he does participate, there's a good chance that when your boyfriend sees you and the accuser both...

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My boyfriend has kids 50% of the time and we are talking about getting married. I do LOVE him but, I'm not sure where my place is with his kids.. How should I deal with his kids? Each child is an individual. You deal with them just like you would deal with any individual: work on building and strengthening a personal relationship. The problem here is that you're relating to the kids as an abstraction -- a sort of "unit of baggage" he's carrying around with him. That's a valid perspective from one angle, but it's deadly to do that on a...

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Its my first time on the slopes, do i need to enroll in snowboarding lessons? It's not required, but you'd probably find it worthwhile. I can't snowboard, but I can ski. When I first started, I could barely even stand on the skis on level ground... but after a 2 hour lesson I was able to ski down the beginner slopes with some confidence. Well worth the money and time, I suspect snowboarding lessons would be similarly valuable.

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When will Highlander be back with his questions?Miss his' alot. I'm not aware of any trauma that would make him leave. I suspect he's just on vacation for a bit. There's nothing in his profile or recent activity which indicates a permanent goodbye.

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Can anyone tell me why my 100W soldering iron won't heat up if its plugged into an outlet that also has a fluorescent bulb plugged into it also? Thanks. There's no logical connection between these. A soldering iron and a fluorescent bulb can get along just fine in the same outlet. Are you sure your soldering iron works? Does each item work on its own?

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Do you want to see the film "Juno"? I saw it and found it quite enjoyable.

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What would happen if I drank oil? You'd stop squeaking when you sang "If I only had a heart".

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My parents have been arguing a lot lately and I know my Mom is not happy, I dont want them to get divorced. Should I do something, say something, or talk to a professional? You should tell your parents how you feel, as honestly and simply as possible. It's hard to be in that situation: you don't know what will happen -- they may get divorced, or they may just be going through a hard time. All you can do is be yourself -- make sure that they know how much it hurts you when they fight, share your fears about the divorce, etc. Try not to take sides,...

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This guy i am dating says he really cares about me a lot but is scared of getting hurt and stays distant from me sometimes then talks to me others when we truly start to connect he backs off. my question is does he really mean it when he says he cares It's entirely possible that he's telling the truth. It's also possible that he's just not that interested. I would incline more toward the first explanation -- give him the benefit of the doubt. Certainly plenty of people see love as dangerous territory and shy away, he wouldn't be the first. You might try asking him if he's willing to take things slow,...

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Is it okay to have earplugs on while sleeping? As far as I can tell, yes -- I've worn them for about 10 years while sleeping, and I can still hear you just fine! :)

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Suppose you only could have a few choice words to end an argument or disagreement, what would you choose to say? "I think you have some good points. Perhaps we'll talk more later, right now I don't see a way to make progress."

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I have been offered a part-time legal secretary position in Atlanta. They asked me to name my price, but I don't want to go too low or too high. Top dollar full time can pay up to $65,000. My gas bill is going to triple. What would you ask for? I would sign up for one of the salary survey web sites... they're worth the money when you're talking about a decision that could affect your income for years to come. Here's one of many available by googling "salary survey": http://www.salaryexpert.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=PCSReports.Main&ItemID=14

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It seems that a lot of long-time Answerbaggers originally joined at the beginning of the year(of whichever year they joined), would you mind posting when you joined and how long you've been on Answerbag? Sept. 1, 2006.

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What is the point of music appreciation class? Well, really the point is to be able to appreciate music! But that's not a very interesting answer, is it? Being able to appreciate something isn't automatic: every domain of life has it's own "language"... details and distinctions that are important in that area, and which allow us to interpret that area. For example, I'm not a doctor -- so if I go to a...

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I am 34, want to get married and be a mom before 40, if i do not acheive any of this, eventhough all of my friends and cousins have, should I feel really depressed and upset, or just TRY to find comfort in the fact that it was not to be??feedback pls It's fine to have a goal, but you've got this thing wrapped around your neck like a noose. The idea in life is to be ALIVE, not to be so fixated on a particular outcome that you lose the ability to function. If you're so obsessed with your idea of how your life MUST go that you lose all flexibility and creativity, along with all ability to appreciate life as it is now,...

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Hey people happy new year to you all, i just found out that i am going to be a mommy i am pregnant , i am about 6 weeks and 3 days what are some main rules to follow? Wow, congratulations Sandra! Time to cut back on the deep sea diving, Sumo wrestling, and chainsaw juggling!

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What do you personally believe is the most important life lesson you have learned thus far in life from your past experiences is? That I'm not separate from others.

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My boyfriend is in a band, and i manage their website/myspace. today he called me to say that they are going to get signed. i read the email, and i want to be happy, but i am afraid that if and when this happens, things will change. please.... ADVICE? I think your situation is completely understandable -- this kind of change can certainly make you anxious. Some people will tell you to be happy for him, and don't worry... but it's unlikely that you'll be able to do that. You ARE worried, yes? And there's no magic wand you can wave to make the worry go away. Just stay in touch with your thoughts and feelings on the...

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Does anyone else feel like AB has lost a great deal of it's allure? (And isn't it ironic that I'm posting this as an AB question?) For me, AB has lost and regained its appeal many times over... I've long since lost count. I no longer treat this as a novel event.

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If my husband and I seperated (not legally) in April 06 but he uses the same address as me can I file Head of Household as he didn't contribute any $ towards the 3 kids? Yes, you can file as head of household if you're providing more thatn 50% of the support. The addresses are irrelevant -- he can live in the same house or a different house. The question that matters is "who's paying the bills?"

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Because most people don't want to be murdered, it makes logical sense to outlaw murder in our legal system. But technically, it's not IMMORAL is it? Animals do it all the time, right? Yes, it's immoral. But asking "why?" IS legitimate, and it's not a slam-dunk question to answer. The short version is that in order to understand why it's immoral, you have to have a coherent "basis for morality" -- something which provides a way to tell right from wrong. There's different levels to morality. For a child, right and wrong are based...

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What would be easier to develop: a program for creating random questions - and I don't mean just choosing them randomly from a list - or a program answering them? If relevance and quality matters, the question program is much easier, because producing answers which are relevant to an arbitrary question is a very complex problem -- when compared to simply producing questions which are syntactically valid and semantically meaningful. The answers have to dance with the question, if they're not going to be nonsense. The questions don't have to...

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I own a business in South Dakota and my family is heavily Christian. Would it be a mistake to start a professional, forward-thinking atheist/freethinker group in my home state? It sounds like you're concerned about what your family will think, yes? Do they know you're an atheist? If you haven't "come out" with your family, I think that's a good place to start. Usually family is pretty fundamental in your relationship with others, being able to stand up to them and say "this is who I am" when you know they'll disapprove...

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Why do we look for happiness outside ourselves,when happiness is a state of mind that can be accessed at any time within,and does not need to be looked for? I think it's a mistake to say "happiness is found within", because it preserves one of the most basic errors which contribute to unhappiness: the illusion of separation between self and not-self. Where is "within"? What is "external"? When we go looking for the boundaries between inside and outside, things start to get fuzzy -- it's not clear exactly...

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How can I add my email address to my profile? There is a field for this when you edit your profile, but it's best not to use it. Instead, just add text to your profile which "morphs" your email address into a form that can be read by humans but not by spam-harvesting robots, e.g.: fabulous [at] gmail dot com This will help minimize the amount of spam which comes your way.

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With all the debate about what women really want and what men really want, doesn't it boil down to everyone just wants respect? Well I think that's a good mid-level answer. I think the next level up is "we want to not be dependent on getting respect from others" -- i.e. we want to be the source of our own wholeness. Interimly, we look to others to reflect ourselves -- to know who we are. Ultimately, we need a ground of being which is unconditional... independent of opinions and judgments of either...

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Why are so many freaked out by the natural process of aging? Especially when you can still look and feel this good! Aging reminds us that we don't have much time left. For those who want to keep on living (like me!), that's annoying... but it's also a potential wake-up call: the wrinkles around my eyes say "you had better do your best each day, and try to appreciate life and others to the fullest, and stop acting like 'someday it's all going to go my way'". ...

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I love my girlfriend very much,we've had our ups and downs.some of her insecurities stem from previous relationships and a divorce.i thought i was strong enough to build her up again,but with every 1 step i feel i get 2 steps behind.any advice? It's good that you love her and want to support her, but there's some serious mistakes in what you're saying: - Her insecurities do not stem from previous relationships or divorce: those are just the circumstances of her past. Her insecurities have to do with who she considers herself to be: the images and concepts she has about herself. You can't "make up"...

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If you'd like to share - What was your first kind action of 2008? Watching the Rose Parade on TV without thinking a single nasty thought about Stephanie Edwards -- the former co-host with Bob Eubanks :)

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If the majority of people dont make eye contact where you live with each other what does that mean is there something wrong with these people,is that normal? It's not unusual, and it's not really a problem. Sometimes we have this idealized notion that everyone should be friendly and outgoing all the time. While there have been cultures where that's the norm, it's more the exception than the rule. In general, we're not all completely comfortable with strangers, and that manifests itself in a variety of ways, including...

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My brother has a laptop with Windows Vista but much prefers the Windows XP on our desktop. What is the easiest way to change his laptop operating system to XP and can it be done for free? - Yes, it's free (the Vista license allows you to install XP instead, but doesn't provide the physical media) - Make sure his specific model will run XP. This isn't always the case, newer hardware may lack drivers for XP. I have just such a laptop -- it cannot be rolled back to XP. - Google your PC's model number with "Windows XP" at the same time, and see...

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I am not pregnant so far as I know but yet I am so irritated by husband. Every little thing bothers and I just want to be left alone. Anyone know why? I like msFortunate's answer, which focuses on the hormonal aspect of this (http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/1973609) I also think you should do some self-examination: not physically, I mean studying your own thoughts and feelings. Find a quiet place for 10 minutes each day, get rid of all distractions. Sit up straight, relax, and breathe. As much as possible, don't move. Just...

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Many world economies demand an increase in consumers and consumer spending. The population is too high for the planet to sustain and repair itself. Various groups, religious and others prohibit birth control. Where/when do we start to deal with this? The "produce and consume" economy is a narrow-minded perspective which isn't conducive to a healthy planet. Advertising generates demand for things we don't really need, then we go to work to make those things and earn the money to buy those things, then we need more energy to run those things, and dispose our OLD things in ways that are harmful to the planet, meanwhile we...

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I'm a car salesperson. As customers, would one be offended if I "asked for the sale"? For example: "So, sir. What's holding you back from buying this car today? Is there any way we can get you in it today?" It depends on what your goal is: if your goal is to make the most money, by all means have an automatic "ask for the sale" practice. But there's more to life than money, and some of us smell something fishy about this policy -- what is that smell? Here's one way of describing the odor: you're manipulating the customer as if he were a separate object, merely a cog in...

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Can you be a creationist and not a Christian? Yes, the Genesis account of creation has been around a lot longer than Christianity. It's common to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism... although many people of those faiths have adopted modified beliefs about the story in light of modern science.

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What dus think global act local mean? please dont copy n paste, explain briefly and giv examples "Think globally, act locally" is the proper phrase. It means "recognize the interconnectedness of all life at the global level... see that YOUR actions affect the whole. But don't try to save the world, save your neighbors." The ability to see the "big picture" clearly is what helps us choose appropriate actions for our "small scale" daily...

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Does anyone not like penguins? My grandfather was a Canadian, he loved ice fishing. On a "nature exploration" trip to the Antarctic edge, he was peacefully sitting on the edge of an ice hole waiting for a bite when he was brutally attacked by a dozen rogue penguins, who left him bleeding and unconscious and stole his bait and pole. Fortunately the ship had a safety patrol which found him about an hour later and...

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I have a problem. As soon as something amazing comes into my life, I start doubting it's real. There's a guy I really like. He told me last night he "hearts" me. I woke up this morning, and now the doubt is setting in. What should I do? You need to learn how to "manage" your self-doubts, just as you might manage a chronic medical condition. Lots of people have diabetes and live relatively normal lives. Lots of people have self-doubt and live relatively normal lives. Here's the basic strategy: 1. Tell the truth about your doubts. Don't pretend you don't have them, don't hide or cover them...

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If you still loved your ex and they were in a failing relationship, would you stay close to them in hopes that you got back together? She is beginning to flirt with me and act the way she did when we were together. Really, this isn't a healthy situation. I know the temptation to hang around her is strong, but here's the problem: as long as two people have chosen each other and are trying to make it work, EVERYONE else around them has an ethical obligation to support that relationship -- even the ex-mates! You have this responsibility too, whether you recognize it or not. If you see your...

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I devoted a lot of time to helping my boyfriend when he was feeling down. I supported him in every way and in the end the final result was that he put me down, by telling me I did not have my own identity and interests. How and why can someone be so cruel I'm sorry about what happened, but why are you asking this question? Obviously people can be cruel... what matters for you now is (a) healing and (b) moving on. Digging through your past memories and trying to figure out what it all means isn't going to help with either of those priorities. He did what he did. You did what you did. It's now the past. Yes, there are...

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My avitar and name was just hijacked. Shout out to those who have been hijacked! Have you been hijacked on AB? And do you really care? Random subject for fun! No, I doubt anybody would want to hijack my identity... that would be like joyriding in an abandoned Chevy with no wheels :)

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Different sources from different times in history, say 2012 is going to be THE END of life as we know it, on earth. Have you altered your life with this in mind? I've lost track of how many ends-of-the-world I've survived so far. It comes every few years... some group claiming a prophecy that's as solid as a rock -- we're all going to die on Sept. 19th, 1989, or January 1, 2000, or ... pick your date. There will always be end-of-the-world predictions that come and go, I think. Groups who need to feel that they're special...

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Every time I shut down an open internet browser it shuts down every one I have open. Say I'm on one page and shut it down it says internet explorer encountered an error and must shut down. It then proceeds to shut all pages down. What is wrong? Probably you have installed some add-in or toolbar which has a bug. When you close a window, the bug fires off and cause the browser program to crash and close all windows. Without knowing all the details of what you have installed, nobody can really solve this for you. In general, you should decline to install toolbars and add-ons to your browser unless you know exactly what they are....

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What is the difference between being spiritual and being religious? Can atheists be spiritual and not religious? Spirituality is a basic aspect of human development, it deals with the core questions of life... questions like "who am I?", and "what is the meaning of my life?", and "how am I related to the rest of humanity?". Any mature human is likely to be interested in spirituality, simply because it's part of being human. Religions are organized attempts to...

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Why does the growth of a seven pound baby into a 100 pound adult not violate the second law of thermodynamics? The 2nd law of thermodynamics says that entropy of an isolated system will tend to increase over time. So how is it that the "system" called a human being doesn't become increasingly chaotic over time? Simple: a human being is NOT an "isolated system" -- a human being is intricately interconnected with its environment, including other humans, the food chain, the...

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Would you like to help me congratulate Eltinwe for reaching Sage level!? Yes, Eltinwe has always been gracious and intelligent... to call her a "sage" is being too restrained! :)

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I teach at a college as a prt-time contract instructor. Can I use Schudule C for expenses ... classroom, travel to campus? Normally a contractor does operate as a business entity, filing schedule C and claiming mileage and other expenses. It's possible that there's some sort of exception for your particular profession, but I'm not aware of it. If you don't find it listed as an exception on the IRS web site, then I think you're in the clear -- you'll get a 1099-Misc form from the...

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How much do you pay for a haircut? If I want an ordinary cut, it's $0. That's also the same price I pay for extra services. It's called "take a #3 comb, clip it onto the trimmers, and whack away!" This has worked for a number of years now. I may never win a fashion contest, but it's joyously convenient!

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What's the best way to deal with someone who claims they are a genius even though the evidence suggests otherwise? Presumably you're annoyed with them, yes? Or you wouldn't bother asking the question probably. There's two kinds of answers: the helpful kind, and the FUN kind! :) The helpful kind are long and dreary, involving restraining yourself, seeing if there's a crack in their armor through which you can actually deliver a usable communication, etc. These are all good...

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How to achieve Self Belief? What exactly are you trying to achieve? Self-confidence? Self-understanding? What is "self belief"? It helps to get specific. "Believing in yourself" is a pretty broad topic, it's easier to tackle if you pin down exactly where you have doubts about yourself and what they are.

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If i want to move to america. what are the first steps i should take and how, condering that'l i need a job straight away That can be quite a challenge. There are a number of categories under which you could get a visa, but to become a permanent resident the requirements are rather stiff. The most common ways to become a resident are to get a work visa (generally allocated only to highly-skilled workers who are sponsored by a company that hires them), or to marry an American citizen, which is pretty much an...

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When I was at work today a co-worker was talking bad about another co-worker to me and I did not know what to say because the person who she was talking about is a friend of mine.This has happened twice now, how do I tell the co-worker to back off? How about "well, she's a friend of mine... if you like, I'd be happy to go with you now so you can discuss the issues with her. Maybe the three of us can work them out together".

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Is Scientology a cult? Any question like this is fraught with peril, because rigid categories don't make a very good parser for reality, in which subtleties, gray areas, and complexity rule the roost. Certainly there are some cult-like aspects to Scientology: the apparent control the church exercises over members, it's frightening suppression of opposition using morally questionable tactics, the secrecy...

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Steven Weinberg once said "With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion" Do you agree? No, but it's not a bad start. For good people to do evil things requires... in general... that they honor some IDEA more than they honor their VALUES. I call this "clinging to beliefs instead of standing for values". Now, it just so happens that religion provides a fertile breeding ground for exactly this kind of malfunction: religion offers lots of different views one...

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Who was Answerbag's first ever Sage? Technically, it was Auntie Em. At the time AB 4.0 was rolled out, she had the most points. One day the staff inserted a bug into the system which miscalculated the badges a bit, and we got a preview of what came after Brain -- suddenly, Auntie Em was a "Sage", even though she was only at level 48 or something like that. After a day, they fixed the bug and she returned to being a...

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Today is Carmella's birthday. Would you like to join me in wishing her a Happy Birthday? Carmella is one of my favorite 'baggers of all time. Heck, one of my favorite PEOPLE of all time. (If I were any kind of decent friend, I'd have a nice poem all written for her and I'd post it here. But my excuse is that I've been out of town... <<covers ears to mute the booing and hissing>> ) So Happy Birthday, Carmella. May you have many more, may they...

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Does it feel like AB sortof died a little? It seems to have slowed down alot. I used to wonder about this sort of thing... whether AB was dying or not, what the changes in the rating system meant to the future quality of the site, whether trolls should be shot or hung, etc. But it always seems that whenever I get concerned about those kinds of questions, I stop having fun or being satisfied with AB. To me, it all comes down to one thing: am *I* going to do my best...

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Why do you suppose that atheists have a lower divorce rate than Jews and Christians? As I mentioned on Riff-raff's answer, I think the stats on this deserve dispute, and the notion that there's a causal connection between the divorce rates and theism or atheism is suspect. But I could go on and on about the Bible and marriage. My father was a Baptist preacher, and this was one of his favorite topics. In addition, I think I've heard every conceivable debate...

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In an extremely drunken state the other week I sent a topless picture to a male friend, the moment I'd done it I felt overwhelmed with guilt. My bf of 8months now knows and is finding it very hard to get o Well it seems strange to me that nobody has yet suggested "stop drinking so much!". I don't like to finger-wag: I had a real problem with alcohol for a number of years myself. I know what it's like... you do things that are just plain STUPID when you're drunk. It causes lots of problems for lots of people. So rather than try to sort out your guilt or focus on...

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Is it wrong to distract yourself and pretend that everything is fine when you know that a friend or loved one is suffering? Even if you know there's nothing more you could be doing to help them? Why would you need to distract yourself or pretend? Regardless of the cause, I'm generally opposed to self-distraction and pretense. Life will not be escaped... it just keeps following us around until we stop and pay attention. Presumably this person's suffering (I won't even bother with the not-so-complicated task of guessing who) is affecting you, yes? You feel...

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What is your personal definition of True Love, or your views on this? Love is damnably difficult to define... there's different kinds, different aspects, different levels. Volumes and volumes have been written about this. How about an easier question... like "who ELSE shot J.F.K."? OK << sigh >>, what is love? Love is opening up instead of closing down. Love is giving instead of taking. Love is listening instead of...

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Has anyone else had answers deleted from this section because they were critical of Scientology? Or am I the only one? There have been some pretty harsh criticisms of Scientology posted on AB, but I don't recall what categories they were in. You can still find deleted answers with a Google search, if you put "site:answerbag.com" in your search terms. I can't recall seeing more than one pro-Scientology posting in my 8 months on AB, so it's hard to imagine there's a big...

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Must a roman catholic seek permission from his church to convert to another religion? The question really doesn't quite make sense to me: if someone no longer trusts the Catholic church to provide their spiritual guidance -- i.e. they want to convert to another faith, why would they consult the church for permission? It's just too strange.

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Why are Fundamentalists always the most ignorant people? This question is a problem. I'm not a Christian, and certainly not fundamentalist, and I have many disagreements with them. But questions like this don't even approach being valid debate material -- it's nothing but an open-ended insult. What an attitude like this does is provide support for fundamentalists to paint themselves as abused, misunderstood, or discriminated...

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Do people treat "Anonymous" users on Answerbag differently? Yes, definitely... I'm less inclined to engage in long dialog or put in a lot of effort answering a question from "anonymous", simply because there isn't the relationship factor -- a lot of the good stuff on AB occurs inside the friendships (and enemyships?) that form. Anonymous doesn't make any friends, and misses out on that aspect. If you're not...

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It's your first date with a new partner. Girls and guys, what do you expect from the other? It could be gifts, reactions, actions...etc... Well... I haven't had a first date in many years (I've been married a long time). But the best expectations are no expectations: to just be present and participate fully with whatever happens. There is no "right way" for a date to go... every one is different. My job was always to "be there" as much as possible, with an intention to have a good time....

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Do you think that positive stereotypes are just as damaging as negative stereotypes (e.g. all Asians are good at Math)? No, I don't think positive stereotypes are as damaging as negative stereotypes. "Stereotypes" is just another word for "categories"... we all have them about many things (and people). The basis of our ability to think abstractly is completely dependent on the ability to create categories and classify individual things. It's one of the mind's ways of...

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Do you think anyone has noticed that Tranny and I know each other in person, not just through AB? Hmm... I didn't know that. Are you also xxSUNSHiNExx? If so, then yes -- I knew...

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Why is it when you have a computer problem is seems to be 10 times more frustrating than anything else? Because computers have a special knack of making you feel STUPID when it's their fault. (My ex-wife could do this too...!)

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Do you believe in Steelhamster? I believe that you believe, and isn't that what really matters?

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What would be a good name for AntigoneRising's male kitty avatar? Catigone Felonious, III. But what are you talking about? Her kitty is definitely female... no guy dances like that.

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Is suicide ever the only option left? Certainly there are people who are in such chronic, persistent pain that it seems like the only answer. I know someone in this condition right now: in constant physical and emotional pain, who can look forward to a future of more of the same, with no realistic hope in sight. In addition, this person suffers from serious financial problems, is isolated and alone, and lacks the social support...

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Are there any celebrities among us, that just come here to be a regular person? Of course! My real name is Paris Hilton.

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I want to change my user name but i want people to still know it's me. any ideas? Your avatar is fairly distinctive, so that helps. The solution I like is to make the change in a series of stages, so that it "mutates slowly" rather than suddenly becoming unrecognizable. So, if you wanna become "Stablecat", you could go from "Clueless Ned" to "Clueless Cat" to "Cluefull cat" to "Stablefull cat" to...

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What is the point of all the religions out there???/ There are several main "functions" performed by religion: - Providing answers to the "big question" about life; - Providing a buffer against the anxieties we have about pain, death, suffering; - Providing a framework for values; - Providing "social glue" which connects individuals and families to community. But I think the most important and central...

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I dont like mass,i believe more in karma than in straightout forgiveness of sins, as is the way of christians(supposedly me) and am looking into more alternative engaging wiccan ways to find answers..should i still call myself a christian?is that right? Well I'm generally in favor of challenging beliefs directly -- this is what critical thinking is all about. But if you're going to do that, it's really best to be consistent about it... if you're going to challenge the Christian notions of redemption, you should also challenge Wiccan views and karma as well. (I'm Buddhist, by the way). Our minds love to make up...

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I am very confused about reincarnation. Will you make 3 statements about reincarnation? There are 3 popular views of reincarnation: 1) The "essence" or "soul" of the individual migrates to a new body. 2) The "causal connection" flows from one life to the next, sort of like a candle which lights another candle -- is it the same flame? Well, yes and no. 3) The whole story is speculative and unsupported by any evidence. This is my own view...

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If you follow a certain religion, do you make it a point to study and understand other religions, as well? Why or why not? I'm Buddhist, and I spend quite a bit of effort working to understand other religions. It's clear to me that many religions have a lot in common, although of course there are many differences as well. It's my view that religious understanding and tolerance are crucial to the future of our planet, because one of the largest threats to our future is extremism, and religion is...

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How do you forgive? Forgiveness is letting go of your right to punish the other person for what happened. In order to do this, it really helps to see that you're clinging to something about what happened... some part of the story which says "they should not have done X, I am right, they are wrong". It might be TRUE that they should not have done X, but clinging to that viewpoint... telling it...

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My sister seems to need to be in constant contact with anyone she dates. If they do not call her for a few days, she thinks that their relationship is in jeopardy. She won't listen to any advice given, and I worry about her. What could I do to help her? I think JUSTNORMAL is correct -- her insecurity about herself will cause trouble. She may chase them all away, or (worse) hook up with someone who will exploit her insecurity in ways that are harmful. There may not be too much you can do to help, but it's good to keep trying -- what needs to happen is for her to realize that she's chasing guys in order to escape her own...

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Can you tell me about your religion? no offense intended whatsoever, i just want information. I'm Buddhist. Buddhism challenges beliefs of all sorts, and asks the practitioner to study themselves instead. This study reveals the "structure" of individual self, and in the course of this revelation the individual begins to also see their connection to others and to the whole of life. As this deeper connection becomes more vivid and present, it begins to express itself...

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What do you believe, but cannot prove? I believe some things I can't prove, but I'm constantly trying to identify and uproot those beliefs. Even with things I CAN prove, I'm not really interested in believing them. Basically, I don't believe in belief. Well, actually... it's a bit more subtle than that. It's not clear what I need beliefs for. Every time I study this question, it seems to me...

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Who's the angrier ABer (as in leaves the angrier, more one-sided comments): Ultra-right Christians or Ultra-left Atheists? Feel free to use examples ... Anger and extremism go together, on either end of the spectrum. Extremism is closely coupled to absolutism: the notion that our beliefs and concepts can capture absolute truth, and when coupled with the human tendency to define "self" in terms of beliefs, this can be a deadly combination. Religions TEND to produce more absolutist thinking than secular views, but such isn't...

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Why do wommen like the bad boy type???if not what type do you like? Here's a related thread: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/312421

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I'm jealous of my boyfriend's sister. She is coming to spend 3 weeks and will be living with him in his house. I hate that. Help me. It's good that you recognize your jealousy, and that you're asking for help. Jealousy can do a lot of damage, especially in a case like this where it seems to be a bit out-of-control. Jealousy is a form of insecurity... when we don't feel confident that another loves us and is committed to us, and we believe that we NEED that person a great deal, we're very sensitive to...

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What would you consider to be a long relationship? In this moment when we're alive together it always was that way and never ends eternity fits neatly into now a pot and it's lid now has no beginning or end it's always new

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Did you know:bees kill more people a year than sharks do. So why are we more afraid of sharks? For the same reason that we're more afraid of terrorists than we are of septicemia: the former killed ZERO people domestically last year, while the latter averages 43,000 EVERY year. The bottom line is that in our ignorance, we react to what frightens us, not what actually threatens us. Part of maturing as individuals -- and as a society -- is to develop the wisdom to know the...

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Should I get a divorce? My wife and I fight all the time. We don't speak for days. We have 3 children, 3 houses and a bunch of stocks. I think I want to get separated, but am worried about losing my shirt in the divorce proceedings. I am in Pennsylvania. Nobody can sort this out for you. But what caught my attention was your concern about losing your shirt rather than losing your children. I would suggest spending some time reflecting on your values: what really matters most to you? Is money really the top priority?

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What does the phrase "We think, therefore we are," mean to you? It means my personality has fragmented into more than one individual, all of whom are confused about thinking and being.

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I Lost the Love of my Life Jan 26, Can ppl really go crazy with grief? or does everyone feel this way? No one wants to be where you are... the pain must be intense, like you've fallen into a well and don't even know which way is up. Losing someone you love is the hardest thing life has to offer I think. People will do their best to offer compassion and solace; but of course there's a limit to what any of us can do... you're the one who has to go through the pain and find...

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What is your personally favorite youtube video? My new favorite is "Charles has a licking problem". This thing has worked it's way into my mind and has started to do bad things to me.

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Have u ever heard of the concept "Law of attraction" ? As in our thoughts attrack things, if we think something it's going to happen, if it's bad or good, universe listens to our thoughts and reshapes itself according to them. This is simplified version. Yes, I've heard of the Law of Attraction. I think it has a certain limited truth, but people make too much of it. More importantly, I think that people who focus on trying to "exploit" this principle are really missing an important point about thoughts -- to become a mature individual with a well-developed understanding of life and oneself, we really have to exert effort coming...

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What do you call the bar you hold up under the handle of a lawnmower? The kill switch.

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Singwell asks the same type of question every time, citing an example and then a question asking if you've done/experienced something similar. Have you noticed this, and do you mind? (No offense, sing) I think some of these questions are good, and some are grasping a bit. I grant her some slack because the competition for good questions is rather weak sometimes, and at least she puts some thought into it. AB is "driven" by the questions, and the average quality of these is higher than (forgive me...) "what's your hair color (again)?". And every once in a...

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Am I crazy, or does just about everyone have a kid with ADHD these days? It sure seems that way. My wife is a therapist, we were talking about this recently. It seems that it's common for doctors to diagnose this -- I think partly it's a matter of wanting to be able to classify the kid's behavior so they can be medicated and insurance plans will pay for it. Beyond that, it's my sense that generally there IS a lot of attention deficit in...

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Why are fools and fanatics always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts? I was going to leave this alone, but it's too juicy a morsel! :-) Doubt always accompanies any kind of conceptual knowledge, because in order to have a concept, one must separate something from the whole (i.e. take it out of it's original context) and encapsulate it as an abstraction (remove the messy details, sharpen up the boundaries, simplify, generalize, etc.) By the time the...

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My mom just bought my dad an "Air Supply" CD. So, here's my question: how can I destroy a CD and make it look like an accident? A music CD looks a lot like a DVD, yes? And everyone knows...accidents happen. Before continuing, I think I should mention that it's a distinct HONOR to participate in your adventure. It's impossible to under-destroy an Air Supply CD. Ok, with that out of my system... A CD looks like a DVD. So your first step is to rent a movie from the local video store... better yet, rent...

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When does being different become unequal? Different IS unequal, pretty much by definition. But it sounds like your asking something like "should people be deprived of equal rights just because they're different" -- for which the answer is NO, if the difference is something morally neutral (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) The answer is YES if the difference is not morally neutral, such as they've...

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My 51 year old brother has been out of work for 5 mos and drinks too much. He now stays with my 86 yr. father. help!? He needs to be kicked out of your Dad's house, clearly. 51 is too old for anyone to be giving him time to get his act together, etc. If he doesn't have his act together at this point, it's all on him. Your father is too old to be caring for him or rescuing him, and you shouldn't be either.

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Do you know that we're not stuck with the lame AB search function? Google can do excellent searches of AB content (details inside). I actually knew this at one point and lost it in my vast reservoir of Johnny Depp knowledge! I've whined for a long time about the lameness of AB search... it only searches question text, not comments or answers. But Google DOES have the ability to search AB, and has all the content indexed fairly quickly after it's posted. The trick is limiting your search to JUST...

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Do you think it is right to be disowned by your family if you are gay? & Why Of course it's wrong to disown a gay family member. This is allowing one's prejudices to displace their love... human beings are much more valuable than abstractions and social conditioning.

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A friend of mine was raped recently while at work. She just found out that she is pregnant, and has every reason to believe that the child is the product of that rape. Is it right for her to abort the child? There's a difference between asking "is it right for her to abort the child?" and "does she have a right to abort the fetus?". It might seem to be "merely a matter of semantics", but semantics is actually CRITICAL to understanding these kinds of problems, because our thoughts ARE semantics -- thoughts are "meaning encapsulated as concept". ...

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What is the difference between practising Buddhism and practising Zen? Zen is a subset of Buddhism. Zen focuses primarily on meditation (zazen) as the central practice, and places less emphasis on "book learning" (sutra studies) than most other forms of Buddhism. Also, Zen generally does not use tantric methods (visualization, trying to cultivate particular "positive" mental states, etc.) Zen operates on the basis of a trust in...

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I want to let my ex go i was on and off with him 4 6 years i dont now how Nobody can answer this for you, but sometimes talking to others can help you sort it out for yourself. The thing to focus on is awareness: awareness of your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs about yourself and your ex, etc. The more you can notice and recognize about all of that, the more you can work through what's important and what's just "noise". In addition,...

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Is there away to see a list of all the ab members at one time? (not search for members) No, the closest thing you can come to that is go to the leaderboard and scan (and scan, and scan....)

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Miss Heidi, why do you believe in the Book of Mormon with no proof save the prayer suggestion in the Moroni sub-book? 1. Are you sure that is God answering the prayer? 2. A logician would surely blow this out of the water. This is an unacceptable question. If you want to speak to a specific user, go answer one of her questions or comment on her answer.... don't post "personal attack questions".

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The core value at the heart of Consumerism is vanity. Likewise, one of the main values that Islam espouses is humility. Does this mean that Islam and Consumerism are incompatible? I think many religions are at odds with consumerism... It's a question of degree. There's nothing wrong with having and owning things, it's a question of the degree to which one is "addicted" to having more and more "stuff": this is a behavior which comes from a sense of being incomplete and needy... an attempt to fill one's sense of emptiness...

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How does God feel about gay marriage? Stableboy said: --------------- Well... I'm tempted to quit... but when you talk about not wanting to change dictionary definitions, as if they were something sacred, that actually points to the source of many serious problems: clinging to concepts. New words come into existence, old words disappear, and the meaning of words evolves all the time. That's etymology: the study of the...

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How do you give out points? do you only give points on subjects that relate to your life? or questions that would just be helpfull period? do you give points on answers that you think are right? or answers that are good and sometimes just funny? I usually do one of three things, depending on the situation: a) select only the best answer and give it full points b) scan the list and distribute points based on quality c) just rate the answer I'm reading. (c) tends to happen when I'm coming to the list through a specific user's profile -- i.e. following somebody around.

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What not to say at a wedding? "Dude, that chick at your bachelor party was a LOT hotter! What are you thinkin!?"

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What do you think about religion? Hate it or love it and why? I think religion has an upside and a downside: the upside is providing a path for spiritual development, the downside is a tendency to generate divisiveness and oppression of other views. I love the former, and disapprove of the latter. I don't think I hate much of anything anymore.

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If someone is interested of meeting me please e-mail me www--pea@peoplepc.com I dont like to stay alone I need to get distracted in some thing else I am here in Las Vegas. I am 14 years old. This is not a good idea... to be posting an invitation on the Internet for strangers to meet you in when you're 14? Do your parents know you're doing this? There are lots of predators and strange people around -- especially in Vegas! Not wise at all.

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A man has sex with a male friend 3-4 times every 6 months. Other than that he is completely hetrosexual. Is he Bi, Gay, Straight, or are we wrong to try to categorise him? All categories are "fuzzy"... we just don't notice it often because we like to cling to concepts -- they simplify our understanding of reality. But a case like this illustrates the difficulty with taking categories and abstractions too seriously: there's always gray at the edges. That doesn't mean we should stop categorizing things, it just means we should...

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Most women say they like sensative men or at least a combo of sensative and cocky. Why then do so many women go for the cocky one? Here's my way-too-thorough response on a related topic: http://tinyurl.com/27m8zr

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Who is Jodie44? A fine person. We'll see if she answers herself, which would be the best answer you'll get.

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What is the significance of the "777" attached to several Answerbaggers 'handles'? For example: Andersen777. I've noticed a fair number of ABers have done this. I did here Andersen777 say something about luck. But I always call her "Andy", so I guess I'm bad luck...

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This girl at school once said to me that i was too nice to have a girlfriend. wht do you think she meant by it? its really been confusing me lately Here's a related posting: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/312421

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Is Answerbag now trying to race Yahoo Answers to the bottom of the intellectual barrel That would be pointless... the barrel has no bottom. Such a race would last forever.

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How would you sum up life, the universe, and everything in one sentence? Breathing in, breathing out.

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Im doing a random sample survey on the people on AB that smoke/dont smoke-and the people that drink and dont drink. When im done i'll make a graph on it for school. Help me out. I don't smoke. I drink very rarely, and very small amounts when I do drink. Is that all you need to know or is there some survey to fill out?

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Do you believe your religion to be the one "true" religion? (I'd appreciate it if you also would list your religion.) I'm Zen Buddhist. I have to twist your question around a bit in order to make a sensible-sounding answer, because Buddhism isn't about capturing the Absolute Truth into a belief system. Some religions do this: they compete for dominance in the game of "our beliefs are truer than yours". In Buddhism, it's considered that the truth is not something which can be...

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How do you feel about the lyrics to the song "Imagine" by John Lennon? I really miss John Lennon... I loved his music, and he was a great advocate for peace, etc. I went into shock when he died. I also like this song a lot. Having said all that, the lyrics are quite flawed because the ideas they express are flawed: Utopian ideals are quite popular -- it's easy to think that if we just got rid of the bad stuff (religion? posessions? countries?) that...

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What's your favorite band fronted by a woman? Well, I guess it might be cheating to say "Aimee Mann", because it's clear she's the artist and they're her backup squad... But she is far and away my favorite female pop star of all time. It's inconceivable to me that so much talent can fit into that package and still not really produce great success. But then again, she makes no effort to exploit her looks for...

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Have you ever felt like you did not belong? Yes, everyone has this experience many times in life -- it is one of THE defining characteristics of personal identity... Our sense of self is very much driven by our conditioned ideas of the group(s) we belong to and don't belong to. Those boundaries help to tell us who we think we are. A key milestone in the development toward maturity of a person is when they begin to recognize...

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Which movie always makes you cry, no matter how many times you watch it? In "Dances with Wolves", near the very end there's a scene in which Kevin Costner is preparing to leave the Sioux tribe he's been living with in their winter encampment. His best friend Kicking Bird has carefully carved a tobacco pipe as a goodbye gift, but can't find it and is searching the teepee for it in a near-panicked state. His wife finds it easily (some...

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Your favorite Bourbon? BourbonAllMighty

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A Chinese man says his cat can clearly pronounce his own name. Can your pet say anything? We have 3 cats: two boys and a girl. Predictably, only the girl can speak English. She has a one-word vocabulary, and the word is "heck yeah"... this is her basic utterance for all situations: if she wants to be petted, it's "heck yeah!". If she wants to go outside and the door is closed, it's "heck yeah!", and if you asked her if she's the one...

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What's the shortest possible answer you can give to this question that will still make sense? Self-referential questions are endless loops.

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Why do people hold grudges? The basic reason for holding a grudge is the same reason we cling to ANY idea: it helps provide stability for our sense of self. To let go of a position which we've held with passion is to admit that maybe it wasn't so crucial in the first place, and that's a threat to our naive belief in a fixed identity. We can no longer say "this is what I stand for", as if the...

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I believe in god, but I despise religion. Is that normal or weird? Religion at it's best is organized and formalized spirituality -- a well designed path for spiritual development that has been refined and honed over the years. Religion at it's worst is brainwashing, suppressive, and provides the basis for violence, evil, and oppression. So I think it's a mistake to just despise religion out of hand: the passion with which you hold that...

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Is it possible to become Ego-less? I would say it is not possible, and even having that as a goal represents a certain kind of confusion about ego. There are two basic naive views about ego: a) ego should be eliminated. It's bad, period. b) ego is the source of self-confidence. It's good. People who think that being egoless is a good goal will generally wind up with some very complex pretense of humility...

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Do I need a special set up to play my quadraphonic 8-track of John Lennon's Imagine? In the days of 8-tracks, there were several standards for encoding quadraphonic music onto the tape. The decoding methods were generally built into the player, so the player would have 4 output channels and you would plug those into your amplifier independently. You can play any of those tapes in a stereo-only player... the challenge with anything involving 8-tracks is just to find a player...

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I discovered a lump in my left breast above my nipple last night, any words of encouragement? I'm very worried. Sorry, I don't know much about breast lumps, but I know a lot about worry: There's no way to know (until your lab results come back) whether what you have is cancer or nothing major. That is just the facts, yes? And we all recognize that worrying doesn't help anything, but we do it anyway... naturally we're concerned about what might be, and the mind fills up with...

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Why do all good things come to an end? All things end -- impermanence is one of the fundamental characteristics of reality. Without change there's no meaning to the word "time". As to "good things" vs. "bad things", those are OUR points of view talking. Life doesn't think like that... it just keeps flowing on.

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What is your opinion of prostitution (either male or female)? Here's some common competing views about prostitution: - It's a sin, a violation of what sex is meant for, bad for the hooker, the johns, and society as a whole; - It's a victimless crime, an act between consenting adults; - It's the exploitation of women by men; - It's a pathetic grasping at love and pleasure by people who can feel little of either; I...

| 9 people like this

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How does one arrive at the conclusion of "I think, therefore I am"? This is a famous quote from the French philosopher and mathemetician Rene Descartes. He was looking for the foundation of knowledge -- he wanted to come up with some statement which could not possibly be doubted, and use that as the basis for his philosophical system. So he went about doubting everything he could doubt, and finally came up with "Cogito ergo sum" (I think...

| 7 people like this

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I am going to start working for a non profit organization that repairs inner city homes for elderly widows. Where is the best place for me to find what my tax responsibilites will be, ie, SS%2 I don't understand the question -- if you're going to be an employee, your responsibilities are the same as any employee: taxes will be deducted from your paycheck, and at the end of the year you'll file a return and pay any unpaid tax or receive a refund of excess tax. If you're a volunteer, then there are no tax responsibilities. ============= EDIT ================...

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Have you ever liked something but you keep is a secret because you think you'll get made fun of for likeing it? Yeah, that's how I feel about "COPS!" (the TV show). I guess I keep hoping I'll see someone from my family on TV.

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Would anyone care to join me in congratulating gtravels on becoming a sage? Gtravels is one of the greatest humans who ever walked the face of the Earth! I'm not worthy to congratulate her, but I shall sacrifice a goat and lay it on her doorstep with a hand-painted sign that says "Sage is too low for you". (Yes, I will ring the doorbell and rush off... can't face her glorious countenance, of course! :-)

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I need a positive support system to help me address a relationship problem and stick to my guns of following through with addressing the problem, and not putting up with excuses anymore. Any suggestions of support for me that may help me get stronger? Well I think you've got the right idea in the phrase "support system"... my favorite support system for this kind of thing is other people: someone who will hold you to account for your behavior regarding the area. I once went backpacking with a friend who was a smoker. He brought no cigarettes with him -- intending to use the 7 days in the mountains to quit. As we were...

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Why was the official suicide count of people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge ceased in 1995? I'm not sure of this, but I heard that they stopped counting because they didn't want people including that as part of their motivation to jump from the bridge -- i.e. "I'm #2932", etc... to draw some sort of meaning from it as part of their suicide plans.

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On a scale of one to ten, how big is your ego? I could go on and on about this topic! But will I? Hmm.... Generally, I'm pretty arrogant and egotistical... it seems I'm just sort of wired up that way. The area where I could go on and on about this is in the question: "what do to about that?". People take sides about ego: "it's a bad thing, you shouldn't be egotistical" ... or...

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What shall I do in San Francisco today? One of my favorite things is to go across the bridge to Sausalito and eat at a nice restaurant on the water.

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Does anyone feel that this place isn't just about the questions and can be about meting people and learning new things? That is absolutely true: it's actually more about the relationships and learning than it is about anything else.

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Does the emotional and mental pain that comes from being raped ever get easier to deal with, or go away completely? Well, I'm male, and I've never been raped... but if you can make some allowances for that -- I would say that there are characteristics to traumatic events like this which are common across the board: Emotional pain from trauma IS completely resolvable, although often it does go unresolved or only partly resolved. The problem with these kinds of incidents is that -- long after the...

| 20 people like this

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Do things seem to be going well, but you're still not happy? No, but I am very familiar with this feeling. It's easy to believe that the circumstances of our lives are the key to being happy -- getting the right job, the right relationship, the right home, ... whatever. This seems so obvious it often goes unquestioned. And yet, it's easy to find people -- including ourselves -- who seem to have that all worked out and still aren't...

| 2 people like this

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How can your develop your own singing style? This is really a form of the question "what does it mean to be yourself?", and it can be approached with the same tools that work for that question. You are unique already -- there's nothing you have to do to be unique, that's a given. That uniqueness will naturally express itself in your singing, and it's a major mistake to go chasing after ideas of how you should...

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What do you think is the nicest airline? Well British Airways was very nice, but I only flew them once. In the U.S., I very much prefer Jet Blue -- they're service is efficient and friendly... they just seem to "get it": try to make our lives a little easier, and don't mope around like you're still angry over deregulation and/or labor contracts. When I fly other airlines, it always seems like the crew is...

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My husband & i bought a house a year ago (my name and his name is on the deed)He served me with divorce papers last friday. He wants me to cook & clean & relations & tell him where i am going.He will not give me any money to live on. It would be good if you could provide some more details. You can post them as comments here, or add an answer to your own question. Are you saying he's making conditions for the marriage? Do you work and produce income? Does he do anything at all around the house? How do you feel about him? etc. And of course, what are you looking for from us... just general advice or a specific kind?

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Do you support the use of alternative energy sources? Why? Certainly I support the use of alternative energy sources -- I think everyone who understands the problem does so. The issues are all around practicality: how do we get alternate forms of energy that work with our economy, that can be distributed, that don't cost more to make than they're worth, etc. I'm concerned about the influence of embedded interests in this area: energy...

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Do you ever get a little annoyed with people having conversations between each other on your questions? (Not that it's the end of the world, but do we really need to see someone else's conversation right there) It depends on who it is and what they're talking about, as well as what the answer is about. Most of the time it doesn't bother me, but occasionally there are cases where it diverts the comment thread from something good. It's not a big deal, but when I'm on a comment thread I do sometimes stop talking if I feel it's irritating to the answerer.

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I only did what my boss told me to do, told a customer he was unavailable, yet now I feel like I gave poor customer service. Did I? This is really a problem with your boss: he should not be putting you in a position where you have to lie. You didn't sign up for that. The question is what to do about it? One thing worth considering is to have a talk with him, and tell him that you don't want to be put in that position -- that it's inconsistent with your values. If you don't feel like you can do...

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What do you think the eternal question is? There's a lot of good questions that are eternal -- questions that don't have a fixed, permanent answer but which, if asked properly, help us to grow. My favorite is "who am I?".

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On a first date, what's one thing the other person could say that would make you bolt for the door? "You got some hedge clippers and duct tape?" ...or... "Wow, your dog is really sexy!" ...or... "Thanks for asking me out. I'm so glad I didn't tell you about my infection before!"

| 8 people like this

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Is anyone else a pattijo fan? {I AM!} Pattijo has always been nice to me. She doesn't yell at me or call me "arrogant know-it-all egotistical sonofa*" like some people. I think she's nice.

| 4 people like this

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Street lights burn out frequently when I approach walking or riding. It happens from 50-75 ft. away. Any ideas? Walk or ride faster -- then they'll burn out after you pass, and you won't be left in the dark.

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A man was taken to Bridgeport Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after he led authorities on a high-speed chase and then claimed to be Vice President Dick Cheney. Have you ever claimed to be someone you weren't? Why? Are they sure it WASN'T Dick Cheney? :-) I once created a sock puppet named Tormato and spent a day pretending to be a new AB user to see what that was like. But I guess that's not quite enough impersonation to get my a psych eval.

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Whose face would you like to see on a stamp? I'd like to see Auntie Em on a stamp. She could kick Darth Vader's butt.

| 4 people like this

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Turkey says it appreciates its history. It has restored an ancient Armenian church, but will not permit it to be used as a church, only as a museum. What do you think? I think this is very strange. Sounds like their quarrel with the Armenians is alive and well.

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How many users does Answerbag have? There are about 140,000 accounts. Of course, many of these are inactive, sock puppets, etc. Only the AB staff can tell how many users are actually active, and they're not talking.

| 1 person likes this

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When is it rush hour on AB? It seems to me that the level of activity goes up starting around 6 PM Eastern and continues for a couple of hours. I'm on Pacific time, and right around 3 on most days it seems like a bunch of new comments start showing up on my profile.

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Have you found the drublic's new identity yet? Try typing in his name and then click search for members....interesting! I don't see any member result for drublic. If he's back, I have no idea how you would know unless he left some obvious clues or said something.

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Has anyone taken the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, and what was, or is, your "type"? (Introvert/Extrovert; Sensing/Intuition; Thinking/Feeling; and Judging/Perceiving.) ENFJ.

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Now because of this sliding scale point system, are you going to get offended if someone doesn't give you their full amount of points? (I have seen little comments here and there) I don't know if I'll get offended... but this is a feature I've wanted for a long time, and it's absence is one of the main reasons I keep committing badgicide: I don't like having the all or nothing choice when rating answers. This is less important now than it used to be, when only a few people could hand out +6 -- I didn't like totally reordering a list of...

| 4 people like this

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How do you change your email preferences on the new version of answerbag? 1. Go to your profile page 2. Click the "My Settings" tab 3. Click the "Preferences" link under the "My Settings" tab 4. Don't forget to click "Update" after you change the settings.

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What do I do if I think my girl puppy is pregnant by her daddy dog? There's nothing to do but take care of both dogs and get daddy fixed. Dogs don't have moral qualms about this sort of thing. However, incest is bad for the gene pool, if too many generations of inbreeding occur certain defects and diseases will arise.

| 4 people like this

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Do mixed race/cultures marriages work? Certainly there are many mixed marriages that work well. But it can put additional challenges or strain on a couple, especially when starting out. There may be pressure from family and community against the relationship, and these differences in cultural background often mean differences in expectations and ways of seeing the world which have to be worked out. But love is a pretty powerful...

| 10 people like this

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On the topic of religion, what is the difference between Christianity and Catholic? BryInLanza is correct, Catholicism is one form of Christianity. Centuries ago, the Catholic church was very dominant and had little competition. In 1517, a monk named Martin Luther went on a bit of a tear, protesting some of the practices of the church. He broke off and formed a new church (thus the name "protestant"). The current Lutheran church still traces their legacy back to...

| 8 people like this

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Do you think that what works for one person, might not work for everyone. Or do you think that your way is the best way? I usually start out thinking my way is the best for everyone. But then if I remember to whack myself on the head with something before speaking, I can often twist it so that it sounds like I'm open minded.

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I'm sick of stupid American politics and the dumb war between democrats and republicans ( this is no sovereign nation) who wants to move to Canada with me? As long as people identify with their view, this will occur wherever you go. There's no escaping it. Might as well sit back down and relax. Don't forget to breathe.

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What is this thing called faith? Normally I would skip this question because it's posted in Christianity, and I'm Buddhist. But I think my view is relatively inoffensive to Christians, so here it is: There are different versions of the definition of "faith". For some people, it really is nothing more than suppression of doubt... which most critical thinkers would find of questionable wisdom, I think. ...

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Someone I work with recently confided in me that she would sleep with her best friends husband if she knew her best friend would not find out so how do I respond to her saying this Well it's not really your job to fix her. If it makes you uncomfortable, you could just say "I'm not really comfortable listening to that aspect of your personal life... it's not consistent with my values".

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Since minds have properties natural objects lack, how can minds be a part of nature? Since nobody really wants to discuss this topic it seems, I'll offer a 2nd answer into the void ! :-) From an objective / scientific standpoint, the mind is something the brain does. There is no logical constraint which says it must have the same properties as (for example) a rock. The brain is a very complex structure, and mind is (objectively) a description of the brain's mode...

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Since minds have properties natural objects lack, how can minds be a part of nature? This is a philosophical "problem" which is just an artifact of dualism. Once you've conceived of "mind" and "natural objects" as being separate domains, such questions seem to make sense. But in fact, you never actually find any such "natural objects" independent of mind -- what you always find is mind participating in any and all perceptions,...

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Which is bettter to have; being egotistical and brimming in confidence, or being modest and lacking in self confidence? Confidence and ego aren't really related as common usage would have us believe. It's possible to be very confident with very little ego. It's also possible to have massive doses of ego and very little confidence. Ego has to do with clinging to ideas of who you are -- so there's people who think that they're weak and powerless, and are actually clinging to those...

| 4 people like this

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Why can I no longer rate questions and answers? There's another user I talked to who can't click the +/- buttons to rate... but CAN hover the mouse there until the variable-rating window pops up and that works for her. She posted a note to the blog already... maybe it's the same problem.

| 1 person likes this

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How long does a 'moment' last? Does the answer vary depending on whether or not you believe in the duality of body and soul? A "moment" has no fixed definition, and no it has nothing to do with believing in duality of body and soul. It's sometimes said that time is a "familiar stranger" -- it's always with us, the most ordinary and familiar thing... and yet we simply cannot grasp the answer to a question like this, we can't get a handle on what "NOW" really means... as...

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What is a good comeback if someone calls you insecure? Well if you really AREN'T insecure, what do you need a comeback for? Just listen to what they have to say and consider it... if it doesn't have any merit there's no need to respond.

| 6 people like this

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What the %#^$ is with the sliding points? It is a great idea, but it takes me three times to rate the question correctly... WHY? You can just click the + or - buttons immediately to hand out your full limit -- you don't have to wait for the little pop-up points tool.

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If you be authorized by God to add one sentence to Bible, what should it be? Thou shalt not use thy beliefs as fodder for thy self-righteous attacks on others, or as justification for abusing or marginalizing others.

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What is your favorite song by the Eagles? "Old '55" (Riding with Lady Luck... freeway cars and trucks...) Makes me feel like I'm actually in the car on a peaceful sunrise drive! I saw them last summer in Anaheim, and was fairly disappointed that they skipped this and about 20 other favorites (it was still a long show in spite of that!)

| 5 people like this

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How to increment a variable without using increment operator a = a + 1;

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Do you have a mission every day or do you just make it up as you go along? My mission is always the same: to be myself (that's enough challenge, thanks...). As a practical matter, this means focusing on staying awake and aware, because being lost in the fog is what causes all the trouble. Everything else that's worth doing falls out of that naturally.

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Husb.fired for whstleblwr of BIG nonprofit.He was soliticed by out-of-state trial attys due to AP articles-attys quit 2wks b-4 trial then joined w/nonprof.attys&succeeded to get jdge to force settlemnt to avoid Court TV at trial.Attys sue us.Who can help Sorry, but I don't think you'll get much response with the question worded as it is. There's another way to do this: ask a much simpler question, and put "(see my answer)" in the question text, like this: "My husband was fired for being a whistleblower (details in my answer). What can we do?" -- then add an answer with as much detail as you need. As...

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What can I put in my Cup-O-Noodle to make it less boring? Don't laugh... I put a spoon of cream cheese, some butter, and a couple tablespoons of Planters mixed nuts (adds protein, too). Yummy!

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Have you ever met a person who seemed to think he or she knew everything? Yeah, I meet him in the mirror every morning! But then by nightfall he seems to have wised up again. It's really weird.

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How do know you are a real person? There's no way to not be a real person -- if you can breathe, you're real. However, it is possible to get caught up in all sorts of ideas about how you should be and try to conform yourself to those ideas -- that would be called "not being yourself". The cure for that is just to try to be aware: to see what those ideas are, and look at the underlying motives for clinging...

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Do you wish that the size of the avatrs was larger? They don't seem as clear to me. Definitely. The tiny avatars in several areas are so hard to see they hurt my poor old eyes. Fortunately, there's lots of BLANK space around those areas (such as the profile pages, and the comment chains) which can allow the page layout to change to make room for larger avatars.

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Just yesterday I was an expert in Punk Rock, but some evil force has stolen my title and left my forever crushed. Will you mourn with me? Well my old account has been an expert in Ejaculation for a long time, and I've tried in vain to rid myself of this distinction.... so this is Liberation Day for me. But of course I'll mourn with you.

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Have you ever had the desire to take over the world? Yeah, but just the parts that have good coffee. You can keep the rest. And the poles, too. Not interested in that much cold.

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In Excel, how do you determine the number of days in a month? Well, here's one way to do it: build two date values and subtract them. Here' I've subracted Feb 1 from Mar 1: =DATE(2003,3,1)-DATE(2003,2,1) Then formatting the result as a decimal number instead of a date will make it read out as 28.

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Is religion good or bad? Defend your choice. Religion is potentially either one. It's been used to justify all sorts of evil. But it's also produced enormous good. Religion is basically formalized spirituality, and spirituality is mankind's progress towards wholeness and integration. Depending on your particular orientation, this might mean a special relationship with God and humanity, or integration with some other...

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Do you take into consideration the persons rank on AB for the answers they give when deciding if the answer has merit? No, but I'm certainly more likely to read the answers from someone whom I recognize, who has provided good answers in the past. I have limited time, and I'm not always willing to read the entire list and make a balanced and unbiased assessment of each answer.

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Is faith actually "Non-thinking"? Science always questions established dogma, yet faith rarely does.... or does it? Well there are different versions of the definition of "faith". For some people, it really is nothing more than suppression of doubt... which most critical thinkers would find of questionable wisdom, of course. A somewhat more sophisticated flavor of faith recognizes and allows doubt, but emphasizes developing a trust which transcends doubt and evidence: a "leap of...

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When is it justified to withhold the truth from someone? There's no fixed criteria or absolute rules that can be formulated for something like this -- that's what good judgment, values, and experience are all about. As we mature and develop, our ability to deal with complex and ambiguous situations should improve, and an integration of experience, values, and awareness should arise which allows us to respond appropriately without relying...

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Getting what you want, is it down to thinking about what you want - not what you don't want? Well I know we're coming at this from very different perspectives, but I think I'll take a shot anyway. I think it's much more important to be aware of where our wants are coming from than it is to get what we want. In many cases, "wanting" is really a kind of unacknowledged suffering rooted in a sense of being incomplete. This is especially true for the sorts of...

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What is meaning of nesting algorithms I think you may be mixing a couple of ideas together a bit. In programming when we talk about "nesting", it refers to a things which are structured sort of like a set of bowls, where they each look alike but are different in size and fit inside each other -- directory structures in the computer's file system are an example of a nested heirarchy. Algorithms are just methods...

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"All men are created equal" is one of the most cited phrases of the American Revolution. What does this phrase mean to you? Well I think it's poorly worded: obviously, all men are not created equal -- in fact, all men AND women are different. Would have been better to say "we consider all people to be entitled to equal rights", which sort of is what the Declaration of Independence says later on -- so I suppose we can forgive a few clumsy ideas that slipped by the editor :-)

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Have you taken the Myers Briggs Type Indicator? Has knowing your "type" helped you in either your personal or professional life? I came up as ENFJ: https://bsm.securesites.com/ENFJ.html A few months ago, I was on a real tear -- getting others to take this test online. It was great fun, and I was surprised at how closely the profiles did fit with my own experience of the subject. I have a number of profile links for other 'baggers from this activity, but of course I have to keep them under wraps! :-) ...

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This is a question for people brought up in a Christian family but are currently atheists. What prompted you to change your belief? I'm not an atheist, but I was brought up in a Christian family, and I'm not a Christian -- I practice Zen Buddhism. Technically, I didn't really change my beliefs from Christianity to something else, because I wasn't really ever quite convinced about Christianity. I've always had an interest in science and philosophy, and it just seemed like I could never get that...

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Have you ever known someone to be completely oblivious to his negative personality traits? What would be the most courteous way to remedy this? It depends on the situation, the traits in question, your personality, his personality, and about a billion other things.... But, some things I'd pay attention to are: - Are you maintaining your own "boudaries" well? Is he being offensive to you personally? It's important to draw the lines with some people and tell them not to cross over, and where those...

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Why do intolerant people think others should tolerate their intolerance? This is a very interesting question! Intolerance is basically rooted in absolutism: the notion that a belief, idea, or concept can "hold" absolute truth. Absolutism turns into intolerance when the individual or group defines their identity in terms of said idea(s), which then turns the idea into a Sacred Cow which must be protected and promoted with all the fury and energy one...

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In all honesty, How many of you have MORE than one Avatar/account/profile on answerbag? I have a total of 4: - Stableboy (main account) - Stableboy_ (my old account pre-badgicide, no longer active) - Stabledog (did you really think the mutt could type?). Not allowed to rate anyone, but occasionally leaves answers or comments. - Stablegirl (used only to test avatars I've modified for others)

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How can a person stop thinking about their grandmom that died a week ago? Sorry about your grandmom -- it probably hurts. You probably won't be able to stop thinking about it for some time, so I would say don't worry about that. What you should do instead is learn how to stay in the present at least part of the time. To do that, you can just practice counting your breath going in and out -- count "one" mentally the first breath, then...

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Why is it no matter what decade it is, when you ask a child what they did in school they say "nothing"? Did you do this? Did it drive your parents nuts? It does seem to be a nearly universal law that kids say this, at least in their teen years! It drove ME nuts when our kids would do this. It seems to be a combination of (a) parents are fishing for something, teens want to resist that "intrusion" (b) teens tend to be weak at making conversation, especially with their parents (c) the questions are too open ended and require the...

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What's your opinion on smokers/smoking? Smokers are just people; most of them recognize that starting smoking was not the best choice they ever made, but quitting is hard. I do find the smoke quite irritating if I have to be exposed to it, but here in CA the law is pretty restrictive and it's much less common to receive 2nd-hand smoke than it used to be. (I was a smoker myself until 1984). My real harsh judgment...

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What would improve the quality of questions submitted on AB? Well I would like to see the historical quality measures of a user's profile featured more prominently in certain functions on the site. In particular, the main question list could be sorted differently so that questions would be sorted by user-quality-rating as well as by time. For example, if 10 questions are all submitted within a 15 minute window, the question from the user with...

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If a tiger and a kangaroo were fighting, who would win? I think the tiger would have a tasty (but bouncy) meal!

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Why does anyone care if they get downrated? (Since a point cannot be removed from your total once it is given, the feature is actually meaningless and serves only as an artificial gratification.) Well I'm pretty much cured of points addiction now, but that doesn't mean down-rating is meaningless. It's a statement -- a communication (and yes, it does have an effect on the order of answers in the list, which has a lot to do with how likely your answer is to be read) I think the thumbs-down button does need to exist, but I usually campaign for the idea that one should be...

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My brother died a year and a half ago. His 16th Birthday would be tomorrow. Other than going to the cemetary, what are some good ways to "celebrate" the birthday of a deceased loved one? - Make a scrapbook for him... photos, things from his life, music he liked, etc. - Write him a poem or a letter and post it on the inside of his bedroom door (if his bedroom still exists, of course!) - Go out walking, pick some flowers for him, and put them in a vase next to his photo. It's good to come up with creative ways to commemorate those we loved who have died... helps us...

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Is "resiliency" really a word? Doesn't "resilience" mean the same thing? Why do people or industries make up this type of corporate lingo? Irregardless of whether it's a word or not?

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What type of job would you like to do in the future? I've never succeeded in doing anything in the future: the only time I seem to be able to work is in the present. What am I doing wrong?

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"What is the most popular pick-up line at the old folks home?" "Do I come here often?"

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As people are posting personals on Answerbag, and in the interest of keeping things in order, would you like to write a little bit about yourself? Well this is a fairly novel approach! Are you SURE you didn't have another AB life previously? :-) So I'm Stableboy, I'm a computer programmer, and I just turned 49, and I'm married. I'm not especially interesting, but I don't let that stop my mouth from running! Here's me and my family: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/72780/134043 Advice? Hmm......

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Where do you turn for answers: Science or God? Well actually I'm not very interested in answers. Look at all the answers we already have... what difference have they really made? What happens with answers is actually a pretty big problem: we pick our favorite answer, then we wrap ourselves around it like we're afraid of falling off a high cliff without that answer. Once we've done that, we look around and notice...

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How do you gain wisdom and knowledge? Wisdom and knowledge are two VERY different animals. Knowledge can be obtained from study and experience, i.e. traditional learning methods like reading, lectures, practice, etc. Wisdom is much more subtle: it's really a matter of integrating your knowledge and experience into a creative synthesis which results in a deep understanding. The key ingredients for developing wisdom are...

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How do you convert from one religion to an other? This is mostly a matter of the requirements for the new religion. To become Catholic, for example, is a pretty involved process with classes, etc. On the other extreme, you can become a Unitarian just by thinking "I must be a Unitarian!" :-) Almost every religion has it's own "entry point" recommended for newcomers. In Buddhism, the basic "conversion" is...

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Have you ever eaten in a restaurant and realized you have no money with you? If so, what did you do? This: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/168997/585777

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Do you hate it when people leave spare change as a tip for a waiter? When I was a wild and wanton youth, I had a friend who was a waiter at a fancy restaurant. It always irked me when we'd go out to eat, because he would irritate the server by deliberately making his order as complicated as possible, asking for "extras" that he knew weren't included, etc... trying to trip them up to demonstrate subtle points about serving to me. One...

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What happens if you stay awake more than 4 days straight? You get an extra "bonus day" and are promoted to level 70.

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What is Answerbag's policy on "the F word" in answers and comments? The word "False" is only allowed when used in a comment, to indicate that the containing answer contains total non-Truth. If the answer contains any hint of Truth or Truth-byproducts, "False" may not be used in the comments thereto. Notwithstanding the aforementioned policy, exceptions can be granted in special cases, such as answers which specifically ask for comments...

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What's your favorite way to tease a child? But of course I have to answer my own question! My wife and I raised two girls. The eldest (Heather) was very serious and intelligent, and would deeply ponder anything she found interesting. When she was 8, she was under the dining room table one day and tore off one of the "Not to be removed except by the consumer" furniture tags attached to the underside of the chairs. I saw...

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How would you like to spend your 60th birthday? I guess I could do it like Elton John just did: giving my 60th concert for the adoring masses at Madison Square Garden... telling stories of ancient times... singing "Empty Garden" in memory of his old buddy John Lennon and bringing the house to tears, etc. But more likely it will something like my wife taking me out for a nice steak! :-)

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Do you believe that hatred must stem for some sort of love to warrant such passion? And perhaps an example? Well there are certainly cases where love turns to hate as a reaction to the breakdown of a relationship. But generally I would say "no" -- hatred's most common foundation is fear, not love. That which we don't recognize and acknowledge in ourselves is "externalized" as that which we hate. For example, if I'm very fastidious and precise, I may...

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Al Gore once claimed he invented the internet, now he is the voice for global warming, is he a genius, idiot, or just misguided egotistical politician? None of the above. He's a human being, just like you and I. We love to classify people, to "sum them up" in a single word, to find the perfect zinger to cubbyhole our enemies or the perfect honorific to promote those we admire. But the bottom line is the same for every single one of us: nobody can be summed up by a label. We're all extremely complex mixes of...

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Can someone be seen as a scatter brain, yet highly intelligent? Yes, intelligence is different than the ability to focus... I've known quite a few intelligent people who cannot get their attention to settle down on one topic. It's rather disturbing to be around them, in my experience, sort of like watching one of those music videos that fire random images at you rapidly.

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I haven't been around much lately. Honestly, did anyone notice? I am curious as to whether I am making an impact. This question is in honor of Stableboy. Where HAVE you been, dear? And what's up in the news department in your house?

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How many Answerbaggers can fit in Stableboy's pool? Unfortunately, it's not real big... about 30' x 12', plus a spa that's 6' x 8'. So MAYBE you could cram in 50-60 people if you don't mind having not enough room to move your arms. Sorry, I'm not rich enough for a big pool... but we can maybe host 100 people for a party, so c'mon over!

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Would any of you pirates or scoundrels like to join me in a hearty congratulations to the Prettiest of all Pirates, who has just reached Sage level? Pretty Pirate is my heroine! Congratulations.

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If you don't pay your exorcist, do you get repossessed? LMAO!

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Atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists: When you debate with a theist, and you arrive at an impasse, how have you handled it? I'd like to continue debating, but most theists leave the conversation when they feel they're "losing." What can I do? How about giving up clinging to any particular view on the topic, and just being alert and sincere? There's no reason to get entrenched in one view or the other about this topic. All beliefs include some measure of doubt, it's much more authentic to just recognize that and go on about your business than it is to invest lots of energy in asserting a belief and fighting with opposing...

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Do you beleive if the government would step aside and let us raise our children with a firm hand "not beating them" but allowing us to parent them without the risk of being acused of abuse, would the kids behave better? No, the government should definitely NOT step aside. I work as a volunteer CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for abused kids, and there's no question that plenty of parents are simply not being parents -- they're abusive, neglectful, often providing horrifying conditions for their children. Having the Child Protective Services or other child welfare agencies step in is an...

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I'm in a relationship with a person who's in prison, he has been there for a while now and has change alot, my question is, do guys that have been in prison for a long time really change, or is it just an act because they are lonely? People in prison are just like people outside of prison -- everybody is different. I would suggest that you pay close attention to your own feelings and thoughts about this relationship, in particular to challenge anything which might put you "to sleep" about the situation -- that could be, for example, blindly hoping it will turn out. It could also be presuming that it...

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Does positive thinking really improve the quality of your life? I'm very opposed to positive thinking, and have posted many harsh criticisms of it. I'm also opposed to NEGATIVE thinking, though. Basically, I think it's a major mistake to try to deal with life by manipulating one's thoughts. A much better approach is to work at being AWARE of negative thoughts and challenging them -- this puts you back in touch with reality,...

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James Bond was 007. Who were the other "double o's?" 000 - Experiment that went awry, this agent was the inspiration for Inspector Clouseau (the Pink Pather) 001 - So arrogant and egotistical that he would call the bad guys when he was coming to tell them "you are SO finished!". This turned out to be charming but ineffective. 002 - Never got over being second-best. 003 - This number was skipped. The agency didn't want...

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Have you ever been on a flight with a female pilot? Well the only time I've ever KNOWN about it is my last flight (Atlanta to Orange County, CA) taken a week ago -- a woman was piloting the plane, which I know from the cockpit announcements she made. I'm 49 and have flown many times, this is the first time I ever heard a woman talking from the cockpit. (Yes, the landing was smooth!)

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What is your favorite John Denver tune? Well, here's another guy who never really did it for me! But "Rocky Mountain High" is unquestionably a classic.

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What can I do to stop myself from going insane? (Or am I already there?) You seem fairly sane to me. Maybe it's time for a nap!

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What does everything always boil down to? Well it's sort of a whimsical question... and I considered some whimsical answers, but it wasn't to be. It doesn't "boil down": reality is very complex, and it can't be reduced to some simple principle or basic element. At the same time, all this complexity is really one "thing": reality itself. It's not a bunch of separate things glued...

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Why did you pick your avitar/ picture? I saw this guy dealing drugs outside a pre-school one day... and I just thought, "wow, now there's somebody who does NOT give a damn about anything!" So I asked him to pose for a photo, figuring it would be a good anti-troll measure. Works pretty well, actually! (Oh yeah, I called the cops after walking away).

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How do you get over the death of a loved one? In short: you mourn... It's important to allow yourself to experience whatever comes up, without expectations or judgment. Typically you may go through waves of sadness, anger, numbness, or guilt... There's no "right way" to feel, just allow whatever is happening to happen... remain aware, in other words, as much as possible. The process of healing is natural and...

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What was the first band you ever saw live? I don't remember the first one, sorry... it was during a time of my life when I was wiping out my memory chemically on a regular basis! But the most memorable early concert was seeing Elton John at Dodger Stadium on Oct 26, 1975. This was easy to remember, because as I drove my friends home in the massive traffic on the Golden State Freeway, I managed to cause a 5-car pileup that...

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Why do soldiers break step in marching over a bridge? To avoid stressing the bridge excessively... if they march in step, there's a chance that their steps will coincide with the resonant frequency of the bridge and cause possibly dangerous amplified shaking of the whole structure. EDIT = = = = = = = = = = = On a related, note, here's the famous collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge due to resonance caused by wind... it's...

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Which is more effective and easier-to-handle: one question with 300 answers or three almost identical questions with 100 answers each? I would vote for one question. Either way, it's icky.

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Does it really matter what you believe? Yes, it matters. Beliefs form an important part of our structure of interpretation -- they filter and shape what we perceive and think, and how we respond to life. There's a hidden fly in the ointment of this discussion, though. There's a lot of "trash talk" in our culture about manipulating beliefs: trying to believe this, or not believe that... what you should believe...

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What is your favorite John (Cougar) Mellencamp tune? Cherry bomb. I admit, I'm not one of his fans, but this one gets me moving.

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Why, when someone asks a question about Mormonism, they are marked down? ie, marked down as in points on answerbag.com. Because there's lots of religious prejudice afloat among the trolls.

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Is it possible to be pro-choice, and still disheartened by abortion photos? Yes, most people who are pro-choice are still disturbed by abortion photos. The underlying issue which causes the debate is actually pretty simple: it's a conflict between absolutism (the notion that there's some absolute point at which a human life comes into existence, for example) and non-absolutism (the recognition that we define such things with thought, language, and...

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What can you do the first time but cant the second Lose your virginity.

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Windows XP: How do you remove the Recycle Bin from your desktop? Download TweakUI from Microsoft, it has a variety of functions preferred by power users. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

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How did cops and doughnuts become best friends? I would think you're the guy to answer this, John. How would we know? We didn't see a thing, ossifer!

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Can you divide EVERY living person in the world into 2 distinct groups with no grey areas? I have a particular love for this question. Yes, it's easy to divide people up into 2 groups (or 3 , or 4, or 8)... but all of the groups depend on abstractions for their criteria. For example, you could group people by their names, and divide the names up into categories by various criteria -- length, alphabetical ordering, etc. -- except the names themselves are arbitrary labels,...

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Whats the point in life if all that is going to happen is death? The point of life is to be alive. What makes this an interesting problem is that we have so many ways to kill life off while we're still technically alive: getting stuck in the past, getting stuck in our own egos, getting stuck in dead relationships, dead jobs, dead beliefs. The challenge is to live fully, which means something different for each person. If you're doing that,...

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Do you believe that I love you? Certainly.

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Without saying accountant what is the most boring job? Accountant isn't even in the running for "most boring job"! How about: - Toll booth attendant - Night watchman - Sock inspector (the person who puts the little "inspected by #32 sticker on) Or my personal favorite: condom tester. They place the condom on a metal rod, press a button to inflate it with air. If it doesn't break, it passes. They almost...

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I own a 89 Oldsmobile cutlass supreme. Lately it has been acting up. I am a single mother with a very limited income and desperately need transportation to and from work. My question is how can I fix my own car and it not cost me my life savings? If you can't afford a regular mechanic, and don't have a mechanic friend, you might take a look at some of the trade schools or junior colleges in your area. Often they have automotive repair classes where the work is done by students and the teachers are experienced mechanics. The labor rates are often dirt cheap. In addition, if you stay involved closely with the work, there...

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What are the diameters of a regulation basketball and basketball rim? The ball is 9", the rim is 18". You can squeeze 2 balls into the rim and they will stay stuck there (which happens occasionally during practice!)

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If art is all about view and perspective then can an art teacher really grade your art as wrong? Provided of course you stay on subject. The fact that it's about view and perspective does not mean that there are no criteria for quality. This is a difficult subject, because there are lots of tangles the mind can get into along the way. A great artist IS better than a poor artist, and yes, art is very subjective. If you say that there's no difference between great art and poor art, then every child's...

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Try to insult me in 3 words. You ask badly.

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Can you ice skate? In between episodes of falling and sitting on the ice, yes... you could say it's a form of skating.

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Have your heard of DEvELOPMENTAL OPTMETRIST'S AND VISION THERAPY? My 6 year old has show major weakness in her visual processing and they are recommending therapy. I have never heard of it before and what can I do at home to help her? Thanks Yes, our youngest girl had vision therapy when she was about that age... she had a variety of problems (among the most amusing: she would seemingly not "see" walls sometimes and walk right into them!) It seems to help kids whose eyes work just fine physiologically, but whose brains are "behind the curve" developmentally in processing visual input. I don't know why...

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Good mourning everybody. What are we mourning for this time? :-)

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Are you proactive or reactive? Both. I don't think that anyone can legitimately claim to be exclusively one or the other.

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Why do people choose to be Christians? Setting aside the obvious answer that some people are simply born and raised Christian, and are acting out of childhood conditioning rather than true choice, Christianity has a lot going for it. The interest in spiritual development is natural in human beings, and religion is the most common expression of that interest. Spirituality is primarily an effort to integrate all of oneself and...

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What is your opinion on gay-ness? People have a right to do what they like in their own bedrooms, as long as consenting adults are involved. Consenting means "not drunk, drugged, mentally incompetent, etc". People who value freedom, personal responsibility, and the right to privacy have a sacred OBLIGATION to support the rights of gays, on the basis of these values. People who attack or attempt to erode the...

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If a famous ex-partner of yours was writing a tell-all book of their life thus far, would you be looking forward to reading it, or dreading it's release? I would probably buy a copy out of curiosity, and then fall asleep from sheer boredom. Self-published books rarely have the sizzle of the big sellers.

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I was just accused of lying about being bi-sexual to gain points and popularity from other AB'ers. How would you deal with being accused of lying about your sexual preference just for points or popularity? Hmmm... I've been accused of some interesting things, but this one tops those by at least 11%! You're lying about being bi-sexual in order to INCREASE your popularity? How does being bi-sexual increase one's popularity? Does that mean you would appeal to the whole 'bagger population instead of just one gender? I get it -- it's sort of like sticking a little...

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In DHCP, we will give IP adreses to different systems so while assighning those IP address to systems we wil go for resolve ? how is it usefull? what can we notice if we give resolve? And by going to resolve what it will done? I know a fair amount about DHCP, but I don't understand your question at all.

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Somehow it is suddenly proven that there is no final destination (Heaven/Hell) BUT there is a God. What does this change? I don't think it would change much. Most people who subscribe to those ideas don't hold them as the primary reason for their religious orientation anyway. And of course, those who don't believe such things will continue on as before. The main thing that would change is that believers would be unable to use them as threat/reward arguments when attempting to persuade others.

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What are the legal actions i need to take in order to get married? In most places in the U.S., you need to get a marriage license issued at your county recorder's office. You can then be married by a Justice of the Peace (a judge) or an ordained clergy. In Las Vegas, they have some very streamlined procedure, I don't know the laws... but it's famous for providing "drive thru weddings".

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Does it bother you if/when your significant other lusts over an attractive celebrity, or do you simply roll your eyes and tell them to keep dreaming? I offer to set up a date. I know she'll be back! :-)

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Do you know anybody with a REALLY uncommon name? (not just a differnt language) I know a guy who's name is Topsoil. I kid you not.

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One of my favorite quotes comes from Dr. Wayne Dyer: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." What does this mean to you and how might it apply to your life? .

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Have you ever tried to tell your friends/family that you needed something emotionally, and they assumed you were kidding and treated the whole thing like a joke? How'd you handle it? Well I can't say I recall having that problem, but I can certainly imagine it and have seen it happen. I think I might try to corner one person alone and talk to them, making sure they understand that I'm serious. That person would possibly be in a position to tell me why others aren't taking me seriously. Of course, I can't help wondering if this is a real personal...

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Dating a guy who has a 4yr old son with an ex. Have limited experience with children and am self conscious around them. Didn't grow up with parents - thus the family bond is a mystery to me. Think children are beautiful but don't know how to relate. Help! All you really have to do with kids is be yourself. This can be tough if you're not used to being around them, because your mind will be filled with all sorts of ideas about how you should act. Just notice those, breathe, relax, and then see if you can shift your attention to the child. Just listen to what he says, and "be there". The rest will come naturally if you manage to...

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Why is Answerbag so addicting? Because it provides an environment where people can readily share what they value about themselves and receive appreciation (in the form of comments and points). This is a sure-fire crack cocaine for human beings!

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Elective cosmetic surgery: Vanity or self esteem booster? Agree or disagree? Why? Would you ever have anything done? Seems like everything I type this week is laced with the phrase "no simple answers..." Sigh. - Yes, it's possible for cosmetic surgery to boost self esteem. However, it can also be a "band aid" which attempts to bypass genuine personal development.... maybe what someone really needs is to take a good hard look in the mirror regarding their values, for example,...

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Do you believe that being "spiritual" without being religious (and going to church) is just as valid in the eyes of the Lord? There's a number of different things that are all being lumped together in this question: - Spirituality doesn't necessarily involve religion. Religion is formalized spirituality, but "informal" spiritual development has been going on for thousands of years and will always be an option. - Religion doesn't necessarily involve church. Church is primarily a...

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Can something please compete with the iPod? I can try, but not sure I can make myself that small. What happened to your account? Did you badgicide?

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How do i find out what my boyfriend type on the computer? How about asking him? Spying on him probably ISN'T the answer to the trust issues in your relationship. I suggest you try to talk to him about your doubts, and if you can't make progress that way, it's probably time to step back from the relationship for a while.

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Does anybody know or would like to write a poem about reductionism? It all seems so complex Like levels and modes and aspects I just can't take it no more Can't figure out what that's all for So I gots my big plan in mind I reach up inside my behind And whip out my smooth Magic Prism Which some folks call mere reductionism It started with quantum theory But that got me too weary I turned it all over to my digestion So I could...

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One of my favorite quotes comes from Dr. Wayne Dyer: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." What does this mean to you and how might it apply to your life? Well I agree with the doctor up to a point: a significant amount of our perception is actually not perception at all, it's "concepts and conditioning". Sometimes we call this "preconceptions" or "prejudice", although it's really more complex than that -- perceptual conditioning influences the way we interpret input dramatically in ways that are not...

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What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name "Hunter Thompson"? Talent does not assure happiness.

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I am doing my federal taxes and trying to find the line to place the new deduction for the telephone ($30)? I've never heard of this deduction. What makes you think there is one?

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Do you ever watch the television news and get the distinct impression that someone or a group of people are carefully controlling what you watch to further broader ideological goals? Yeah, but I wouldn't call "maximizing network profit" an ideological goal. Still, a goal is a goal.

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Does thinking as a teenager that you are mature, excuse you from the rules like age limits? EG you think you are mature at 14, so you think you don't have to wait till your a certain age like 18 which is the law? There are developmental stages in life that just take time and can't be bypassed. It's normal for teens to overestimate their own level of maturity... but in fact humans continue to mature throughout their lives in a variety of different aspects, and even the most mature teens have a long way to go. However, arbitrary limits like 18 or 21 don't have any truly special...

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Although I'm very much a rock music fan, one gaping hole in my music collection is one that I think should perhaps be filled by some Beatles albums. Where should I start? My favorite Beatle albums are: - The Beatles (a.k.a. "The White Album") - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Let it Be - Abbey Road

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Are anti-smokers justified in their criticism of smokers, given that they then climb into their vehicle and churn carbon monoxide and other nasties into the atmosphere? People aren't putting their exhaust pipe next to your dessert. And smokers also produce vehicle exhaust, so that's a wash!

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Could you ever forgive someone who physically abused you? Yes, it's possible, and it's a healthy thing to accomplish. Forgiveness is letting go of the anger, resentment, regret, etc -- no longer hanging on to the "personal story" about what happened and it's perceived meaning. When these incidents occur, it's this interpretation which lives on in the mind of the abused person... the trauma of the incident itself...

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Its kind of funny here on AB when you asked a question that concerns politics. Everyone starts fighting, why is that? The core issue is the same for all "hot button" issues, in all topics, and for all time: Human beings have a tendency to (mistakenly) define their IDENTITY in terms of their opinions and views. Thus when they see an opposing view, attacking it and defending their own view is granted excessive importance -- because "this view is who I am" -- to defend the view is to...

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Does my fabulousness anger you? No, I'm so thrilled to hear about your fabulousness I can barely contain myself! :-)

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If someone invites your child shopping and spends a considerable amount of money on them expecting nothing in return, are you still obligated to pay them back? Or do you graciously accept the gift? I don't think there's any simple, single answer that applies in all situations. There are so many factors which might influence the outcome, such as: - Do you think this person wants something intangible, like control? Are they just rich and big-hearted, or do you sense some ulterior purpose? - How easy is it for you to repay them? - What do you think the child might learn...

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What are some ways to get over committment issues? I'm guessing that you're having an internal struggle between the belief that you SHOULD commit to a relationship and anxieties about what it would be like to commit and fail, or even to commit and succeed. BOTH halves of this argument are on shaky ground. It's simply not true that you SHOULD commit to another person. Neither is it true that your anxieties about a committed...

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If AB was a Pinata, would you hit it? Yes, but I'd use a Nerf bat. It would be more a symbolic blow than any real attempt to break it's dainty little frame. (I'm pretty sure the candy inside is mostly sugary fluff, I'm too old for that anyway. :-)

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Why did the goverment allow gay marrage when it is not legal in the Holy Bible? We don't live in a theocracy. Our laws are (in theory) based on a set of values and principles which are adequate on their own without requiring religious support. Separation of church and state is one of those principles, so referring to the Bible or any other religious document to provide guidance in creating laws is actually contrary to the design of our system of government.

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When might it be bad to be honest? A classic problem that illustrates this is "do you tell the Gestapo at your door that you're hiding Jews in the attic?" If you say "yes", because you believe that telling the truth is an absolute requirement at all times, you are sentencing the refugees to death. If you say "no", you're admitting that telling the truth isn't an absolute...

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My friends gf asked me if i would date this girl from her school. i don't even know her, but i went ahead and said yes. after thinking about it,and looking at her myspace profile, i realized she was way out of my league, and got nervous. what should i do? The most important thing is to be yourself. If you're nervous, you're nervous. It's OK to be nervous, and it's even OK to tell her that you think she's out of your league. Often if you admit to something like that, the nervousness goes away, and then you and she can talk freely... either a connection will emerge, or it won't. Either way, if you're...

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Try to sum up the major religions in a single word... Just give it a shot, an honest attempt is all' Two words: Developing wholeness.

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Have you ever had someone try to convert your religion? Many times! Some folks seem to run out of steam climbing the mountain, so they spend their time walking around trying to get others to come over to their trail instead.

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Can one person make a difference? Actually, it's not possible to STOP making a difference. That's what personal responsibility is... there's no way to escape making a difference, thus the need to pay attention to what we're doing with our time and lives.

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What do you do with all the AOL disks that you get? It's funny.... I used to get enough disks to pave my driveway, but I haven't received one in years. Maybe they found my name on the list of people who know something about computers and decided "why bother?" :-)

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What is black and white with red all over it? A nun falling down the stairs.

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What's another good word for Troll? Courtesy Challenged Individual.

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Do you ever miss certain people when they're not on AB at the same time as you? I go into deep depression whenever Auntie Em is not around. I go into slightly better states of depression at the absence of several others. So basically, I'm depressed almost all the time. Please send professional help.

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What do you like better? Aim,Yahoo, or Msn I prefer Yahoo, but I use GAIM as my client software so that I can run a single IM program with all the major services. I have Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and Google chat acocunts, all running under Gaim. It's wonderful, and FREE. I'm currently running the 2.0 beta version. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

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What is the thing that makes it hardest to be your religion in today's society? I'm Zen Buddhist. I don't find it difficult, however there are some things which annoy me on occasion: - Widespread misconceptions and ignorance about Buddhism mean that most of the conversations I have with others are pretty basic -- I spend my time providing basic information or debunking common myths. This is understandable, because Buddhism is relatively new in the West, but...

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Have you ever felt the frustration of not being able to say exactly what you mean? Yes, usually when this happens I stop and just breathe deeply for a bit to bring myself "present", relax, and take a little extra time before speaking or writing.

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How far is it from the free throw line to the backboard? 15 feet from the backboard. This is standard for all basketball, although some very young children may play with a shorter line.

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IF you had a million pounds/ IF you had this /IF you had that - what is this Hypothesisbag? Well I guess I have two competing internal views about this... Certainly many of the questions on the 'bag have become very "fluffy" -- how many times can people ask "what's your hair color?". On the other hand, I'm free to answer any question creatively, yes? I'm not really constrained by the question... none of us are. And in fact, sometimes I...

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How do I deal with rejection from college? I know that it was unreasonable for me to expect to get into one place, but rejection from there still makes me upset. Couldn't I be one of the 8.3% of applicants admitted? If you really want to deal with this experience, as opposed to slapping some self-help or positive-thinking band-aids on top of it, you're going to have to be willing for it to be the way it is. You wanted something, it didn't happen. You have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that -- internal dialog arguing back and forth about what it means. Observe this dialog carefully,...

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How did africa become soo poor? what was it that happened which led to massive amounts of poverty and people with aids? What can be done to reverse this? It's not so much that Africa became poor as it is that the continent has largely been bypassed by many of the factors which have contributed to the development of other parts of the world. Politically, there are still many African countries led by despotic rulers. Many countries have a wide range of economic disadvantages, such as low education levels, lack of basic infrastructure,...

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What's the oldest aircraft still regularly flying today? Well I'm not an authority on this, but my impression is that the Douglas DC-3 holds that honor... an ancient prop-driven workhorse from another age which still serves in various roles around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-3 Whether it qualifies as the "oldest still regularly flying" or not, it's still an awesome story of a design that aged well!

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What do you do if your best friend becomes a crazy alcholic and does drugs and you dont wanna tell on her or him but want to help them and try and get them to turn their life around? Unfortunately there is a limit to what you can do without help... obviously you should make sure that they know you care, and try to point out that they're damaging their own life, but to really help them resolve the core issues which are causing this behavior is going to involve getting some serious assistance... And that means telling their parents. My advice would be to take a...

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What is the most important thing that you have learned through out your life? That awareness is the most important thing to master. If you master that, everything else falls into place naturally. If you don't, struggles are certain.

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If the universe is so huge, there must be other planets with life, somewhere out there, right? Of all thee millions and millions of planets, it can't JUST be earth. Well, nobody knows. Certainly it seems, given our current understanding of the universe, that it's likely there is life elsewhere. But we don't know for sure until there's evidence.

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What crosses your mind when you look at pictures of yourself as a young child? "I must warn him about the 70's!" ...or... "Gosh, glad I grew out of that..." ...or... "Bellbottoms. How quaint." ...or... "Nobody needs that many freckles." ...or... "So many failures yet to come: that hair is nothing!"

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How can I connect to a MS SQL 2000 server using my Mac? Well.... SQL Server does allow TCP/IP connections (default port 1433 if it's enabled), and there are *nix drivers for MSSQL which presumably could be compiled on the Mac... unfortunately that portion of my memory was fried by Answerbag addiction, so I can't recall the details. So I would think that any general-purpose DB admin tool for OSX would be able to connect to MS-SQL...

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What do you do to boost your mood? Nothing. I'm a big fan of staying in touch with reality, which includes trying hard to pay attention to whatever is going on internally in detail -- trying to manipulate my mood is completely contrary to the goal of being aware. Sometimes the worst experiences are the most educational for those willing to sit through the lesson.

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Is happiness an attainable goal? I think it's a mistake to have happiness as a goal. The problem is that true happiness isn't something which fits into our concepts, ideas, or images -- but goals require us to hold on to such things. So anything which we think represents happiness just becomes a standard of comparison by which we judge life (and guess what comes up short in that comparison?) There's...

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Do you ever worry that you've hurt someones feelings (on AB) with something you said? Yes, and I'm usually pretty quick to apologize if I think my remarks were inappropriate.

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Are you dumb? Sometimes. I find my IQ varies greatly by the time of day, how tired I am, etc. I certainly wouldn't consider myself immune to plain old "dumb" at times.

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Over the last hour or so I have seen questions the aim of which seemed to me to have been to attack a fellow ABer. Does anybody agree with me that if this continues we should be prevented from asking questions which include a fellow ABer's name? I agree. These questions should generally be flagged as offensive... the moderators will remove them.

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Um there's some girl i like,she goes to my school im only able to talk to her online. because were in diffrent classes and my middle school doesnt cycle and because boys and girls at lunch are seperated. please tell me how to get her like me Well, the best way to get someone to like you is to just be yourself: don't get caught up in ideas about how to strut around, or try to be funnier than you are, or more "manly", etc. Unfortunately, we can't really control how others feel about us directly. Being yourself reduces the odds that she'll decide you're a jerk, beyond that just tell her how you feel...

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What can I do to restore peace to Answerbag? (I may have inadvertently contributed to the current anti-Mormon conflagration) Gosh, you hit on one of my favorite topics again: religious tolerance! There's a line between respectful religious discussions and attacking another's faith... and that line gets crossed all the time here. I suspect (and your question intimates) that you didn't consciously attack the Mormons, so this is probably more directed at others. It takes a real adult to have...

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Why are the religious experiances affiliated with marijuana and other psychedelics so closely tied to the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates? Well I would exclude marijuana in your list of substances... I smoked it for years as a youth and never had anything resembling a spiritual experience. (And no, simply feeling good doesn't qualify as "spiritual experience") But psychedelics such as LSD and mushrooms, peyote, etc. do have a well-studied connection with spirituality, and this is something I can speak with some...

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Is being gay a sin? Certainly there are religious views which consider homosexuality to be a sin. I consider those views to be confused: if you make something like homosexuality into a sin, the whole basis of morality is called into question. Morality is about the good of the whole, it's basis is the inter-relatedness of all life. That which damages the whole is wrong, that which enriches it is right....

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If someone reaches a rank where their ratings are worth more points, do all the questions/answers that they already rated get those extra points? If not, can they re-rate something to give it their new point value? No on the first, yes on the second. You can re-rate items with your new level and that WILL add the points difference.

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If humans had not developed language skills do you think we would still possess the "6th sense" or instincts that animals seem to have to such a great degree? Well, without going into topics like the paranormal, it's clear to me that humans do indeed have the ability to "intuit" a great deal, and that this ability is relatively latent and undeveloped for most of us. It's also clear that our preoccupation with concepts and language is one of the main impediments. Because concepts seem so neat and stable, we're tempted to...

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How does a two way switch work? I think you're talking about what is usually called a "3 way switch". This type of switch is actually like 2 switches in one, where one switch has been turned upside-down so that it's ON in the down position. When 2 of these units are mounted in a room, they're "cross-wired" so that there are actually 2 possible circuits which will turn the light on....

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How can mustard be bored? (psychologically) This is a frequently asked question. Nobody knows.

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P.E.O. is a sisterhood. What P.E.O. means is a secret. Does anyone know what it means or might mean? Will you share? Well, I'll tell you... but then I shall have to terminate you! :-) Seriously: when I was young I worked at the California P.E.O. home for about 18 months as a maintenance aide (repairing things, etc.) All the employees I met speculated endlessly about the meaning of it, but nobody seemed to know. We had some rather offensive phrases we invented, but I doubt any are correct....

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Why is "Be Yourself" so commonly used as advice for everything? - Because failing to be yourself is so commonly the cause of trouble; - Because trying to answer the question "who am I really?" is one of the best ways to become wiser - Because really coming to understand the meaning of "true self" does bring a certain amount of power with it.

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Does not believing in the paranormal mean you have an open or closed mind? No, actually clinging to ANY belief means you have a closed mind. So for example, if you believe in ESP, and you hold that belief dear to your heart and defend it against all opposing views, that is closed-minded. The same applies to the contrary: if you believe there's no such thing as ESP, and you hold that dear to your heart and defend it against all opposing views, that is...

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What was the reason for US troops entering the vietnam war in 197... whatever it was? In those days, the U.S. was all about stopping the spread of communism. North and South Vietnam had been divided in to communist and non-communist countries (North and South respectively), and the North was seen by the U.S. as the aggressor.. invading the South to spread communism. So the U.S. moved to assist the government of the South ... initially supplying weapons and advisors, but...

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Do I offend you? Yes, I find you extremely offensive: but in a satirical, thoughtful, darkly unnerving way that is actually quite pleasant. Soldier on!

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Do you have an ABer of the day? I sometimes pick one at random and go through all their questions, and rate them. You find some real gems. Sort of... but I don't do it every day, and I don't do it at random. Usually I pick someone with whom I've had only brief interactions -- then I go scan through their questions and answers to find things I'm interested in. This is actually my main mode of using AB these days, I don't often scan the questions list looking for things to answer, I just follow around...

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Are first impressions a form of prejudice? Yes in the sense that first impressions form a memory, and that memory then participates in distorting perception of future experiences. This is the normal mode of operation for the mind -- we become conditioned by past experiences, and that conditioning is "active" in filtering future experiences. But I wouldn't consider this prejudice in the sense of being a category-wide...

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I am having an operation march 13 2007. it's for Cervical C5-6 & C6-7 anterior cervical discectomy, fusion & plating. any one had such an operation? how did it go? much pain after wards? how long before back to work? any help appreciated. Sorry nobody knows your answer... have you had the surgery? How is it going?

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What do you think is the primary deterrent to drug use. The law, or drug testing by employers? The main deterrent to drug use is the desire to have a life that's satisfying and well balanced. Most people in that state have no interest in becoming drug dependent, and those who quit drugs usually do so because they "bottom out" and see the destructive influence of their drug use. Deterrents are not very effective. (My wife is a therapist, and worked in drug rehab quite...

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What would be a good way to celebrate my birthday with a very diverse group of friends? Ask each one to give you a gift with a different number of zeroes (i.e. 1.00, 10.00, 100.00, etc...) Set it up as a competition to see who can get the most zeroes on their birthday checks. Give a nice hug to the person who gives the most, and 10% of the total to me for coming up with the idea.

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What does travel teach you? Don't put anything critical in your checked luggage.

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Could you have a relationship with someone with views diametrically opposed to yours? I.E. Conservative/Liberal, Religious/Atheist etc? Yes, generally I've found that there's always some views that can't be reconciled. This is somewhat easier for me than some people I think, because I consider clinging to beliefs and views to be a bit of a personal shortcoming... something to be gradually cured rather than something to serve as the immovable object that tears a relationship apart. Relationships are much more...

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Do you think the presidential title should be changed to "Contractor-in-Chief"? LMAO!

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How can infinity of anything exist in reality? It wouldn't fit in the universe, would it? Infinity is everywhere... it's totally inescapable. There are examples given by others here (things which are infinitely divisible), and I could give many more. We're drowning in infinity and don't even notice it: mainly because we habitually cling to concepts, which divide it up into neat little "units of thought". We focus on our concepts and ignore our direct...

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How can I keep my dogs out of the bushes? Make the bushes out of the same material they use to build the pound.

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Is there any viable answer to your significant other asking "Does this (article of clothing) make me look fat?" Diversion is key: "Damn, have you seen my cell phone?"

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I feel like giving up. Do you ever feel this way and what do you do about it? Well... I suppose you've heard my speech before on this already, but the thing to do with resignation or despair is to allow yourself to have those feelings and thoughts, and do your best to be aware of the exact details... exactly what feelings, exactly what thoughts. The more you can just "tune" your awareness to what is actually going on within yourself, without judging it,...

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Do you notice that keithold is always very polite and respectful? I do. I don't know him well... but anybody who's polite and respectful gets my vote!

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Does anyone know anything about crystal healing? if so, what should i do to drain negative energy and depression? I'm doubtful that anything involving crystals can heal depression or "drain negative energy". The best solution for depression is to develop awareness of your own internal emotional processes and personality, so that you can locate and resolve the unconscious beliefs and attitudes which keep life "stuck". This has almost nothing magical about it, and searching for...

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I am interested in buying a car, but the interest rate is so high. How can I get a better interest rate than 18%? If I do accept the car loan, is there a way I can pay toward the interest? If you have a credit union, they may be the best source of a better rate. You can "shop around" for a loan, there's no requirement that you use the dealer's financing. This does require being "tough enough" to withstand not buying immediately, and the dealer's inevitable pressure to do so. In the end, your credit rating, income, and debt level will...

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Why was there a buddhist religion? First a couple of "housekeeping" notes: - Buddhism is a proper name, so it should be capitalized, just like Christianity or Islam. - Buddhism is still very much alive, so it's not quite correct to use "was" in the question. - It's not quite clear what you're asking for, so I'm going to assume that you're asking some form of "how did...

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Do you tend to judge people by there looks? Or looks give you first impression about a person? Absolutely. Nobody is free from this, not one of us. The difference between the best and the worst with regard to such prejudices is that the best work at being AWARE of their prejudices and letting go of them. The worst simply don't notice their prejudices. Anyone claiming to be free of such is either a liar or terminally unconscious.

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Do you have ego? You betcha. It's ultimate ego to imagine that you can function without ego.

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Have you ever ate butter by itself before? One of my very earliest memories... my father was a preacher, and we lived in an apartment in the church itself. My mother asked me to carry the slab of butter (on a plate) from the kitchen to the dining room table -- a distance of perhaps 20 feet. About 1/3 of the butter didn't make it all the way. God, I loved butter! I believe I got in trouble, but this memory remains sweet.

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Is modern western society breeding a culture of nihilism? Yes, I think it's an inevitable byproduct of our dualistic mindset (we think of ourselves as something separate from the rest of life), combined with the erosion of traditional religious foundations. It's my view that this trend toward nihilism is precisely the thing which is fueling a counter-trend toward fundamentalism, which in turn inflames the dangerous and divisive religious...

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Ugh! What is it about relationship questions? You ask one, and another one is formed from the answer you received from the first one. Why is love the hardest topic to advise about? Why can't it just be cut and dry? I wish I had a dog's life right now Because relationships are so intimately connected with our favorite topic: "who am I?", and that's not a simple matter. That topic includes such weighty matters as "am I lovable?", "what is the meaning and purpose of my life?", "will my life turn out OK?", etc... and most of those questions somehow lead back to relationships. Dogs have it good,...

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Do all humans have a moral obligation to help the poor and oppressed? I don't think that "moral obligation" is really the right way to talk about this issue. It's very common for us to think in such terms, because this sort of abstract thinking is easy to understand... we think we just have to decide whether or not we have a moral obligation, and that such a decision will be meaningful. But what sort of help do we really give to others...

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Did you like the movie Eragon? I'm an adult (48 years old). I saw it with an 11 year old boy who loved the book. I thought it was basically a B-movie fantasy flick, with stodgy acting and directing, full of silly cliches', etc. But still it had a little bit of interest. The boy hated it: he complained constantly about departures from the story line in the book, and wasn't at all bothered by the 2nd-rate...

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Whether you believe there's a spiritual reason for our existence, or we're just the result of evolution. What's your motivation? These are two very different questions: in fact, there's really 3 questions here. Rather than answer them directly, I'm inclined to take a stick and just poke at them a bit (sorry, daylight savings time does that to my brain... :-) - The notion that we're "just the result of evolution" does not exclude spirituality. Just because humans evolved from less-complex...

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If you feel that Christians are wrong for trying to convert athiests, why? I don't really think of this as a matter of right and wrong, but as a matter of clarity and confusion. I'm Buddhist, and I have no real illusions about being able to "convert" anyone. Why? Because the more attuned I am to the other person, the more I can sense the complex web of interconnections that they are, and see how that web holds them together and gives them an...

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Vegetarians - if you don't like meat, why do some vegetarians eat meat analogues (soy bacon, sausages, burgers, TVP as mince)? It's not necessarily true that vegetarians don't like meat -- I'm sort of in the middle ground.... I still eat meat, but prefer vegetarian, and I know lots of vegetarians. Some of them like meat but have committed themselves to not eating it for ethical or health reasons. That doesn't necessarily end the craving, which is a deeply conditioned response developed in...

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Is music theory worth anything at all? Yes, it is. But like anything which is conceptual, you can get "lost" in the theory and lose touch with the MUSIC, so there is a sort of "danger" there. Plenty of great music has been produced by people who knew nothing of music theory. Plenty of mediocre music has been produced by those who know lots of theory. But overall, having an understanding of theory is...

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How do I prevent spam (ads) from entering my e-mail inbox? The spam is spoof spam by the way. They pretend to be me, so hotmail thinks I'm sending a message to myself, and it gets in my inbox. You need a spam filter, basically. One fairly simple way to reduce the amount of spam you get is to sign up for a free GMail account instead of using the account provided by your ISP. Gmail has pretty good spam filtering. There are also quite a few commercial spam filter products you can buy in your local software store or online. This is a field which changes rapidly, so I can't tell...

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Why a piece of ice is able to cool a glass of tap water.? Heat is naturally "exchanged" between things with different temperatures. At the small scale, the heat is really vibrating atoms and molecules, and when the warm water molecules are shakin' all over, they bump into the cold ice molecules (which are also vibrating, but not as much). The water molecules bump into the ice molecules and make them vibrate more, which causes the...

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Whats the most violent movie you have ever watched or known? Scarface. I think they had to build a special bullet factory for that one just to keep the set supplied. I hated the movie. I know it was supposed to be socially relevant or meaningful, but all that was lost in the hail of bullets and blood from my perspective.

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If you think or know that somebody you love is going to die, how do you deal with it? It's important to face death directly if you can. This means allowing yourself to feel whatever is coming up: fear, sadness, pain, anger... etc. There's nothing in particular you have to do to "deal with it", other than remaining attentive to your own experience as it unfolds, and doing your best to be yourself and be helpful to others in the situation. The death of...

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What do you do to take care of stress? Regular meditation: sitting still for a regular period each day, and just observing / experiencing my own internal stuff as it happens. This works wonders.

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Do we create our own reality? Yes, and no, and both, and neither. How's that for covering all of the bases? :-) 1: Yes. what we have access to ("reality") is our own experience, which of course has a heavy dose of our own creative powers in it -- particularly the ability to "parse" entities out of the seamless whole of experience and treat them as separate, and then to interpret, explain, and...

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If everyone had as much respect for OTHER people as they do for THEMSELVES, would this world be a better place? True respect isn't personal: it applies to others as much as it does to yourself. What many people mistake for self-respect is actually self-deception: failing to confront one's own shortcomings, and making too much of one's strengths.

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Why is revenge wrong? The problem with revenge is that it perpetuates or escalates the conflict... It comes from allowing anger to control your actions, which is not the best way to deal with anger. Essentially, revenge is ego trumping wisdom.

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I strongly believe now there is no guy out there for me. being so caring & loving doesn't pay off. my fiance came close to being the one i always wanted but showed his true self. will i ever find the one coz i have lost hope in this area? I think it might be time to back up a bit and re-visit the notion that (a) you MUST have a guy to be happy and (b) there SHOULD be a "right person" for each of us. Life isn't something cooked up by Hollywood. There is no law of nature that there must be some sort of perfect, ideal person out there who is predestined to be the right one for you. All there is is people being...

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Is there a good way to approach someone who dislikes you for no reason? It depends on a lot of things... and in fact, I would start by questioning the need to approach them at all -- unless there's something specific to be accomplished, what's driving your interest in them? In particular, if you're just anxious about having someone not like you, and you feel the need to resolve that, I would argue such things are better resolved within your own...

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What percentage of American women experience depression at some point in their lives? What percentage of American men experience depression at some point in their lives? Sorry, I don't know the stats. I just want to point out that NOBODY 'experiences depression'. Depression is an abstraction, which by very nature lacks the qualities of immediacy, presence, and perceptual form that characterizes experience. In English: what we experience has a particular form or forms which manifest in the sensory domain (taste, touch, feel, etc.) or as...

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Does it seem to you like there are an inordinate amount of rabbit questions on AB? Is AB a rabbit-owner destination site? Is that supposed to be bunny?

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Have you ever told a lie on AB? Yes. But I'm not going to give you the filthy pleasure of knowing "about what?".

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What is the difference between fiction and nonfiction? Fiction admits to being a bunch of lies! (Good to see you again, BTW... how's things?)

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Would a human bite cause any damage, temporary or lasting? If the bite is from a cannibal, it could be fatal. That kind of thing tends to snowball.

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How bad is indulging in something bad for you that you had sworn you'd left behind (like a previous addiction)? It depends on what the addiction is. If you're addicted to high-fat foods, the consequences are long and slow. If you're addicted to murdering young children, that's a different matter. Giving in to addiction is like sliding down a slippery hill... first you have a thought about craving X, which by itself is just something that happens without any volition. But then at some...

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Dry humor: any thoughts? And please, no jokes. Really, that's the only kind of humor there is. When humor gets wet, it becomes soggy and limp. You could say it stops being humor... it may be slapstick, or sarcasm, or just plain silly, but it's not really humor anymore. So yes, give me dry or give me something else.

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Could the staff re-upgrade the site so that our profile wouldn't have a delay? (i don't always have time to have a delay...) The problem is that populating the profile is an expensive operation in terms of CPU time for the server -- it's a complicated database query that everyone runs quite frequently. The delay is really caused by new logic on the server which "caches" the result of a previous refresh and resends it each time. This saves a LOT of CPU cycles, and makes the 'bag as a whole run...

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What level were you most happiest reaching? Level 1... after reaching level 45 (at the time, not many people had done that) and realizing the problems that came with it.

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Who has the best avatar on AB? Sorry your question missed it's window of opportunity, apparently. Here's a similar question from the past: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/68453

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I would like to purchase a Window Vista preloaded HP computer but I have been told that they have problems getting on line with dial up as it is too slow for their software , is this correct? I'm not aware of any problems with Vista getting online, and I think that's pretty doubtful. The problem is going to be doing updates to the operating system over a dial-up connection... Vista is large, and the updates are pretty sure to be large as well. It will be a VERY long phone call to get any substantial patches downloaded.

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Do those jump sole things you can put on your feet to exercise or calfs really improve your vertical jump? I used them for a while and they definitely helped... and I've talked to others who used them with success. Part of my problem is I'm just OLD. When you get to my age, the beating such things apply to ankles and knees starts to become a problem. But I did find that I was considerably quicker on defense, blocking shots, getting rebounds, etc. I stopped using them mainly because...

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How can i get my clock on my computer not to get behind?It makes every other program on my computer keep the wrong time. You can install a free program called "Dimension4", which starts with Windows and keeps the clock up-to-date by syncing with military time servers on the Internet. Or... you can learn the cryptic laws of the Windows Time Service, which will keep you up many late nights googling and being confused. Dimension4 can be downloaded here: http://www.thinkman.com/dimension4/

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Where does inner peace come from? I like some of the other answers here, but I still want to go at it from a different angle: We get into trouble when we form ideas about how we should be or how life should be, and start pursuing those ideas. The moment we form an IDEAL about life ( e.g. "I should find Inner Peace"), what we really do is turn on the "comparison engine" of the mind. In order to pursue an...

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What is the biggest misconception people have about you when they first see/meet you? The thing I hear most frequently is that I'm either mean or ex-military or both. I have very close-cropped hair, so that probably accounts for the military. And I generally don't smile in ways that people recognize as a smile, so I think that's where the "mean" comes from. This first-impression does come in handy from time to time, of course... in a rough bar, or...

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What should I do if a co-worker says something bigoted in a conversation, even though the bigotry isn't directed at me? I'd like to call her on it. I'm just here because I realized that I've NEVER answered any of your questions. What kind of friend is that? But then I looked over the list and saw why -- they're all tough questions that would require either research or effort on my part. Where's the fun in that? Yikes... So this was the best question in the bunch, not quite as easy as "what's your hair...

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What would be the ulimate form of revenge? Forgiving.

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Do you think the *(action)* thing has become more popular on AB's users? Yes, it's a popular technique. I believe we owe the origin of this practice to Darkling, who often goes unrecognized for her brilliance, and has been using what she calls "stage directions" for a long time. Because she infected some of the old-timers with this, and they spread it ever more widely, it's now pretty much a standard issue communication method. ((SB bows to...

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What would you consider the absolute limit of human potential, the one thing that no human, no matter how far they push themselves, will ever be able to do? There is an infinite number of things a human cannot possibly do. The challenge is to do our best at what IS possible, not wander off into fantasy land and get lost. Often this does mean taking a hard look at what we think our limitations are and giving them a kick. But it's also useful to keep one foot on the ground: being "only human" brings with it a lot of...

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How do you distinguish male cats from female cats? I try to pet them. The touchy, irritable one who tries to scratch me if I accidentally brush the wrong hair is the female.

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Hypothetically speaking, what would make an Answerbag bully tick? What kind of satisfaction would such a person derive from constantly belittling others for bad grammar and poor spelling? Well there's some good answers here I wouldn't argue with... the whole business about a weak internal sense of self-worth, combined with a tendency to see others as "the enemy", coated with a layer of shame about this -- I think that all adds up to bullying others as a way to feel some sense of power. But I would challenge the word "satisfaction" in your...

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What is a persecution complex and what are the typical signs that a person is suffering from one? I don't know that "persecution complex" is in the DSM IV, but certainly there are times when people have a strong predisposition to interpret neutral or innocent events as personal attacks. I would say this starts with seeing oneself as a victim of external forces... which is correlated with abandoning personal responsibility for one's own life in some area(s).

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How do you cope with feelings of desperation? I deal with all powerful emotions the same way: sit quietly and just experience them without judgment, resistance, or attempts to "get over" or "fix" them. (Well, truthfully.... I DON'T always succeed at this, but that's what I know works best). I've learned that no emotion or feeling by itself is too much to handle. What makes desperation or panic...

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It is all about not letting the negative behavior of other person effect you. But how do you achieve that. It's really not about that. Other people's behavior DOES affect us, that's the whole point -- we're all interconnected. The desire to be so isolated from others that you're unaffected by their behavior is not healthy. There's a balance to be found between openness (allowing other people in, and sharing your life with them) and boundaries (keeping certain...

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What lifts your spirits when you are down? One thing I do feel very strongly about is that it's important to let go of any ideas about lifting my spirits. Those images and thoughts about how things should be, how I should feel, how things should be better -- those are a big part of the problem, they make the painful things in life much worse. An important part of this is dealing with all the thoughts about myself. Usually we...

| 5 people like this

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How do you look at your membership here at Answerbag? As something you do for yourself, for your own fulfillment and to get your opinion out, or more as a duty to be here and offer what hlep you can, or somehow else? At least some of all of these: - It's fun to connect and talk with others, I've made quite a few friends here. - I feel that I have something to offer and can be helpful on certain topics; - Some people are in pain and just need somebody to listen, I'm pretty good at that; - It's a wild and wacky place, you never know what strange things will occur; -...

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Does anyone know what has upset Drublic enough to make him leave AB? Well since nobody seems to have any inside information on this, I'm going to give in to my urge to speculate! He was on a total tear with posting almost constantly and moderating almost as much. I don't know how he was able to perform any work in his job at that pace (not my business, of course!). But it was just a ferocious rate. The quality of his work was generally good,...

| 9 people like this

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Whats the most inappropriate thing you have said or heard in church? Sermons using Jesus' teachings to support making war.

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When you get insulted, does it automatically lower your self-esteem or have no effect at all? I really don't care that much about self-esteem anymore. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. That may sound strange, given our common-sense view that self-esteem is critical to one's life... and for most of us, most of the time, it is, and people need to take care of that. But there's another level to relate to self-esteem as well: when you begin to see clearly that...

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A man walks up to you and says - "everything I say to you is a lie." Is he telling you the truth or is he lying? It's the kind of nonsense statement that becomes possible when the mind gets tangled up in abstractions and loses touch with reality. There's an endless supply of these little logic paradoxes, they're fun for a short while, but eventually if we pay attention we notice that they have little practical value in life. But it's important to notice that, because a lot of the...

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Does rating answers to questions make AB a popularity contest? There are a lot of different aspects to this issue, it comes up a lot. Yes, I think there is some "popularity contest" stuff going on here, but that's not the whole story -- and really, a popularity contest isn't something horrid, it's just something people do when you get large groups of them together. If you put 10 people in a long elevator ride, by the time they...

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What are some informative websites or books specifically about practicing Buddhism? Some favorites of mine: WEB ------ - Meditation instruction from Zen Mountain Monastery: http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/meditation.php BOOKS ---------- - Buddhism is not what you think: Finding Freedom beyond Beliefs (Steve Hagen - a Zen teacher in Minnesota with a science background, who does a brilliant job of making difficult things clear, and also weaves in some...

| 7 people like this

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My pc won't load the question pages, so I can't answer or comment on anything, what is wrong? According to the blog, comment processing has been disabled because it's been identified as the source of the performance problems. Here's my guess (having developed software for over 20 years). I love to speculate: The comments are in a database table. There's a table for questions, a table for answers, a table for comments, a table for users, etc. This is a pretty...

| 5 people like this

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What did the stamp say to the envelop? "I'll take you anyplace in the world, baby..."

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My pc won't load the question pages, so I can't answer or comment on anything, what is wrong? I'm jealous! You have it so good compared to me! :-)

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My Dad puts me down alot. It does bother me very much and even sometimes bothers me for days after being insulted. Am I being the dramatic one for letting it get to me? This should bother you quite a bit. Parents need to provide a supportive, caring, balanced environment for children. That's what kids need to develop into healthy adults. Yes, parents need to establish structure (rules, consequences for misbehavior, etc.), but there is no good reason for a parent to be insulting or verbally abusive to a child. This is his problem, not yours. There...

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I'm writing a story, and I'm trying to really develop my characters. What are some ways I can do that besides dialogue, flashbacks, and just talking about the character? One of the most common themes in character development is the "redemption " of the character. This happens when something which is causing the character to suffer is relieved (i.e. reuniting with family, recovering a lost love, finding a new love, resolving some past incident causing guilt, etc.) Basically, anything which takes the character's "woundedness" and...

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I cant stand this anymore I miss him soo much.I wish I can have him back and forgive him for all the things hes done with me do you guys believe therer are third chances if there is love between both of us?I do need him in my life in order for me2b happy Sorry, I know it's painful. But the hard fact of the matter is that if you think you need to have him in your life to be happy, you're on dangerous ground. Having him won't make you happy -- it may reduce your anxiety and produce some gratification, but you'll be forever dependent on his attention, and worried about his mood swings, and fearful that he'll leave you....

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Why can't people just say 'thank you' when you give them a compliment? Many of us get uncomfortable with positive feedback... there are a variety of psychological factors rooted in our past and conditioning which account for this. For example: - We dislike egotists: people who "toot their own horn". Because we dislike them, many of us swing to the opposite extreme, and put on a show of humility to avoid being thought egotistical... "oh, no...

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I am an athiest. I LOVE getting into religious discussions and minor arguments with people but have found VERY few people that can do this without getting so worked up they want to scream or vomit. Why do you think this is? The problem is that people IDENTIFY with their beliefs. There's a big difference between having a view about something and defining one's identity in terms of that view. When someone holds a view "correctly", they're able to engage in lively and creative discussions about it, turn it around in the dialog and view the topic from different angles, and learn or grow...

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If you could have superpowers, what kind of powers would you chose? I'd like to be able to be fully myself 24/7, and never get caught up in false notions of who I am.

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What's the best way to give someone really bad news? I think there's no single answer which fits all situations... it depends on so many things -- the person receiving, the person giving, the nature of the news, the circumstances... I'm not much of a fan of "recipes for problems" -- boilerplate solutions to be applied like a template onto the difficulties life presents. The problem with that kind of approach is that life...

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My boss seems to think that i'm staying here forever, but i hate it and want to give notice to leave. it's a small business and we're all fairly "close knit"... how should i go about giving notice? i know he's going to get angry no matter what. Jesse, Based on your comments, I'd say you're actually in a somewhat "abusive" relationship with your boss. He's domineering and controlling, and you're trying to avoid conflict to your own detriment. Rather than getting too concerned about how to tell him in a way that doesn't upset him, you really should be setting boundaries with him: it is NOT...

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Should we live life for today or save up for tomorrow? This debate rages on forever. There's a simple answer, the trouble is that the answer blows the top off of the human mind, leaving it exposed to all sorts of radical ideas! :-) Here's the answer, unadorned and without the 6 pages of explanation required to make it seem sensible: Living for the moment IS saving up for tomorrow... because the only tomorrow that actually exists...

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..has anyone ever met and fell in love on answerbag..? Yes, if you count those who haven't actually met, there are several "couples"... some of this coupling should have been taken OFF of AB as a courtesy to the public...

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As an Amercian, do you see a verbal attack on the quality of the President as a verbal attack on America? If so, why as in Europe people do seperate the two? Criticism of the president is NOT the same thing as criticizing the country, any more than criticizing the tires is the same thing as criticizing the car. The president is a person -- he's nothing more and nothing less than human. He makes mistakes, holds confused views, and otherwise operates just like a human being. There is no problem with criticizing him, and in fact in an open...

| 9 people like this

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What is love for you? There are different levels on which this question can be answered. Love is like an onion... at the outer layers, we have things like "caring attention", "compassionate action", "warm feelings", etc. These are all valid aspects of love, there's nothing wrong with those definitions. But as we peel the onion, it gets harder and harder to say what love is in...

| 3 people like this

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Would anyone care to join me in saying Happy Birthday to Nevets? Happy Birthday, Nevets! May all your remaining years be rated up.

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Why do we, as humans, find it so difficult to disagree without being offensive? Have we really become so self-centered that we willingly disregard other people's feelings? The basic problem is that we IDENTIFY with our opinions and viewpoints. That is, we hold our views incorrectly -- considering them to be something which defines who we are (e.g. "I believe in the death penalty", or "I believe Dukes of Hazzard was the greatest show ever") This can be hard to see in ourselves. There is a big difference between simply having a view about...

| 6 people like this

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What is God's plan for me? Don't know, but I promise he won't post it on AB!

| 7 people like this

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Is it humanly possible to become nonjudgmental and to be unconditionally loving toward all others? Yes, it's possible. It just isn't something that can be maintained continuously -- at least, not by anybody I've met. Unconditional presence and love are a natural capacity for all of us: really, that's a decent way to talk about the essential nature of BEING for human beings. The trouble is twofold: most of us have no idea how to locate such a capacity within...

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If I were a usually shy guy and I wanted to start "opening up", would abruptly going to someone to make conversation be a good way to start? if not, what would? There are tips and techniques you can use to disguise or overcome your shyness, you'll probably get some of those from others here. I recommend something that's much less obvious, however... Rather than try to manipulate your behavior and thinking (to make yourself less shy or "open up"), in the long run it's much more valuable to work on increasing your overall...

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Are you religious? Yes, but I think the word is fairly messed up in our culture, so sometimes I "go off" a bit trying to correct it. This must be one of those times! To me, "spirituality" is that aspect of life which deals with the most fundamental questions, such as "who am I?" and "what is the meaning of my life?". These questions are both personal (they're...

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Is it possible to fall in love with the same person again? I would say that actually happens in every relationship over and over again... The surge of emotions which we think of as "falling in love" is inherently temporary, just like all emotions. There is NO emotion which just turns on and stays on all the time (anyone who doubts this is invited to observe their own experience more carefully). What happens in a good relationship is...

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If, in accordance with the Bible, the meek shall inherit the earth, what reward is offered to those that stand up for the meek? I don't know, but it would be nice to see more of that. Right now, there's quite a few meek in Darfur who are being abandoned by those who could stand up for them.

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Do you know CSS? Yes, pretty well.

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How do you clear your thoughts? I do 40 minutes of meditation each day, and usually an hour on Sunday. It works wonders for thought-clearing.

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Do you stand your ground? It's not my ground: so no. I think it's quite dangerous to identify with a position or viewpoint so deeply that one feels the need to defend it. Ideas are just ideas, they're free to come and go, and it makes no sense to get attached to them. We make the mistake of identifying with our beliefs, and then defend them as if they defined who we are. This is a fundamental...

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Is Google widely accepted within the computing world as a desirable and good company to work for? Everyone I've talked to about that says it's a wonderful place to work.

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How do I save a document from the internet onto my flash drive? If you're using Windows XP, when you plug the flash drive into your USB port, you'll see that a new drive appears in your Windows Explorer. That drive (it might be D: or E: or even higher letters) is the flash unit. When you go to save a document from the Internet, choose that drive as the destination.

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Will a TV cable amplifier block my digital signal? Possibly. Why would you want to amplify the signal? If it's digital cable, generally you will either get a picture or not -- the digital nature of the transmission precludes the usual problems that analog signals had that posed the need for amplifiers.

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Do you think your state of mind can change your quality of life? Definitely. That's the #1 way to affect the quality of life, in fact.

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In a relationship, is it ok to be "clingy" if the other person is also clingy? There's a middle ground to be found: many people have the sense of needing their partner's attention, and that's fine. However, if this neediness is too strong, and if people just give in to the neediness, it can be something that stunts development in other areas. We need some balance in life: interests of our own, goals, etc., as well as relationships. When two people try...

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My friend spanks her teenage daughters, it seems to do the trick but i'm not sure if i want to spank mine.... what should i do? Spanking does produce short term results -- with long term consequences. If you want yourself and them to pay the price for cheap solutions, go right ahead... but be very clear that you have to keep your own anger out of the equation. If you're spanking as a reaction to feeling out of control or upset, you're teaching violence. Just for the record, my wife and I raised two girls...

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What exactly is a conscience? What is the Scientific explanation? Do you have a stong inner voice? The basis for all true morality is our sense of interconnectedness with others and life -- i.e. there is a level at which we know we aren't separate, and that level "speaks" in certain ways when the mind is not otherwise preoccupied with self-centered thinking. Science recognizes this interconnectedness in many ways, but doesn't really capture it adequately -- mainly...

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What's your impression of me? Other than that you can probably tell I'm bored? I think you're very nice. Especially for putting up with BobSaccamano!

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Does religion conflict with rational thought and judgement? There are 2 main ways in which rational thought and religion come into conflict: - Many religions posit beliefs as part of their system of thought which are either in direct conflict with logic / science, or are simply unprovable. Naturally, someone who values rational thought will be uncomfortable around such beliefs. - By it's very nature, rational thought has certain limitations:...

| 8 people like this

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How do you find happiness? 1. Stop looking for happiness. 2. Study your suffering. Do this until you see what causes it. 3. Stop doing what causes the suffering. Happiness is what's left over at the end of this process. If you try to go hunting for it, you'll just make more suffering, as you continually spin around in circles clinging at one idea after another. That strategy never works.

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Why do you think alien life didn’t contact us yet? Now there's a man who never heard of Tom Cruise!

| 6 people like this

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What is inner peace? The natural state of a mind which isn't entangled in endless chains of reaction to it's own thoughts.

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In your opinion which are the best books to read on the subject of Buddhism? Some favorites of mine: - Buddhism is not what you think: Finding Freedom beyond Beliefs (Steve Hagen - a Zen teacher in Minnesota with a science background, who does a brilliant job of making difficult things clear, and also weaves in some correlations between science and Buddhism that enrich the topic) http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0060730579-0 - The Wisdom of Insecurity (Alan...

| 3 people like this

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What is the meaning of life? Yes, but it only becomes apparent in the midst of selfless action. You'll never get it to fit into an answer on a web page, unfortunately.

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If your life had an ingredients label, what would it say? Ingredients: disappointment, pain, grief, fear, unfulfilled expectations, sadness, and death. Anything nicer is something YOU have to add.

| 5 people like this

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Does beauty have an age limit? I would say there's (at least) two levels to "beauty", at least when we're talking about what makes humans attractive to each other. Definitely age has it's effects on the body, skin, hair, etc., and most of us don't really like those effects. I really don't like having gray hair, despite any talk about how it's dignified or whatever. It represents...

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What do you think the world needs now? Well I like all the "love and understanding" answers, but the trouble is that mostly we don't know how to achieve such a state in ourselves, let alone infect the world with it. Dreams are a funny thing: we're always trying to achieve some state which represents those dreams... we go looking for love, we seek truth, we envision peace: but mostly we just sit around and...

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Long before 911 I had come to hate the thought of flying. Has 911 affected your feelings towards flying and if so how? No, 9/11 did not affect my concerns about flying. It DID affect my concerns about our rationality as a culture. Obviously the events of that day were a horrible crime and tragedy, yet here we are 6 years later -- still very much living in reaction to those events. This means the attackers won an important victory: they convinced us to live in fear and act from fear... to search...

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What are your thoughts on Prince Harry going to war? I'd like to see all the soldier-age children of national leaders placed on the front lines of all wars. That would end war pretty quickly, I bet.

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What is the meaning of life? At first, the point of life is to recover your original wholeness -- to learn what it means to be yourself. Once you have a good handle on that, the point of life is to enrich the whole, which includes things like helping others, expressing yourself fully, and working to heal the world damaged by the ignorance of those who haven't made much progress on task #1.

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Does it give you satisfaction to have the top answer? Gratification is a better word, I think. A quick, cheap high, which always makes me feel dirty and sleazy after! :-)

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I used notepad to create VB.NET code exactly as it is in a book, then saved the file as TestWeb.aspx into C:\ASP.NET directory. When I type http://localhost/ASP.NET/TestWeb.aspx, I get message that The resource cannot be found. Why is this? You need to put your file in "c:/inetpub/wwwroot/asp.net/testweb.aspx", and you need to use your IIS console to set the "asp.net" directory as an ASP.Net application, so that IIS will understand that it needs to launch the framework to handle that request. You also need to make sure that the "World Wide Web Publishing" service is running.

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Could you give me some points on this question? And I'm not such a bloody beginner any more. Well I hate to bear bad news, because you're new and I'd like to be friendly -- but I think the best thing I can do to be friendly is to warn you that asking for points on AB generally produces a pretty negative response from most people. The expectation here is that members contribute to the conversation in order to get points, and "points begging" is considered rude. ...

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What are the two main kinds of software? Crapware and vaporware.

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Is it possible to add answerbag to myspace, other than just a link? I believe Myspace allows a wide range of HTML tags, so it should be possible to add an IFRAME (an inline frame) which references a page on AB and displays it inline with the rest of your Myspace content. However, as Eli says, this will turn your AB friends into a wild-eyed furious mob of predators bent upon your destruction (myself excluded, of course!) -- the anti-myspace sentiment is...

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Is the old Left/Right dichtomy insufficient for 21st century politics? It was never sufficient even for 18th-century politics. The whole notion that liberal and conservative are coherent world-views made up of naturally interlocking and mutually exclusive sets of beliefs is silly: reality has never been divisible into two simplistic and sealed camps of ideas. What really drives these divisions is "herd mentality" -- the craving to belong to a...

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Whats the last thing you said to the opposite sex that you knew was a mistake? "How cute, you have a little mustache!"

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Do you often wonder exactly what it is your cat is attacking when there appears to be nothing there? Cats are funny: they see dead people. The undead are always trying to play with them, in a vain effort to recapture some of their own materiality... of course, the undead don't realize they're dead in most cases -- and they're frustrated by their inability to cause effects in the material world with one exception: cats respond. Be glad for cats. If you die before your...

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Why ... do you think it is that most ABers including yourself don't use a picture of themselves in the avatars? I dunno. I wish more people would do that. I like to see who I'm talking to. Of course, I don't do it myself because I'd frighten everybody, that's why I picked up the photo of a famous leading man / movie star as an avatar. Don't tell anyone, they think it's me.

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Why is the abortion question such a conundrum, with people taking very opposite and conflicting sides on the issue? The problem is actually rooted in the way concepts are formed: life is full of processes which have very gradual transitions in which there are no sharp boundaries between one state and the next. The canonical example is frogs and tadpoles: a tadpole grows up to become a frog, yes? Except... there's never any sharp dividing line between a tadpole and a frog. If you film the process,...

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Will you marry me? Well you know how it is -- they're kind of picky about multiple marriages in my town. But you seem very nice, so best wishes for that project! :-)

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Is it wrong to answer a dead question (one that has not been answered for a long time)? I think it can be a nice thing. However, if the question is very specific to the person asking, I may not put much work into it unless I have reason to believe the questioner is still around. I don't want to spend 10 minutes on an answer that may never be read.

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Why are the main landing gears of any commercial aircraft angled upwards when landing? The aircraft as a whole is pointed nose-up, this allows the rear wheels to hit the ground first to provide stability, then the pilot lowers the nose wheel so the plane can be fully grounded and steered. If he set down the nose-wheel first, the plane would be hard to control -- any small steering movement could be magnified into possible instability. Setting down the two rear sets first...

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Where is Stableboy? I haven't seen him for the past couple of days. I'm still pretty active, and I talked to LadyF this morning a bit, I think we'll be seeing more of her in coming days from the sound of it.

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Should Buddha be considered a god, when Buddhism is inherently an athiestic religion? Buddha is not considered a god in Buddhism (with the exception of a few sects, anyway) Buddha just means "awakened one", and it is a word which is used for the historical person Guatama, as well as for anyone who has awakened through their own efforts. It isn't correct to say that Buddhism is inherently atheistic -- Buddhism doesn't take a position on the existence of...

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Which is better to choose from when installing windows XP: FAT32 or NFTS? Generally, NTFS is the best. It offers security and high scalability. The one case you might want to use FAT32 is if you're planning to dual-boot with Linux or Windows 9x, which do not support NTFS.

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"What is fundamental?"...what is it that everything we see has in common (the "substance" that doesn't rely on anything else for its existence) There is no "fundamental substance" that relies on nothing else for it's existence. Everything which exists does so by virtue of it's RELATIONSHIP to everything else. But I still like your question... if you keep asking it long enough, someday there will be a popping sound in the back of your head and you'll see the nature of life very clearly, after which...

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If I were having a girl and I asked you to name her...what would it be? Any significance? My favorite girl names are Selma, Esther, Sophie, and Jacinta. I have no idea why... maybe I've known wonderful people with those names!

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We are supposed to be living purpose driven lives: What is your purpose for being on AB? I guess I'd argue with the premise of the question. It's not true that we are SUPPOSED to be living purpose driven lives. This is one particular philosophy, and it has it's fans. That doesn't mean it's correct or universally valid. There are a variety of reasons I use AB, the most important is just that I enjoy being connected with other people, and AB provides an...

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Would you prefer to be thought of as 'interested' or 'interesting'? I'd much rather be interested than interesting. Interested people can easily connect with others and enjoy a wide range of experiences. Interesting people need lots of attention -- people to appreciate their interestingness. I just don't find that very interesting.

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How do you deal with your fustrations? Daily meditation works wonders... just observing and experiencing the accumulated noise and irritation of the day gives it a chance to resolve itself without my having to "do something" specifically to fix it. It's like water in a pond: if it's left undisturbed, the dust settles and the water clears.

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Do you think political correctness is over done? I think the question is too general -- too abstract. What are we really talking about specifically? It seems to me there are two competing forces: on the one hand, those who care about others recognize that it's possible to offend people with bigoted or marginalizing language. I can't think of any white person I know who still uses "the N word" regularly. On the...

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Just wondering...whats it like in the girls bathroom? It's really weird. Nobody pees on the floor.

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Are snakes and reptiles found in all continents? If you're including lawyers, yes.

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Does turbulence bother you when flying? Only when the wings come off.

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I am hosting a "welcome the newbies" mixer...who here has been here 6 weeks or less and would you care to share something about yourself, impressions of the sight? Well I'm not in your target market, but I think it's a great idea! My impression of the site is that it's a great place to meet people and learn. Share something about myself? Sure: I don't like pina coladas or getting caught in the rain, nor do I like songs about such things. Actually, I don't drink, so that's pretty much it on that. But I do like...

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Do you suppose terrorists use AnswerBag to communicate in code? Absolutely. All comments or questions which beg for points are actually encoded messages from terrorists. Be sure to report them to the Department of Motherland Security.

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Is faith through fear of damnation real faith or just "playing it safe?" That kind of "faith" is really more like superstition -- don't cross a black cat's path, don't walk under a ladder, believe in so-and-so or you'll go to hell. It's hard to imagine a weaker definition of faith, I think.

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How do I retain more information while reading? What I've found helpful is going the "multi-sensory" route: reading aloud runs it through the ears as well as the eyes. If it's really critical, I've read into a tape recorder and played it back while driving. Also, it sounds silly but I found that SINGING the text worked well. (This is not something to do in public, I would say... unless you're much braver...

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When was the last time you geniunely felt euphoric? This morning. I won't talk about the circumstances :-) But in general this is a several-times-a-day occurrence for me, which can be triggered by all sorts of small, ordinary things: the walk from my car to the office in a light morning breeze, a cool comment from another 'bagger, the smell of fresh coffee. Euphoria is rarely more than a few steps away if someone is really...

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What is your favorite michael crichton novel? I thought Airframe was quite interesting and enjoyable. I don't think it was one of his big hits, although I don't follow the bestseller list much.

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Does anybody know about Windows ME, and do you think it is a good program for right now? Windows ME is an obsolete version of a very troubled operating system (Windows 98). Use Windows XP if you're going to use Windows.

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Do you take time to smell the Roses ...? ... How? Well there aren't many roses around here, but the basic idea is something I consider very important: slow down, relax, and be present to the ordinary and simple things that make the moment. I do at least 40 minutes of meditation each day, and often go out for short walks -- walking slowly, trying to stay present to just what's happening outside my own thoughts. It's very...

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If you could dis-invent one thing, what would it be? I think that would be nuclear weapons.

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When you go on a job interview and the interviewer tells you to tell him about yourself, what do you say? I do my best to answer the question without pretense or manipulation -- i.e. I DON'T use it as a way to slip in irrelevant facts designed to manipulate the interview. Many people see interviews as basically a "sales pitch" opportunity, a time to be persuasive and manipulative. I've been hired more times than anyone I know, and I think I can speak with a certain authority...

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Who is the number 21 'Anonymous' on the Leaderboard for all time? I believe that is Chronic Yin Yang or Painful Ginsu... more likely the latter.

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Who is the funniest person on Answerbag? Actually I would vote for the combination of Jode44 and Darkling. When these two get going it makes for dark and wild times, the hilarity falls out almost as a side-effect. Sometimes they add ptrask to play bass, then it's truly over-the-top.

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I can no longer restrain myself from the urge to construct a massive granite monument to my dear friend Auntie Em, the wisest and funniest 'bagger ever. Which of her 10 zillion quotable lines should be carved in the largest letters on this monolith? I finally found the famous "unusual use of duct tape" answer I've been searching for: http://tinyurl.com/3atnx7

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Who is the funniest person on Answerbag? Auntie Em is so funny, even her wisecracks have their own wisecracks. Anytime I'm feeling low I just make like a stalker and follow her around laughing. It works every time.

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Is there a material which could form a vessel tough enough to contain a vacuum without deforming but remain light enough to float in air? I think the answer has to be "no" -- this would be such an obvious candidate to replace helium balloons I'm sure you're not the first to consider it. The 14.7 lbs/square foot of air pressure at sea level is a LOT of pressure. My imagination is all I have to go on here, but anything tough enough to hold that out is going to involve heavy and thick materials, with lots of...

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Is there a good place for swimming in the sea around the Los Angeles area? Not so many waves and a litte calmer and safer. The long beaches are generally pretty good, such as Redondo, Huntington, and Malibu. If you stay away from rocky areas and learn the basic approach for dealing with riptides, you can join millions of others who swim in the ocean safely each year.

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Is reality just a shared illusion? Reality is not a shared illusion -- but our interpretation of it is. We humans have certain common cognitive abilities which determine the way in which we construct our interpretation of what's real. Specifically, we always "package" reality up into concepts -- we take the seamless whole of our experience and slice it up into pieces, label the pieces, and form mental models...

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In addition to Auntie Em's monument, we are erecting one for Stableboy. Which of his most marvellous quotes would win prime place on it? Wow! Thanks, Carmella... I guess you know this doesn't help with my ongoing ego-management challenges? :-) Really, I do appreciate the thoughts. Many people have been very generous with me on AB, allowing me to ramble all over the place with oddball views. This generosity has made me feel very much at home, and I expect to be around for a long time to enjoy the company of y'all.

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Would you say that I deserve the title of Answerbag's most outspoken member? Egotism's a funny thing: it comes in many flavors. What they all have in common is the centrality of "me". In ordinary speech, we think of an egotist as someone who toots their own horn, puffing themselves up with their own importance to compensate for hidden feelings of inadequacy. But that's just the common-sense definition. It really includes all sorts of other...

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Has anyone had a problem with improper use when posting a personal email address to his/her profile? Or did you create a separate account and forward them to your main email? There are users who've received spam through their AB-published e-mail addresses. The problem with using the standard "show my e-mail" box is that automated e-mail scraper programs can pick them up very easily. There's an easy solution: turn off the "show my e-mail" box in your profile, and just type your e-mail address in a slightly disguised way in your...

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I'm thinking of taking a position in San-Francisco for a year. What rent should I expect for a two bedroom apartment in the a good area of the city? I'm single and never been to San Francisco. Our daughter rented an apartment there last summer after a lengthy search. She and her roommates were looking for a 3 bedroom, and found quite a few in the $3000/month range. They got lucky and landed one of the rent-controlled units at $2100. It's a safe neighborhood, and a nice unit.

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Is it possible to be cut off from moderating (without having abused the priviledge or made excessive incorrect flags)? I've never heard of anyone having their moderation abilities limited or shut down, no. I doubt that the AB system has any such feature, although of course Joel and they boys could add it if the current moderation craze gets out of control.

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Why do you think bisexuals are such miserable wastes of space and life? I came very close to flagging your question. If it wasn't you, I probably would have. Are you in a particularly nasty mood tonight?

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Nevets, will you please leave me alone! If you don't believe me, ignore me. Please stop commenting on all my answers! You are acting like a TROLL! Well, you're not Wendora. You're stealing her "identity" and generally behaving in unacceptable ways. What exactly do you expect the community to do? Go away and find something worthwhile to do with your time.

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Do you believe that there is a difference between knowing and believing? Without a doubt: a BIG difference. Knowing is just knowing. Believing fills in the gaps in our knowledge, by committing to ideas which are uncertain, despite the uncertainty. This is an enormous source of trouble -- the fact that humans in general have difficulty distinguishing between what they actually know and what they merely believe. If you want absolute knowledge, look no...

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How would you react if tupac, john lenon, selena, john denver, and elvis were still alive. If they all moved into the same trailer park, I'd be stark-raving amazed. Otherwise, I doubt it would register.

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What happens to a person when they lose all sense of "self"? There's two basic levels to this question. For the most part, "loss of self" is indeed a very dangerous condition. A human being needs to develop a stable sense of self and a healthy personality / self-esteem structure. This is all part of developing normally as an adult human, and breakdowns in self-structure can lead to really harrowing psychological conditions that are...

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How do you control your emotions? I make no effort to control my emotions. I make a LOT of effort to *experience* my emotions, and not "act them out" (particularly negative things like greed, anger, fear). Sometimes I use a metaphor: emotions are like an engine, and choice is the clutch. It's important to know when to push the clutch pedal, disconnecting the emotions from action. To be able to just...

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If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? This is simply not true. There is no logical requirement that there be "nothingness" beyond the edge of the universe. That is extending common-sense thinking beyond it's legitimate domain. The prevailing view is that the universe (space) is expanding. This does NOT mean it's "expanding into something", that is mapping your personal experience (common sense)...

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Should impersonating the esteemed AntigoneRising be a capital offense? I hereby impersonate AntigoneRising. This is an official Civil Disobedience experiment.

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Do you find it difficult to talk to someone while keeping eye-contact? In what situations? There is no rule that you must maintain eye contact while talking to someone. So no, I don't do this, and I would consider that if I were obsessed with such a thing that would interfere with my ability to be with others and just be myself -- which is far more important than some sort of rigid rule on what to do with your eyes.

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Why does Obi-Wan Kenobi allow Darth Vader to kill him in the original Star Wars movie? I read an interview with Alec Guiness a few years ago. He said that he HATED working on Star Wars, that he felt the lines he had to recite were insipid and silly, and insisted to George Lucas that his part be written down to a bare minimum. He regretted having taken the part. So they killed him off so they could minimize his role legitimately. Frankly, I loved his part. I think he was...

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Do you prefer the term "Badgicide" or "Bagicide"? Well since I invented the term, I thought I should be allowed to define it! (Badgicide -- killing the badge, as YugonDoomer says). But BAM misread it early on as "bagicide", and since she's so popular others picked up that term. This is an evil abomination, but since I like BAM a lot I couldn't really express that fully. So now we have this horrid situation where...

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"Got to get back to the land, set my soul free. We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden." Anybody else ever felt this way? It's a great, classic song lyric. (from the song "Woodstock", for those catching up to the 60's). It resonates with the longing to return to something grounded, something closer to real and farther from chasing the illusions of wealth, fame, endless stimulation, and hollow success in a world fabricated with concrete and steel, electronics and information, irony,...

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Are you suppose to be a certain religion to meditate and/or channel energy?? Can you do it without being that religion? You don't need to belong to any special faith to meditate. I have no idea what "channel energy" might mean, so I'll leave that alone. Good meditation instruction can be found here: http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/meditation.php Anybody can do it (and many do) without regard to religious affiliation.

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Why don't beggars work? Because we're too busy hanging out on Answerbeg.

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What do you think level 60 should be called, if not Maestro? Addict.

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Why is it that so many lowlife men can get away with being deadbeats and cheaters and still find another woman to be with them while other good honest and decent men are completly ignored by women? Because those lowlife men have something which at least LOOKS like confidence to a woman. That outweighs 98% of goodness and decency for lots of women, at least until they get clear about the downside of their new hunk. A good, decent man who also has a respectable level of self-confidence regarding women does just fine.

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Is AB still a place to get answers to your questions, or is it a place to socialize? I think it's both, and then some. There have been a number of threads that touch on this topic (What do you use AB for?, etc.) One thing that I've NEVER seen in all of these answers -- and haven't posted myself either -- is that one of the things I use AB for is so learn about myself and stretch my own "boundaries". It's not so much that people provide...

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Does Answerbag have a chat room, if not why not.? I would like to see a "Chat about this answer" link next to each answer... while I love to comment as much as the next person (and receive them), a lot of comment chains really don't deserve to be preserved for all time -- they're just people socializing, etc. Being able to pop up a chat window would take those conversations off-line a bit, make them move much faster...

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Who do you think you are? (I've decided that before this question hits 100 answers, I should take a stab at it myself!) I've had a lot of ideas about who I am over the years. Images and beliefs, behavior patterns, relationships, strengths and weaknesses, personal history... these are the kinds of things I've thought define who I am at various points. While I still think those things are good to...

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How do you conquer the fact that some people try their best to intimidate you? Everybody needs to learn to stand up for themselves. Ideally, it's best to be able to do this without being aggressive or rude. There really isn't anything to "conquer" here. Just be yourself, and learn to maintain your boundaries -- don't let someone walk on you, but don't be aggressive. That's all part of growing up. EDIT == = = = = = = = = ...

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Who do you trust will bring a better world? Man or God? That's actually YOUR job. Not many people recognize this.

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Is the concept of "Religious Tolerance" inherently flawed? No, it's essential. But I read your answer and would draw a distinction... There's a difference between "tolerance" and "respect", and a difference between respecting others and respecting their beliefs. I have religious views. There are many other religious views I think are false or silly. Mostly, I keep my mouth shut about them, out of the commitment to...

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Read my profile. Was it worth reading? I thought it was interesting... you're coloring outside the lines and taking a risk. One really simple thing that would help is if you just put in some paragraph breaks so it's easier to read. You can do that by just typing a <b /> every place it should break. Frankly, I'm glad to see you're trying to write. That takes courage. Don't let the critics get...

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What famous quote would most sum up the ethos of Answerbag? "Don't do unto others that which you would not have done to yourself".

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Is there anyone on ab the bugs you soo bad you could kill some1?if soo who? I don't flag many questions for moderators, but this kind of thing does hit my radar as offensive. AB isn't about calling people out in public for drubbings, or encouraging people to voice their hatred creatively. If you want to help, find ways to cultivate harmony and communication. Gossip and slander is for sleazy tabloids.

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Do you think from an I or We perspective? It depends on the topic, my mood, and about a zillion other things. As long as we're on the topic, though... I would consider that being always locked into either one of these perspectives is really a personality disorder. If you can't break out of self-centeredness and take the perspective of the relationship or group, you're really cut off from what it means to be...

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Do you work in a cubicle? Yes, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Years ago I had an office and felt sealed off and separate from the rest of things. This is just not me. So I've never again wanted an office, I like being accessible and able to see and hear what's going on around. If I need silence to focus I wear earplugs. For about 7 years I ran a consulting business out of my home and...

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A lot of Avatar pictures on this site are of very attractive girls/women. Do you think that any of them are fake? I think most of them are authentic. There may be a few fakes.

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How do you get videos off You Tube and use them in an answer? Actually you don't have to download the video (which requires advanced methods if you're targeting youtube), all you have to do is paste the "embed code" from youtube into your Video Answer on AB. In fact, you actually CAN'T upload a video to AB, they don't host the physical file on their servers -- all they do is insert the appropriate HTML so that your video...

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Why is it that people are so offended by religion? I don't see people being offended by religion per se, so much as they are offended by the aggressive tendencies of some religions to proselytize in ways that are disrespectful, aggressive, and/or self-righteous. This kind of proselytizing is often just a disguised form of "spiritual ego": marching around and declaring "we have the one true faith, and anyone who...

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How does one "meditate"? What is it actually used for? Is it effective? There are a variety of answers. The form of meditation with which I have a lot of experience is "awareness meditation", which is called Shikantaza in Zen. The word means "just sitting", which really means "just being aware" for practical purposes. It focuses on being in touch with one's moment-to-moment experience, rather than wandering off into endless...

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Do you believe in/agree with heterosexual marriage? Should it be allowed? I think it's dangerous. I know people will say this is a slippery-slope fallacy, but what's next if we allow heterosexual marriage? Babies? Year-old frozen wedding cakes being defrosted for "one last bite"? Old, new, borrowed, and blue junk laying all over the place that nobody really likes? And what about the economy? Who's going to PAY for all of those $20k...

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"Learn the language of the land or get out!" What do you feel about this statement, and why? I think it's a great start on full-fledged bigotry and xenophobia... As for me, I've never been able to master the Native American languages: there's so many of them, and some are quite subtle and poetic but difficult to pronounce. So sadly, English and a bit of Spanish is all I can muster. I still think I fit in, though... I just try to be friendly and tolerant.

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What big city do you live next to? We are Yorba Linda, the Gateway to Anaheim: home of Disneyland (the original, not some cheap knock-off), the Mighty Ducks, Angel baseball, and about 1000 little amusements designed to cash in on the endless stream of Magic Kingdom visitors. At night in the summertime we hear the Mouse's fireworks.

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Define intimacy in your own words. Full attention present with the other; No separation in mind and heart.

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What is your favorite Stephen King book? Hearts in Atlantis. Haunting me still... :-)

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What is the oddest product warning label that you have seen? (like the warning on a hairdryer, "do not operate while asleep" or on a Dremel Electric Rotary Tool "This product not intended for use as a dental drill.") I have a folding sunscreen for my windshield labeled "do not operate vehicle while screen is in place". What bothers me is that I can imagine people for whom this warning is helpful.

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Baby Boomers, do you keep up with current music trends? I'd like to... I think there are wonderfully talented young people in each generation. Sometimes I hear something at the gym or coming out of another car stopped at the light that sounds interesting. But basically, I lost touch with pop music around 1983 I think! Before then, I was on-and-off a pro keyboard player and had to keep up just as a matter of employment, and of course I...

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Is there a way to track a website back to it's creator? Running a "whois" on the domain is about as close as you can get without doing site-specific research (calling, e-mailing, etc.) http://www.whois.com/ A "whois" will tell you the registered holder of the domain, which often includes contact info.

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What is the funniest response to a question that you've seen on AB? Well naturally I favor my own entries, being so overwhelmingly self-involved as to think that self-promotion isn't always an onerous personality trait: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/89382/362810 But Auntie Em's "Duct tape" response has to be on the short list, if I can find the darn thing. If the AB search engine were a bit more useful this would be a cinch...

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Are we friends? I'd like to think so. I guess the jury's still out on whether you're pissed off at me about whatever it was we argued over last week. Can't remember the topic, that's one of the benefits and shortcomings of old age.

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Has anyone taken the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, and what was, or is, your "type"? (Introvert/Extrovert; Sensing/Intuition; Thinking/Feeling; and Judging/Perceiving.) Yo estoy ENFJ, con dos chicas en retroglide y zazzy_uno. Quiero hablar con otros de ENFJ. Nosotros rockos! https://bsm.securesites.com/ENFJ.html

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Why is it okay to kill ants, and a gigantic crime to kill larger animals like dogs? Shouldn't we try to stop ALL animal creulty? Not just the bigger animals? This question arises because of the tendency to "absolutize" when thinking in abstract terms. It's actually an interesting question, because if you really struggle with it hard enough, you can have some important insights about morality, ethics, logic and wisdom. A comprehensive treatment of the topic would be very long, and I'm not going to do that. But here's...

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Is the base 10 system with the symbols 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 the worldwide standard for counting and mathematics? If not, who does not use this method? If so, who was the last country to adopt it and when? I've never heard of any still-active culture which uses anything other than base 10 for normal operations. Obviously in computers base 2, base 8, and base 16 are popular. It seems to me I've heard that the Babylonians and Mayans both used odd bases (12? 36?).

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How do you trust your mate? How do I learn to trust? My girl is 600 miles away and I always think that she is running around on me. I want to trust her. Please help! "I want to trust her" is the mistake. If you don't trust her, you don't trust her. Wanting to be some other way is a little odd... what would that even mean? Well, clearly, it means you have some idea that you SHOULD trust her -- that if you were a good person, or something like that, then you would trust her. Or maybe you feel like somehow you're weak because you...

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What would be the first things I say to a girl I like, who I've seen around for 3 years at school, but have never spoken one word to Worrying about what to say is the wrong tactic... The words aren't nearly as important as what's going on with YOU internally while you're with someone else and talking to them. Chances are good you're nervous, yes? Unsure of how to be, concerned about whether you'll look or sound stupid, or whether she'll like you, filled with images and ideas about how it...

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Don't you think that most of people are takers than they are givers We're almost all BOTH, and often at the same time in different ways. You can't really sort people into one or the other (with a few exceptions). Learning how to relate to selfishness -- in ourselves and others -- is one of the most fundamental things life has to teach us. Everyone owes it to themselves, and to humanity, to show up for class and pay attention. This is the class...

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If you shot a gun while on the moon and aimed it toward earth, would the bullet reach it all the way? It depends on whether the bullet is fired fast enough to achieve "escape velocity" from the moon, which is 2.7 km per second. That's awfully fast -- a really fast bullet would go about .9 km per second. So unless you have an AMAZING gun, the bullet will slow down from the moon's gravity and fall back to hit the surface (where the sound it would make would be...

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If you have a brother that weighs around 300 pounds and you way about 140 and he sits on you everytime you get into a fight how do you stop him from doing these besides the obvious fact get stronger Well the even more obvious solution is to stop getting into fights with him. It takes two to tango. I'm willing to bet that you're not a totally innocent bystander in the debates which lead up to the violence. I suggest taking your wisdom up a notch instead of your weight.

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How can I talk to my 12 year old about my depression without freaking her out? I have been feeling suicidal and am having panic attacks and I know that she can sense that something is wrong with me. It sounds like you're going through a very tough time. Kids really aren't equipped to deal with adult-level problems, but it's important that you tell her something which will account for your lack of enthusiasm and emotional strength -- you could just tell her something like "I have a lot of problems right now, and it makes me tired and sad. I love you and we'll...

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Who else feels their missing out on life being on answerbag? This is something that comes up a lot as a question in various forms. I think it happens mostly because we tend to think of participation here as "surfing the web" or "hanging out on AB", and seeing the avatars, usernames, and comments as being some sort of electronic database artifacts or online game -- something trivial or entertaining, but not very important. Of...

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Why can men go in public without a shirt on, but in most societies a woman would be arrested for doing the same? I agree, this is a TERRIBLE law, and I insist that it be changed now. No more shirts! No more shirts! No more shirts! C'mon, everybody... I can't HEAR you!!

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When do you know when your marriage is over? Married 18 yrs/2 kids. We live very stressful life & tend to take it out on each other. Not sure if he cheated (but think so). He is a big flirt and speaks inappappropriately to other woman for a married man. Well, first things first: you know your marriage is over when you SAY it's over. Marriage is based on a declaration of your own speaking and commitment, not on the circumstances or your feelings. This is an advanced topic... from the sound of your question, I suspect it's a topic that hasn't been addressed well in your marriage -- perhaps by him, perhaps by you, perhaps by...

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Why does the colour red symbolize heat, while blue symbolizes coldness? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I mean, a blue flame is hotter than a red flame. Yeah, but blue ice is colder than red flame!

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As my baby's due date grows closer (2/27/07) what can I do to make this time easier? We lost him at 13 weeks gestation. I'm so sorry.... I don't know much about babies, but best wishes and good luck and may the Force be with you :-)

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What are some good comebacks to use when people ask me why I never smile? "I'm estimating the size of your bodybag" "This is just a plaster mask. I left my face in my other pants" "I don't want you to think you're safe with me" "I'm still worried about Y2K" "Smiling makes the voices scream even louder"

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I'm looking for a good book on object oriented design patterns, any suggestions? The canonical classic is "Design Patterns" by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. It even has a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns If you haven't already read it, it should be on your short list.

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What do I have to do to use the Answerbag API? Look up the documents in your source control system -- they should specify the semantics for each object and/or function, along with any parameters and return values. If you don't have such documents, have one of your henchmen write them!

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I wanted to connect my friends old hard drive along with my harddrive and i did. but when i turned on the computer the screen went black at the start and said something about please select the device or disk or something how can i fix this? There are jumpers on the back of each hard drive which select whether the drive is "master" or "slave" on the cable bus. One drive should be set to be the master, and the other drive should be the slave. There are usually little drawings of the jumpers printed on the drive itself which tell you what positions to place the jumpers in. Generally, the boot drive should be...

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Why are you shy - because I don't get it? Because I don't think people will like me. That's why I almost never say anything.

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What is the difference between ego and self respect? The essential difference is that ego is a false self constructed upon our withdrawal from life due to pain or unpleasant experiences, while self-respect arises in our sense of being connected to life. So they're pointed in "opposite directions", if you will. Another way to say it is that ego withdraws from others and tries to build a barrier around itself, and then tries to...

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Any tips on how I can learn to stand up for myself? I am a walking doormat :( The psychology term for this is "weak boundaries" -- i.e. you're a warm and likable person, and are somewhat underdeveloped in the area of "pushing back" against those who aren't respectful of your territory. The fact that you recognize the issue is good, of course. What you have to learn to do is be aware of when someone is stepping over the line, and start...

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Is narcissism, or egocentrism the fuel that drives AB participation? Other theories welcome. It depends on the person and the time. Also, I think you have to include various other motives -- particularly: - The desire to connect and share life with others - The desire to contribute and make a difference in the lives of others. - The desire to be stimulated by interesting conversations and learning from multiple viewpoints - Plain old fun. But let's not...

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How do you clean the windows in your mind? Zen meditation: 40 minutes a day, an hour on Sundays. Several times a year I participate in longer "sesshin" -- 2 to 5 days of intense practice. Basically, doing this: http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/meditation.php

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What is worth more to you: someone giving you points or someone leaving a nice comment on your answers? I actually find that when I'm not in the best mood, an up-rating without a comment is almost as annoying as a down-rating without a comment. I come here to be connected with people -- and people are individuals, not numbers and measurements. The way we connect with people on the bag, where you can't see a smile or pat someone on the back, is to comment.

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..do you think its possible, to really fall in love with someone you meet online? You should see some of the stuff that goes on here. I didn't even have that much imagination before I got an AB account :-)

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Have you, in romantic relationships, been more inclined to be offended or flattered by your partner's jealousy. I don't think either offended or flattered: NERVOUS is the word that comes to mind. I appreciate that my mate is generally trusting and allows me a lot of freedom, she's rarely bothered by my friendships with women. But she's not perfect, as none of us are, and there have been times when some combination of circumstances and perhaps a sense that she's being neglected...

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Who was the worst US President ever? I'd like a chance to try for that honor: http://www.answerbag.com/image_viewer?aid=134043&iid=6379 (The kitten is for the tabloids...)

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Do you feel empty? What are you missing? No, I don't feel empty, and nothing is missing. But I do know how you feel. And I have some radical advice about it: do NOT go looking for what's missing... people have been doing that for thousands of years and nobody has ever found what's missing. The reason nobody has ever found what's missing is because the idea that something is missing is false: if nothing is...

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I'm leaving answerbag...if you would like to know why it is because of rude users rating down my answers for no reason and i'm tired of people asking useless questions that don't make sense...have anything to say to change my mind? Yeah. Take a break for a few days. Take a few deep breaths. Quitting out of anger and frustration isn't very good. When you're calm, take a look and ask yourself two things: 1. What do I want out of participating on AB? 2. What do I have to offer others? Then I suggest you take the first list and burn it. If the second list contains enough to be worth your effort...

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Will you buy me a life? I'm sick of this one. Well if you can say more about what you're sick of, I think that might make for an interesting conversation. I wouldn't be able to buy you a life, of course, but sometimes just having a good rant about it helps somewhat.

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What is the best scotch? Well in the days when I was into that, my favorite was Bowmore -- a 12-year-old single malt. Warm and smokey. I still have 1/2 bottle on the shelf just in case... it's been there for years.

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If you found yourself in court this year, most likely what would it be for. I am in court on a regular basis, and will be several times this year. It's part of my obligation as a court-appointed advocate for abused children (CASA). The court appoints CASA volunteers to work one-on-one with children who are in it's care, to make sure they get the resources and support they need in the absence of a stable family structure. Part of what the CASA volunteers...

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Why answer Q's with nonsense? Like a question about if you were married and _________..., and answering "I would never get married" Then don't answer the question, right? Sometimes this happens just because people want attention, or because they like to "hear the sound of their own voice". It really isn't a helpful practice, I recommend pointing that out politely when it seems fitting. If you don't have something interesting to say in response to a question, don't answer. Telling someone you don't want to answer the question...

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What was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi's greatest contribution to society? I think he demonstrated that one person -- willing to LIVE their commitment -- can make great changes without resorting to violence. His life is a tribute to the power of selfless dedication to vision and values.

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Do you think you're a very assertive person? What does it take to be assertive? I think it's a mistake to get attached to some notion of how you should be and then try to pursue that image or idea. Part of the problem is that any idea of how you should be is going to be a kind of "prison": the mind gets tangled up in self-manipulation and self-judgment, constantly trying to correct behavior, attitudes, and feelings in order to make them fit your idea of...

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What was your best Valentine's Day ever? I live in Southern California, where the weather is warm. One thing you DON'T see here... because of the warm weather... is redwood trees. Except, one mile from our house, there's a little canyon with about 200 redwood trees, living at the lowest known latitude in the U.S. for this type. To hike down into this canyon is to leave the suburbs and enter King Arthur's forest,...

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What is Timbuctoo famous for? A place unwanted things are always sent to.

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Finish this sentence: 'You know you're old when...' You know you're old when you wear your diapers the entire way on a cross-country trip to kill a rival for your affections.

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What do u think about the astronaut lady who wore a diaper across the country? I think she needs a Huggies.

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What's wrong with this picture? A child-care worker looking after our children, and our future...makes minimum wage. A baseball/hockey player, (whatever) makes millions. I don't really have a problem with the millionaire sports heroes -- our economic system does create the conditions for that kind of bizarre "niche" success. The problem is at the other end of the scale: expecting the free market to properly value the things that are actually valuable is foolish, because the free market isn't essentially rooted in values, it's rooted...

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How about The Girls of AB calendars where the top 12 avatars belonging to women appear? Also, The Men of AB Calendar, The Pets of AB Calendar, and the AVATARS of AB Calendar where avatars like BAM's would appear? Sign me up for 5 copies of "The Women of AB" calendar, please! (Let's stay away from "girls" though... too ambiguous :-)

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If we made a movie entitled, "AB: the Movie" what would the story lines be and which AB'ers would star in it (Stableboy, here's your chance!)? Hmm... I'm quite sure any movie I'm in would drive the viewers out of the theater in massive waves of boredom. The title of such a film would probably have to read like a warning label from the MPAA: "Boredom in 5000 Unedited Words" ... or... "How to Say the Same Thing Over and Over Again for Months on End, Just Modifying a Few Phrases" ... or ... ...

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Is the right to bear arms still a necessary part of American life? Or is it an anachronism that actually makes modern America a more dangerous place in the 21st century? Should it be removed from the constitution? "Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people..." It's clear that we are overrun with guns. Many street gangs in large cities have more firepower than the police. But as much as the over-arming of Americans is a massive problem, as much as our culture is the most violent of any industrialized nation, and as much as the gun lobby arguments are often rooted in...

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Any thoughts on Vancouver? I love that city. It's beautiful, clean, cosmopolitan. Any direction you turn is a poster-worthy view.

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Has anyone here ever been to jail or to prison and if so, for what? I've been to jail a number of times, but never served a sentence longer than 7 days. Various small time crime, basically when I was 18..23 (my Wonder Years!). Burglary, drugs, failing to show up in court. That's where I got shifty eyes, in fact.

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Our cumminication skills between eachother are not that good. WE fight and argue too much I love her is there any tios anyone could give me. We are starting to listen to one another more bus we are getting drained. I'm going to assume you're fairly young (teens?) The main reason people fight is because they like to be RIGHT more than they like to be at peace. When someone's sense of self isn't very well grounded, being right acts as a sort of cheap substitute for self-esteem, so the mind craves winning arguments as a way to make oneself feel more real, more important, more valid,...

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Stableboy's picture scares me! It scares me too!

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Toaism teaches that all things are in constant motion, in constant flux. Is this not consistent with what we have learned in science? That nothing is trully still? This is true. There's no such thing as a solid, in the common-sense meaning of the word. Actually it's worse than your question suggests even: it's not even that "things are in constant motion", because nobody can quite say that there's any "things" to be in motion. Atoms are made of particles, yes? But what are the particles? Well, strictly...

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For those kids who have always been the smart one, what do you think of your "average" minded friends? When I was a kid this was my situation all the time... other kids would try to sit near me so they could copy off of my paper in school or get "tips", I never had to study to get A's, and I whipped through tests and exams without really ever getting concerned. It took a number of years before I realized this was unusual... probably around 7th grade I began to understand that...

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What do you think your ratio of questions to answers should be? What is yours? The perfect ratio is 10:1 answers to questions -- if everyone did that, then every answer page would be full without having to click "Next >>" to see more. The 'bag would be a happier place, trolls would be vanquished, the endless religious battles would end, and nevermore would a "What time is it now?" question be posed again. Let's all keep this in mind...

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This shall be my last question on Answerbag. Are you doing all you can to love those around you? Well I'm not going to answer your question, so you'll just have to keep coming back over and over again to see if I've changed my mind! Ok, seriously... I understand your frustration with the 'bag, and your feeling that it's not satisfying to deal with all the crap. Many of us know exactly what you're talking about. I would ply you with all the usual stuff...

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Whats the best smell in the world? We used to have wild hills behind our house before the developers bought the city council. My wife had a dog named Keesha, and each morning we'd go walking up in the hills early, sometimes before dawn, when skunks ruled the roost. On one particularly memorable morning, Keesha was out ahead scouting for trouble and found it. Our first clue was a VISIBLE cloud of some gas lightly...

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Do you think you control your world or that your world controls you? Neither... it's impossible to find a sharp and definite boundary between "me" and "the world". Notions of control -- in either direction -- only make sense in the abstract. Nobody is actually separate from the whole of life, it's all one infinitely complex web of cause and effect. Only with thought and language can we whip out the scalpel of discrimination and...

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Why do americans like the superbowl so much? i dont get it... Well in one sense it's just a football game, and since it's the culmination of the season and the championship win-or-go-home, that makes it big to football fans. There are a LOT of football fans in America. But beyond that, the Superbowl has become almost a national holiday -- a massive spectacle of media hype and excess, an occasion for partying and drinking, a display of all...

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Who here is an "authorized personnel" and why? I am fully authorized for all operations around here. This authorization was self-granted by the usual authority.

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Why are morals on a downslide, it seems anything goes these days, is that a good thing? Basically the source of your anxiety is that you're clinging to your beliefs instead of standing for your values. You haven't stated what those values are, or what you're concerned about, so it sounds like the sort of idle ranting which occurs when someone considers themselves to be morally superior to others, and is clinging to that view in order to pump up their own ego. ...

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Is anyone else in a rut? (job, marriage, relationship, stage in life, etc) I'm not currently in a rut, but I can certainly relate. There's a difference between having a repetitive routine with something and "being in a rut": for example, there isn't a whole lot of variety in my daily routine from one day to the next... get up, go to work, etc. The current routine "works" for me, as does my marriage and other important things in...

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When reading answers do you get influenced by other peoples answers? Yes. I usually read the other answers first, looking for someone who's saying the same thing I would say, but often by the time I get to the end of the list my answer has changed somewhat in response to what's already been written.

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I work out to excersize dvd's everyday, the people on the dvd sweat like crazy, I sweat a lot but these peoples shirts are soaked. I work very hard keeping up with them, doing exactly what they do. How come I don't sweat as much as they do? There are just individual differences. For reasons unknown, when playing basketball (which I do about 4x per week), I sweat far more than anyone else on the court. I'm in good shape, it's not water weight or something -- but I've always disliked heat and apparently my body agrees that putting out lots of moisture is the answer. So my shirt is usually soaked after one game,...

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What's the weirdest or most embarrassing combination of things you've ever purchased from a store? We used to have wild hills behind our house before the developers bought the city council. My wife had a dog named Keesha, and each morning we'd go walking up in the hills early, sometimes before dawn, when skunks ruled the roost. On one particularly memorable morning, Keesha was out ahead scouting for trouble and found it. Our first clue was a VISIBLE cloud of some gas lightly...

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Is there still a valid reason for people to use Ham Radios? I think the real reason has always been fun mainly. It's kind of cool to bounce your little signal off the upper atmosphere and talk to somebody in Europe or Japan. The actual utility of this exercise was always a little fuzzy, although they've done some useful things as an emergency communication network. I guess "let the old guys have their hobby" would be the short...

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My 17 year old son worked last and earned $7251.00. Can I claim him on my return. If you provided more than half of his support, yes. But he still has to file a tax return, and he cannot claim himself if you do that.

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If I didn't get my w2 from one certain employer, will I be able to get that one specific w2 form from th IRS in order to file my income taxes. You should ask that employer for a W2. If they're still in business, they're obliged to provide your W2 by Jan 31 each year. Most companies are very cooperative about providing duplicates. If the company is no longer operating, I believe it is possible to get a copy from the IRS, but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a long time.

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See ya'll I'm leaving AB. FreshApples is gone! I'll stop in every month or so, but I got a plan that don't pertain to Answerbag so bye everybody! Good luck! Don't forget where we live...

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In a society where divorce has become the norm, is marriage really all that sacred? The sacredness of marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with the divorce rate: you make YOUR marriage sacred by wholeheartedly giving yourself to your partner, taking responsibility for the relationship, and creating all the love you can. What other people do is irrelevant to the sacredness of my marriage. This is as it always has been: marriage has never been more sacred than the parties...

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What good (if any) are we doing in Iraq? There are well meaning people involved, no question about it. But this was a bad idea from the start: we sowed folly, and now we're reaping horror. Why did we invade? The ostensible reason was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) which he might someday use on us. Since when does the U.S. preemptively invade any country which MIGHT be a threat someday? Is that what...

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When you first joined, did you find the existing answerbaggers welcoming or not? When I first joined I found that some people were very friendly and some were not... pretty much the same as now, only of course now I know a lot more people than I did then. Frankly, I think this depends as much on the new user as it does on the old users... people who are warm and outgoing will fit in pretty much anywhere. Those who are shy or suspicious will find it tough to merge with...

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Do you think the North and South of the United States will ever try to become 2 separate nations? Uh... we tried that already. It didn't work.

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Do you think a person can ever really feel totally "complete" Yes, but you don't go about it by trying to imagining what "complete" is and then pursuing that. The reason we feel incomplete is because we cling to ideas of how things SHOULD be instead of allowing ourselves to "merge" with things as they ARE. In Buddhism, this problem is called "attachment" -- we get attached to all sorts of things. It's as if...

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If you could ban one person from answerbag, who would it be? This is a bad question: the only thing it can do is invite people to publicly air their prejudices and anger, instead of handling it with the person in question. We have enough hostility already.

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Why are some people so destructive? I usually try to turn this kind of question backwards and aim it at myself, where it becomes "why am I so destructive?". Usually this happens when I stop considering the effects of my actions on others, stop caring about the whole and just focus on my own personal desires and fears to the exclusion of all else. So "selfishness" would be the answer. I would imagine this...

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What was the importance of the integrated circuit? Integrated circuits were an essential breakthrough in electronics -- allowing a large amount of circuitry to be mass-produced in reusable components with high levels of functionality. Without integrated circuits, many modern things we take for granted would be impossible: the desktop computers are a good example -- building one without integrated circuits would require enormous amounts of...

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Do you agree with the statement: "Down-rating trolls are jealous little beings who down-rate because they are kept anonymous" ? (until we figure who they are that is...) I don't know if jealousy is the right word: cowardice is a better word I think. Wanting to express your disapproval of something is fine, but I would be unable to maintain my self-respect if I was so afraid of reprisals that I had to remain anonymous. If I have something negative to say, I say it, and then listen to hear what the response is. If they want to mete out vengeance,...

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Do you think that you can actually change the world? Yes, in fact you can't AVOID changing "the world", because you and the world are not two separate things. The world changes constantly, you change constantly. There is cause-and-effect in both directions, and this is completely unavoidable. What people really mean when asking this question is "can you make the world fit your concepts of how it should be?", for...

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Do you ever find yourself worrying about people on answerbag? Yep.

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It's a little late, but what are your views on the United States adapting a policy to allow Spanish-speaking students to recite the pledge in Spanish? .

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COST OF WAR .. The war so far is costing Americans 8.4 Billion per day ..A total of 267.4 Billion to October 2005, 350 Billion if additional is approved.. How does that make you feel..when there are so many homeless and environmental issues to use it for? It's hard to see that there could be a reasonable "other side" to the view that starting the war in Iraq was a huge mistake -- any conceivable justification for invading this country was weak at the start, and has gone from weak to non-existent now. The problem now is that there's no good way out of this situation: to throw more resources into the war looks like piling...

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How is it possible that three Equal, Divine and Separated persons in the Holy Trinity are not three gods? You're trying to use formal logic to analyze something that isn't going to submit to that kind of analysis. (Caveat: I'm not a Christian, but was raised in that religion and have heard the arguments many times) The simple explanation is that the 3 parts of the trinity are 3 aspects of one "mystery", and preserving the mystery is an important part of the religious...

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I love everyone ... Am I a fool? It depends on what you mean by love. In your case, I suspect that you have a pretty well-grounded sense of self which extends beyond selfishness. In some people, I'd be concerned about such a statement. For example, children who have been abused sometimes develop "attachment disorders" in which they fail to make the normal kinds of discriminating attachments to caregivers,...

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Does DCA really kill cancer effectively without side effects? Who knows more about this drug? From the article in New Scientist: "IT SOUNDS almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of...

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Who hates the fact that they can't help stereotyping? There is no sense in "hating" this -- it's a perfectly normal and necessary function of the mind to produce abstractions and "pre-judge" it's experiences based on these stereotypes. We would literally be unable to function without that cognitive ability. The only problem is that often we're not aware of the stereotyping that we do, and thus we're not...

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How can you build confidence in order to talk to attractive girls? Don't try to "build confidence", that will just mess you up. You have to turn the question upside down and ask "what prevents me from just being myself around attractive girls?" You're fine when you're being yourself -- everyone is, actually. The problem is that when these girls are around there are "tapes" that play in your head which are not...

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What do you think needs to be done in order to end homelessness? There are a variety of different kinds of homeless people, with different causes and conditions that give rise to their homelessness. The solution will not be a one-size-fits-all answer. A lot of homeless are mentally ill, and no amount of job skills training or incentives will help: they need medication and in some cases life-long shelter for which they cannot pay. Many others have...

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What is your opinion on global warming is it natural, a result of pollution or a combination of both? It seems clear that man's burning of fossil fuels is contributing greatly to the level of greenhouse gases and destabilizing the climate system. While there is a small and persistently vocal group which criticizes the general scientific consensus, I feel pretty confident -- based on extensive reading of scientific literature -- that these views are mistaken. If we act decisively,...

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If you could have superpowers, what kind of powers would you chose? The ability to be myself all the time, and never get mixed up about what that meant.

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Do you believe you can "speak" something into existance just by talking about it? Yes, in addition to examples cited by others, there's an entire class of "things" which ONLY come into existence by speaking -- for example, promises and declarations are things which are a direct product of speaking. There's an old joke that illustrates the point. Three umpires are in a bar after a game, and they're talking about how they decide between balls and...

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What would Jesus do? He would teach peace. He would teach the importance of caring for the poor and the sick. He would preach the dangers of greed and selfishness. He would warn against self-righteous posturing. At least, I hope that's what he'd do. That would be pretty helpful.

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Why do we exist? You could just as well ask "why does anything exist?" -- i.e. why is there something rather than nothing? Why does reality go to all the trouble of existing? But there's a problem with this sort of question: reasons and purposes are things that only have meaning in the context of a human mind contemplating such ideas. They're conceptual, and concepts are a function of...

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Do you have true empathy for other people? Yes, all healthy people do. Humans are not isolated little islands, cut off from each other -- although sometimes we wish we were, and some people go to great lengths to insulate themselves from the pain of others. The trouble with those layers of insulation is that to cut oneself off from other people also means cutting oneself off from the ability to experience being fully alive, which...

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Why is it OK to overthrough Saddam (dosile for the past 15 years) but no one cares about 100,000's genocide happening NOW in Sudan? The main problem in Darfur is that these poor people have nothing that the industrialized world wants -- so they're a low priority in the grand scheme of things. There are those of us (including myself) who do make a steady effort to try to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur and encourage pressure or action by the U.N. and world leaders. There is an organization which is...

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I'm fairly new here and while I have given out points, I'm reluctant to downrate anyone. When do you, personally, downrate someone? I assume for not answering the question would be a fair reason to take points away, but not for an answer we disagree with? Sometimes I will down-rate an answer for a variety of reasons. Mostly I just ignore answers I disagree with, but if -- for example -- an answer to an important question is dangerous or misleading, I may rate it down. One thing that's very important is to always leave a comment identifying yourself. To me, this is an important part of providing critical feedback for others: they know...

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How do I boot up in safe mode? Press F8 as soon as the BIOS startup is complete. Windows will present you with a menu of startup choices, including Safe Mode. You may have to try a couple of times to get the timing right -- there's only a short window of opportunity to hit F8 at the right time.

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Do you believe that America would be better governed as a Theocracy instead of a Democracy? Why or why not? Certainly not. One of the important rights the government is obliged to defend is freedom of religion (and yes, freedom FROM religion for those who choose). Obviously a theocracy isn't well equipped to provide a level playing field for religious tolerance.

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Can I convert to Buddhism, despite being in a Roman Catholic family? Is Buddhism something you can practise personally? Actually you can practice Buddhism without "converting" or even leaving the Catholic church. There are quite a few "dual practitioners" in the Christian world. Thomas Merton is an example of someone who was well known for this -- he was a monk and a Zen practitioner simultaneously, and wrote quite a few books on related topics. As to "converting", there really...

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What catches your attention the most when you go shopping? The "Exit" sign in the mall.

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Does more current flow out of a battery than into it? Does more current flow into light bulb than out of it? No, the current in a circuit is exactly the same in and out.

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I'm a needy,attached, relationship kind of guy. And my girlfriend and I use to be together all the time, day after day, and when we weren't together we were on the phone. Now she may be wanting some more space. I don't know how to handle it? You need to learn to deal with your own neediness by yourself. This is NOT impossible. You will chase away every woman you meet if you don't do this. Women do NOT like clingy men. The feelings and thoughts that you have when she's not around, or isn't paying attention to you -- those are all bearable. You will not die. The trick is to learn to *experience* your anxiety...

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Daniel Radcliffe appears nude during a scene in a play. Do you think this will tarnish his image from the "Harry Potter" series that he starred in? I doubt it. "Equus" is a respectable piece of theater that has always had a nude scene. He's already a teen heartthrob from what I've heard, so the girls will probably like it and the boys won't care. His shot at an Oscar for the Potter work is already slim anyway, yes? He wants to be taken seriously, like so many child actors growing up.

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My Shoe Size is 14 in The US. And my hand size is 8" long, what would my height be? And how can u tell How old are you? My shoe size is 11, and I'm 5' 10". I'm not sure this is a very accurate way to estimate adult height, though. Probably the other males in your family -- father, brothers, uncles -- are a more likely indicator.

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My administrator user account is deleted and now i am unable to find all of my personal folders(video songs,software etc.),which were resided in that account. now how can i reacesses those folders? The Administrator account on Windows cannot be deleted. It CAN be renamed, and of course the password can be changed. So the answer is going to depend on what actually happened. Check the c:Documents And Settings folder. Windows creates a sub-folder containing all the profile data for each user, and generally gives these folders meaningful names. If you get "Access denied"...

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I know that as your points go up, the value of how you rate others go up. What I just found out was if you go back to earlier questions or answers you can actually rate them higher or lower according to the value you have increased. Did you know that? Yes, I discovered the same thing. Math is so complicated!

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I am almost at level 18 but Im DYING to get up to level 20 to become an expert, is there any way to do it a whole lot faster? I have an old level 47 account I'm not using. You wanna make a bid? I owe about $2500 in Federal and CA taxes this year if you're looking for a suggested opening.

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What is the total dollar value of the world and everything in it. Does this value rise or fall with inflation and new manufactured goods? I dunno, but I'll give you $57.42 for it, which is everything I have in my wallet right now. And I want all the Beanie Baby collectibles too, don't try to get sneaky.

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Can I declare a "no-flight zone" over my house? Absolutely, that's the wonderful thing about declarations -- anybody can declare anything they want. My wife and I once seceded from the U.S. and formed our own tiny country (I was the President, of course). And I've declared myself owner of all the mineral rights found in the star system Arcturus, so don't try to mine there without my permission. Next week I'm...

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If someone from here wanted to meet you in person would you do it? There are quite a few 'baggers I'd like to meet in person. I'm in So. Cal., so drop on by when you come to Disneyland (which is almost in my back yard -- we hear the nightly fireworks show going off in the summertime)

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What do you think of George W. Bush? Actually I find him to be personally likable, although I disagree with many of his policies and didn't vote for him. I think he'd be a fun person to have at a family dinner table, as long as we stay away from the usual hot button topics (politics, religion, and Paris Hilton) You generally don't win the BIG popularity contest -- being president -- unless you have at least some...

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It is said that a "spoonfull of forgiveness can go a long, long way". How much are you willing to forgive? All the way to the bottom -- at least that's my goal, sometimes it takes me a while. The ultimate school of personal responsibility is in one's ability to forgive. This is an advanced class, which isn't offered until you first pass "maintaining personal boundaries 101" and "not blaming yourself for the faults of others 102", which are both important...

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Do you find some Avatars annoying? Yes, and I have a solution. If I encounter an irritating (usually flashing) avatar, I right-click with my mouse and choose "Adblock image". This is possible because I use Firefox as my browser, and have the free Adblock extension installed. I believe Elitheeli gets the credit for this little gem of wisdom.

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I'm guilty of asking some fairly silly questions at times. But I try to do my share .. So why would some nasty little person go through my whole profile activity and rate all of my Q's and A's down? .. Do they really take it all that serious? Bring it on! It happens to everyone at some point (I got that just last night... a whole string of unrelated -4's!) You said something that upset somebody. There's really no way to have any sort of substantial conversation on the 'bag and not eventually annoy or irritate someone, and many people don't have the anti-troll club logo tattooed on their mouse hand, so they forget the...

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So im 17 and i am in a long distance relationship with my best friend for years steven and we plan on getting married in a few years what are tha chances of it lasting? It's impossible for anyone to say: these relationships can work, certainly. To calculate an actual percentage would require a lot of field research data with very specific details, none of us have that on hand. You both have plenty of growing and changing to do: whether those changes bring you together or pull you apart will only be known when you get to the future. For now, all there...

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If people are all different would it mean that what they'd see would completly different to what you see? eg a square could look like a circle in someone else eyes - if so - creepy! We have common characteristics and we have differences. It isn't all-or-nothing. One of the things we have in common is that our visual and perceptual systems (when working normally) all see shapes pretty much the same way. In addition, we have communication (language) which standardizes the terms for "square" and "circle", and distributes those terms so that there...

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What personality trait do you most hate in humans? Hate itself is by far the most serious problem trait we have.

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Do you just answer questions off the home page or do you search for questions? If I have trouble finding interesting topics I pick a friend's activity log and tag onto questions they're looking at. This pushes the ugly work of topic-selection onto them!

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What is your favourite Elton John song? Pinky

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Is there any way you could make peace with Hitler? Part II ======= (This link deals with "emptiness" and it's relationship to the basis for morality, the rest of this rambling depends on it...) http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/119735/285464 So we're in the process of "deconstructing" the conventional interpretation of reality which we all presume. I'll call it the "Entity / Category /...

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Is there any way you could make peace with Hitler? (Part I) As long as we get him safely restrained, sure. Clearly this man did a lot of evil stuff. My view is that the best way to deal with evil is to work on uprooting the source of it, not by punishing the offenders. There is some ego gratification in punishing the guilty -- it makes us feel that the scales have been "evened up" somewhat. But in moments of clarity, we sense...

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How likely is it that the world will fall out of orbit? what would happen and how could we survive? Wow, did we run out of things to worry about already?! :-) This is not an issue. Many millions of years from now, our orbit will naturally decay. Until then, let's see if we can touch up some of the messy parts of our still-orbiting planet, eh?

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I really would like to know why it seems that people, in general, the past few years, reject wisdom, intelligence and reason? It appears that there is massive movement towards humanity embracing superstition and discounting reason. Why? Well I think the question is a bit to broad, but you are pointing at something that's real. My theory is that it's a reaction to post-modernism. Modernism was largely dominated by the notion that science was going save us, now that this appears unlikely there's a fair amount of anti-science feeling, especially in the U.S. (where science education lags behind much of the...

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How do you deal with multiple phone calls from customers who may be difficult or angry? It's challenging, no question about it. The most important thing is being able to keep your cool -- some people are naturally better at this than others, but a person with strong self-esteem is more likely to be able to just let it "roll off" without taking things personally. Beyond that, having some skill with stress management really helps (meditation, etc.) Finally,...

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What is the rank and leaderboard for? It allows people to see how they're doing at the endless game of accumulating points, in the grand competition for person-with-the-most-points. Whoever wins gets the attention of all the trolls for the duration of their reign.

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Why do people (besides trolls) downrate people who posted their opinion on a question? Well I would consider that to be part of the definition of trolling. Now, let's be clear though: there really is no such thing as "a troll", just as there's no such thing as "an a***ole" -- these are just labels we apply with language and thought. All that's really going on is someone is clicking a button, deciding that they do not want to identify...

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How can someone at a lower level have a higher rank than some one at a higher level in AB ( I see for eg, a contributor with a better rank than a wiz). They cant: you're probably looking at the weekly leaderboard instad of the all-time leaderboard (see the tabs at the top). On a week-to-week basis, a lower-ranked user can produce more points, but their total points will still be lower, and that's reflected in the all-time leaderboard.

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What would you do if your cat peed on your computer parts or computer? Most likely there would be major parts replacement needed: motherboards, power supplies, and hard drives are just not very fond of cat pee.

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My parents cosigned on our home (my husband and I) which we bought in 2003, sold in 2006. they did not put any money into the home and did not receive any profit. how do they get an exemption for the profit we made on the sale of our home. Well if they don't put any of the profit into their bank, there's nothing to do: no profit=no income=no income tax. The proceeds aren't going to them, so there's nothing to report.

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Would your friends say you are arrogant? Yeah, pretty much all the time. I know they're half kidding, but that other half wants to kick my butt!

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What Brand of piano's do you feel is more reliable, and has a good sound? I like Yamaha (and of course Steinway).

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Is global warming really happening because of pollution, or something more natural? (From Union of Concerned Scientists press release 2/2/07) Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most comprehensive review of climate science to date. The report makes clear that global warming is due primarily to human production of heat-trapping emissions and finds that continued warming will bring higher intensity storms, rising sea levels, and more...

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When i click on a folder it goes to serch instead of opening it , how can i restore open as default? It sounds like the sort of thing that might be cured with a reboot.

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Does anyone know anything about software patents, and how to go about patenting an idea without an actual prototype, or anyway of protecting myself and my idea while having someone else program it? If your patent is pending -- meaning you've submitted the application to the PTO, you're fine. Anyone who tried to steal the idea (i.e. the programmer) would be foolish, since it would be very easy to demonstrate that they had infringed your patent. Normally that sort of work would be covered under various non-disclosure agreements which specify the specific intellectual property...

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Is it possible to be a figment of your own imagination? Not only is it possible: it's inevitable. We're all figments of our own imagination, in the sense that it's the mind which cooks up the notion of "myself" as some distinct entity separate from the whole of our experience. There is no "self" without this capacity of the mind to discriminate between "me vs. other", and this discrimination is...

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Do you do volunteer work? What kind? I work as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for abused and neglected children. (http://www.nationalcasa.org). I also volunteer at my Zen center in various ways.

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If you could change one thing about Answerbag 4.0 what would it be and why? Change the rating system to reflect quality instead of just quantity. For example, including factors like number-of-points-per-answer, or relative rank of answers, etc. Anybody can become a Sage in the current system just by spending all their days on AB -- that doesn't mean they actually are doing "quality work". The current system creates a distorted and noisy environment,...

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I feel as though as I am having a nervous breakdown over the future effects of global warming, and I cannot take my mind off it. What can I do to stop fretting about it? That's an interesting problem! While I agree that global warming is an appropriate thing to be concerned about, if it's interfering with your ability to live a normal life and function well, that's not good. Any sort of chronic worry or anxiety is a result of becoming too entangled in one's own thoughts -- regardless of the topic. Basically, you think too much....

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Do you feel a military conflict between the United States and Iran is inevitable? No.

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Should your Right to do something over power the fact that it may not be the right thing to do? Do you put your feelings over the feelings of others even though your actions may have a direct impact on them? Why or why not? It sounds like what you're asking is something along the lines of "how much should selfishness determine one's actions as opposed to concern for others?" This is a pretty big question which doesn't have a single, simple "answer". One way to sort-of answer it is to say that one needs to balance several things at once: I need to take care of myself, and see...

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How do YOU feel when YOU have reached the next level on Answerbag? I'm mildly irritated. I don't like the whole ever-rising levels for everyone, and the absence of any quality-valuation in the levels game. But it's a minor irritation which I have a solution for.

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You have a pile of work on your desk. You are have calls from customer service reps because you are behind in processing your work. What are you going to do to lower your stress level? You need to distinguish between the situation and your own mental / emotional state first, because these need to be addressed in different ways. As far as the situation is concerned, it's important to communicate clearly with those who are expecting work from you -- to let them know what they can actually expect given your situation. As long as you're doing a good job of setting...

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Where do you go to chill out/relax? I do 40 minutes of meditation every day, and usually an hour on Sunday. This practice is something I consider essential -- if I skip a day for some reason, the effect is immediately obvious: I'm more stressed, more likely to be bothered by things, less connected to my own values and sense of well-being. I expect to continue this for the rest of my life. Here's some pretty good...

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I've seen a trick play where one offensive player lifts another player by the foot high enough to dunk the ball! Is this a legal move in H.S. Girls B.Ball? No, it's not legal in ANY form of basketball to use another play (or the backboard) to dunk the ball. It can be fun to watch, though! The Harlem Globetrotters are famous for this kind of joke play.

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Why is the personal savings rate in the United States the lowest it has been since the Great Depression? I'm not sure this is true. A tremendous amount of money gets poured into deferred-tax retirement accounts like 401k, but since this is mostly purchasing mutual funds I wonder if it gets counted as "savings" --- I'm thinking probably not. Do we know what they're actually measuring here?

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Y the hell do u people ask so stupid Questions so u can get stupid answer? Ok, look: here's the deal. AB is only PARTLY about coming up with information answers to questions. It used to be more about that, but now it's more of a social networking site. So if you look at it from that perspective, how many times is "How are you doing?" going to be asked at a typical dinner party? Many, yes? If you hate that question, you probably should stay...

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A news report from scientists tells us that Global Warming is the fault of human activity on the planet. Does this really come as a surprise to anyone? It's good that the report has such massive and authoritative backing, and no it's not a surprise. The one thing that I found surprising is that the Chinese fought hard to water down the language from "virtual certainty" to "90 percent certainty". Clearly they have a big problem with their growing economy and heavy use of coal, but it's sad to see that --...

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What is your opinion of Valentine's Day? Do you Love it or Hate it? I love my wife, truly. But manufacturing a specific day for expressing it, and marketing the heck out of that day... this I do find irritating. It's like the greeting card and floral companies trying to manipulate our relationships. But I do my best each year to try to forget all that, relax, think of my love, and come up with a new and creative way to show my appreciation for her....

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Are biofuels right for you and your car? Well I can't use them on my old car as is... but more importantly it's not clear that biofuels are much of a solution for the planet -- at least the corn-based stuff that the U.S. is suddenly so hot for. The total amount of energy produced by this fuel barely "breaks even" when compared to it's production cost, so there's no significant net gain in terms of C02...

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How can I learn to meditate? What happened to going down to your local center?

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I keep worrying about TaoZen. Are you here and safe? Just post a comment to one of his answers if you want to talk to him.

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Who do you think is the wisest Answerbagger? That would be Auntie Em: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/125324

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If someone answers your question but doesn't rate the question as worthy, why did they answer the question in the first place? And should I bother rating the answer whether it is correct or not? Well I agree that in most cases the courteous thing for the person posting the answer to do is to rate the question. Part of the problem is that this is a fairly new feature on AB (the ability to rate questions). Many of us were "trained" on the old system, which had no such concept as rated answers. So people are learning. Perhaps more important is just to stay calm; the sun...

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Has anyone ever received a negative rating from someone actually willing to leave a comment, who had the guts? (the second part is optional) I've received a couple. I've handed out a significant number of down-ratings, about 98% of them with comments.

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Kind of a fluff Q but, how would you describe me in one word? (criticism is welcomed as well) Curious.

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Do you have any conceivable reason for even getting up in the morning? Well, MM -- I would say that if you're chronically finding it hard to find a reason to get out of bed, that probably qualifies as depression. You should maybe get that looked at. It is NOT normal to feel like life isn't naturally worth living.

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Is anyone besides me wondering where Lady Fuschia is these days? I haven't seen her since Jan 26th. She has a nasty habit of disappearing and trying to have a life -- sometimes for DAYS on end. It's really sad. I've talked to her about it, and she refuses to budge from this behavior.

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Ok- so of you that have interacted with me, if I were to change my name, what should it be? Kdawg is cool, but you gotta get rid of the '1' -- numbers in usernames are NOT cool. Since you need the right number of letters to satisfy the AB Gods, you could just put in a space, like "K Dawg" or "K. Dawg". If you become rich and famous on the 'bag, people will abbreviate it to 'KD'. That's when you get the free T -shirt!

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My comment button is not working again, since the engine tune up, any ideas? I had that problem this morning -- hitting REFRESH on the browser solved it. This could mean that some Javascript code had become obsolete and was being cached by the browser, such that hitting refresh caused the new code to be downloaded.

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What is the meaning of life? I'm never satisfied with any of my own answers to this question -- it's not that my life isn't meaningful, it's that I can't ever get that meaning to fit into WORDS. Everything I say about it leaves something to be desired. So I've given up... rather than try to talk about the meaning of life, now I talk about those things which allow one to experience a...

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What would you do if you was 25 and your dad was the only parent you ad left and you spend a lot of time at his house and help out etc but you get all the crap for eveything going wrong. and its making you feel down all the time any advice anyone? Sometimes it's tough for a relationship with a parent to make the transition to adulthood. In your case, I suspect the problem is that you haven't yet learned to set "boundaries" with your father and enforce them. We all need to be able to "train" those around us about what is and is not acceptable behavior. It might be that you do this well with your peers,...

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What are some good methods for managing priorities? Making a list and ordering the items is simple and time-honored, I've done that a lot over the years. The thing that I find most critical isn't so much the mechanism used to manage the list as it is the internal discipline required to keep revisiting and reviewing the list, and to actually DO what the list says to do. The problem is that what's on the list isn't always...

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I have only been permitted to spend five hours with my children.They will be three years old in April and my ex-wife has taught them to call her new husband Daddy.Considering cost and travel restrictions(they were taken overseas),how can I see them more? That's a tough situation. If they're overseas it's a good bet that any litigation to change your situation would be very costly, and perhaps not make much difference. If I were in your situation, I would put most of my efforts into healing my relationship with the ex-wife (and her new husband). I don't know how much anger and resentment is present in your...

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How do you respond to a friend who constantly belittles everything you do because she's jaded, negative and bitter about everything? It depends on how much her behavior bothers you. There's two things that can happen: she can be a negative influence on you, or you can be a positive influence on her. This depends on you, for the most part. If you're able to be with her and not be bothered deeply by her negativity, your presence can possibly help to provide some "contrast" for her... even when...

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Do you believe in the saying "nothing lasts forever"? This is true: one of the most basic qualities of reality is impermanence. However, we often believe that some things are permanent -- this is possible because we trust our imagination more than our observations. The things we actually observe are all impermanent, but the mind is able to create ideas of permanence (and cling to those ideas in a vain bid for a "solid" sense of...

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What is the most overused phrase yet underpracticed philosophy to date? Be here now.

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ENGLISH STUDIES: I majored in "Modernism" 20 yrs ago.It covered a period c1880 to c1950 odd. Now we have "post modernism".Well every POST-ism follows a previous ism. But I'm puzzled. What is a positive description of POST MODERNISM please? Post-modernism has a variety of definitions. I'll give you mine, and then a Wikipedia link so you can see the rest... Post-modernism is a psychological state characterized by reaction to the "failure" of modernism: modernism was the notion that science and cultural liberalism would save us. Now that this seems very doubtful, there's a widespread sense in the Western...

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If all the answer baggers wanted to meet up for a party.Would you attend and where would you want the party to be? The best place would be Southern California! Let's see why, shall we? - Major airports with lots of cheap flights from all over the world available; - Guaranteed good weather; - Many other tourist attractions to visit (Disneyland, Hollywood, beaches, etc.) - Major crossroads of Interstate highway system for those who drive. However, the main thing missing in this...

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Is Ghandi's concept of peaceful resistance as a means of change valid in a violent, war-like world? The reason Gandhi's method worked is the same reason Martin Luther King Jr.'s method worked: if one stands on understanding that all humanity is interconnected, speaking and acting from that clarity, it awakens this innate knowledge in others. Even though we're prone to selfishness, fear, and warlike behavior, people of courage can still stand up and speak to the higher self...

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My girlfriend is worried I will meet someone on here...has any one ended up in a relationship due to ab? It is possible for romantic relationships to start here. One way you might reassure her is to invite her to visit the site herself, and show her how she can read your activity -- that will let her know that you don't have anything to hide, that everything is out in the open.

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Are you an AntigoneRising fan (like me)?! Yes, she's a good friend to have.

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What is a Kill Switch? In my 25 years working as a programmer or electronic engineer, I've never heard that phrase used in a computer context.

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To Answerbaggers in the higher ranks: Is it worth it? Not for me. I've taken to having the AB staff reset my level to 1 about once a month. There are a variety of things I don't like about having a high level.

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Will painfulginsu return? Why did he leave? I don't think he'll return. I believe he was frustrated by the noisy and hostile atmosphere which sometimes prevails on the 'bag.

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How do you measure success? The ability to produce progress toward a challenging goal is the first criteria. But that's just the most basic level. To be able to do this in an sound ethical context is important -- that includes an ethically acceptable goal, and using acceptable means to achieve it. The last part has to do with our relationship with goals: there's a huge difference between someone who can...

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Do you think it is necessary for two parents to live with the child for him to have a stable personality? No, a single parent can do the job -- but it's much harder. A child needs a stable, loving, safe, predictable environment which provides sufficient structure: that's a tall order for a single parent, but it can be done. There is a lot of research that has been done on child development, there isn't a lot of mystery left about what children need. Children go through...

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If you were an alien,and you just landed on this planet,what is the first thing you would ask someone? "We came for your dinosaurs. Give them to us and nobody gets hurt. Do you see that guy with the ray gun? He's NOT the nice one."

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Why is it that when I'm being myself I'm insulted time and time again? Is myself bad? Should I stop being myself? No, but I would argue that the "self" which is regularly being insulted isn't your real self. These are deep questions that take YEARS to work out: what does it mean to be myself? Who am I? Many people -- especially teens -- think that "being themselves" means saying or doing whatever they feel without concern for what others think. This is definitely NOT...

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Who miss the old answerbag prior to the rankings? The old system had a big advantage: quality was rewarded, and mediocrity was discouraged. Now quantity is rewarded mostly, so that makes the 'bag a very noisy place, with everyone posting every thought that pops into their heads. There's nothing to inhibit the post-o-matics. So in that sense, the old system was better. What are we going to do with 200 Sages, some of whom will...

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What has the most magnetic force in the universe? Unconditional love. It's 8.37 times more powerful than the strongest electromagnet, even when superconducting coils are involved.

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Who here Loves to go bowling? Although I suck at it, I cannot help but have a blast -- in part because of the opportunity to make fun of those who suck even worse than I!

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What is the most important thing in your life? Other people.

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Who was the first non-staff AB user? Brendan Lim: http://www.answerbag.com/profile?id=8

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What movie shook you emotionally? Why? Hotel Rwanda -- although it took liberties with the story a bit, it really brought the horror and tragedy down to a personal level. It really moved me to action afterward, noting that now the same thing is happening in Darfur with approximately the same level of response from the world community: one notch above zero.

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What is your guess as to how many people here are perverted? 100%. But most of us are smart enough to keep our mouths closed about it! ;-)

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What is ONE thing you love about rain? Walking after a rainstorm -- it's as if the rain washed out my mind along with the streets. The sky is reflected in each puddle, the air is sweet, and there's no place else to be.

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My cat is only 9 months old and has just had a litter of kittens. She is so skinny now, I can feel all her bones. What can I feed her to fatten her up so she doesn't look scary thin? Is she eating at all? If not, she may have a cold! Cats won't eat if they can't smell their food, so anything which interferes with her sense of smell (nasal congestion, etc.) can stop her from eating or significantly reduce her intake. Basically, a vet is called for from the sound of it, either way.

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How do you deal with someone who is very manipulative and creates problems between friends. How do I deal with them is probably a very different answer than how I would recommend YOU deal with them, because you and I are different. Without knowing much more about you, I would recommend that you just focus on being yourself and don't get too worried about this person. If you're able to do that, there is a "next level" of relating to this sort of thing -- and...

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Do you believe in Goddess? I believe in you, does that count?

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When you download shareware from a developer that asks for voluntary donations, do you donate? Usually, yes -- after I've spent some time deciding whether it's actually useful for me.

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What kind of questions do YOU give a positive rating too? I usually up-rate almost every question that I "visit", on the basis that if it was interesting enough to draw me in, I want to encourage that kind of question. The exception is when a question is offensive and I'm visiting to flag it or post something critical of the author.

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Do you think humans are still basically primitive? Important parts of our makeup are very primitive. I'm thinking specifically of the fight-or-flight instincts wired into our nervous system, which date back many millions of years. When we're attacked or threatened, adrenaline kicks in, the mind focuses attention instantly on survival, the heart pumps, strength increases, etc. This is a very primitive response, and often it saves...

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Should civil rights be universal or conditional? How do you resolve your answer to fit your worldview? (Ok, this will be confusing to anyone who doesn't read the first 2 comments before reading the answer. How's that for putting the cart before the horse?) So first, I think we all grant that basic human rights should be an entitlement for well-behaved citizens, yes? And that the government and citizens have an obligation to uphold those rights... otherwise you have some form of...

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If someone wrote a book about you, what would it be called? "What the Cat Dragged Out" ...or... "Adventures in Nowhere" ...or... "Monkey See, Monkey Duped" ...or... "Why the Sky Ain't Blew" ...or... "Anyplace Can Be This Place if It Tries Hard Enough" ...or... "Imagining Reality". I guess that's enough for now. No danger that anyone will actually...

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Which question on AB made you think the most? The answer I put the most work and thought into was probably "Who has the best avatar on Answerbag?", for which I cooked up a long list with categories and titles and links. Don't know WHAT I was thinking, really... it just got out of hand and I was having too much fun: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/93237

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Do you believe in extraterrestial life? If so, why? There's no evidence either way. Until there's evidence, holding a belief about such a thing would be inappropriate. It's perfectly OK to say "I don't know", and leave it at that. The notion that one must fill in every gap in knowledge with belief is silly. Being willing to stay with "I don't know" until you REALLY know is called...

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My boyrfriend of3 years cheated on me this oct,he said he made a mistake n begd me to take him back cuz it was just a few kisses. I took him back but i found out a few days ago that he asked th same girl to be his gf,without even breakin up wit me.how?why Well the "why" part hardly matters -- obviously he has problems with fidelity. The "what to do?" part is easy: dump him and recover your self respect. He will do this again and again, you're fooling yourself if you think you're going to change him, or that he's going to suddenly have some deep realization that alters his behavior. Those kinds of changes...

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Who are some famous people who have been home schooled? Adam and Eve.

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What rhymes with orange besides door henge? I used to ask this question about once a month for years, and never came up with an acceptable answer from anyone. The closest I know of is two words: "door hinge".

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When one person calls another of the same race brother or sister but does not direct the same expression to another race in the same way ..is this color/race segregation and does this constitute a racist remark? ..(I am not a racist & no offense intended) I don't think it's "racist", that's too strong. There is a kind of solidarity expressed in that sort of thing, and as "group membership" indicators these are fairly benign. But I do think it represents a weakly developed sense of global identity: if someone sees themselves as primarily belonging to the human race first, and their own ethnicity second,...

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My cat has severe allergies so I can't wash her, but occasionally she smells 'catty' and I wondered if there were any homeopathic tips for freshening her fur up? Rumor has it that you can wipe them down with fabric-softener sheets. My guess is a few seconds in the microwave to warm them up would help to free up the tiny flavor crystals! (the sheets, not the cat!)

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Is there anything that just comes naturally to you? (like art, learning, speaking, sewing, anything) What is it? Flapping my jaw.

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One office measures 15X15, yielding square footage of 225. Why is it that an office that measures 16x14 is only 224 sq. ft and 13x17 is only 221? One way to visualize the answer is to take it to the limit: imagine a room 1 X 29. Now imagine that you're going to tile this room with 1' square tiles. So how many tiles do you need? 29, right? Ok, so now you take it down a notch, and have a 2' X 28' room. You can take one tile off the "end" of your original room, but now you have to come up with 27...

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I cashed out my 401K when I quit my previous job. The 10% penalty was taken out as well as Federal and State taxes. Will this hurt my tax return, will I end up oweing money? Will it "hurt" your return? Well that depends on whether or not the right amount of taxes was withheld. It could be that you will get a smaller refund than if this had not happened, but it's also possible that you'll get a larger refund. Basically, you just have to do the math, there's no way for us to know the answer without exact details of your income and...

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What keeps a person from downloading a free trial (Ex. Anti-Virus) onto their computer and when it expires they just download the trial again and again? Does it work? The first time these applications are installed they write a "signature" somewhere in a permanent location (i.e. the Windows registry or hard drive). When you attempt to reinstall them, they check for this signature -- which remains even after being uninstalled. So they can recognize that the application was previously installed. To defeat it would require fairly advanced...

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Do you speak another language fluently? Numerous computer languages. And a little bit of Spanish.... maybe just enough to get myself into trouble in a Mexican bar without really knowing why.

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You are out of work. You can not get on welfare. The food banks will not be open for 5 more days. You are very hungry and broke. Would you steal food? My mother had 6 kids, and finally had to leave my abusive father (in 1963!) to preserve any chance of our having a healthy childhood. She received some help from relatives, but for several years we were very dependent on AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- a Federal welfare program) to survive. She went to school and developed enough secretarial skills to get a job, and was...

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Have you ever heard of the peoples temple? and jim jones? i never heard about it until tonight. were you or anyone you knew affected by what happened? how come no one really discusses it today? Yes, this was a very big story for quite a long time when it happened. Now it's just old news basically, although I've mentioned it once or twice here on AB in response to some topics. People who are old enough remember well. Those who aren't will only know about it if they stumbled onto the story somehow. Basically, it was "discussed out" years ago... as a...

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I don't want my brother to leave me when he gets married. I'll probably cry out of sadness rather than happiness at the wedding, and I'm jealous of his fiance. Is this being selfish? My sister tells me so and says boys shouldn't be this way. It's wonderful that you have such a bond with your brother. There's nothing wrong with that. Life changes our situations sometimes in ways we don't like, and he has to move on now because that's where his life is going. It's OK to be sad, and you should just recognize that your love for him is the reason for your sadness. In time, being sad will pass, and...

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Is it ever OK to feel happy about something bad happening to someone else? I don't think it's very useful to pass judgments like that on yourself (OK vs not-OK... what does that even mean, anyway?) However, if I feel good about someone else's pain or misfortune, I do consider that to be a "red flag" about my own mental state. It's pretty unusual for me. Ultimately, we're all connected. The only basis on which life can truly...

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Who else would like to congratulate AntigoneRising for FINALLY taking the top spot where she deserves (though the leader board has yet to be updated?) I think I'll congratulate BAM for finally being relieved of that jagged honor, and send AR a sympathy card!

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Have you ever been so convinced of your own opinion that you have failed to see the legimate and plausible arguments of others? Absolutely. That's always characteristic of identifying with your own viewpoint -- it distorts perception and the ability to objectively assess all viewpoints. I'm not any more immune to it than anyone else -- the way I deal with that is to keep focusing on having *awareness* as my top priority instead of *viewpoint*. The former unifies, the latter divides.

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School reunions, would you go to yours? Have you already been? What was it like? I went to my 20th (in 1996). I had a good time, but I was disappointed that a lot of my friends didn't show up. The first thing that struck me when my wife and I started walking around and greeting people was how many OLD folks were there! I thought "who ARE these geezers?". At some level my brain was apparently expecting a bunch of teenagers! :-) The highlight of the...

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What do you do when your stressed? Exercise or meditation.

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Why do these non- christians go an nag about us but if we say a thing about them its always that were judging them I always try to draw the line between defense and attack in these matters. Yes, it's true that some people will become aggressive about their faith and "attack" others, and it's appropriate to defend yourself or others against these attacks. But it's a fine line between defending yourself and becoming a counter-attacker. If you do that, you're not helping. ...

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Why do Christians seem so quick to judge and tell you your wrong and going to hell? Self-righteousness attacks on others -- regardless of the religion involved -- is mainly a function of having let someone else do the actual WORK of spiritual development and then taking their words as your own. This is particularly common in sects which emphasize scriptural learning over personal experience. Someone whose religion is primarily grounded in their personal experience has a...

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If Wal-Mart sold alcohol, what would they call their house wine? 10. Chateau Traileur Parc 9. White Trashfindel 8. Big Red Gulp 7. World Championship Riesling 6. NASCAR Bernet 5. Chef Boyardeaux 4. Peanut Noir 3. I Can't Believe it's not Vinegar 2. Grape Expectations 1. Nasti Spumante

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Who's avatar have you seen and thought i like that or very interesting or of some sort? Here's some older answers on this topic, it's probably time for a new contest: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/93237

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I've basically f*cked up my whole education and I'm talentless poor white trash, do I have any hope? Ok, I'll bite. Who said you were talentless? As for hope, I'm not a big fan of it myself... I'm more into effort and planning. But to each their own.

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What is your favorite quote made on AB by an AB user? "...the universe is one large intricate tapestry and pulling out one thread, no matter how poorly stitched it was, will change every other thread in the tapestry. So best to leave it alone, live with imperfection, and be grateful the whole hasn't unraveled." - Auntie Em http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/87454/130120 EDIT = = = = = While you're here, don't forget...

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What do you think about Mormons? Generally they seem a pleasant and decent bunch. In my town, there's a very large Mormon population. We've never had a problem with them.

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Who was the noncommittal male character in the Fifth Dimension's song "Wedding Bell Blues". You mean Bill? I always assumed he was fictional. Maybe Marilyn McCoo's boyfriend. But wasnt' the song written by Laura Nyro? So that would mean it was HER boyfriend. Or somebody made up. Or I dunno, where do you get these questions, Perryman?

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What tips have you got for me to learn to be a better listener? Whatever I try doesn't seem to work, and I want to be better at it :) There is really only ONE major barrier to being a good listener: your interest in yourself. Most of us are completely preoccupied with our own thoughts 90% of the time. Even when we're thinking about other people, there's a heavy dose of "I wonder what THEY think of me" hidden in the thought stream. Don't believe me? Watch your own thoughts very carefully for 30...

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I am nearsighted(cant see far objects) so I got glasses but should I wear them while reading books and when on PC(coz I can clearly see near objects)? I'm also nearsighted. I take my glasses off for reading. However, I have a DIFFERENT prescription for the computer, that helps to ease eyestrain. Myopics (nearsighted people) do not normally use correction for up-close work.

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I can no longer restrain myself from the urge to construct a massive granite monument to my dear friend Auntie Em, the wisest and funniest 'bagger ever. Which of her 10 zillion quotable lines should be carved in the largest letters on this monolith? "There are two ways to get rich. Work harder or WANT less." http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/90960/133766

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I can no longer restrain myself from the urge to construct a massive granite monument to my dear friend Auntie Em, the wisest and funniest 'bagger ever. Which of her 10 zillion quotable lines should be carved in the largest letters on this monolith? Q. Is it really possible to be happy without being successful? A. "If a person is happy they ARE successful regardless of what possessions they may or may not have." http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/91565/136488 =================================================== Q. Is it better to burn out or to fade away? A. "... a lifetime of "fading" away can illuminate...

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How many days a week do you have TWO or more alcoholic drinks, assuming you are old enough? Well it USED to be that I would have 4 or more (I don't know how much more!) 7 nights a week. If I had to travel, my first concern was always "where will the whiskey come from?", and many times the answer was "my carry-on bag". I learned to adapt to the effects of this liquid in various ways, e.g. I would walk with my feet about shoulder-width apart to improve...

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Is it really possible to make good money doing data entry online -- such as $30 to $50 per form and over $200 per day, as one firm claims? Or is it really too good to be true? Somebody who's offering $30-50 per form for "data entry online" is either scamming you or not telling you what the job REALLY entails. For example, it could be that before you can fill out the form you have to sell a $2000 alarm system to someone, because the "form" is an ORDER form for the alarm system. So the job is really cold-call sales, not data entry. You can...

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What do u do when you feel that you just dont belong? Sometimes you do find yourself in a specific situation like that in life and you can change your friends, job, etc. to resolve the problem. But it sounds like your question is more basic than that. It's pretty common for some people to feel as if they don't really belong ANYWHERE -- a sort of chronic and pervasive misfit status. Someone who feels this way really does have...

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Do you ever feel like you have been cursed? Seems like lately nothing is going right. I doubt that you've been cursed. Who would curse you? You're too sweet. But if you tell us more details about your curse, we'll analyze it with our Curse-o-meter XP and tell you the anti-spell.

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If you had to have one song inexorably stuck in your head for the rest of your natural life, which song would you pick? "Cigarettes and Red Vines" by Aimee Mann.

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What word do you spell wrong over and over and over? Occasionally: just TODAY, in fact, I believe I've finally gotten this one straight (my habitual misspelling is "occaisionally"). The Firefox spell-checker has finally trained me!

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If you could have a sit down, face-to-face conversation with an AB-er, who would you choose? Ok, I've always avoided answering these kinds of questions, because there are a LOT of people here I appreciate, and I don't want to leave anybody out. But I can't hold out any longer -- the need to say this stuff just overwhelms contrary concerns. But your question is too limiting for my list, so I've expanded it in various ways, sorry... Person I'd most like to...

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What exactly is religion? The root Latin word "religio" means "to bind". A common interpretation of this is "to bind man and God together". However, belief in monotheism is far too narrow to include all religions; even insisting on belief in supernatural beings is too strict a criteria, because Buddhism and Taoism don't require that. The most general definition which I like is...

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Girls: Do you like a cocky man or a sensitive one? Ok, I failed your gender pre-qualification, but I gotta take this one on anyway -- it's the perfect place to test my theory about this topic. I've had enough wives and girlfriends in my life to have formed some strong views about it. My view is that the common sense about men's sensitivity is mucked up because the word "sensitivity" isn't being properly...

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What would your response be to someone that said "Gee, I thought you were dead"? "I wondered why you were digging through my trash!"

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For the Atheists, do you or any other atheists you know fear Christianity, or even religion in general? I think there are some non-religious people who fear religion, yes: - Some have an uncertainty that they haven't really confronted: they believe that they MIGHT actually be destined for Hell, for example, but are in denial about their own concerns. This is particularly common among those who were raised in strict religious homes and then abandoned the faith. - There's plenty to...

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What are some possible reasons why I constantly push people away (metaphorically speaking)? You mean like not responding to their e-mails on this topic!? :-)

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I had a hysterectomy a few years ago, and I just realized that I haven't had a period since. Am I pregnant? Yes, you definitely could be. But the baby in such a case would not be strictly human. It's sort of a variation on "virgin birth", except instead of omitting the male seed we omit the womb. Don't worry about it: if the baby has more than 1 head, just buy extra earmuffs and pacifiers. Oh, and don't name it "Damian" if it's a boy.

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In a few years, do you think that 75% of the questions asked on answerbag will have already been asked on here before? Sometimes I think we're already there! Really, I don't mind all the duplication... in the older times, people saw the 'bag more as a repository for "correct answers" to factual questions -- there was a time when opinion answers weren't even allowed. Now it's much more of a social-networking site, with little emphasis on accumulating a database of facts....

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Do you ever feel like nobody understands you and you are alone? Certainly every adult can relate to this feeling, and it's normal to have it once in a while. But if you have it chronically... that's serious. That's more of an emotional or personality disorder, not just a "rough period". So for someone who occasionally feels isolated and misunderstood, just allowing that to progress through it's normal stages is fine. But...

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Im feeling really down and upset a lot at the moment. does anybody have any advice on how to pick myself back up? It may be that being "down and upset" is exactly what needs to happen right now. I suspect you have some idea that you should be "up" all the time... but that isn't realistic, and having a fixed idea of how you should be is actually harmful. Allow yourself to be where you are: be aware of it, but don't wallow in it, and don't feel like you have to rush in...

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My boyfriend of 6 months does not communicate with me. I think at this point conversation should be flowing & it's not. One day he will talk about marraige, but never say "I love you". It's very hard to get him to talk about his feelings. Advice? The first thing to deal with is your expectation / standard "conversation should be flowing". This seems to be a fixed and unquestioned belief that you have, which means it's going to cause you to make something wrong: probably him. So now we have a situation in which the guy -- for reasons we don't know -- doesn't talk much, and he's in a situation where his...

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I fall in love and everything always goes wrong. How can I prevent this from happening again? I do not want to be alone the rest of my life. I suspect you have beliefs and expectations about your relationships which are causing problems. Without knowing more details, all we can do is speculate. Some common mistakes you might be making: - Expecting your relationship to make you happy. Won't happen. Be happy first, then BRING your happiness to the relationship. Yes, having love in your life makes it easier to be happy,...

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Is there an argument against homosexual marriage that is entirely secular? Yeah, some of the same arguments that fit for heterosexual marriage: a big commitment, not for the immature, etc. Marriage is always something to be considered very carefully, regardless of your partner's genitalia.

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What do you personally do when you are drowning in your own thoughts? Observe them instead of getting tangled up in them -- i.e. the basis of awareness practice / meditation. EDIT ========================================= OK, if you have trouble with following the breath or counting breaths and observing thoughts, here's another variation which might be more suitable: "jotting the thoughts". This is a variation of my own invention,...

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A few months ago my girlfriend and I moved into a house. I rented it in my own name and all of the utilities are in my name. She has 2 children 12 and 14. I want to throw her out (many reasons). Can I? You have the legal right. But you might want to post more details unless you want all hell to break out here... from the little bits in your answer, it sounds like you want to throw a mother and kids out on the street because you can't handle them -- i.e. a triumph of selfishness over manhood and being a head of household. So unless they're serial killers, you can probably expect a...

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Why is life so complicated? Complicated and simple are actually two sides of the same coin: in order to see complexity, you have to have the notion of simplicity, and vice-versa. So neither complexity NOR simplicity have any independent reality of their own. But so what? That's not really what we humans are concerned about when this question comes up, is it? What we want to really know is "why am I...

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Is the Muslim religion a threat to western civilization? The religion is actually called Islam -- a "Muslim" is a person who practices Islam. Rather than go down the tunnel of debating religious beliefs and assessing an entire group of about 2 billion people in a single conclusion, I try to focus on speaking up for religious tolerance when these kinds of questions come up. It's pretty common for the human mind to go into a sort...

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Have you ever had alien contact.. or thought u had? Yes, I did... well, I thought it was alien. But you know, when somebody is totally bald and bug-eyed, wearing a black synthetic space suit from the neck down, and walking with a strange bowlegged gait, this can happen -- especially if it's the first time you've seen one of those weird bluetooth hands-free cell phones. He was speaking in tongues loudly -- to his unseen master --...

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Do you usually let people know when they've crossed your boundaries or do you withdraw emotionally? Sometimes both: when someone crosses the line, it may take me a few minutes to realize it... then I'll tell them something rather direct about it. If telling them doesn't resolve the issue, I will withdraw and reduce my own exposure. However, I'm pretty good about not staying closed off: if they get the message and decide to shift the way they relate to me, I'm pretty...

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Is there another way to relieve stress other than cutting? I heard snapping a rubber band on your wrist works but havent heard any others. Awareness practice (meditation) is definitely the most effective solution. However, it takes effort and training. Getting some therapy is a decent alternative, and is significantly less demanding.

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They say communication is key in a relationship but how do I tell my fiance it feels like shes pushing me away without her getting mad upset or tripping out or anything I already know2use "I feel statment but bessides that I dont know what2say2? start off Communication IS key, but we have a lot of bad ideas about what communication is. Communication is NOT telling your partner every thought or feeling you have. Communication is NOT dumping your anger, anxiety, or jealousy in their laps. When you say it feels like she's pushing you away, what does that mean exactly? What is she doing or saying -- or what are you expecting that...

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For people who believe in God... And have tripped on shrooms, acid, or LSD before... Do you feel some type of connection or understanding between you and God when tripping? Some form of that is a pretty universal experience with psychedelics -- at least for those who don't just have a bad trip. These are legitimate spiritual experiences: but that doesn't mean you're actually talking to God... the interpretation of the experience is still very closely bound to your own beliefs and conditioning. People in animistic cultures (those which...

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Will I ever begin to live my life? You already have. This IS your life. What makes it seem odd is that you're harboring ideas about your REAL life being something other than THIS. This is a very common situation we find ourselves in: we're always waiting for life to start -- when we get older, or when we get the right job, or the right relationship, or when we get out of debt, or.... (fill in the blank) ...

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Is there a limit in the points a question or an answer can get? If there is, how many? If there's no limit, which are the questions/answers that have got the most points? There is no limit. The highest rated questions can be found by clicking on the "learn" tab: http://www.answerbag.com/c_view/1?save=true I don't know for sure, but I believe the highest rated ANSWER is probably Superpanda2's massive 444 points in response to the top-rated question "What are levels on Answerbag?": http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/86908

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Why does my wireless connection - which is excellent - go from being connected at 54 down to 2 back to 24 down to 1 & so on, it is making me nuts, please help! There are all sorts of factors which can affect the radio signal quality for a wireless system (or any radio-based system). It's possible, for example, that there is intermittent interference from some piece of equipment in your house, or even your neighbor's house. The list of possible causes is truly limitless. It's better to just focus on trying to improve your signal...

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If your W2 form is lost in the mail, how do you go about getting it replaced? Contact the employer who sent it. Their payroll department or service can send a new one.

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Where can I get a free copy of the Paul Anka song, "Having My Baby"? If you got a good story about WHY you need this, I think we'd all enjoy that. What a wonderful way of showing how much you love us, no?

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Who said, "Quality will be remembered long after price has been forgotten"? The one AB staffer who opposed the rating system change in 4.0

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What do you think about the fact that, theoretically, an Answerbagger could achieve "Sage" status with moderation points alone - never asking or answering a single question? Well if somebody really wanted to be nothing but an unpaid public servant, and flag all the mis-categorized and offensive content, I would think that person actually deserves sagehood. But who would spend their time that way?

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President Bush wants Americans to reduce their energy consumption by 20% by 2010. Is this do-able? I think it's certainly theoretically possible. Do we have the will to do that? Not without a major shift in public attitude. Currently we are the most consumption-oriented culture in history: we have a sort of national anxiety that if someone asks us to conserve, cut back, or do more with less that we'll just die of frustration or boredom. We don't have to look any...

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How can I refrain from being so self critical? The best way to resolve this is to learn to be aware of your own "tape loops": repetitive patterns of thinking and feeling which run on autopilot due to past events and conditioning. We all have this sort of thing. The mind is a "programmable" instrument, and we've each had incidents in our lives that were painful, and adapted in various ways by building up behavior...

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Why is Boredasmustard an expert in Theology when she doesn't believe in God? Well it happens. Somehow my old account became an expert in "ejaculation" -- I can't say I know much more about it than anyone else really, I probably had some high-rated answer in that category and wasn't even aware of it. Really, I like BAM, and I'm nervous about your question because it sounds a little too close to a personal attack. But I think she'll be...

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What would be a good 15 year anniversary gift for my husband? Money's tight, but he wouldn't care for any of these: http://www.happy-anniversary.com/year-of-marriage/year-fifteen.html One thing I've seen that's widely appreciated is custom photo gifts: albums with favorite pictures, or coffee mugs with family photos embossed (there are services which do this for a fee). My wife received a wall calendar from one of our girls made by a service of Snapfish.com: you upload the photos and lay them out online, and they ship it to you. It's very nice, with...

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What would be a good 15 year anniversary gift for my husband? Money's tight, but he wouldn't care for any of these: http://www.happy-anniversary.com/year-of-marriage/year-fifteen.html I think you need to post more information about him so people don't just offer blind guesses. What sort of person is he? What does he like or dislike? Do you have any skills that might be turned into gift-making (crafts, poetry, etc.)? The more people have a sense of who he is, the more relevant their gift suggestions can be. You can post an answer to your own question with details...

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How to become expert in programming language. any tips to make programming easy to understand. The hardest part is just getting sufficient experience. I think the best way to do that is to work on real projects: programs that are actually going to be useful to someone -- even if that someone is just yourself. The first substantial program I wrote (back in the early 80's) was a checking account program for myself: to keep track of transactions and calculate the balance, etc. I...

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How many answerbag users preferred the previous answerbag format? I like the new format... it's the rating system that's the problem. Simply put, the new rating system emphasizes quantity over quality, and that has made the 'bag an excessively noisy place, as everyone who is craving points just posts whatever thought pops into their head, hoping it will be rated. I think the cure for this is to modify the rating formula so that quality is...

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A chance for resurrection, what question that you asked on here did you not get a satisfactory answer or not enough exposure in your view? Include links so we can all help out... Well I once asked people to write an "Answerbag poem". It was kind of a demanding question; even so I got some wonderful responses. But I was hoping for more: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/94354 (The "contest rules" are the last entry)

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What is your philosophy of life? To expand on what JudithLover said: philosophy is an intellectual enterprise, for the most part -- a bunch of IDEAS about reality. But ideas are not reality, they're just concepts. It's like the relationship between a map and the territory, or a menu and the meal: if you try to eat the menu, you're seriously confused. But we try to eat our philosophies all the time. We...

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"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."...Do you agree/disagree? I agree... given the common-sense definition of "power", and Auntie Em explains why pretty well I think. However, I don't like the common-sense definition of power: I think it needs refinement. The distinction I draw on this topic is between POWER and FORCE. I say that what we normally call power (e.g. political power, the power of position or dominance) is actually force...

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The Wicked Witch just landed on your house,what are you going to say to keep her from putting a spell on you? Wanna see my troll collection?

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Are you having the same problem as me? I can't see the posted comments for answers without commenting myself. Yes, this is a bug I and several others have reported to the staff a number of times. Sometimes refreshing the page solves the problem. I don't know when or if it will get fixed, it is a real pain. I find that it will disappear for several days or a week and then re-emerge: some days being much worse than others. Very mysterious.

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Is life made to be questioned? It's very important to have a "questioning" stance with regard to many things. We're born into an ocean of pre-existing beliefs and practices -- our "personal culture", which includes the traditions of our country, region, racial heritage, and family. Then we enter the education system, which despite recent improvements, still largely consists of pumping...

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Why do we nuture our emotional pain when we could just let it go? Because we're more interested in the persistence of our identity than we are in being free from pain. There's this common-sense notion that we're all seeking happiness. It's true to some degree: we all have our ideas of what we think would make us happy, and we're not shy about trying to bring those things into our lives. Leaving aside for a moment the possibility...

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So, I'm a quiet, shy guy with not a lot going for him, i not in a band, im not too smart, and im not drop dead gorgeous either (not ugly). How can i meet someone with my reputation as "that quiet kid" Well I'm not a quiet, shy guy. But there are times when I've felt quiet and shy, so I know what you're talking about. You don't need to change: what you DO need to do is to stop trying to change yourself, and stop worrying about being somebody other than who you are. All of those concerns create a "mental noise" which gets in the way of just BEING with...

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Has anyone ever tried to be totally self-sufficient? (Growing your own food, etc) I agree with Drublic, this is extremely rare... I would take it one step further and say that in the real world, it's actually impossible: even if you were to walk naked into the woods and disappear (and survive), an absolute definition of "self-sufficient" would need to include raising yourself from an infant, and having no need for others in any way throughout your life. If...

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If anyone relates..how do you deal with being alone? I enjoy being alone. One of my favorite things is taking a long, slow walk. Really slow... like... any 3 year old would blow right past me. It's nice to savor just the slow rhythm of feet on pavement, the leaves rustling, cats poking their heads around houses, planes lined up for LAX in a neat 30 mile row. There are lots of things I enjoy doing alone. Very nice stuff. But I...

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What is the best free c++ compilier on the net? If you're ONLY targeting Windows, Microsoft provides an "Express" version of Visual C++ which is quite good. It's their standard version with a few advanced things stripped out.

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Why is it that no matter what I do, I always seem to end the day feeling like a did something wrong? This is a case where you need to post more details: take an example from some recent day, and describe as exactly as possible what you thought you did wrong.

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What's your take on Post-Modernism? Well if you're asking for a definition, Wikipedia does a pretty thorough treatment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism Post-modernism is a topic I touch on regularly in my rantings about Zen. My focus is mainly on it's relationship to fundamentalism. By "fundamentalism", I mean a general clinging to traditional conceptual structures, such as "God set the...

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How is Nihilism different from existentialism? Nihilism is the absence of basis for values and meaning: life is empty and meaningless, and there's nothing you can do about it. "Might as well party and look after #1" is the typical solution. Existentialism is "there's no objective basis for meaning, each person carves out meaning by taking responsibility for their own life and the meaning thereof". You...

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"If all the world's a stage and we are merely players..." what game are we playing? The game is to find out who's behind the mask you're wearing on stage.

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Are you patriotic? Yes and no. As an American, I recognize and appreciate many things about our nation and culture: a broad degree of freedom, values like the protection of individual and minority rights and an emphasis on personal responsibility and opportunity, etc. There are quite a few good things to say about our country and it's heritage. On the other hand, I'm very concerned about...

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When, if ever, did you stop caring about the points and levels? Well I found when I got to somewhere around 10th on the all-time leaderboard that I was starting to care about levels. I'd notice thoughts like "don't up-rate that wonderful answer from BAM, because she's ahead of you!" (this was before she was SO far ahead that it would be hopeless to manipulate the game!) So that was one of my early wake-up calls about points and...

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Below is one of the famous "ink blots" from the Rorschach Test. PLEASE just name 1-2 things that you see, like a dog, a bat, a tree. It has to do with sexual preference to some degree. What do you see in it? Two VERY ugly horses lying side by side after making the bad kind of love. They're both smoking cigarettes.... I can't make out the exact brand, but it's definitely a Philip Morris product. Either that, or the pelvic skeleton of a creature I hope I never have to challenge to a crotch-kicking duel.

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What are ways that you've found peace with uncertainty? Uncertainty is not a problem unless you're addicted to certainty. To the degree that one is attached to certainty, uncertainty will be troubling and upsetting. Since life is full of uncertainty by nature, to be attached to certainty is a guarantee that peace will be elusive. So, as a practical matter, it's valuable to observe one's own thoughts and attitudes, and notice...

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Recently I've been trying to calm down when I'm mad, but I'm worried it might not be good for me in the long run. Is there anyway I can suppress my anger without it building up over time? It's important to deal with anger properly: you don't want to suppress it OR vent it. Suppressing it is bad because it tends to go "underground", change forms, and manifest in unhealthy ways. Venting it is bad because you're spraying it around on others and making trouble for yourself. So what to do? The correct resolution is to experience it fully: be angry,...

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When you first saw this question, what page on answerbag did you see it on? The homepage? The new arrivals page? Someone else's profile? The unanswered questions page? I like to review the new questions within certain categories, so I click the category links on the new questions page. That filters out about 90% of the things I'm not interested in. It does mean that I have to scan several different categories to get my fix. So I encountered this question while scanning the recent "Outside the bag" postings.

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I have trouble finishing what I start, any words of advi...? You have too much time on your hands, Bob.

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What does it take to start my own political party? All you need is someone to blame for problems. Everything else is optional! :-)

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Horrible position. All my friends talk behind eachothers back. My girlfriend talks to her ex late at night/hangs out with him, and than lies about it. Should I seperate myself from everyone? But than I'm ALL alone? Be alone or surrounded by bad people? There's two things you can do here: be alone, or be a positive influence / leader in that group. I recommend the latter, but the former is still better than hanging around and being "one of the crowd", going along with what you know is destructive behavior.

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How old do you think Joel is? He's about 32. He was a stunt double in "Hook" at 16, which was released about 16 years ago.

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Is a life without hope worth living? We pretty much take it for granted that hope is an important part of life, and we fear losing hope; we fear despair. The underlying condition which makes us grasp for hope IS a sense of desperation or dissatisfaction about life as it is. We feel cut off from love, from freedom, from satisfaction, from meaning, ... really, we feel cut off from being truly ourselves, and that sense of being...

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You are the MOST liberal U.S. senator rabbidly boarding on socialism. You must go hunting with Dick Cheney. There's no getting out of it. What do you do during the trip to protect your life? I dress myself up as Rush Limbaugh.

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Which takes less water when doing dishes? filling the sink, Letting the water run or the diswasher I've read several times that a modern dishwasher is the most efficient method, but I can't cite sources. However, I always find I have to "pre-wash" the dishes, and I do that by filling the sink and trying to minimize the amount of water wasted. I'm pretty sure that the faucet runs less time this way, at least when there are lots of dishes to clean. Just a...

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Are you important? Do you really matter? Yes and no. Each person is both "nobody special" and "the whole world". On the one hand, the world is a huge place, and there's sharp limits to the value of any single individual, regardless of how we measure that value. Even a great person like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., with all of their accomplishments and contributions... is still a drop in the bucket...

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Me and my ex have been broken up for over 4 months. He has a new girlfriend (I'm constantly obsessing about them) I think about him more and more every day. I thought it would get easier it's only getting harder. When will this jealousy ect. go away? Basically you're having a kind of "identity crisis": you were drawing much of your sense of self from your relationship and the attention that having a man provided. With that gone, you're unstable and dissatisfied. Every one of us has to struggle with the basic questions of who we are and what our lives are about. It's quite common for us to come up with...

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I have a fantasy about being shrunk to a couple of inches tall by a good looking lady and then eaten alive (swallowed whole not chewed). Are there any open minded ladys out there who may find this interesting. Anyone who would do it if possible? I'm not a lady, let alone an open-minded one. However, if you can shrink yourself to a couple of inches tall, I will do everything in my power to find someone to swallow you whole. Good luck... it's so rare to find anyone with vision under 12" these days.

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Whats your favorite bible verse? "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" - Matthew 5:9

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Do you think Shaq is a talented Athlete, or just BIG? He's both huge and talented: his problem now is that he's getting old. But I've been a longtime Laker fan and watched plenty of amazing feats in the Shaq-Kobe era, in the days when I rarely missed a game. One I remember in particular: Shaq leapt halfway out of the building to block a teardrop layup -- and caught the ball with his left hand after tapping it with his right....

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What are some good haircuts for guys that I should consider for myself? The only one you don't have to pay to maintain: every 3 weeks, a #3 comb on the electric trimmer puts it all back in place! And if you take a nap in the middle of the day there's no concern for messing it up... :-) Of course, it helps to have a less frightening face. I just smile a lot to make up for it.

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Do you love lamp? I think your question is getting bashed for being in the wrong category. Since your username is "webmaster5", I'm presuming you mean Linux Apache Mysql PHP (LAMP), and yes, I love it. But I've flagged your answer for re-categorization so it doesn't just confuse everyone. If this isn't your intent, have someone flag it back...

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I am in a place where I know I can not change my husband after 5 yrs of marriage. I know it is time to get out, but I have moved most of my stuff then I froze and I cant seem to let go. can someone please help me Life isn't a painting, and people aren't statues. In order to be alive, people have to change: it isn't a matter of you changing him, or him changing you, it's a matter of LIFE changing both of you. This must continue until your bodies can no longer sustain themselves, that's what "til death do us part" means. But there's another kind of death...

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Do you ever read some of the answers, questions and comments and just want to cry and give that person a hug? Yeah. And half the time that person is BAM! :-)

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I found out how to get to the AB chat room if anyone cares. http://gabbly.com/answerbag.com This isn't actually an "Answerbag chat room". You can put ANYTHING after the "gabbly.com" to create a chat room. It has no affiliation with answerbag, other than the fact that Joel and the staff happened to type in "answerbag.com" as the tail end of that prefix on the magical day that the myth of an Answerbag chat room came into being.

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My son is only 11 and a bit overweight. He recently found out that many pro sports have turned to yoga (including football - which he LOVES). He wants to get started, but I'm new to yoga myself and don't know where to start. Yoga has mental benefits as well as physical: it helps with concentration and relaxation. This is a great thing for a kid to interested in. As FineBalance says, there are lots of instructional videos available and it's common for community centers to offer classes. The gym I go to offers classes as well.

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Why on Answerbag do some people ask questions, then fail to rate the answers to those questions? I agree that it's a courtesy issue. When you ask a question, you're inviting people to interact with you, and the polite / responsive thing to do is to rate or comment on the serious responses at least. Rather than answer "why don't people do this", I would just encourage you... and others.. to keep reminding people about these little courtesies that make the...

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Do you care what people think of you? Yes, I'm not immune to that, and I'm pretty confident that people who claim they don't care are either fooling themselves or totally devoid of self-awareness. There's nothing wrong with caring about your public image: we all have to accept the fact that the way others interact with us is based on their IMAGE of who we are, and that our lives are affected by how others...

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WHAT WAS THE WORSE THING YOU EVER DID TO YOUR FRIENDS? I.E. TALKED SHIT ABOUT THEM? Please clean up your language in questions, this is a public site with many different kinds of people participating.

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Is there such a thing as moral absolutes, or is it ALWAYS just a matter of perspective? Neither of these views are correct. The basis for moral thinking is understanding the interconnections between all of life. My actions affect others, and vice-versa. Furthermore, "my life" cannot be truly separated from the lives of others. A person who sees this is able to make sound moral decisions without being bound to an absolute set of rules about right and wrong. A...

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Would you say i'm a good kid if i'm thirteen, get straight a's, don't do drugs, don't fight with anybody, and don't slack;not spoiled? Well of course those are all good qualities to have. Others here have added some helpful feedback, so that leaves me free to turn the perspective around to a different angle... Being a teen is tough: a lot of development has to happen in a relatively short period of time to go from being a child to being an adult. This is a time when people do a lot of "experimenting" with...

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My boyfriend says that he thinks I am asexual. How do I go about this and trying to solve the problem. I don't know what to do anymore. Well you might want to post an answer to your own question with a bit more detail. I find I'm left having to guess a bit on this one: - How do you feel about having sex with him? Is there something holding you back or just a lack of interest? - How often do the two of you have sex? - How often does he want to have sex? - Are there other issues in your relationship that are...

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When you have been with the same person for years and you feel like you have lost all passion in the relationship what do you do give it up or try to find the passion again and how do you go about finding passion again It's a mistake to look at your relationship as if it's supposed to provide you with passion. It's YOUR job to find the source of passion in your own life, and BRING that to your relationship. People looking to get passion OUT of their relationship are setting themselves up for frustration and failure. So what can you do to be more passionate about life? Get serious about...

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Was your religion passed on or did you decide to follow a particular faith w/o the influence of your parents? My parents were Christian, and although I came close I never could bring myself to adopt it. Since I was about 17, I've had an on-again, off-again interest in Zen Buddhism, which finally turned into full-time ON about 4 years ago. However, it's not quite right to say that "I made up my mind about a higher power". Zen isn't big on that kind of statement, because...

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Do you consider marriage a big goal to achive in your life? I do. So does my wife.

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When I realize that I am having a dream or nightmare I can control the events for a short time before I wake up. Can anybody else do this? And if so what did you do in your dream or nightmare? This is not uncommon, it's called "lucid dreaming". Some people actually specialize in developing their ability to dream lucidly. As to what I've done with my lucid dreams? Hmm... um... I ... um... I saved a cat from a burning building. Yeah, that's it.

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How does one arrive at the conclusion of "I think, therefore I am"? This is a famous conclusion of the philosopher Descartes. He was trying to establish a fundamental basis for everything in life: something which could not be doubted. He hopped through quite a few hoops to come to this famous conclusion "I think, therefore I am" ("Cogito ergo sum"). The basic idea was that he observed his thoughts directly, and found that he...

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FUCK YOU ALL This is not an acceptable thing to post either as a question or an answer.

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Survey/Poll: Would you like to see Answerbag require anonymous comments for all "Not Helpful" ratings? I'll turn the results in to Answerbag HQ, so the more votes, the better. I would like to see the OPTION to choose either anonymous or identified comments. Either way, the user should be required to comment in order to down-rate; it would be nice if they had a choice about whether or not to identify themselves.

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WHat is John_1315's deal, anyone? It is not acceptable to "call someone out" publicly like this in an "attack question". If you have a problem with their postings, you can flag them for the moderators, and you can down-rate. This is not the way to handle it.

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For those who repeatedly abuse AB *cough cough John_1315*, wouldn't it be more efficient to just blacklist their AP address(es), so that they wouldn't be able to create new accounts? Is this possible? Personal attack questions are unacceptable.

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When do you think the apocalypse will come? Whenever you stop taking responsibility for your own life.

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Who has the most level on this website Boredasmustard (also known as "BAM") has the highest level, followed closely by AntigoneRising. The entire list can be viewed here: http://www.answerbag.com/stats?board=1&period=alltime

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Why do parents assume unconditional love from a child, even when they neglect, abuse or ignore the child? Everyone wants unconditional love. Parents want it from their children, and children want it from their parents. Spouses want it from each other, and so forth. It's what everyone wants. We all have the capacity to give and receive such love, but only in short spurts: to be able to love another unconditionally for more than a short time represents a highly developed state that most...

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Why do Jehovah Witnesses Kill? In the news many cult members have killed their children. Child murder is a sin if you ask me. By Christian Peper What you're doing with these kinds of questions is called "trolling". If it persists, your Answerbag account will probably be deleted. This is not legitimate discussion, you're just trying to start fights.

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What ever happened to davoomac and Answers101? Davoomac has been out but recently announced his return. Don't know about Answers101.

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Has anyone heard of answer bag chat? if you haven't you should try it The rumors are distorted... If you go to this link: http://gabbly.com/answerbag.com ...you'll find the infamous "answerbag chat". It doesn't actually have anything to do with Answerbag, other than the fact that the staff and users were playing around with this public service a few days ago. You can actually create your own chat room with any properly formed URL...

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Why did my daughter change overnight when she reached 13? from sweet and gentle child to a unreasonable, arrogant, person. Any one out there know what i'm talking about? Yes, it happens! Sorry :-) Adolescence is the time when parents get to pay for all the joy they experienced in the early years of child ownership. Seriously, though... this is when kids start to make the transition to being adults, which involves performing all sorts of vile "experiments" with their personality and sense of self. In particular, the need to distinguish...

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Assuming, the human race somehow survives itself and the natual forces of the universe, and nothing supernatural intervenes, man is allowed to evolve, what is his ultimate destination, when does evolution decide to go no further? There's no reason to expect an "ultimate destination". Evolution isn't a process which reaches some static, fixed, and final state... there's just endless changes proceeding on as long as the conditions which allow life exist. To stop the process, you'd have to stop life itself -- change is an essential characteristic of living systems. Also, I agree with...

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I am a twelve year old. i am physically abused by my father very often. he hits and kicks me even when i don't do anything wrong. i am afraid to tell an authority in case they take me away from him. he is the only family i have. what should i do? It's very important to talk to an authority. They will be able to ensure that your father gets the kind of help he needs. The authorities understand that the best place for a child is almost always with their real parents rather than in a foster home or group home, and they will do their best to work with him on his anger problem. You don't have to live in fear all the time. ...

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How do you break up the monotony of day to day life? I don't. Monotony is only a problem if you're not giving yourself fully to each moment as it arises. In the Japanese tea ceremony, there is an exact and precise procedure for doing everything... how the water is boiled, how the tea is stirred, how the napkins are folded. There's an entire elaborate procedure just for scooting across the floor from your seat to pick up your...

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How generator works There are several types, but they all depend on a basic electrical principle: if you move a magnetic field past a coil of wire, electricity will flow in the coil. So for example, a very simple generator may have a spindle with magnets embedded in it, and the spindle is surrounded by coils of wire which don't touch the spindle. That allows the shaft to rotate while the coils hold...

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Why do we always want bad guys? I've noticed 3 things about this phenomenon: - There's a perception that bad boys are more exciting: that they're pushing the envelope of what's acceptable, and that this makes being with them more exciting. - Most women are attracted to confidence, and a guy who is indifferent to ethics and others -- i.e. a "bad boy", is often mistaken for confident...

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Do you prefer to be right or to be at peace? "Being right" is a major problem for human beings. We think we can possess the truth by wrapping it up into concepts, and then we think we can define ourselves by attaching our identity to this "truth". This is a DISEASE, not something to value. Every time we heroically claim to stand up for the truth, we're basically bashing some other viewpoint and creating...

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My husband died almost a year ago. Since his death I have dreamed of him holding me, kissing me and making love to me. People think I am crazy when I say this. Sometimes I dream of him looking out a window, am crazy or what? You obviously have a very deep connection with him. I don't think it's a problem that you want to hang on to that; your heart is keeping itself company, basically. Your relationship with him continues on, in a certain sense. The only time I would be concerned is if you're otherwise having trouble "processing" his departure: do you still function in the rest of...

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I am a single mom looking for ideas on ways to make enough money to support my kids.I have no college & no job experience that amounts to anything worthwhile.I am stictly looking for ways to make $.Don't say Burger King cuz their min. wage pays nothing. You mentioned not having money for a babysitter: how about doing childcare in your home? You'd have to find out what the licensing requirements are, but you already have experience caring for kids, and childcare is EXPENSIVE for most working parents (meaning, pays reasonably well).

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I have a really bad earache. Do I have to go to the doctor, or is there something else I can do/take? b/c I really REALLY hate the doctor's office.... Over-the-counter painkillers (aspirin, ibuprofen, aceteminophen) will help somewhat, but yes you should go to a doctor. It could be serious.

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I was raised up mainly on my own my mother worked every night until 2 am leaving me home alone and she never really was affectionate or loving and my dad left me when I was young, Could my depression be from the way I was raised or genetic? Amanda, All kids need a warm, loving environment to grow up in -- it's like the nutrient fluid womb of childhood. Without that, the young personality twists itself up into knots trying to find love: trying to be somebody lovable, basically. Of course, all children are lovable and deserve to have that environment, but not all parents are able and willing to provide it -- often...

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Whats missing in your life? Nothing. But since that's a boring answer, let's ramble on a bit! :-) Certainly there are things we all need which are basic: food, shelter, safety, some measure of health. Then there are more "advanced" needs, which aren't about physical survival: love, a sense of belonging, self-esteem, an opportunity to contribute and be valued. If any of these needs...

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Where is Answerbag located? They're located in Santa Monica, CA (just west of L.A.)

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Why do people kill? I think Vantenkeist has a point: there's more than one reason for killing. Probably what would be more attuned to your question would be to turn it around and ask "what inhibits people from killing?" I think there are several inhibitors -- things which prevent us from acting out our anger, greed, and fear with such explosive violence as to cause the death of another: -...

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Would you consider a physical relationship with someone you have met on the net? Yes. Although I'm already in a physical relationship with my wife, so she would probably veto that sort of thing.

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Do you belive in true love? Absolutely: there isn't any other kind. There's no such thing as "false love", it's either love, or it's something being called love that isn't.

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It's all gonna be worth it in the end right? It's already worth it, and there is no end.

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Are you overly self-conscious, what about you makes you feel/act this way? The most important thing to know is that this occurs because someone is taking their own self-concept too seriously: it's too rigid. The mind forms concepts about "myself" by merging a variety of things: memories, conditioned thinking patterns, body sensations, beliefs, etc. We naively believe that this sort of put-everything-in-a-blender "self" is really "who...

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Do Buddhists believe in absolute morality and the existence of "good" and "evil"? The short version? Good and evil: yes Absolute morality: no -- not in the sense used in Western religion, i.e. a fixed set of rules about what is right and what is wrong which is immutable and applicable to all situations. To understand the Buddhist orientation toward morality properly, you really have to understand the notion of "no-self" or emptiness. Basically, to act in...

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What does "being a great leader" mean to you? A great leader has more interest in the well-being of the whole than they do in their own ego. It's that interest which guides their thinking and action, it's that commitment which gives them their view of life and the courage to ignore the inevitable difficulties and enemies that one acquires in leadership. A leader is "used by" their commitment, they have a sense of...

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Why can't I change my avater? You probably just need to hit the refresh button on your browser -- images are 'cached' by the browser for efficiency, so it doesn't have to reload them from the server every time.

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Does evil really exist? Evil exists in the sense of destructive and selfish ACTIONS. This is a key point on the topic which gets "muddied up" a lot. There's no abstract evil, all that actually exists is specific evil actions by specific people in specific situations. So as long as that part is clear, then yes, evil exists. If we're talking about some sort of metaphysical evil force floating...

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Why do people on answerbag get so upset about trolls, and such? it seems the more upset ABers get, the more the trolls react. and do things on purpose. do you think we should just ignore them? I've always -- with one exception -- ignored trolls, and encouraged others to do the same. Specifically, I mean the downrate-without-comment trolls. There is other kinds of trolling, like attack questions, inflammatory / bigoted answers, etc., which I will usually take on and apply some counter-pressure. But downrating? No, if someone lacks the courage to tell me why they don't...

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Do generally happily married people ever have brief moments when they secretly think "I've married a moron" or something similar? My wife has that thought every day.

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Does the American state of Alaska get illegal immigrants from Russia? You mean because of it's proximity? I've never heard of that problem. That would be a pretty tough trek, nothing like walking across the border from Mexico. And then once you've crossed the border, where are you? The outer fringes of a very large state... If you cross over from Mexico, you're in San Diego or El Paso rather quickly and can blend in with large...

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Putting the legality aside, can portable radio units receive signal by a window on a domestic aircraft flight (over the 50 states)? I very much doubt you'd get sufficient signal for a satellite radio. An ordinary ground-based radio will get some signal coming from ground transmitters, but the satellite signal is weak and polarized in an unhelpful way for the inside of a metal aircraft hull (it's coming from above, where the hull of the aircraft can block the signal)

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Why do I have an erection every day when I wake up? Sometimes this happens just because you need to urinate. It's one way the body can prevent you from wetting the bed (closes off the valve...) If you don't find yourself aroused upon waking, and you do urinate after, that's the most likely explanation.

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Why do some people NEVER ask questions? I rarely ask questions, because there are already plenty of good questions being asked by others to "drive" the conversation. Also, if I need specific information on a topic, I find Google to be more helpful than Answerbag most of the time.

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Has Satine gone AWOL again? Her most recent activity was this answer 16 hours ago, it doesn't sound like AWOL, it just sounds like satine: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/114680/257956

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Am I the only person who gets ticked off when I call an automated service like the bank and it tells me to press 1 for English. Or when you buy a product and it has English and Spanish on the box?? This is America. We speak English. Learn it or go home!! No, you're not the only person bothered by it. Technically, the name for your reaction is called "bigotry". There are lots of people in the country who speak other languages, and these are PEOPLE. They're not hurting you just because they don't speak English. Frankly, your anger comes from an entirely different source, and the solution will be found in the...

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I have been married for 3 years. My Husbands sister & his aunt(the only family he has left) have always resented me for some reason. I have honestly tried to make peace to no avail. I'm tired of pretending I like these 2 people. Any suggestions? Pretending to like people is a waste of time. That you chose this path in the first place actually indicates to me that there is some hope for the future in your relationship with them. Why? Because pretense is the outermost layer of a troubled relationship. When that peels off, things can begin to move. Unfortunately, what's under the pretense can be scary stuff: lack of trust,...

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What's the most boring thing you do? I pretty much stopped being bored when I realized that boredom itself is pretty interesting -- if you study it carefully.

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I am learning html. Once I create and save my webpages, how do I upload to a server using IE 6? What does it mean to upload to a server? Most servers expect you to submit files using a tool that transmits them with a popular "protocol". These protocols are supported by many HTML editing programs. If you're just using a plain text editor to create your HTML, you'll need to learn how to use FTP or some other "techie" tool to transfer your files. What are you using to edit the HTML?

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Would you be willing to follow the example of others by giving up your badge and level to become a newbie again? No way, dude. But if you pass over some of what you're smokin' I'll get you some points...

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Why do people go on so much about how bad British food is? Well I was there for a week. The only meal I liked was at an Italian restaurant in London. My stomach was quite glad to get back, although the rest of me enjoyed the trip. Sorry... I can't think of any "English" restaurants here in Southern California. We have French, Italian, Chinese, Mexican, German, etc. Plenty of countries aren't represented as being famous for...

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Anyone interest in meeting & chatting with tall singles? Is the girl right for you? http://tallzone.bravehost.com/ DO NOT POST SPAM HERE PLEASE!

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Why has it become so acceptable to harm people? It hasn't. Is it acceptable to you? If not, good. The next step above that is to make sure those you interact with know that it's not acceptable. That's called "taking a stand" -- to stand up for the rights of others, to protect those under attack, etc. This is how to deal with such things. Seeking "why" won't matter, nobody's opinion on...

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How do you do to stay "regular" (to avoid constipation)? I eat fruits and vegetables regularly. If I don't do that... well... let's not talk about it.

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How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? I think it really comes down to the reason for the killing: if the wife of a cabinet member kills him out of jealousy over an affair, that should qualify as murder. If someone kills him to influence public policy, that would be assassination. Of course, it won't matter to him.

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In the last month, several "superbaggers" have left AB. They seem to be predominantly adults. That may be irrelevant. They have found the discourse "disappointing." Any theories on why the exodus? Has AB become "insensitive or hurful" to you? I think the main issue is that the change in the rating system encourages volume over quality, and that tends to produce a lot of points-acquisition competition that adds little actual value to the conversation. So, those who aren't primarily here to compete for levels are annoyed by the "fluffy" nature of much of the dialog. Personally, I just turn up my "ignore"...

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If you are religious, were you raised the religion you are, or did you find it on your own? I was raised in a Christian family, now I'm Zen Buddhist. So I guess you could say "it didn't stick".

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What University did you go to? Don't take this the wrong way but if you didn't than why not? I didn't go to a university or finish college. I had scholarship offers and admissions to various schools, but decided to be a druggie/ juvenile delinquent instead. Now that I'm much older, I can appreciate both the value of the path my life took, as well as the value of what was lost by missing out on college.

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Does a life without love have a purpose? If so, what is it? To locate the source of love. Once that is found, the purpose changes to "being the source of love for others".

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What is your favorite one-hit wonder? "Ride Captain, Ride" - Blues Image "Brandy" - Looking Glass

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What is something that many people don't know about you? When I was 10 I had a very cute little red-haired terrier named Stephanie. I loved this dog. One afternoon a lady knocked on our door, very distraught -- she had hit Stephanie with her car. I followed her out to the street, and my dog was lying there badly injured. I moved her as gently as I could to the gutter so she wouldn't get hit by another car. My mother wasn't home, none...

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How do you handle constructive criticism? I listen very carefully, considering objectively from all angles, weighing the pros and cons of their argument using a government approved scale of 18 criticism validity factors. Then I locate the roundest baseball-sized rock I can find, hunt down my critic's car, and wind up and launch the nastiest 92-MPH fastball I can muster, daring the windshield to swing for the fences. I find...

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If signmakers went on strike, what would they put on their picket signs? "This sign intentionally left blank"

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Who thinks that if Microsoft was shut down that would be the end of all viruses? No, definitely this would not be the end of viruses. Virus writers would just move the bulk of their efforts to whatever platform replaced it. There are viruses for other platforms, but if you're a virus writer, obviously you want to hit the largest number of users so you pick the biggest target. I used to work for Symantec (the anti-virus company), and I currently work for...

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Is it true that because of polar icecapes melting it releases something into the air and create the next iceage? No, the polar icecaps are melting because the planet is getting warmer. The "something in the air" is largely believed to be excess carbon dioxide produced by burning so much fossil fuels (by humans). This is called "global warming", and it's a major environmental concern. Some people believe that it's not a problem, or that there's nothing we can do...

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How do you earn a living? I'm a software engineer. I write obscure and meaningless looking sequences of letters which help to make someone's computer much more complex and difficult to use than it was before they got the notion to install this new piece of software.

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How do you feel about the Minnesota Congressman, Keith Ellison, being sworn in using the Koran? I would prefer that we remove all religious-oriented symbolic gestures from government, but if we must have them it certainly makes no sense for a Muslim to swear on the Bible, any more than it would make sense for me to swear on the Bible. Alas, this will surely be a loud and divisive issue, which is the kind of discussion we most specialize in. It's also the kind of discussion which...

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Do you think you live your life to the fullest everyday?If not how would you like to make it happen? No, but I do invest a lot of effort in it. I always manage to fall short. I think there's a lot of unhelpful ideas floating around about this topic, the sort of naive "sieze the day" stuff: pictures of people jumping out of airplanes, chasing the girl of their dreams across the ocean, ripping off their ties and singing "Born to Be Wild" in staff meetings, etc. ...

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Until a few days ago a friend thought the words to "Little Red Corvette" were "Pay The Rent Collect". What's the funniest song lyrics you have misunderstood and how long? Some others from my book on this topic. I have not personally made these mistakes, but found them amusing: "I want to rock 'n roll all night, and part of every day" - Kiss "You need Kool-Aid, baby I'm not foolin'" - Led Zeppelin (Whole lotta love) "I've got shoes, they're made of plywood" - J. Travolta and Olivia Newton John...

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Is the answerbag half-empty, or half-full? It's always completely full, but it expands to an infinite size. Hide your loved ones.

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Are you for or against stem-cell research? I'm not an expert on the science, but from an ethical standpoint I see no problem with stem cells from discarded embryos. Aside from the ethics of the whole abortion debate, these fetuses weren't aborted IN ORDER to produce stem cells, so one can't logically argue that stem cell research somehow contributes to abortion. That would be putting the cart before the horse.

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With all the crime, death, wars and other huge problems in the world, it makes alot of people including me very confused and borderline afraid. Is there a way to stay calm and not get stressed too much in today's world? The real source of confusion and fear isn't "out there" in the world, it's in our own minds. The cure for that is meditation (awareness practice), which allows the swirling, agitated mind to settle down and become grounded in the simple presence of being oneself. Live will always be turbulent until you're peaceful.

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How come there are so many warnings about the Mormon church? People will persecute anybody who holds a view which potentially undermines the "rightness" of their own view, if the persecutor has has identified with their own view. This is just the way self-righteousness works. There's not much you can do about it, other than to stand up for the rights of Mormons to hold their views and practice their religion. If you want to be really...

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Where did "God" come from....who was before him? Well I think you know the conventional answer, but here it is for the record: The notion of God is generally coupled to a concept of reality in which God is prior to all other aspects of reality -- therefore the notion of something coming "before God" is meaningless: both time and space are "contained within" God, so there's no way for time to leak out and exist...

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What does an 'out of body' experience feel like? I've only had that happen once: when I was a kid, I woke up early one morning and had this sense that I was floating on the other side of the room looking back on myself. Very weird. Never again happened, which is odd enough given all the drugs and strange experiences and meditation and who knows what else I've seen on my long, strange trip to this question.

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Do you believe television desensitizes youths? Why? All forms of stimulation have the capacity to desensitize all of us: just recall what happens the first time you hear a song that you like, and then what the experience is like on the 200th hearing... We're all "programmable" -- i.e. we are subject to being conditioned by our experiences. There is absolutely no escaping this basic characteristic of being human, and the more...

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What do you think it means when our National Guard (who is enforcing the Border immigration law) is driven from their post by armed illegals crossing the border? Does this constitute invasion and an act of war? It happened in Arizona recently. I don't think it can be considered an invasion or act of war if it isn't at least implicitly condoned by the Mexican government. More like "an international incident", similar to when uncontrolled guerrilla factions cross borders in less stable countries. Do you have a link to this story? I've never heard of something like this...

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If there's an edge to the universe, what's beyond it?....if space is nothing, how can there not be nothing? ImAlec, teknimage, and myself have been rotating the responsibility for answering this question for quite some time. I think it's my turn again. There's no "edge" to the universe: it's both "finite and unbounded", meaning that even though it does not extend infinitely, it doesn't have an "edge", so the question of what is beyond the edge has...

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How do u live alone....i find it soo lonely xxx That can be hard. I suggest: - Volunteer in your community. It's a great way to meet people and boost your sense of contributing something at the same time. - Get a pet (I like cats, don't tell my dog!) - Hang out with us here on the bag. We're always good for a laugh... or a fight. :-)

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Until a few days ago a friend thought the words to "Little Red Corvette" were "Pay The Rent Collect". What's the funniest song lyrics you have misunderstood and how long? I have a whole book on this topic! But it's not with me at the moment. The title is "Scuse me, while I kiss this guy...", referring to a misinterpretation of Jimi Hendrix' line from Purple Haze. I'll look up some juicy ones tonight to share.

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If one song were to describe your life, what song would it be? The Long and Winding Road.

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For the sake of peace, do you actively avoid controversy? I avoid controversy any time I can't see some purpose to be fulfilled by participating. There are lots of divergent opinions and controversial views in the world -- of course, we have them in our face each day here on the bag. If I were to simply voice my disagreement every time I saw something I don't agree with, I'd be completely busy 24/7 just arguing with everyone here. ...

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I can't open my self to people, i had an awful childhood and recently i get depressed for no reason and i cannot explain it or fight back at it.all i know is that it comes and goes with no reason. What can I do? It's very important to get treatment for this kind of depression. Are you seeing a therapist? Children need to have a healthy and loving environment for their psyche to develop normally: that sense of belonging and being regarded positively is the nutrient fluid that a sound sense of "self" develops and grows in. If you didn't have a stable and safe sense of being...

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Can I run two scans (spyware+anti-virus) at the same time? Yes, if you have software which allows that. The trouble is that you probably won't save any time: these scanning operations use up a lot of CPU and disk time, and running them simultaneously will probably make both operations slow down more than if you ran them in sequence, because the competition for the computer's time causes extra "task switching" to occur.

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Recent survey finds, "60% of Americans making $35,000 or less are self-described 'neat freaks', whereas only 11% of those earning above $75,000 claim the same". How do you define yourself: Successful & Messy / Tidy or Unsuccessful & Messy / Tidy? Well for a number of years I averaged about $150k, and I was very preoccupied with neatness. Now that my level of ambition and stress have fallen, I'm more relaxed about that. So I guess I'm not too impressed with the survey as an indicator of anything important.

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Since avatar theft is ok here on AB, should we have a weekly "Avatar theft" contest where whoever steals the best avatar wins points? I've got my eye on a little dancing kitty... Tired of my own mug.

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What's up with all of the piercing questions all of the sudden? That is a very penetrating question.

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What's worst then not being able to be with that person you love? Being someone who believes the only way to have love is to get it from others.

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What is your Obsession? Unratable and off-topic: I love your new avatar, glamorgirli!

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My husband talks to women online and pretends he's not married. He says to them that he wants to meet for sex, but when I confronted him, he accused me of spying and said that that was his fantasy world, and he would never act on it. Should I be concerned Yes, this is totally unacceptable behavior. It would be one thing (although still creepy) if the two of you were sharing this as some sort of sexual stimulation, but the fact that he's doing this on his own is a clear sign of trouble.

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Have you ever "hung up" creatively on a telemarketer? Myself, wife, and 2 girls used to make a major hobby out of dealing with telemarketers. Some favorites: 1. Tell the caller that the person they're seeking passed away last week in a tragic lawnmower accident. Extra points to the best instant grief-stricken relative simulation. 2. Set the phone down and loudly call for the person requested. Wait 10 seconds. Do it again. After a...

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Today as I was driving home I saw a car crash. Thankfully no one seemed hurt but since I'm pretty brand new driver it shook me to tears. So two questions- am I weird for getting upset? and is it the towns fault since the traffic lights werent working? I'd be worried about you if you saw a crash and WEREN'T upset... All humans are bound to each other -- when you witness something bad happening to another, it's normal and healthy to be disturbed. To avoid that, you would have to "numb yourself" to this relatedness that is a natural part of being human. When we're numb, we're dangerous to each other....

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I seem to say things that are always being taken the worng why. In my head I hear it one way but everyone else hears it another (offensive). What can I do? The trick to learning to speak without offending people is in learning to listen. Someone who's talking without listening is like a tape recorder in playback-only mode: they can't adapt what they're saying to fit the situation, which is always changing. A tape recorder doesn't have any "sensors" which detect what feedback is occurring, so it just runs on...

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Why isn't common sense very common? Common sense IS very common. It's wisdom that's rare. Common sense tells us that we're right and others are wrong. Common sense says that people don't change: once a jerk, always a jerk. Common sense says that if someone disagrees with you, there's something wrong with them. Common sense says that you should "express your anger" by spraying it on to...

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Lately i've been getting annoyed by a kid at my school...normally i wouldn't care, but it's getting worse, instead of telling anybody about it, i'd like to eal with it myself, so im gonna try to beat the sh** out of him, any good fighting tips? Yeah: don't let anger turn into violence.

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What religion (or lack of religion) do you follow and why? I practice Zen Buddhism. This choice was the result of years of study and exploration of world religions, talking to many people, and annoying all of my friends and family by turning every conversation to the topic of religion for about 2 years. I've gotten over that obsession, fortunately.

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What was the very first question (that was approved) posted to Answerbag? "How can I determine the return-on-investment for installing a solar electricity generation system on my roof in Southern California? What do these systems cost, and how can you do roof maintenance?" I received one reply, which basically said "use google". :-( http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/74091

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Why do questions such as race, religion, or politics start so much violence on AB? The problem with these kinds of arguments is that people get married to their viewpoint , and then feel they have to defend it to the death. To just walk away is hard, because the mind always spits out the thought “yeah, but you don’t understand…” and launches right into the next counter-argument. Everyone has this “disease” in varying degrees:...

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What makes art "art"? What criterias do you feel something needs to fulfil in order to merit the term? Any activity which arises from "creative energy" qualifies as art in my book. People might arrange their shoes in a novel way, or suddenly be inspired to clean their toilet to a level of purity previously unmatched. It's that 100% engaging with the subject -- becoming one with the activity -- that makes it art, not the specific kind of work result. Having said that, as an...

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Do you ever see someone who seems to have everything in their life completely in controll and together, who's totaly on their feet and doing just okie-dokie fine, and yet all you can feel is a sort of muted rage towards them for because you're *not happy? Sure. The presence of someone who's in good shape can rub you the wrong way because it reminds you of whatever isn't going well. It's the "contrast effect". Someone who has love may irritate those who don't. Someone who's confident may irritate those who are shy. Etc. Of course the solution for this sort of thing is always in the mirror, not in...

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How come I can go jogging for 20 minutes but when I run up stairs I am out of breath When you're jogging, your body goes through a "warm up" cycle, in which all the systems get conditioned to optimize the flow of oxygen and blood, etc. Jogging is less strenuous than running up the stairs, and once your body gets warmed up the pace is sustainable without strain. When you run up the stairs, you're not warmed up and this is stressful -- everything has to...

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Would you be upset if your child told you she or he was going out with a same sex partner? Yes, I would probably be upset. That doesn't mean I'm closed-minded, it means I'm a human being with a lot of conditioned responses that I didn't invent. What I would try to avoid is *reacting* in a way that spills my upset onto the kid (girls, in my case). If that meant being silent and faking a smile, I'd fake the smile. The next thing I would do is sit alone...

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If someone answers my question in a really unsatisfying way and the question leaves the "unanswered questions" category, how do i draw attention to the question to enhance the chance of more answers? You can post an answer to your own question (i.e. providing more details). That will drive it back to the top of the list. You should only use this method if your posting actually adds some "value" to the discussion. If you can't do that well, you can just re-ask the question and it will pop back up onto the list.

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Do you write your best poetry when you are at your lowest or at you highest moment? Well I don't really write poetry, but I do play the piano. And my answer to all such questions is that we're most creative when we're most *alive*, which isn't necessarily a "high or low" point. To be alive means being able to experience this moment with great depth, being connected to a sense of true self, and having a clarity of presence that is visceral and...

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Why is it ok,for blacks to say racist comments to whites and if whites say something back,then that is racist? It's not OK for anyone to make racist comments. How could that not be clear to everyone?

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What is the very worst thing you can do in an interview? I would stay away from barfing on the interviewer.

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Is there such a thing as a phobia for electrical outlets? I wouldn't be surprised. The mind can develop an irrational fear about anything -- there may not be a formal name and recognition for this fear, though. ("Outletphobia?" If it's not named, you can name it!) To illustrate, on my 8th birthday my mother asked me to light the oven -- she had put something in to bake and forgotten to light it. So I went into the kitchen,...

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Do you ever feel like you never want to get out of bed except for going to restroom and to the kitchen Ok, Bethany, I'm going to take a 2nd stab at this question. I went over some of your postings first just to try to get an idea of who I was talking to. The thing that strikes me most is that you ask really good questions: they're the kinds of questions that invite people to share about themselves, and those are usually pretty popular on Answerbag. That's fine, but what...

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Is the correct english you guys or ya'll Neither of these are correct English. I use y'all, because the absence of a plural pronoun for this case is a glaring problem in the language. You can say "You ladies", or "You gentlemen", or "You ladies and gentlemen", or other such variations, but nothing quite has the convenience and precision of y'all. It should be standard usage, but it...

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What kind of vehicle do you get around in? (year)(mod)(color) A top of the line 1972 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost in impeccable condition. However, in order to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention, I've cleverly disguised it as a green 1993 Camry. You *almost* can't tell the difference.

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Do you hate anyone? If yes who? Why? No. Hate is poison to the soul of the hater. I stopped drinking poison.

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Do you ever feel like you never want to get out of bed except for going to restroom and to the kitchen Not unless I'm very sick. If you're having this experience, there's a good chance you're depressed. Is there something important in your life which isn't working well?

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I want to buy a new computer but I am not sure if I should buy a home computer or a laptop. I currently have a home computer but I am on the go alot and I could be entering college in about a year. What would be the best to buy? I think a student is much better off with a laptop. Both of our girls found them more suitable in college -- they bring them home on visits, take them to the library for homework, etc. The one downside is they're not as rugged as a desktop -- you gotta get a nice padded case and be careful with them. If you don't trust yourself not to bang it around, a desktop might be better.

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Guys... would you prefer a woman that speaks her mind and says what she thinks or a quiet yes sir kinda girl? I like a woman who knows what it means to be herself. Sometimes that will involve speaking her mind, sometimes it will involve silence. Someone who thinks they should always speak their mind is narcissistic -- self-involved or chronically attention-seeking. Someone who thinks they should always be quiet lacks a sense of their own value. There's no rules for how a woman should...

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Can you give me an answer to any of life's little mysterys? (feel free to do so) The future isn't going to be better than now. That's a popular myth.

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What's a good job for a fifteen year old who isn't fond of socializing and despises Corporate America? You should write book or music reviews for a youth-oriented magazine. You're smarter than your peers, have excellent taste, and will thoroughly rip anything that sucks. The only problem is you'll have to write more than one paragraph at a time. That could be a challenge.

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Is it wrong to want something more? Wanting more is part of the basic human condition. We're always wanting more. And more. And still more. And when we get more, we get a little buzz out of that, and then we go back to wanting MORE more. More, more more MORE! more --- *more* ((more)) Got it? We want more. Certainly there are specific times and specific cases where it's appropriate to want more. But...

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Can someone give me a snappy comeback for a co-worker who constantly asks, "Will you do me a favor?" I've tried "NO"; "Go away"; and "Leave me alone" but he simply doesn't get it. (I've said "Yes" plenty of times, BTW) Hand him a party favor.

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My grandfather always used to say: "You bet your bippy." What is a bippy? This phrase came from a popular joke from the 60's comedy team Rowan and Martin. They had a hit variety show called "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in", and the phrase was used as a comeback quip in lots of dialog. Nobody ever defined what a "bippy" was, it just sounded vaguely dirty...

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It seems that no religion agrees with another except for Buddhism. What if they're all right? Aren't all things possible through God? Well from a logic standpoint it's not possible for all religions to have the "whole truth", simply because they differ significantly from each other, and logic has the principle of "excluded middle" -- two opposing ideas cannot both be true. However, as a Buddhist I would push back a bit on the idea that Buddhism agrees with other religions. Buddhism isn't...

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Why does capacitor's plates does not stuck with each other inspite of the fact that they are oppositely charged? Most capacitors have an insulating material (the dielectric) which separates the plates so this can't happen. A very few just leave an air gap and the rigidity of the plates is sufficient to prevent contact. However, the physics of your question is incorrect: the plates aren't physically pulled together by the opposing electrical charges (that would be more like magnetism). What...

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I see people say, "You are just seeking attention," all the time. What is so wrong with seeking attention? I agree with BenThereB4 in general but would add some other aspects: What all people are seeking is a sense of belonging and wholeness: being. However, we can't "get our hands on" what this means exactly. In childhood, we learn to protect ourselves from the slights and disapproval of others by withdrawing and building a shell around "myself". This shell...

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If you wrote your own biography, what would the title be and why? I actually am considering something like that. The preliminary working title is "Path of the Jigsaw". It refers to the way a jigsaw creates a puzzle by cutting a path through the whole picture, leaving a maze of pieces behind. Reassembling the pieces is the task of self-discovery.

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One of my family members has died recently and i am very very hurt about it... what is the best way to get my hopes up and become happier? I'm sorry about your loss. It's important to grieve. Rather than focusing on getting your hopes up and becoming happier, you'd be much better off allowing yourself to experience the pain and loss of this person. The pain is the part and parcel of love. If you try to shut it off, the only way to do that is to withdraw from love -- to pull back into a "shell" of...

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Are you happy? Not at the moment. I see happiness as a transient emotion, just like sadness, grief, fear, anger... it comes and goes like clouds passing through the sky. So I'm actually not very interested in happiness -- certainly not interested enough to engage in "the pursuit of happiness". There's something much more important, in my opinion: wholeness. To be whole is to be...

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Do you ask/answer question to help others, or sometimes are you just looking for more points? Well I think I've gotten cured of the quest for points per-se, but I still do like to see my answers end up near the top of the list, which is different than just accumulating points on my account. However, I don't answer questions just to see my name at the top of the list -- there has to be some other factor: wanting to help, having something I want to say, finding the question...

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If somebody posts a question requesting points, should the staff deduct points from their total as well as reject the question? I think it should be handled the same way I've seen it handled by the community: people step in and tell the person how points work, what their role is, and how best to win them. When people first land on the 'bag, it takes a while to become "communitized" -- to meet people, learn how things work, discover the effects of their undesirable behavior, etc. The best way for...

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