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Bee - Nor do I take marriage as a guarantee of life style. I was thinking of it as a way to assure by legal means that someone is there to look out for the kid's interests. I tend to be knowingly inflexible on this issue because I guess I have personally seen too many kids devastated by...

Kirk was good, but Shatner was SUCH a hack that sometimes I had to laugh at his overacting. Picard, on the other hand, was an incredibly good captain for an exploratory vessel. The rebooted Kirk hasn't clicked with me one way or the other, and Janeway didn't do that much either.

Bones wasn't racist. His problem with Spock was personality differences. He gave Spock a hard time in the same way that you might give a friend a hard time but in a loving way. More than once, Bones admitted his feelings towards Spock, though as a determined and die-hard curmudgeon, he...

Yes, I recall the "kiss." Very controversial at the time, but Shatner and Nichols played their parts. And of course in the Star Trek movie reboot, Spock and Uhura are an "item."

"Diversity is our strength. " Sounds almost like something Commander Spock of Star Trek (the original) would say. In fact, there was an episode - I believe called "Is There In Truth No Beauty" - in which Spock wore his IDIC medallion - with the letters standing for "Infinite Diversity in...

Actually, the fire tornado was previously considered rare, but the recent wildfires in California included a few. The "fire whirl" was more common but this year the effect escalated with the presence of all that dry heat and extra energy in the area. In essence, a tornado is a tight air vortex...

Nope, no longer worried about a pet - real or synthetic.

OK, I bit. I won't post numbers. According to the test, I had my highest scores in: Fairness, Diligence, Creativity. I had my lowest scores in: Dependence, Flexibility, Patience. I was outside of the middle 80% in: Fairness (high), Diligence (high), Creativity (high), and at the 90% mark...

As a kid I had dogs, but our area wasn't kind to them. Mom had allergies so we couldn't bring them in the house. They had a doghouse, but our neighborhood was prone to flooding and sometimes (back then) the predictions for flooding rains just weren't made very well. Eventually, after losing...

Bee, regarding the "bad mother" scenario. Taking into account that for some people, marriage is already outmoded (see other thread in this forum), what father? I'm actually on your side - but so many people think marriage isn't needed even after a child is on the way, and so many people don't...

I might try to time it so that I derail the train before it gets to any of them, thus killing the evil engineer running the train.

Since I consider ALL religion to be learned behavior, the only factors of merit are the forces in place where you grew up. Your parents are USUALLY the primary sources of your religion because you spend most of your formative years with them. However, locale can play a role. Some nations and...

Bee, I agree with the idea of little evils and big ones. Hitler and Stalin? Big evil. The Menendez brothers (southern California a couple of decades ago) were smaller evils. Me gleefully stepping on a cockroach or palmetto bug? Not sure that one even registers. Your other comment is worthy...

Tornadoes are any time, night or day. You protect yourself by knowing if a storm front is in the area because the big ones only occur at frontal boundaries unless they are fire tornadoes. New Orleans is right at 30 degrees North Latitude (and 90 degrees West Longitude). That makes us about...

I can't claim to be an expert. At best, I'm an armchair psychologist. However, when I had my bouts of clinical depression, I learned that there were common triggers for stress. They included death of a close loved one, changing job status including a new job, moving to a new home, change of...

The lifestyle of the "Old South" can be a bit laid back. In Alabama, things get done but not at a pace so frantic as to leave you gasping. My cousins from that area are all good, solid people who love the USA and who love their families, though their idea of fun sometimes is subdued by my...

"I read that 20% of people in America have mental illness. " Probably true, Jon. The rest of us are just nuts. Fiona, I have to ask as a matter of curiosity. You have a child starting "A" levels. For the USA types who use a different system, what age group does that generally represent?

I'm a country philosopher because my viewpoints include many cousins from my mother's family and from my wife's family, all of whom either live or at least grew up in rural or sparse suburban settings. I have a mix of central Alabama and south Louisiana country cousins. We "chew the fat" quite...

Let the members create their own threads for a while. Your new threads are not always heavily engaged because the titles reflect your own viewpoints and mental frames. Sadly, lacking telepathy, I sometimes am unsure of what the thread is really about. But don't let me stop you from asking...

But I digress... (not unusual for me.) The migration you describe is occurring because people are voting with their feet, having found themselves in untenable situations where they lived and now, thanks to the miracles of modern communication, aware of the possibility of going elsewhere. Many...