Definitely always rude to ask! ita, the rest of your body is pretty little, all things considered.

Not as little as my friend who does have fake boobs, but not large.

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It's totally rude

and in no way a compliment.

friends - that's different

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I think it's always on the wrong side of rude to ask someone if hers have been done

I'm thinking that it's generally rude to ask people about having artificially altered their appearances [eta: to something else "natural"]. Obviously, the extent of the alteration and your intimacy with them affect the rudeness, but I'd start with not asking a stranger if they dyed their hair, and count questions about surgical modification of secondary sexual characteristics as requiring the most intimacy.

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I have to confess to sometimes about wondering about a woman's big breasts if she doesn't have a matching lower body

I might fall into that category if I weren't carrying so much extra weight. I'm not hippy, and I come from a long line of flatasses.

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The Conspiracy Theorists are out!

Blackout New York: Let The Paranoia Begin

More than a few versions of the following e-mail have made their way to our inbox:

My friend's dad works for ConEd - he just called and told her not to ride the subways any more today, as we will likely have a blackout. ConEd is sending all non-essential employees home right now so they can shut down power to their building. From yesterday's heat, Manhattan has 4 feeders out, putting a big strain on the system. He said in his 30 years working there, he's never seen ConEd act like this, especially at 10:30 in the morning. He said not to panic, but not to take a chance if it can be helped - avoid riding the subway if at all possible.

Also, when the friend rode a cab on home? A kindly Arab driver took a liking to her and totally told her not to be near the Empire State Building next Wednesday, because "bad things will happen."

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The Conspiracy Theorists are out!

It's the heat. It brings them out like rats.

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Speaking of which...

WHOOT!!!! THE HEAT HAS BROKEN. In Downtown Boston at least, and I think it may depend on what part of town you're in.

I walked out the back of the building I work in (the side which faces southwest) into what felt like still mid-to-high-80s and a warm breeze (still better than it has been) walked up a few blocks, turned a corner so I was going more northeast, got into a more open area, and got hit with a breeze that was at least 5-10 degrees cooler. Wild!

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Wait a sec - NY never got nuked, did it? When was the (latest) prediction for NY Nukage?

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I'd start with not asking a stranger if they dyed their hair, and count questions about surgical modification of secondary sexual characteristics as requiring the most intimacy.

Especially because with stuff like hair, it's easy to get people to talk about it if they want to -- telling someone with crazy red hair "I love your haircolor!" will often result in them saying who did it/what brand it is. Complimenting someone on their lack of wrinkles/great rack, NSM.

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Gee, and I sent Summer to you, special.

That's why it was wearing a Speedo!

Eta -- Topic!Cindy – On a more serious note, today was the 10th anniversary of my mom’s death. I found myself thinking of you a few times today, too. Not my most pleasant of days, remembering the death of a parent and his/her absence from our lives since then. But the pain does lessen in time, and the memories of happier moments do stay.

I'm sorry I missed this last night, Narrator. You were so much comfort to me, when my father died. I think right after I posted, I shut off the PC, so I could close off the room where it lives, and keep more of the air conditioning in the living room.

The anniversaries are hard, sometimes. They make me stop and think, "It can't be X whole years, already," and "It seems like a lifetime, ago," at the same time. I think, but the pain does lessen (although sometimes, something will happen that makes it as sharp as it was at first). For myself, I more see it as me getting used to it.

Does your family do anything to mark the day? My mother, my aunt and I used to go shopping and out to lunch on the anniversary of my grandmother's death. We haven't done it in a few years, though. It got harder, once I had the children, and the anniversary is ten days before Christmas, which makes it doubly tough. We don't really mark my father's death, though. My grandmother would have had her 100th birthday this month, so we're having a family reunion on her birthday.

He did not. He welcomed the little brat home, made a feast, invited the neighbors, had a damned block party to celebrate. And told his hardworking, law-abiding child, "Dude, whatever's left now still gonna get split two ways when I'm gone."

That's not what he told the good child, Beverly. He tells him, "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours. We're celebrating because your brother was lost, and now he's found. He was dead (the "to us" is implicit), and now he's alive." And of course, that was a parable, not an account. It appears after the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin.

Yes, Judaism has a rich and evolving history of struggling with these issues and, of course, it recognizes that these stories apply to a particular time and a particular people. The same can not be said for fundamentalist Christians.

And you know this, because you've interviewed them all, and documented their understanding, compared it to their knowledge base and found that lacking?

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually not a fundamentalist, but I bet there are plenty of people you might describe as fundamentalist, who have a fuller understanding of how the stories apply to a particular people and time than you, because it's stuff they're into, and have studied.

...

In other news, I don't think I've run across a term less useful than "Biblical literalism" and variations on that theme, including, "literal word of God." It seems to mean a different thing to every person who slings it around, including pollsters who ask people if it's "literally true" ( and the pollees who answer).

If you're talking about those books Christians recognize as canonical, there's a minimum total of 66 books (more for people in churches that recognize the deuterocanonical books). People who've read those 66+ or at least a fair part know their reading prophecy, poetry, and parable, along with accounts meant to document actual events, and the idea of accepting it literally means different things to different people, depending on what they're reading.

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