James K

Ideally, a Website would hold recipes for all categories of Polish cookery: entrees, side dishes, appetizers, desserts, &c. They can be in either metric or US Customary (Imperial).

The Friendly Atheist (Hemant Mehta) reports on his blog a conversation with Rev. Fred Phelp's son Nathan Phelps.

Nathan states that Rev. Phelps is in a hospice in Topeka and is dying. Phelps is 84. Nathan left the church when he was eighteen, in the Seventies.

(Phelps is the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kans., the church that gained notoriety picketing the funerals of veterans of the Armed Forces.)

While I would wish no ill on anyone, even Rev. Phelps, I wonder how others might feel about his impending demise.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/...

(Goes to the Patheos blog of The Friendly Atheist writing about Nathan Phelp's report on his father)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_phelps

(Wikipedia article on Rev. Fred Phelps)

With multi-million dollar aircraft, missile systems, detection systems, tanks, and ships the military will not take a person of low intellect, low education, or even a minor criminal record.

So why is the assumption still prevalent that those of us who served in the military of low intellect?

http://www.mwm.us.mensa.org/faq/people.html

. . . the same thing as attacking a person? (In other words, if you do not agree with what one answers, is that the same as attacking you?)

And is blocking a person conducive to any sort of meaningful discussion?

Though I have been blocked by less than five people in R&S (I try to be respectful of persons, though I do not respect beliefs merely because they are asserted), I am curious as to why those five or so would choose to block in a discussion on religious views . . . as atheists go, I am one of the mildest here.

Perhaps I merely am reading too much into it, but it seems that blocking someone who is not a spammer or making personal attacks is surrendering to the idea that either you will not or cannot engage in a discussion of religious ideas. . . .

you to explain an answer further concerning a recent political scandal, and you have a city wide power failure?

When you get back on and try to explain, the questioner has blocked you (presumably because you did not answer)?

I've noticed in many media photographs numerous Republican Senators and Representatives wearing a lapel pin with an insignia I cannot make out, and surrounded by gold laurel leaves. What does that pin represent?

(It is not the same pin as my avatar, which is Gold Star Family lapel pin, for direct family members of servicemembers fallen in combat,)

An example of the pin in a photograph is linked below, the Wikipedia article of Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Gohmert

My understanding of the Blue Star service flag is it can only be displayed by a family member (parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild) when a family member is in the Armed Forces during a time of war.

The Gold Star service flag represents that same family member killed in combat during time of war.

I cannot seem to get a straight answer from the Department of Defense or other organisations on whether the Gold Star service flag can only be displayed during that particular war, any war, or any time. (My father was killed in combat in the Vietnam War.)

Clarification would be appreciated, as well as a reference if you could provide it.

(American disabled veteran, logged in through Yahoo! Canada to avoid the hated and non-functional NEO format that Yahoo has foisted off on us to debug for free)

Our personal (and our village’s) attorney’s mother passed away Monday, age sixty-four. I am a village trustee, elected in December unanimously by our overwhelmingly Christian town.

He was at the village board meeting when his mother passed away.

Both my wife and I highly respect our attorney, and he is fully aware we are atheists; we both work for the village government.

(As it happens, he was the person who administered my affirmation of office when I was elected to the village board in December, and researched state law to ensure I could get around the state constitutional requirement for an oath to a deity.)

A funerary Mass for his mother is to be held Thursday. While both my wife and I are of the opinion that prayer is of no particular use, such things as funerary Masses are for the living, not the dead. Ritual (religious or otherwise) seems to be built into the human psyche.

We are fairly new here in town (two years); the whole county is quite aware we are atheists and knows us, and a goodly portion of the county will be at that Mass. So the question to posit to the group here is how much of a faux pas would it be to turn up at the Mass (in support of our attorney in his time of difficulty)?

As village officials it seems appropriate (though we are both atheists), so what do both Christians and atheists think about this?

I am aware how a Mass is conducted (I have been to them before, though I was a Wiccan and never a Christian). As we live in an overwhelmingly religious community, this particular situation seems likely to occur more and more often; cutting ourselves out of our tiny community's rituals (weddings, deaths, &c) over religious differences to me would seem petty.

My lawn died in last year's drought; this year all I have is wheelgrass and Russian Thistle (tumbleweeds before they start tumbling).

I cannot afford to have a lawn company come out and lay out a fancy carpet of turf; I need to re-seed my lawn myself in

What sort of equipment is required to do this (I have a town lot), and where can I find DIY instructions on how to do this?

A woman who usually answers questions in the Politics section came into the section I am usually in (Religion and Spirituality, or R&S) and stated that the folk in the Politics section far-and-away believe that the R&S section has the most hateful and divisive trolling questions and answers.

I occasionally hang out in Politics, and never came to this section before. It doesn't appear that divisive to me (though it has a fair share of trolls too). But I find R&S to have the most hate-mongers.

So what section do you think is the most divisive? (Ancillary question: should the death penalty be imposed for trolling?)

My wife and I will be driving to Denver in September for an international meeting. (Denver is notorious for lack of parking.) The hotel we are staying at offers valet parking for $28 a day, with "in and out" privileges.

I have never used valet parking in my life. What the heck are "in and out privileges," are tips required on top of this "privilege" to park at a hotel we are already paying a bunch of money for, and are there other things I should know?

We're just a couple of rural folk that don't do cities well. Pointers would be helpful.

I am not referring to the lights on the Great Lakes. There are seven lighthouses built mostly in the Great Depression, inland, which never served a purpose other than to make work.

Near where I live is the Lake Minatare Lighthouse, in the Nebraska Panhandle. It was built in 1939 on Lake Minatare by the Veterans Consevation Corp, and has never housed a light (as Lake Minatare has never floated a vessel bigger than a skiff).

Where can I find information on the other inland lighthouses in the United States? A Web search so far has turned up nothing but interesting pictures of the Lake Minatare Light.

Thank you in advance?

I was just waking up. The alarm went off with two lines in a chorus (Country)

"You fell in love with a rebel's careful daughter"

"You are the best thing . . ." sung by a woman . . .

That is all I can remember, I am afraid (darn sleep). Really liked the tune, on Connie Celica's radio show this morning, on 13 February around 9 AM.

Any hope?

It is my understanding that quoting the Voice of America articles in news services (NYT, CNN, &c.) is against the law, but I can find no cases where an organization was prosecuted for this.

Am I mistaken, or not? A reference would be helpful to me.

I am interested for a research project I am involved in, and believe it or not, his show is not carried on the local radio stations here. Also, a company may not advertise on every episode of the show, so listening to the show for a day or two would not help, and I don't really wish to pay Rush Limbaugh's Website for the priveledge of finding out by listening there.