norton65ca

^^ Pompey, you're right, I've lived in the Canadian north, and it's absolutely stuffed with bears, and ninety percent of the time, bears who are left alone won't attack anyone. It's stupidity in the majority of cases which creates situations where the bear must be destroyed (campers leaving food out, idiotic idealistic freaks who want to live with the bears, bears accustomed to human contact and garbage... that's a big one and the most common situation, a bear becomes used to humans and garbage bins and gets testy when the humans try to stop his access to the trash. National Parks have changed policy with regard to dumps within park boundaries but people are often rather stupid in bear country. I've had close encounters with a number of bears and if you behave sensibly, 98% of the time you'll be fine. I've even encountered mama and babies out in the bush and lived to tell the tale. Mind you, when I did forest fire lookout in the Peace River area back 20 years ago, I came off that mountain top with a big f*ckoff 30 year old Husqvarna rifle which did give me a bit of a sense of security while walking for three hours to the roadhead

I watched that pathetic little sap on the tv last night in court. If there was ever a face that begged to be smashed in with a steel toed boot, that's one.

Gun laws in Canada, although different by virtue, perhaps, of our history and our geography than those in Europe, are a far cry indeed from those in force in our neighbour to the south.

They have had 4 names Small Heath Alliance, Small heath, Birmingham, then Birmingham City, and been shite under all of them. They finished 9th in the top flight once, don't you know And one the 4 most important honour in English Football. Once. sorry, but even if one admits the inaugural League Cup was a bit of a joke, they have won it twice... ermm, and in that first final they beat us... In addition, they have made the Fairs Cup final twice (60 & 61), FA Cup final once in '56 and finished sixth place in the league in 1956. I despise the club but if we're going to be honest fans of Aston Villa, let's be honest. Makes us look silly if we don't get our facts right. Fact 1: They've always been in our shadow.

oh.. you're back. how lovely.

Valhalla, I'm going to leave this here, but to be frank, I am as English as anyone who lives in the UK, bar the fact that I don't physically reside there currently (although I have lived in the UK a couple of times since leaving in the seventies) I possess a British passport, I am a subject, citizen and have full right of abode in the UK. I never relinquished anything nor renounced anything. I am as English as you are bud. Maybe more so considering your attitude to our sporting representatives...

that is out of order there Valhalla. I am patriotic to both of the nations I belong to. I am English by birth and upbringing nothing the likes of you can say can take that away from me. By the way, FYI, Canada does not compete in the EUROS and has only ever qualified for one WC.

Canada is fine thanks and this dual citizenship ex pat cheers for ENGLAND, his homeland and the place of his birth.

^^^ No, being England fans, we won't. run along now if you don't care for the team and leave the cheering for those that do. Up the three Lions!!! ENGLAND Forever!!!!

interesting question. I'm 49 now, been in Canada since I was ten, feel very much internally like an Englishman, but when I go there I find I don't quite fit in any more, Everyone in England I met asks me whether I'm American... yet here in Canada after so many years I have people ask me what my accent is. Stuck in the middle between two worlds, never fully part of one or the other.

thanks for the info, hot headed chappie methinks. wow.

ermmm, must have missed something, but what on earth were the circumstances surrounding the above featured gif of the player drop kicking the other player near the tunnel ?... wow.

she's a lovely looking girl. Nice smile.

CI is certainly certifiable ;-) I'd have Robbie Keane back in a heartbeat, I think without his loan last season, we'd have surely gone down. The guy has a lot of passion and knows where the back of the net is.

I've been on here for about five or six years, pretty much daily, and as far as I'm concerned, Gazton, MM and TheTrees are good sources. Not always exactly right, but my ears perk up when I hear news via these three. Gazton's above post is spot on. there is no deception, there is no attempt to feed false news, simply good high level gen that often works out but occasionally doesn't. these three have my support.

I think you'll find a lot of senior clerics in many denominations don't believe the same things as the congregation to be honest. It can be a solid, life long career, (good job security) after all, why threaten it by delving into whether it's true or not? Why cloud the picture with facts?

MJM, I think you won't find to many wishywashies willing to get into this debate. The fundies are quite happy to dive in, but I think you'll find no-one interested in holding the liberal Christian position because really and truly, there isn't one to be held. Liberal Xtianity is so close to being nothing that there's very little to defend. New Earth? No. Adam & Eve/ Fall of man, Garden of Eden, Fruit trees, serpents? No. Exodus, Moses, Tablets of Law, Red Sea parts, burning bush? No. Job in whale? No. Historicity of Judah?Israel? Davidic empire? No. Prophecies and fulfillment of same? No. Virgin birth? No. Miracles? No. Resurrection? No. Jesus as literal God man? No. What have you got left to defend? I rejected liberal Xtianity from the get go, there's nothing there to get at all excited about to be honest, at least the fundie version has a muscular, ideologically robust supernaturality about it that one might be able to get behind, but liberal Xtianity? dishwater compared to single malt scotch comes to mind as a comparison.

I should also qualify some o my content here by saying that I do know a lot of people with the above belief system, to the nth degree absolutely doctrinally certain of all of the above, who are also the sweetest, most generous, loving caring human beings imaginable. As ChrisP noted, I a lot of folks who hold the most ludicrous (from our point of view as non religious) doctrines, spend their days in the way of helping others, the needy, less fortunate and so on, and whether they would have been the same decent, loving caring folk without their spiritual viewpoint is a matter for another debate, but I cannot deny their kindness.

http://tinyurl.com/bs8btla I think you should have a quick look at this and read this gentleman's response to his accusers. I've met lots of people in my life who aren't too shy of this kind of rhetoric. They aren't state legislators either...frightening. I know this is the outer edge, but this guy is in a position of power, and there are others like him. The problem from my perspective, is that the extreme is becoming the norm, things are becoming polarized to a dangerous level. It's one thing to say "my esteemed colleague and I have a difference of opinion and we shall have to leave it at that", it is quite another to say "The guy across the aisle is of the devil and filled with a vexatious, profane and rebellious spirit not in keeping with the teachings of the scriptures"...

... and although they're in the minority, I have met a number of people (and at one point I pretty much was one) who believed the following: Young earth. possibly as young as 6000 yrs. (6 consecutive ages with seventh to come (Millennial reign of Christ) Literal flood (Noah, animals, Ark on Ararat) w/ patriarchal ages as long as 900+ yrs (Methuselah, Enoch etc) Parting of the Red Sea, Exodus as written. All prophetic OT books speaking in advance of Christ and his resurrection Virgin birth Resurrection Miracles Book of Revelation speaking particularly of future events, rise of Babylon financial system, mark of beast (ID chip), antichrist, lake of fire etc etc There are MILLIONS of folks around here that believe ALL of the above and more. But then CS Lewis, not a dumbass, believed all of the above as well, he was pretty much my philosophical mentor for decades I think European religion has been gutted by liberalism and "higher criticism" to be honest, over in N America one tends to find the more evangelical stripe in the majority. just my 2c

chrisp, come on over to N America sometime, it's crawling with bible believing, pre tribulation rapture, full gospel, KJV, tongues talking, holy roller, on fire charismatic types that will clear your sinuses with enough Pauline calvinism to make you wonder which side of the "freewill or predestination" debate you will stand on. I am from liberal British Columbia, and there are plenty around here, and if you go up the Fraser Valley, it's BCs bible belt. Southern BC and Alberta, tons of churches, fundies aplenty, Conservative country mindset, anti gun control, and in some cases, bigamist plural marriage mormon fringe cults and white power anti gov't Christian Identity dominionists as well. We get 'em all out here in the sticks... We had protests not twenty years back about Chinese New year celebrations here in Victoria, the dragon dancers were causing a helluva stink cos of course they're satanists in disguise, and even if they weren't, its an insult to the Xtian heritage of our fair country and all......... I generalize a bit, but Europe and N America are very far apart with regard to all that. Your fundies are few and far between, in East Texas, for example, (Not that I'm from there but...) if you were to DARE to declare yourself an atheist you'd be, for all intents and purposes, shunned for the rest of your days. Khryst, they'd rather you were a muslim, at least that they might be able to wrap their heads around, but an atheist? You might just as well be from Mars. cheers, Gary

One word: Rokke. Who did OGS meet in Oslo? Rokke. who is known as the Norwegian Mafioso? Rokke. 'nuff said.

bwahahahaha just found it this morning. I'm having some fun with this lol

Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth. According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization. "I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass." "Everything is here already," the pictograph continues. "We do not need more stars." Historians believe that, immediately following the biblical event, Sumerian witnesses returned to the city of Eridu, a bustling metropolis built 1,500 years before God called for the appearance of dry land, to discuss the new development. According to records, Sumerian farmers, priests, and civic administrators were not only befuddled, but also took issue with the face of God moving across the water, saying that He scared away those who were traveling to Mesopotamia to participate in their vast and intricate trade system. Moreover, the Sumerians were taken aback by the creation of the same animals and herb-yielding seeds that they had been domesticating and cultivating for hundreds of generations. "The Sumerian people must have found God's making of heaven and earth in the middle of their well-established society to be more of an annoyance than anything else," said Paul Helund, ancient history professor at Cornell University. "If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week." According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God's most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings. "These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant," one Sumerian philosopher wrote. "They must be the creation of a complete idiot." http://tinyurl.com/yaf8c58

Chrisp, the NT does seem to have a softer edge, but the theology is still harsh, The Pauline letters detail an exclusive, purist regime that leaves little doubt as to the fate of those who decline the "free gift" of eternal salvation. This is the theological basis for Calvinism. The Revelation of St. John, also, terrified me as a child and contains numerous eye opening views into what is to become of those on the left hand side of the throne, the goats, destined for the place where the flame never dies and the worm perisheth not... Those whose names are not found in the Lamb's book of Life, that Lamb who brings the sword and will divide the mother from her son, the husband from his wife and will slay the wicked and cast all who defy him into the Lake of Fire for all eternity. He is nice to kids in the backstreets of Jerusalem, apparently, but when he comes back for his second trip 'round here, he's gonna be some badass muthafucka. It ain't gonna be pretty.