Personal Questions

[Alex]

I'd be pretty surprised, but on the other hand I have a few bones to pick with anyone who might happen to be in charge and I owe them a swift kick (or many kicks) in places that hurt so I'd view that as bonus.

[ER]

Which had a deeper negative impact on humankind, Nazism or Communism?

While the goals of Communism were more benevolent than those of Nazism, Communism actually killed more people and had a longer time to spread its misery, even today, so....I think Communism.

[Rev. Powell]

Communism, due to its longevity. Nazism was more destructive than any ideology in history, but for a mercifully brief time.

[Alex]

If anyone actually founds a communist state (as per Marx's writings), then I'll let you know. The countries that have claimed communism as their type of government have done a huge amount of damage to themselves and others. Sometimes I wonder if Nazism didn't prevent them doing worse, or if it assisted it more.

[RCMerchant]

That's like comparing Dahmer and Gacy.
f**k both.

[indianasmith]

That's like comparing Dahmer and Gacy.
f**k both.

You nailed it right there, Ronnie!!!

[RCMerchant]

What is the strangest food you ever ate? I had homemade blood sausage made by an old Russian woman when I was a kid. With goat cheese and home-made wine. She could barely speak English. We called her Motka- which is Russian for Mother. I lived around a lot of folks of Russian, Polish, and German descent when I was a kid. I knew a couple Slavs too. My family were the only Norwegians.
She was old. Cooked everything on a woodstove and got her water from a well. My buddy Nick Siskaninitz and me usta plow, plant, and fertilize her cornfield on her property behind her house for free.
Oh yeah- it was good. She came from Russia right after the Revolution. She was over 80 years old. Beautiful lady.

[indianasmith]

When I was in Japan, we went to a VERY ritzy sushi bar that featured an enormous fish tank full of live, fresh-caught ocean fish.  You pointed out the one you wanted, and they would catch it in a dipnet, filet it in front of you, make it into a nagiri (oblong ball of rice, dab of wasabi, and a nice slice of raw fish on top) in front of you - and when they served it to you, they would show you the hapless fish's body, its gills still reflexively pumping, to prove to you how fresh it was!

Best sushi I ever ate.

[RCMerchant]

^  :buggedout:UGH!

[RCMerchant]

What paranormal things do you believe in, if any.
Myself, UFO's are real. Paranormal, from outer space, another dimension- I dunno.
ESP. Yes. I've done it myself.
Ghosts? I'm not sure- I just don't know.
Bigfoot- no. The Loch Ness Monster-no. Mothman-no. Most cryptids- no.
God- no. There is less evidence of the existence of that then any of the above.

[Rev. Powell]

What paranormal things do you believe in, if any.
Myself, UFO's are real. Paranormal, from outer space, another dimension- I dunno.
ESP. Yes. I've done it myself.
Ghosts? I'm not sure- I just don't know.
Bigfoot- no. The Loch Ness Monster-no. Mothman-no. Most cryptids- no.
God- no. There is less evidence of the existence of that then any of the above.

None of the ones you listed (except UFOs--yeah, people see things in the sky that they can't identify, nothing special about that). If the definition of "paranormal" is "denoting events or phenomena... that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding," then existence, consciousness.

[Jim H]

What is the strangest food you ever ate? I had homemade blood sausage made by an old Russian woman when I was a kid. With goat cheese and home-made wine. She could barely speak English. We called her Motka- which is Russian for Mother. I lived around a lot of folks of Russian, Polish, and German descent when I was a kid. I knew a couple Slavs too. My family were the only Norwegians.
She was old. Cooked everything on a woodstove and got her water from a well. My buddy Nick Siskaninitz and me usta plow, plant, and fertilize her cornfield on her property behind her house for free.
Oh yeah- it was good. She came from Russia right after the Revolution. She was over 80 years old. Beautiful lady.

I've had blood rice cubes at a Taiwanese restaurant, that was pretty good.  Just had a mild copper taste, mostly tasted like meat.  Someday I want to try making Sanguinaccio Dolce, which is an Italian dish mixing blood and chocolate.  The blood is for salt, chocolate for sweet, supposed to be quite good and pretty easy to make.  Edible blood is weirdly hard to get though, have to go to specialty stores.

I've also had century duck egg, which are those preserved Chinese eggs that are a pretty gross black color.  Sometimes you'll see "weird food" people just eat one of these by itself, like a hard boiled egg, which is baffling.  It'd be like just taking a giant spoonful of horseradish and going BLECH.  Of course that would be gross, it's really strong.  Sometimes they're also getting a really crappy brand, kind of like buying crappy beer - it's going to suck.

I had it mixed into congee (rice porridge) with diced green onion on top.  It was actually really good and rich that way.  Also, it was at a Chinese restaurant, and the older server lady was super happy to see a white guy enjoying it, which was pretty funny.  She told my wife she picked a good one in Cantonese.

[ER]

When I was in Japan, we went to a VERY ritzy sushi bar that featured an enormous fish tank full of live, fresh-caught ocean fish.  You pointed out the one you wanted, and they would catch it in a dipnet, filet it in front of you, make it into a nagiri (oblong ball of rice, dab of wasabi, and a nice slice of raw fish on top) in front of you - and when they served it to you, they would show you the hapless fish's body, its gills still reflexively pumping, to prove to you how fresh it was!

Best sushi I ever ate.

Holy Gobi, that's worse than those people who go in a field and boil corn while it's still attached to the plant.

As for weirdest food, I don't know, I once ate a tiny sliver of a slice of "memorial bread" at a synagogue that was made from wheat grown from a field next to Auschwitz.

[ER]

What paranormal things do you believe in, if any.
Myself, UFO's are real. Paranormal, from outer space, another dimension- I dunno.
ESP. Yes. I've done it myself.
Ghosts? I'm not sure- I just don't know.
Bigfoot- no. The Loch Ness Monster-no. Mothman-no. Most cryptids- no.
God- no. There is less evidence of the existence of that then any of the above.

I believe nothing is supernatural, all is part of nature, just possibly not understood by us, so I guess what I believe in is the preternatural.

I went through a stage in my teens and early in college where I tried hard to be logical and doubted almost anything and everything undocumented by science but in doing that I was denying my true feelings, because I do think a lot of weird stuff is out there. For instance I think "time slips" and intrusions into and from other dimensions of existence might be perfectly real and would explain some of the reports of ghosts and the like, the ones that aren't pure fertilizer. (And I don't believe they all are.)

So:

UFOs: yes, whatever they actually are in each case.
ESP: oh, yeah, anyone who has ever had a deep bond with someone can tell you that's real to some extent.
Ghosts: For lack of a better explanation, yes, but I think most reports are misunderstandings or lies.
Bigfoot: no, though maybe explicable by the interdimensional thing I mentioned.
Nessie: tourist trap!
Mothman: Hey, who's to say what those West Virginia hillbillies were mating with, right?
Most cryptids: no.
God: Yes, because something had to have preceded nothing, though I don't know if we are capable of envisioning what this would be, and no human conception of God is necessarily right. Jesus coming back from the dead argues more for God being personally accessible to humans than anything else in organized religions.

Now the Loveland Frogman, oh hell yeah, that baby's real!

[RCMerchant]

"Jesus coming back from the dead argues more for God being personally accessible to humans than anything else in organized religions."

I don't believe in vampires or zombies either.