thortho

From what I remember of the rules of what's unclean and what's not, it seems to mostly have to do with what's "different". So, as mentioned in the passage - rabbits are unclean because they chew their cud (well, sort of, anyway) without having cloven hoofs, and pigs have cloven hoofs but don't re-chew. So they're different from the ones that do chew cud and have cloven hoofs. Similar went for things in the water. If it has scales, like most fishes do, then it's okay; if it doesn't have scales, like shellfish and whales, then it's unclean.

Oh yes, garlic. I use it a lot, probably most of my cooking uses a clove or four (or a whole one, if it's one of those cloveless types). I guess that goes some way towards explaining why I'm single.

I prefer hardcopy books, paperback or the other kind, but as I'm living in a fairly small place at the moment (and will be for about another year, at least), I just don't have space for them. So I'm sticking to e-books for now. They also come with the bonus of usually being somewhat cheaper than the other kind

It's fairly long, and not really suited for a snappy one-liner (19th century folks could sometimes be the opposite of frugal with their words, couldn't they?), but I still like it, partly because it's written about 150 years ago and is still true today, partly because it is a little inspiring and thought-birthing, but also because it's from one of my favorite books, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, chapter three (I did have to search for a while to find it in English - I've only read it in translation): "In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual or the family do not ask themselves—what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or, what would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary."

Possibly a fun thing to think about, but it has so very little impact on my daily life that it hardly matters to me at all. Now, if I had a job involving e.g. getting satellites up there, I'd probably need to develop a stronger opinion on this, but since it's very unlikely that I'll ever seek employment in that area, it's a fairly non-relevant question. So I just stick to the accepted idea (since Aristotle at least): The Earth is round(ish).

Get out. That about sums up any advice I can give. Get out, block his phone number, block him on every social media you're using and set the privacy settings as restrictive as you can, don't stop to talk if you "run into" him in the streets or at the store or wherever, and get help from support groups and/or professionals.

I'm a nursing assistant in a retirement home; previously I've worked as an assistant in a psychiatric ward, as well as general worker in construction and roadwork. While making things (roads, sidewalks, buildings, etc.) is quite enjoyable, I find I prefer the caring/nurturing professions a lot more (if not the actual work involved, then at least the co-workers are much more pleasant company, generally), and it's most likely what I'll keep on doing for quite a while, yet. Possibly, at some point, I might take up studying to become a nurse but I'm not sure if I will - there's plenty of time to figure that out.

I'm not sure how to overcome the guilt, and I'm not even sure that's the important thing, here. What's important is to keep going - "make it right", in a way. I mean, if you've wronged someone else and feel guilty about it, what do you do then? Apologise, repair the damage (when possible) and move on. Possibly see if you can use the guilt as a fuel for not doing that kind of thing again. So you've not met some of your deadlines? That could mean that you were overly optimistic in setting those deadlines in the first place, so set yourself the same tasks with a more generous deadline. Or maybe you had too many goals you wanted to accomplish at the same time, so cross out all but one of those goals and save them for later, once you've achieved the first. Having too much on your to-do list can be paralysing - "Hmm, should I do this thing or that thing or maybe one of the others?" and then spend far too much of your day focusing on exactly which task to start with, or you get started on one thing but feel guilty that you're neglecting the others, so that i) it gets harder to focus and ii) you switch between tasks too frequently. Or you've not met your goal of meditating every day? Maybe you've set the duration for your daily meditation too long - if you've never meditated before, then it can be a little daunting to suddenly start sitting for 10 minutes at a time (for instance). So, start with a shorter one - just a minute or two - there's simply no way you don't have time for that. Once that becomes a habit (give it a week or three), slowly increase the duration - one extra minute every two-four weeks or so. Even here, if you've seventeen other to-do things, that might become distracting from your 1-minute meditation ("What am I doing, just sitting here and doing nothing when there's so much stuff to get done?"); so again, trim your list. Find which is most important to you (or just choose one at random, I suppose) and stick with just that for, say, a month. Small, managable steps are pretty much always the way to go. You won't run a marathon in four giant leaps, you finish by "just" putting one foot in front of the other, again and again. That's not always easy, but it gets even more difficult if, at the same time, you're writing a novel on your smartphone and having a conversation with your running buddy.

Makes sense. At least if we take "rules" to mean an external set of rules, probably written down somewhere. Someone of integrity doesn't need to have a rulebook somewhere out there, the "rules" are within them. And they don't need to think too much about whether a particular action is in line with any rules, they're acting more out of instinct or habit than anything else. Much like virtues, generally - a virtuous man doesn't need to wonder if an action is virtuous or not.

There's no such thing as a "perfect" woman (or man, or pretty much anything at all). And nobody else can make you happy - not long-term happiness, anyway, and not all by themselves.

Listen more to what they're saying, and try to find some questions to ask related to that. The way it's coming off from your description is that you talk about yourself for a bit and then run out of steam - it's not entirely clear how much they're saying, or if they're even getting a word in at all, but if you're basically just giving them a monologue, then the conversation's going to die fairly quickly. It could work better to give a short introduction, ask a question about her, and then, based on her reply, either comment on her answer or ask a follow-up question. Now, it shouldn't come off as a job interview (and absolutely not as an interrogation) where all you do is ask and ask and ask - you do need to put a little of yourself out there as well, at least when it's something you relate to (so, she says e.g. that she loves dogs - and you do, too - then you can get into talking about dogs a little; if you have or had dogs, there are stories there, or you can talk about various breeds, what kind of dog you'd like to get, that sort of thing). Or, you could work up on having a few "safe" topics up your sleeve. The usual stuff: Line of work (does she like her job - why/why not), cats or dogs, interesting movies seen recently (or books read, or TV shows or whatever), some hobbies. And so on and so forth, just build up a reserve of conversational topics. And remember to listen to what she says, and show that you're listening with further questions and comments. Also, short lulls in conversations aren't bad, but if after 30-90 seconds of sitting in silence and neither of you manage to find anything to talk about, or if neither of you are interested enough in the other person to ask even the most basic questions? Yeah, that's pretty bad.

She's said "no" three times in the space of what, one year or even less? I'd say it's time to move on. How do you know she didn't have any other plans that time? She might've been off from work, but had something else to do.

Our teeth don't really prove anything; there are animals that have pretty vicious-looking teeth that mainly (or exclusively) eat plants. Gorillas spring to mind: Sure, they eat a few insects and caterpillars, but they're mostly plant-eaters (I imagine that what insects they eat are just the ones unfortunate enough to be on the plant when it goes into the mouth). And just look at their teeth! Our digestive tract, from what I've read, points towards a more plant-based diet, and proper carnivores are capable of consuming a lot more meat in a sitting (relative to body size) than humans; I remember reading that if a human ate meat like a wolf does, then we'd be eating ten to twenty-pound steaks in one go (that's about four to nine kg; a restaurant I know of gives you the meal for free if you manage eating one kg steak within an hour). However, we human clearly are capable of eating meat; we have people living in very cold climates (e.g. Inuits in Greenland and North America) who were historically nearly completely carnivorous (fish, whale, seal, walrus, various small land mammals, birds and eggs) since the vegetation is fairly sparse. From what I've read, more modern diets (with more carbohydrates) haven't been very pleasant for them (increase in obesity and diabetes, mainly). These are, of course, fairly extreme examples, and the vast majority of humans haven't lived and aren't living in such climates. From an environmental standpoint, eating meat (and fish and so on) could be considered "better" when people are living in areas where plants don't thrive so well - better eating a locally caught fish than a nice, balanced vegetarian meal where most of the ingredients have to be imported from a long way off, that kind of thinking. So I don't think the main problem with meat eating is that humans are "made for" a vegan diet; it's rather the whole mess surrounding the meat industry that's the problem.

I don't know how the rules are where you live (because I don't know where you live), but in both Iceland and Norway, the very first time they just take a few small samples, both to check for stuff like iron levels as well as screen for various diseases. I'd imagine it's similar elsewhere; if your blood iron is too low, they won't (or shouldn't) let you donate. If the iron (and blood pressure etc.) is okay, then I suppose it's a possibility that they'd let you give. They don't take very much (at least not where I've been), just half a litre (500 ml or about 1 pint). Speaking personally, I've always felt a little refreshed afterwards - a bit like oil change in a car, I imagine.

On one hand, seeing as how just about everyone here is influenced by him in some way (and wouldn't be here having these discussions if he hadn't started up the forum), citing him is a fairly natural thing to do. However, if trying to make a point about something, I think it's pretty weak to point to someone else for proof. Depending on the subject, of course, but this sort of "appeal to authority"-style of discussing can easily suggest that the writer isn't really thinking about the subject themselves and are just parroting another's views and opinions. I should stress that this isn't even close to always being the case - sometimes, someone else has simply articulated the point so well that it's simply better or more efficient to quote them, rather than trying to say it again with one's own words. But I think that pointing to one of his videos as a way to "win" a discussion or to provide a final answer to the problem being discussed - that's not how it should be done; and it'd be problematic if other participants in the conversation would think to themselves "Oh well, Leo says that it's like this, so that's the end of this discussion". And I'm fairly sure that Leo would agree with this, that his videos are not the final answer or ultimate truth or anything, and can (should, even) be criticised just as much as anything anyone else says. And on that point, I'd like to end with a little quote: "Indeed, I counsel you to go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. [...] One repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil only." Thus Spake Zarathustra: "On the Bestowing Virtue".