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I have always noticed this, but the subject came to light this evening after seeing similarities in today's video games. Have you ever noticed in the Star Wars movies that each movie has a really big chasm in the middle of a room with no guardrails around the perimeter that always leads to the reactor core which someone always has a tendency to get dropped, get thrown down, get cut in half and then pushed into or end up taking a wrong turn and almost walking over the ledge? I fail to see the purpose of such devices. Why would any engineer design such a station and yet place controls for crucial systems on the opposite side of a column where the only access to such is a twenty-centimetre walkway which means the difference of escaping from the Death Star or falling to certain death?

The simple answer to the question is that the Star Wars universe is fiction and does not need to conform to the rules of practical architecture. However, dealing in such a fictional universe, that answer does not count. So, does any one else have any idea as to why such a chasm in an establishment is necessary?

The Bible says that we are to submit to authorities and pay any taxes which might belong to a government. Why is it that American Christians honour a nation which was founded on a revolt against paying taxes? Is it possible that your country wasn't founded on the biblical principles like so many people say that it is?

To me, this makes perfect sense. However, the case with other people is obviously the opposite. Just about any Christian organisation in America is obsessed with a love of country that nearly rivals the sense of doing what's right. “America: right or wrong.”

Now, I've made it a point to stop calling the high school where I attended a Christian school. When I visit the establishment to visit with old teachers and see the new yearbook filled with mugshots that all include a background of Old Glory itself, I start using the term American school. It's highly ironic how a school can be so obsessed with loving a country which they would never allow to educate its children. In keeping with the theme on irony, it's also ironic how a school textbook can state how the British were people who loved God, read the Bible, freed the slaves, spread the reformation et cetera and then, when the chapter discusses the American Revolution, scathe the British as Satan's spawn.

The way that I see it is that people are grown up with this idea that God and America go together like pasta and marinara. If you feel this burning sense of patriotism and feel that America is God's country, try reading about MKULTRA, the Tuskegee syphilis study or, more recently, Abu Ghraib. America is just a country. God doesn't see people by what country that they're from; he sees them by the content of their hearts. May God bless every nation of earth.

I hate biblical prophecy enthusiasts who tell how the events are going to unfold to the end of the world. They assume a symbolism exists in each and every portion of prophesy and then produce theories that are really no different from taking numbers and producing something to go along with it. The Bible code is the worst example of this. It would be the equivalent of looking at a sheet of marble and thinking that it's some amazing find when a shape is found that vaguely resembles the genie from Aladdin.

I'm not saying that there is no Bible code; what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter. God told us what he wanted to tell us in plain Greek. If it was important, it would be somewhere on every bookshelf in every Bible somewhere between Genesis and Revelation. So, if it's not important, why do people devote their time looking for it assuming that it exists in the first place?

Here is a classic example: could God make a rock too big for Him to lift and then lift it? If you are a fan of The Simpsons, you might vaguely know what I'm talking about if you substitute a burrito and a microwave. People could debate this and say that God would have to change who he is or say that the paradox proves that God is inexistent. Me, I would just think in simpler terms: why would a God who knows everything bother to make a rock that big if he knew that he would be lifting it later?

My advise: consider the obvious before you start drawing the flowcharts and schematics; you could answer your question and save yourself time and confusion. As Scotty would say: “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”