Holy iPad Slayer! Company Releases World's First Christian Tablet 326
Velcroman1 writes "Steve Jobs worshippers need not apply. But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet, you may want to check out Family Christian's Edifi. Billed as the world's first Christian tablet, its genesis came with the inevitable intersection of technology and religion, according to Brian Honorable, a technology supervisor at Family Christian, the group that sells the tablet. 'We wanted to be able to offer our customers the ability to use our Holy Bible application, which has 27 different English translations of the Bible,' Honorable said."
Pretty sure Moses did it first! (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure Moses did it first!
Re:Pretty sure Moses did it first! (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure Moses did it first!
and it even had rounded corners [schoolworkhelper.net]!
Re:Pretty sure Moses did it first! (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a movie version, not the real thing. The original Mosaical tables may or may not have had rounded corners, but they definitely had the awesome feature of being double-side. I don't know of any tablet device offering this today.
Ex 3515 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written.
Re:Pretty sure Moses did it first! (Score:5, Funny)
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written.
...so even *that* tablet had multitasking.
WTF, Apple?
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Re:Pretty sure Moses did it first! (Score:5, Funny)
“The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen...Oy...Ten! Ten Commandments! For all to obey!”
Re:Pretty sure Moses did it first! (Score:5, Funny)
Actually there were three tablets, but he held one of them wrong.
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Those were Jewish tablets.
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You saying they "trimmed" around the edges?
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The Moses/Jobs and Mt Sinai/Cupertino parallels did flash through my head as I read this summary.
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Are you sure it was him? See here [gocomics.com]. [grin]
Incorrect (Score:5, Funny)
This tablet was perfectly created a week ago as-is on the developer's desk, it did not evolve over years like the iPad.
-Matt
Need to turn water into wine? (Score:2)
Must purchase two? (Score:5, Funny)
Or do all 10 commandments fit on to one tablet this time?
Re:Must purchase two? (Score:5, Funny)
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You can hit the refresh button all you want, but the code doesn't change just cause you want to reboot.
Re:Must purchase two? (Score:5, Informative)
Good one. But an utter failure on the date...
Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt in the spring of 1513 B.C.E. on Nisan 14 (the first full moon after the spring equinox). They took a meandering path, and crossed the Red Sea. That took them about 3 weeks. Then they all encamped at Mt. Sinai about 3 months later. It took around a week for Moses to reach the place where God gave him the tablets (with the 10 commandments), and another 40 days passed before the full law had been expounded to Moses. At this point, the Israelites and ex-Egyptians that were encamped at the base of the mountain were in full-on revolt, worshiping a calf idol. God alerted Moses to this, and Moses headed back to the camp (another 1-week journey). Moses then smashed the tablets God had given him and set about disciplining the people for their idolatry. The discipline took a few days to "work out", since he had the golden calf ground to powder and mixed into the water supply. (Result: Gold flecked poop!) Moses then returned to the mountain (another 1-week journey), re-chiseled the tablets himself (that'll teach him to control his temper... or not), finished learning the rest of the law (time not specified), and went back to camp again (1 week again). Then the people were assembled, the law was read to them, and they all agreed to be bound by it.
So... 21 days (pre-Red Sea) + 90 days (3 averaged months) + 7 days (travel time) + 40 days (learning law) + 7 days (travel) + 3 days (gold poop!) + 7 days (travel) + unspecified time (more learning of the law) + 7 days (travel) + unspecified time (assembly) = 182 days + two unspecifed periods. I'd estimate the law was reiterated for a further 40 days, so that brings us to 222 days + assembly time. The assembly probably took about a week. Remember, there were 3 million people in that camp, so the reading would have to be relayed by callers, and then the response would be by the assembly. That's a logistical nightmare. I'll estimate about 60 days for this (remember, it took 40 days for Moses to receive it one-on-one from God in the first place). So it took 282 days (estimated) to deal with all of that. 282 days is just over 10 months, which brings us to around January-February of 1512 B.C.E.
1512 B.C.E. through 1 B.C.E. = 1512 years
1 C.E. through 2012 C.E. = 2012 years
1512 + 2012 = 3524 years.
Then add the 6 months from January to July.
That's still pretty far out of date.
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As if it wasn't funny already, your username sure added to its humor.
Re:Must purchase two? (Score:5, Funny)
I am struck by the similarities to the Church of Latter Day Saints origin story.
Moses: God gave me tablets.
People: OK, where they at?
Moses: I broke them.
People: ???
Moses: But wait, I copied them down, so these ten things I wrote on these tablets are totally what God told me to tell you.
People: OK!! Let's go!
-----
Joseph Smith: An Italian Angel name "Moroni" gave me some plates with stuff to tell you. I was out in the wilderness skrying (getting answers to questions by listening to my hat) and this Angel totally gave me some golden plates from God that say what He wants us to do.
People: OK, where these plates at?
Joe Smith: I got 'em put away somewhere safe. I can't show them to you. God said so.
People: ????
Joe Smith: Wait! One of the thing He wants us to do is take a whole bunch of young wives.
People: Oh, hell yeah! Can we start right now?
Women: Hey, wait a minute!
People: Shut up ladies, It's God's will. Now let's choose up. (at this point, the men put their feet in a circle and did "inka-dinka soda cracker..." to see who gets to pick which women. Having been the one to get the golden plates in the first place, Joseph Smith gets to choose first, without participating in "inka-dinka soda cracker...").
[Note: no disrespect is meant by my depiction of the Jewish or Mormon back stories. Well, maybe a little bit, but not of the Jewish or Mormon people themselves, just on the backstories. And who am I to criticize anyone for believing something crazy? Every April since 1960 I've believed the Cubs were going to win the World Series.]
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Having said that, well played, sir. Definitely deserves a +1 Funny.
they could have taken 6 small screens (Score:3)
Arranged them as a cross. That would have awesome.
Bonus: it folds up into a cube. Then the goths would make "hellraiser" jokes and the Christians wouldn't get it
battery can beat up your dad (Score:5, Funny)
quoting:
"The battery is actually stronger than everybody else out there on the market.â
if we feed the christian pad to a Li-Ion, will the romans return again, do you think?
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Obvious statement is obvious (Score:2, Flamebait)
We’re looking at other things, probably a newer tablet
Yeah, uh, so when we start producing the new Edifi 2.0, it's going to be all new and shit.
Wake me when we have a working space elevator, so we can send these wackjobs to meet their god.
technology and christianity (Score:3, Funny)
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Technology and religion were not mutually exclusive for the longest time. Actually, religion (or rather, the religious types) were the forefront of technology for a good deal of the past two thousand years. Only recently, when we "dared" to study past the boundaries of the religious scriptures and even were so bold to contradict it, the religious types started to get uneasy.
It wouldn't do religion justice to ignore its value in preserving information during the "dark ages", when little was spared from looti
Patent? (Score:2)
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Common misunderstanding. That was opensourced a couple thousand years ago.
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"here me, oh israel! god has given me these 15 {{crash}}, I mean 10, these TEN commandments that we should all follow and obey!"
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Dude, even Mosanto never tried to stretch a patent over three millenia! I mean, the RCC is much but it's not THAT evil!
Yea, Not the First, Far From It (Score:2)
If the specs weren't kind of ass (Score:2)
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What would happen if you held it upside down? A Satan pad?
Re:If the specs weren't kind of ass (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing would happen, unlike your tablet that erases itself when you turn it upside down.
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Not until it reads you the bible the wrong way, but then you get to hear Satan's voice.
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...like purchasing a thumb drive shaped like the Holy Bible to store all of your quasi-legal pr0nz on?
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Only if it's nun porn.
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If you wanted to be genuine, I guess the porn you'd have to store on it is pretty much VERY illegal, pretty much at any place of this planet...
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Hmm... I've heard a lot of very colorful idioms for taking a shit, but "mercy" is new to me...
Already done in 1981 (Score:2)
Moses: The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen...
[drops one of the tablets]
Moses: Oy! Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!
Stone? (Score:2)
That is... (Score:2, Funny)
truly the stupidest thing that I have heard all week.
It's a customized Kindle (Score:3, Informative)
Family Christian is essentially a bookstore, and this is their "Nook" or "Kindle." I'm a little surprised they are big enough to do that, but it's attractive that they are offering an android tablet comparable to the Kindle Fire, for $50 less. That could be pretty useful, regardless of religion.
My Dad and I shopped at the predecessor to Family Christian Stores years ago, when the name was changed from "Christian Bookstores" to "Christian Stores." We joked that you could go there and buy a Christian, and that obviously enslavement of Christians and throwing them to the lions had returned. I guess our humor probably isn't typical Christian humor. Mainly I think we were annoyed that the book selection shrank and the rest of the space was taken up with artwork and stuff.
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Family Christian is essentially a bookstore, and this is their "Nook" or "Kindle." I'm a little surprised they are big enough to do that, but it's attractive that they are offering an android tablet comparable to the Kindle Fire, for $50 less. That could be pretty useful, regardless of religion.
No, it's not comparable with the Kindle Fire. A spec comparison is here [familychristian.com].
Spec-wise, it looks like it's closer to the Nook Color (not the Nook Tablet), which is $170. However, it has a lower-resolution screen (800x480 compared to 1024x600), no 802.11n, and a resistive touchscreen instead of capacitive. You can get the exact same specs in an even cheaper Chinese tablet; I wouldn't be shocked if these are based on one of those, but rebranded and with Christian-themed software preinstalled.
Re:It's a customized Kindle (Score:5, Funny)
Family Christian is essentially a bookstore, and this is their "Nook" or "Kindle." I'm a little surprised they are big enough to do that,
Step 1: email suppliers found via alibaba
Step 2: get one of them to produce for you a branded tablet
Step 3: Prophet!
bad gift from grandma (Score:2)
Good luck returning it.
High on Jesus (Score:3)
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Well, I know a few drugs that lets you speak with Jesus, if that's what you're after...
Heathen Hardware (Score:2)
We had to make our own Tablet since our Bible app wouldn't run on Heathen Hardware.
This is of course Tablet 2.0, a massive technological improvement and over 100lbs lighter than the Tablets God gave Moses.
Specs compared to Nook & Kindle Fire (Score:5, Informative)
Will they call their "Walled Garden"... (Score:5, Funny)
Christian != "family-friendly" (Score:3, Insightful)
From the summary: "But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet,..."
Sorry, but Christian != "family-friendly." There is nothing "friendly" about brainwashing and indoctrinating your children into a superstitious, fearful, dogmatic, and guilt-obsessed worldview. Conversely, there is nothing intrinsically "unfriendly" about being non-Christian--i.e., it is a fallacy to imply that Christians have some kind of exclusive claim on being more wholesome or moral than others, simply by being Christian.
Oh, and one more thing: this whole article is just a thinly-veiled slashvertisement.
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Come on, the bible is good wholesome reading for the whole family. Rape, pillaging, slavery, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, torture, biological warfare and glorification of questionable morals for all.
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not to mention the lashings of the ultraviolent and some occasional in-out, in-out.
(bog said so!)
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There is nothing "friendly" about brainwashing and indoctrinating your children into ....
You probably dont have children, do you?
The primary purpose of parenting (as opposed to, say, an orphanage) is to "indoctrinate", or one might even say brainwash, your children with what you believe is proper behaviour. So the first part of your sentence is not much more than redundantly referring to parenting in general, albeit in an extremely Chr
Re:Christian != "family-friendly" (Score:4, Insightful)
What points of consensus on morality has the atheist community reached?
Your ignorance shows no bounds and therefore I quit reading at that point. Atheism (a = not, theism = belief in a god) is anyone that does not believe in a God. There is not single belief system for atheist. That would be like asking if you can get clear consensus on any issue because all the people you ask live in the same city/state/country/planet.
I would also add that you could easily ask 5 Christians about certian moral issues and recieve 5 different answers... examples are: what you can do on the sabbath, should a woman submit to her husband, does the Pope have devine power, is it allowed to have multiple wives, birth control, and abortion.
So your smug comment will be applauded by Christians who probably have less in common with you than this atheist.
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Great Money Making Idea (Score:2)
Step 1: take a cheap-ass discounted $50 tablet
(android 1.x and some 2.x tablets are dropping in price, not to mention RIM playbooks)
Step 2: add some religious software and branding
(project gutenberg is a good source of free religious books)
Step 3: market it to religious groups
(especially those that are technically ignorant; oh look what granny bought you for X-mas)
Step 4: profit $$$.
Step 5: (optional..) repent for your soul at your death-bed.
Repeat the above steps for Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, H
But does it run Linux? (Score:2)
Really? THIS made the front page? (Score:2, Insightful)
Umm, why are we giving what is almost certainly a crappy piece of equipment with a marketing tie in to a bizarre cult the time of day? Someone who is dumb enough or deluded enough to buy one of these they certainly isn't reading slashdot. If people want to go off and read their weird, nonsensical stories about invisible friends in the sky, fine. But this certainly isn't news for nerds nor is it stuff that matters.
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uhm, slashdot is here for page refreshes.
you did know that, right?? that this isn't a service to us, for us or by us?
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Hey, I had a hard day and I come here to unwind, and I've had more laughs in the few minutes reading this than I had all day during the meetings!
Right next to Ubuntu Christian edition! (Score:3)
I can firmly say as an unbeliever I won't be buying one, but I as long as they share their source code, I wish them well.
Mission Statement (Score:2)
Re:0_0 (Score:5, Funny)
It has flash, and will show you porn - but only hetero, in the missionary position.
Re:0_0 (Score:4, Funny)
And only properly married, monogamous couples.
Re:0_0 (Score:5, Insightful)
As a man who considers himself Christian, I'm saying the same damned thing.
Chalk it up to a scam angle used to push out crap tablets.
(besides, if you want a bible on an iPad that bad, well: go get one - there's like a bajillion of them in there! [google.com])
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Speaking of pushing crap, I have noticed something odd over the years:
Christianity and White Supremacists both have the same problem of attracting youth, and both Christian and White Supremacist music generally sucks.
On the Christian side you could say Sam Phillips and Jars of Clay weren't bad, but Sam Phillips 'left' Christian music before her biggest albums.
,,,
And on the White Supremacist side, there's,,,, ? Anyone? I don't know any, e
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There's some skinhead ska bands out there if you look... I could never figure out how the whole reggae>rocksteady>ska thing happened in regards to the skins, since the roots of the music are from Jamaica. People are weird.
Re:0_0 (Score:5, Informative)
The skinhead culture started in the early 60s, when reggae and rocksteady were big in Britain. For whatever reason, the culture adopted the music and the style and fused it with their working class fashion. At the time, there was nothing inherently racist about skinheads. That happened in the 70s and early 80s, mostly fueled by racist ideas of foreigners stealing jobs in what was a depressed economy. It was this racist form of skinhead that was imported into the U.S. Most people in the US only equate the term with white supremacists.
By the way, the British film This Is England does a pretty great job of covering the early 80s skinhead scene, and is just a really good film in general.
Re:0_0 (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to listen to some christian rock when I was a kid.
There was some good stuff out there. Whitecross had a couple albums I really liked - they fit into the glam rock scene that was popular before the grunge bus ran everyone over. Petra had some good stuff if you like keyboard-heavy REO Speedwagon type stuff. Mortification was a christian band, although I could never make out the lyrics - growling death metal wasn't my thing. A lot of people liked Stryper, but I never got into them. There was more, but it's been twenty years.
My parents bought me a DC Talk CD once, but since I wasn't into rap I can't really comment on the quality. Kinda Run-DMCish, IIRC, but I'm no expert.
There's a christian station in our town, and it plays "comtemporary christian" music. Easy listening type stuff, generally. I couldn't stand it then, and I can't stand it now.
I imagine there's still a market for christian rock groups, and if nothing's changed, there's probably some good stuff out there. It's a good niche for the right group. You probably won't find any Jimi Hendrixes or Randy Rhoads in there, but you might find a Joe Perry or a Kip Winger.
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Most don't fit into the easy listening category, and are worth checking out as well done christian music in their various styles:
Daniel Amos/DA, The Lost Dogs, The Choir, The 77s/Seventy-Sevens, Rez/Ressurection Band, Glass Harp, early Sixpence None The Richer
Because they did a good job artistically (IMHO) they didn't achieve the # mentions of Jesus per song quota to get as much radio play as many of artists that wound up defining the genre for most people.
Note that in DA's case, they change musical styles
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Looking at your list, I would guess you know where I'm talking about if I said my hometown was Bushnell, IL.
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Some highlights I caught this year:
77s & The Violet Burning had great sets
Steve Taylor screening Blue Like Jazz and doing a Q&A.
The Choir doing all of Chase The Kangaroo for the very last show
I'm going to miss that place.
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I'm not Christian, but Take 6 is an unabashedly Christian group that also happens to be a very critically acclaimed (10 Grammys) and are pretty fantastic even to my sinful atheist ears: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcg9OV8ZVuI&feature=related [youtube.com]
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There is a large movement that everything in the world is the boggeyman or Satan in disguise. So it's only safe to buy stuff if you can't be tempted by bad things. This company is a large Christian book seller and publisher, just catering to their market.
The people that would buy this wouldn't set foot in Barnes and Noble anyway because the have all sorts of "unholy" books there, even books about SEX. They certianly wouldn't be going to Amazon (on their 56k dial-up).
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Re:0_0 (Score:5, Funny)
Not if you take your bath in holy water, because your ordinary secular water will probably damage its holy spirit. You can easily tell, if it starts smoking, that's the holy spirit escaping and it's a good thing it won't work anymore because it's not blessed anymore.
Of course you got warranty, though, you can claim it in the afterlife.
Re:Resistive Touch. Move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
Capacitive touch screen suck at precision.
Resistive touch screens are awesome for precision. If I wanted a tablet for writing or drawing, I'd be stupid to opt for a capacitive touch screen over a resistive touch screen.
RIM has a patent on a hybrid resistive-capacitive touchscreen, which is really the best of both worlds. Finger fondling capacitive screen, cheap stylus friendly resistive touch screen. The Galaxy Note uses a more feature-rich Wacom digitizer which is awesome. It's a shame that they're the only company that understands how useful a stylus can be on a slab.
To answer Steve Jobs' question, "Who wants a stylus?": just about everybody. (No, those fat fake rubber finger "stylus" things don't count. They don't even come close.)
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Capacitive works okay for short notes, which is all the writing you'd do on a tablet. As far as drawing is concerned, God created the Wacom tablets/screens for that. A resistive touchscreen doesn't even come close to one of those and is about as useless (or useful) as a capacitive one.
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I disagree. Back when PDAs were all-the-rage I wrote constantly on those old resistive touchscreens -- it made up the majority of my PDAs use! Tablets offer the opportunity to write more than just short-notes, and the capacitive touchscreen makes even that simple task difficult and frustrating.
Sketching out diagrams, taking meeting notes, etc. are all much better served by a resistive touchscreen or with a Wacom-style digitizer pen.
We've given up far too much utility in exchange for the very few extras g
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Con men seldom worry about things like including up-to-date technology in their products.
When you can convince people that they need special religious hand-held computers instead of the evil secular hand-held computers, I'm pretty sure you can convince them that multi-touch and dual-core processors are the devil's work.
Hell, I'm surprised that t
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Leave that to a woman...
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Well, I'm not sure about that, you know that old joke: A priest, a gay guy and a pedo go into a bar and orders a drink...
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...and that's just the first guy
Re:27 Translations, You Say? (Score:4, Informative)
here ya go: http://www.biblegateway.com/ [biblegateway.com]
no registration necessary!
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One of my favorite sites.
Whenever you need to take a Bible quote out of context to tick the religious guys off, you may rest assured that there is a version that makes whatever point you're trying to make.
Proof?
It's in the bible that Jesus was a Pedo. No, really. Just read Matt. 19:14, King James: "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
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where's the revised standard version?
Sigh.
I suppose mainline protestantism is truly dead.
Oh well. There's always atheism.
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Several translations don't even try to be literal. Sort of like reading the Iliad in English, but way more choices.
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Engraving is free........much like being a penis
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And you think this is YOUR planet? Hehe. That's funny.
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I think they used mostly scrolls by the time Christians came along.
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yeah, but the mice they used to scroll, back then, are LONG dead by now!
this is why no one has gotton past the first page of any of the ancient scrolls.