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Perhaps not 1700 years ago, but by mid 13th century, Thomas Aquinas had already pondered these questions

Do you agree with homeschooling and school choice? I do. See article 26, item 3 at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/.

I.e. if only one out of a hundred shops in the area refuse to service gays/blacks/etc, I don't see it as sufficient grounds for the state to intervene. But if, say, a quarter of them do that, that's a different thing.

There is a huge difference between discriminating by behavior ("we only give kids to married foster couples") and discriminating by race or gender ("whites only").

And if sexual behavior discrimination must be forbidden, then I would use different criteria than yours.

I would monitor not the "percentage of discrimination", but the _size_ of the companies that discriminate. Individuals and tiny companies would not be restricted. There must also be exemptions for religious institutions - forcing a Christian seminary to ordain active homosexuals as priests would be preposterous.

Opus Dei, on the other hand, is an organization, with hierarchy and purpose - so yes, it could reasonably be involved in undercover projects. That its membership is secret is somewhat worrying, and their general aura of secrecy around their activities does not lend them much trust. At the same time, it's what makes it hard to verify any rumors regarding them, so I have to assume that those are just rumors unless and until they actually are substantiated.

This is simply not true. There is a large difference between discreetness and secrecy. It is true that Opus Dei does not publicize a list of their members; but neither does any religious organization that I know. It is also true that Opus Dei members are generally discreet, don't wear Opus Dei t-shirts, etc. Opus Dei schools do not have "Opus Dei" in their name - but they generally link to Opus Dei in their homepage, and mention Opus Dei in their "about" page. See for example http://www.unav.es/servicio/informacion/mission.
And if you ask a member , he/she will tell it. So when Joe enters Opus Dei, it takes only a few days for his friends to know about it; then, if he is famous, his Wikipedia page will immediately include it. This is hardly "secret".
Second, the Opus Dei teaching is the same as regular Catholic teaching. And the particular "charisma" of Opus Dei is open for all to see: books are available for a small price, and many are available for free over the Internet. See http://www.escrivaworks.org/
Third, Opus Dei is apolitical; and the rare Opus Dei members in political positions are often in centrist or center-left parties.

After Bush, the religion of any American president bothers me. I don't know which will be the next one claiming God spoke to him and told him to do such and such. That said, Santorum bothers me more than Romney in that regard, as I consider him more likely to "hear voices" - his politics seems to be guided by religion much more so than I feel comfortable.

But Catholicism is an extremely stable religion. It is not like the opposition to abortion was invented last year; in fact, the Church prides itself in NOT changing any essential teaching for 2000 years. So you KNOW what a faithful Catholic thinks about social issues (abortion, pornography, etc.); he is not going to "hear voices" and change his mind.

If you mean as a part of valediction, then that depends on whether it's a public or a private school. In a public school, no, since they are not supposed to promote religion, and valediction is effectively a part of the official ceremony rather than a purely personal address. A private school can, of course, set its own rules in that regard.

The 1st Amendment says _Congress shall make no law_ respecting an establishment of religion. So:
1) If the Federal Congress mandated

Not really a new idea. If you look at medieval maps of the world, you'd regularly see things like "Here be dragons" and other sorts of odd human-like creatures in the less explored areas of the map. Look at Gulliver's Travels. It contains more than a few non-human creatures with intelligence in the distance. Yes, those were islands on earth, but sea voyage was the space travel of that age.

More significantly, Saint Thomas Aquinas deal this this issue in the 12th century:
http://dermottmullan.com/aquinalien.htm
http://www.unav.es/cryf/extraterrestriallife.html#texto4

In short, there is no reason to believe that God is limited to just humanity and there are no implications to Catholic Theology if the universe is teeming with life.

Given that the universe is made for God's glory, it would be presumptuous of us to automatically assume that we're the only ones here, even if it ultimately turns out to be true. But given the size of the universe, this will likely remain an open question if we never achieve first contact.

They are probably stronger than lions, and quite a bit more intelligent. Much like a man fighting a Dog. Man should win.

Well, good luck then ;-)

Indigo Magic File Selector

As Steve Jobs would want, here are the 'Lickable Links':

To centralize auth you can use:

NIS/NIS+ + PAM

OpenLDAP + PAM and More

SAMBA + PAM

Advanced LDAP/Samba

PAM is the way to go

to centralize auth you can use :
+ NIS/NIS+ + PAM -> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/NIS-HOWTO/index.html

+ OpenLDAP + PAM -> http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/docs/ldap-auth2.p hp
http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/papers/security-with-l dap-jan-2002/security-with-ldap.html

+ SAMBA + PAM -> http://www.unav.es/cti/ldap-smb/smb-ldap-3-howto.h tml
http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/docs/samba-ldap-a dvanced.php

PAM is the way to go -> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/

OK, we are not a big company, so your "bigwigs" won't care too much for this story, but...

We are using Samba and cups to provide all of our file/print services, and they are both authenticating back to LDAP. Here is best source that I have found so far for samba and LDAP integration. It works very nicely, and with Samba 2.2 you can even do automatic NT/2000 printer driver installation as well.

For backup we use a Tivoli storage manager, which has native linux support, and so far has proved to be pretty reliable. We also run this thing in a very heterogenous environment (Linux, AIX, Solaris, NT and 2000!) with very few problems.