Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with prayers

"You're in our thoughts and prayers"

HopperFan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:05:27 -0800

When did "thoughts and prayers" become such a commonplace expression of sympathy? The phrase seems to be almost ubiquitous now, and I honestly don't remember reading it so frequently before (by that, I mean in the 70s - 80's -early 90s). Were there other common phrases that people used to express sympathy in the past - or is it a simple case of me just not noticing because I was younger?

It seems that I first started noticing it in association with auto racing, but I doubt that's the origin. I tried looking up older newspaper articles that might contain similar sentiments, but I just wasn't finding "thoughts and prayers."

I assume it's unique to the States, with a little bit of bleed-over to the UK, but I'm not sure of that, either.

Prayer notices in the local paper - what are they for?

lysistrata — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:49:29 -0800

I sometimes see announcements in the newspaper praising saints and listing prayers or novenas with instructions to publish the same ad in a future edition of the paper if the prayers work for you. Who places these ads? What purpose do they serve? What's the deal?

Funeral Chants

naju — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:32:55 -0800

I'm looking for funeral chants, prayers and songs that are beautiful and mournful. I'm doing an experimental DJ set and I want to base it around all kinds of funeral chants, prayers, drones, etc. Vocal lines of any language. Should be aurally beautiful and mournful/emotional. Any ideas? Links to recordings/samples would be doubly appreciated. Thanks.

OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod

Moondoggie — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 16:31:55 -0800

Miracle Filter: I'm trying to make sure I've covered all of my options and while I hope that this hasn't happened to you, I secretly hope it happened to someone. My hard drive is dead. Well, not exactly the whole drive. One partition of an external firewire drive. I'm on Mac OSX and first went to TechToolPro and Disk Warrior. They tell me I used to have 72GB there. They can rebuild the directory to see 26GB. Insert cursing.

I called Drive Savers for an estimate. Using the Economy delivery service, the charge would be from $500 to $2700. $500 if they recovered 10%, $2700 if they recover it all. Insert fainting.

My latest crackpot scheme is forensic software. I have an email in to a place that sells it to see if I can download a demo to see if it works. Pricey, but not 2700 frickin' dollars. Insert hope.

My question (finally) is: have any of you gone through this hell and retrieved all or most of your data, and if so, was it by using a method I'm not thinking of. Oh, I tried going in through the UNIX on a whim and that didn't work either.

Yes, I'll backup my data from now on and so should you. Do it NOW! Well, after you've answered, at least.