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My bf is Vietnamese so I have an inside to most of the Viet boys. There are about 50 that work in Soi Twilight clubs and bars. They all know each other. I would say about the same for Cambodian and Lao, though I'm not sure. This out of maybe 500 or more guys that work on any given night. So still very much a Thai majority. There is a difference in look from Thai and Vietnamese. I thought the Lao boy I have been hanging out with this week was Vietnamese, but he very proudly stated no, Lao. Most of the Viet, Lao, and Cambodian boys speak Thai, but can't read it. Pictured menus are great when you take them out to eat. Just about all the Viet boys have been back in Vietnam for Tet. They are due to start arriving back to Bangkok this weekend. My friend will be back next weekend. They all spent 2 or 3 weeks with family. There have been a lot of Chinese tourist around , but for me, surprised at how many Japanese tourist in town. Big bus loads. Chinese appear to drink more and off boys more than Japanese. I'm just getting ready to head out to dinner with my Lao friend. It's interesting that lack of each other's language makes conversation difficult, but the boys do appreciate going out to a restaurant . A change from nothing but street food. The hot season is kicking in. It's 6:30, sun just setting and still about 92. As soon as sun is gone, time to head out.

Live long and prosper. Best regards, RA1

I have been, and always shall be, your friend.

A Syrian friend of mine says the same things. Heartbreaking. Also too, too terrible the antiquities just destroyed in Mosul. In 1992 I saw an awe-inspiring exhibition of ancient Near Eastern art and artifacts at the National Gallery in DC. While the docent wasn't looking I actually touched the stele of the Code of Hammurabi. (Pretty sure that hardness-scale-10 diorite didn't suffer as a result.) Have been wondering if any of the fragile sandstone stele and statuary just lost were among the things I saw that day.

Must read about ISIS in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ It truly is a traditionalist Islamic movement.

This is a big freakin deal people. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/26/net-neutrality-fcc-vote_n_6761702.html

I agree it is a big deal. I don't think this is over by a long shot as the companies that lost will pour tons of money into getting this overturned. But, I was very happy to see this was the ruling.

Re: Saddam's ethnic cleansing and other atrocities, there is the argument that the U.S. reaching out more or less unilaterally (+ Tony Blair for what that was worth) and taking out a sovereign government in Iraq -- not to mention botching the aftermath even beyond our fundamental miscalculations about the aftermath in the first place -- ended up damaging our moral authority around the world, thus our ability over the long run to help the downtrodden etc., in ways that far more than offset the "good" of stopping Saddam. That is, that Bush/Cheney may end up responsible for having destroyed American exceptionalism. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of casualties in the chaos following our actions in Iraq. Nor our role in propping up Saddam in the first place. Nor the extent to which the drain of the trillion-plus dollars and counting that we've spent there has damaged our national security, it being based far more today on economic strength (and everything that buys, guns and butter and economic leverage over enemies and frenemies abroad) than on anything else.

1) ISIS guys aren't psychopaths, lookin, or no more so than most men that tote guns and shoot people. They're just folks who would cheerfully saw off you head with a dull knife to make a point (& post a video of it on YouTube afterwards). Not the same thing at all. Seriously, that's not the same. 2) Bush #1's people said back in the '90s that the reason he didn't knock off Saddam the first time around was he was worried about events in Iraq spinning out of our control if he brought down Saddam.

Grandma prefers THIS Black hole... So much more appealing and user friendly.

I'm a bit like Firecat, I do love Brazil, but the saunas are not my favorite spot. But I manage. I do like being able to go into a bar or club here in Bangkok, and personally see and spend time with the boy that you like. In the saunas I feel more pressured to make a quick decision. In Bangkok, never pressured, except by the occasional mamasan. I know where all the heat the East Coast of the U.S. is. I think it is on vacation here in Thailand. It's been mid 90's with lots of sun. So I've been going out shopping and doing errands in the morning , then hanging around the pool or in the apartment afternoons waiting for the sun to set for dinner and evening fun. When the boys complain about the heat, then I know it's kicking in and they started complaining the last couple of days. Been hanging out at Hot Male most of my evenings. Have several friends that work here. I had a little situation develop over the last several days where the more I hang there, the closer some of them get to you. The last couple of nights, some of the boys have started asking me to buy them a drink. They are polite about it. It's very hard to convince these boys that not all Americans are rich. I buy a couple of boys a drink every night and try to spread it around. Last night one of the newer boys got a beer and slipped the payment slip into my bin. (they write a receipt for drinks and put it in a box next you at your seat and add them up when you leave for payment) I noticed , but so did his boss. Boss went off on the kid and was going to fire him. I did ask him to have him appoligize to me, but don't fire him. He agreed but did suspend him for 10 days. I am very good friends with the manager so we talked about it for a few minutes. He told me that they rarely have to fire anyone, but it does happen. He said he reprimands him in front of everybody as its a lesson of what can happen. I still feel bad, but it is stealing from a customer, and would be grounds for firing for most jobs. On a lighter note. I finally met up with a boy I have been after since the day I got here. Well worth the wait. This boy is Lao. I have been meeting up with mostly Vietnamese boys, but most are still in Vietnam for New Years. I didn't know what to expect. We have had a few drinks together, but he speaks about 10 words of English and I speak no Lao or Thai. But this boy is as cute as they come. All smiles and I do fall for that. So took him home without discussion of what we would get into. One thing I like about Thailand, the boys take shoes and sox off at the door, so when you get to the bedroom you don't have to go thru that when undressing them. I like to shower with boys. Thai boys don't, they like to start off alone, so didn't know where this boy stood. Ask, can we shower together? He was out of his clothes before I could undo one of my shirt buttons. Then undressed me, grabbed my hand and we headed to shower. Needless to say, as with my 2 favorite Viets, this boy was just as much an exhibitionist. Lucky me..I couldn't have begun to expect how much fun I would have with him, and will see him several more times. I like boys that aren't shy. I am now convinced that for the most part Thais are and most of the rest of the SE Asians aren't. (By my small scientific survey for the past year.) Tonight is a night off. I'm going to an Italian restaurant around the corner for a pizza and beer. Then spending the evening watching tv or reading a book. After a week of rice and vegetables, need something a bit different. Tomorrow will be grocery shopping and lunch at Siam Paragon. Then it's Friday night . Will it be, Thai, Lao, or Vietnamese. The decisions we have to make. (But leaning Lao)

You Want Cup of Suckee ?

May his soul rest in peace

He will be greatly missed! RIP

I have friends from Syria and they are peaceful, fun-loving and very accepting people. They have not been able to visit their homeland for many years and it breaks their heart that this is what is happening. They have also said that there are so many beautiful places in Syria that no one could believe the true beauty. Has anyone here ever been there? Hundreds of Christians were kidnapped today. Museums and antiquities stolen.

I received an e-mail from Citibank this afternoon. There was an offer for a smart phone app that is unique in that you can visit certain restaurants and pay your entire tab (including the tip) by using your smart phone. The app is called "Tabbed Out" I think it is a good app but it leaves me puzzled. The app lists available restaurants all over the U.S. but especially in the area where the phone is located, unless you tell the app to choose a different area. You can select any area with the app. When I looked for a choice of restaurants near me, to my surprise, many of the restaurants have a note next to them saying "gay restaurant" which puzzles me. I do not live in a "gay" area. Why in the world would Citibank recommend an app that spells out certain restaurants that are supposedly gay restaurants? Moreover, why would a new app like this identify certain restaurants as "gay restaurants?" I would think identifying restaurants as "gay" could cause problems for some of those restaurants. Not everyone is liberal. Remember, the app goes to all Citibank customers and ostensibly, will go to customers of other banks as well. Citibank does not own the app. Below is a link to the web site of Tabbed Out. Has anyone used this app or seen it? Does anyone have an opinion different from mine? Here is a screen copy of my e-mail that describes the app: Leave Your Old Wallet at Home... We got this covered. Say goodbye to waiting for your server at the end of your meal, and forget about waiting in that long bar line. Here's How It Works Haven’t used TabbedOut before? It's Easy. Open the app and find your location on the home screen. Open a tab at the venue. Order your meal or drink as usual, but remember to tell your server or bartender that you’re using TabbedOut, and tell them your name or unique TabbedOut code. When you’re ready to leave, simply hit “Pay Check,” adjust your desired tip (20%, 25%, 30% or write in your own), and hit “Pay Now.” TabbedOut will charge your credit card with the total bill, no need to hand your credit card over to your server. Welcome to TabbedOut! We hope you enjoy your enhanced mobile payment experience. Step-by-Step Guide We’re excited to have you as part of the TabbedOut experience! If you have any issues at any time, please don't hesitate to email us any questions. Do you need to re-download? Visit our website.

Well, mvan1, I was hoping I was just kidding, but I wouldn't put it past these guys to go rifling through my browsers if they could make a buck off of it. With regard to TabbedOut, their sales pitch to the restaurant owner suggests the only information they collect is about the customer's purchasing history in that particular restaurant. So I wouldn't expect them to start bringing you a Shirley Temple as soon as you sit down. But who knows? I read last year when Snowden was dropping his government snooping bombshell that it's nothing compared with the info private companies are collecting about us. It's pretty creepy to think about. As long as I don't start getting popup ads from Crisco®. And, as far as early bird specials, can't say I do them every day, or even every week, but I can share that I'm not exactly a stranger to tapioca.

Exactly. George H.W. -- and Colin Powell, at that time Chairman of the Joint Chiefs -- specifically decided to end the Kuwait blitz after 100 hours and not chase Saddam all the way to Baghdad because they knew, "You break it, you own it." And could see no way it was worth getting stuck doing post-Saddam nation-building there.

Well on the one hand, you guys are indeed correct on both counts regarding Saddam. We were afraid of a power vaccum, and yes he did manage to keep a lid on things, but that comes with a price of ethnic cleansing. We often turn our heads the other way, when it suits us. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/world/middleeast/05iraq.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://civilliberty.about.com/od/internationalhumanrights/p/saddam_hussein.htm

Thanks lookin - Of course, your answer makes sense. It is easy to target a market based on cookies in a computer. The cookies identify the sites visited by the computer. This site and other escort sites leave lots and lots of "tell tale" cookies in a computer. The app used the cookies to specify the restaurants. Our privacy seems to be ebbing away at a fast rate. Just curious, do you go to "early bird special" restaurants?

British and Israeli boffins have just come up with a method to create both sperm and eggs from skin stem cells which means gay couples may soon be able to have their very own biological kids w/o resorting to an outside donor. The article natters on about how this would make having children possible for gay couples. It's not much different in principal from the test tube babes already available to infertile straight couples. Now the boffins in question confine their speculations to making babies for couples but that's just because they're stuffy old scientists concerned about their reputations, IMHO. Well and maybe their grant money. I'm sure clever boys with a sufficiently kinky turn of mind (like those who frequent these threads) immediately realized that there's no particular reason the eggs and sperm couldn't both be derived from the stem cells of a single donor. Yep, you could make your own baby. Mind you the kid would not really be a clone but it would be more closely related than, say, a child you might have with your full sister or even your mother (are you paying attention, AdamSmith?). So...two questions: 1) Can anyone here define the degree of relatedness of a stem child with its father? I can't seem to quite get a handle on this (except it wouldn't be a clone). 2) Would anyone here consider having a stem child (for lack of a better word)? Or is that a little too weird even for our kinkier posters?

Targeted marketing and data mining no doubt. Mine all say "early bird special".

Happy Father's Day from Me, Myself and I

Well, let's say we would be looking for nasty recessives since bad dominant genes would already be expressed in you (&/or your sister). If you are doubled on the nasty recessive loci, they also would have expressed, so no surprises there either. OK, let's also say neither you nor your sister has a long prehensile tail (or what ever it is we're worried about) but your mother carries the LPT recessive gene. There would be one chance in four of your child needing a quick tail bob soon after birth. Now suppose we allow your poor sister get back to your cousins and go the stem child route. Further suppose you have the LPT recessive. There would be a 50% chance of one of your stem sperm carrying the LPT gene and likewise a 50% chance of your stem egg carrying the LPT gene or a 25% chance of you being able to hang the kid around your neck while you kept both hands free to prepare its formula. So it's a wash on incest related genetic disorders, stem child vs. sister child. I'm not so sure how things work out if we're talking about traits (like height, intelligence etc.) that are multi-gene controlled or relate back to clusters of genes interacting with each other. It's like thinking about the Mid-East, my mind starts twisting around on itself when I try to reason it out and I lack crucial blobs of information. And then there's all those unknown unknowns. ==== All of which does not address my original question: If a long lost great uncle hit the lottery and on his death bed offered you all his millions conditioned only on you having a biological child, would you consider a stem child or would you stick with the traditional time tested sister child route?

Many thanks for all the good viewpoints guys! I think another lesson we've learned is that the Middle East abhors a power vacuum. For all the things you can say about Saddam Hussein, the man knew how to keep a lid on things. The same hand that held down the Sunnis also held down terrorist groups that weren't working for him. There was no power vacuum in Saddam's Iraq. There's no power vacuum in Saudi Arabia either. State beheadings, yes, but not so much from terrorists. I'm not as knowledgeable as you folks, but there seems to be a pretty good correlation between repressive governments and a lack of terrorist groups. So that makes me wonder if we should be so quick to support the overthrow of tyrants until we have something better in mind. I don't know much about Assad, but I'm wondering how much worse he is than an Islamic Caliphate that's bringing in aimless psychopaths to Syria from all over the world and sending them back to us as committed psychopaths. Should we have thought it through another step before we dropped him like a hot kebab? I don't know the answer, but it seems like maybe we should think twice before we throw the bully out with the Ba'athwater.

I have high hopes for this show. Loved Breaking Bad and always enjoyed the Saul Goodman character.

AS never sleeps. Struggling though to recall from eons-ago AP biology whether this would verge toward risking the kind of genetic-disorder problems that the incest taboo seeks to prevent? (Leaving aside for now the separate discussion of what incest taboos may really be about.)

And yet here we go again with 'trainers' and new equipment and more bales of hundred dollar bills thinking, "This time will be different." Arrgh! I suspect part of the problem is that our culture just does not give us the mental equipment to deal well with a multi-actor game where every player, state or sub-state, is simultaneously competing and cooperating with every other actor. Just one aspect of the situation: Sure the current bunch in Bagdad wants to defeat Isis and needs the Kurds right now to do so. But it sure as hell doesn't want to see the US build up Kurdistan so much that the Kurds can retain control of the Kirkuk oilfields after the dust settles. And it wants to peel off some of the Sunni tribes from their support of ISIS but can't offer anything that would allow the tribes to wriggle out from under the thumb of the Shias. Meanwhile each of the Sunni tribes has its separate interests, the various Shia militias on which the Bagdad regime is dependant but over which it has only marginal control go their own way, Iran plays its hand to boost both the militias it finances and the Assad dynasty in Syria. Did I forget to mention that the Kurds have ambitions of their own, have their own fractious political divisions and don't really give a hoot about ISIS except as it threatens what they regard as Greater Kurdistan. And while we're at it, don't leave out that ISIS took and now holds its chunk of Iraq only with the help and consent of disgruntled Sunni tribes and the old Bathist network. And that's just the briefest of overviews of Iraq. Syria is even more complicated. And we haven't even talked about the different goals of the 'coalition' that the US has assembled to do the fighting. The reality that any American administration is going to have to deal with is that the more of the heavy lifting the US does on the ground, the more its allies are going to shift their focus to their conflicting end games and jockey for advantages in the aftermath. Why waste resources fighting ISIS if the US will do it for you?

Excellent synopsis. Mainly because I agree with you of course. Others may not, but that would only mean that they are wrong on this matter.

If you ask me, Obama is doing the right things, although I wish he had started a bit sooner. I've felt for some years that the answer to defeating Middle East terror groups lies primarily in the Middle East. The fact that there are now a few Middle East boots on the ground and a few Middle East planes in the sky is a good thing. But the best thing is that there are now Middle East clerics actually calling the terrorists out for the sociopaths they are, rather than ignoring them or trying to defend them. In my opinion, this is the most significant step yet in trying to rein in ISIS, and my take is that Obama and Kerry are the ones who got it to happen. A few years ago, I saw a projection that the U. S. would be energy independent within a decade or two. It now appears we are pretty close to that now, and that reduced reliance on business entanglements with the Middle East is another good thing that happened on Obama's watch. While I think it's good that the U. S. maintains a strong identity as a 'leader', I am much more comfortable in sharing that role with other like-minded nations. It's very easy to fall into the trap of being the 'only' country that can solve the world's problems. No doubt other countries would like for the U. S. to do all the heavy lifting while they enjoy the benefits, but I don't think that's fair to us. For one thing, it puts a huge target on our back alone. I like the way that Obama and Kerry have spread the responsibility of leadership among more countries. Of course, that means that our interests will not be the only ones represented, and that will be hard for some to accept. But, overall, I think it's a much more tenable position to share the labor and to also share the fruits of that labor. No doubt, there's a shift involved in going from the 'boss of the world' to being part of a group. In my opinion, it's a necessary shift and there will be discomfort along the way, as there always is with change. It will also happen over months and years, rather than days and weeks. While I would personally like to see that shift sooner rather than later, I believe there's a case to be made for having others ask for our help instead of shoving it down their throats. We already tried that under the Bush administration and we're still cleaning up that mess. In fact, my feeling is that ISIS came about primarily because of the power vacuums left by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's misadventures in the Middle East. It will take some time to re-stabilize that part of the world and, if it's to remain stable, it will take a lot more than one country and one president to keep it that way. So, yes, I'm happy with the direction Obama and his team are taking. Even if others may not be.

Ah Saul, skeezy lawyer and part time con artist with a weakness for doing the right thing (but only when everything else has failed). How can you not love him? Agree that the first couple of episodes were clunky at times but that disjointedness was down to laying the background for a bunch of potential story arcs in future episodes. Or so I hope.

The whole disgusting mess is a black hole. There is no solution, none that I can see anyway. It's interesting how we lay this at the feet of Obama. It's a World problem. What would you have him do? Boots on the ground? Create another long drawn out war like Iraq or Afghanistan? I guess we all remember how well that worked out for us. There's enough blood on the American Flag. Time perhaps for our "friends" (insert roll eyes) in the Middle East to take a more commanding role. They've been at this for a thousand years, they should be good at it by now. OR for once, maybe just maybe, it would be nice to see the Iraqi's get their shit together. Failing that, word on the street is that Cheney and Busch would gladly come out of retirement. Since they are so good at this "war" thing. But I digress. P.S. MsAnn apologizes for the outburst. I do believe the brownies are about to come out of the oven, and I hear the tea pot whistling. I'll retreat to the kitchen now like a good wife should.