AdamSmith

The day cannot come too soon for me when North (and Central!) America are crisscrossed by maglev bullet trains. (As many know, rail travel anywhere between DC and Boston is already such a mercy compared with stuffing oneself through the commercial air travel system. Even some short-haul routes elsewhere. Recently I took Amtrak Raleigh-Charlotte for $62 round trip. 3 hours each way. So blessedly easier than driving; far less expensive and frazzling than flying.) Regrettably I will be lying lower than the railbed ties long before.

One-person-one-vote is the generic functioning of the voting software BEFORE Oz adds his PayPal button to this particular ballot issue. Pretending you don' know nothin bout poll taxes...!

"Mobile home"! MsGuy is putting on airs again. If you actually live in one, you call it a house trailer. (P.S. In industry parlance that menacing-looking metal thing sticking out the front is called a tongue. Adding to the rather Dennis Hopper feel all around.)

Progress Does Not Always Come Easy by Jimmy Carter As a legislator in my state I drew up my first law to say that citizens could never vote again after they had passed away. My fellow members faced the troubling issue bravely, locked in hard debate on whether, after someone's death had come, three years should be adequate to let the family, recollecting him, determine how a loved one may have cast a vote if he had only lived to see the later voting day. My own neighbors warned me I had gone too far in changing what we'd always done. I lost the next campaign, and failed to carry a single precinct with a cemetery. From Jimmy Carter's Always A Reckoning and Other Poems, Random House, 1995.

I will have to go dig up some of my late relatives then. As you and MsGuy know we do down here. (As in: http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/12894-georgia-sen-jimmy-carter-loses-cemetery-vote/)

Does the forum polling function restrict each user name to just one vote on a given poll topic? Or can a user vote multiple times in the same poll?

Lord knows I don't always go in for humility, much less self-control, but those notes seem especially right in such a piece. ...America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law. O beautiful for heroes prov'd In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life...

Reminding in turn that Los Angeles and much else of SoCal lies on the Pacific plate, not the North American plate. Explaining, by application of select theories above, perhaps many things.

Having reread it several times, I'm even more moved than on first hearing it. So many passages like this one: "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall."

He just told you.

I agree. That's why I wish we could (hope we will) bring drugs into the same legalize-for-adults/control/tax/health-educate model we apply to alcohol and tobacco. Do you think that could be the fix? Or some entirely different direction? I think we agree it would be hard to do worse than we are right now.

Maybe worth re-reading, on this Inauguration Day, the full lyrics of 'America the Beautiful.' So familiar an old warhorse that we may not always stop to hear its felt pleas for the better angels of the national soul to stand up against the Gilded Age greed, nationalistic overreach, general hubris of its time. Themes only too relevant still. It won't happen, nor maybe should it, but still I feel glad each time there is a little swell of agita for this to be made our national anthem. America the Beautiful (Katherine Lee Bates, 1904, 1913) O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassion'd stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness. America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law. O beautiful for heroes prov'd In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life. America! America! May God thy gold refine Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine. O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears. America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea. America. A Poem for July 4 (Bates's original version, 1893) O beautiful for halcyon skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the enameled plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, Till souls wax fair as earth and air And music-hearted sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God shed His grace on thee Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought By pilgrim foot and knee! O beautiful for glory-tale Of liberating strife, When once or twice, for man's avail, Men lavished precious life! America! America! God shed His grace on thee Till selfish gain no longer stain, The banner of the free! O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee Till nobler men keep once again Thy whiter jubilee!

So obviously (& deliciously to the Left) killing him to have to be in the same camera shot as Obama.

Just noting that the buzzfeed article specifically called the site the guy works for "a social network for gay men," and that AdultSearch as constituted at the moment is anything but.

Having trouble finding any male escorts at all on AdultSearch. Are there? You know eros.com added a male escort category a few years ago, but dropped it when nobody anywhere bought those ads.

That could be read more than one way.

How about if that statement is viewed as a general summary of many specific instances, one of those being that societal efforts to enact prohibition of psychotropic substances (booze, other drugs) have invariably led to increased crime and corruption by the provider industry (and often enough by their enablers in law enforcement), greater suffering by addicts for whom help is less available, and disproportional criminalization of otherwise law-abiding citizens?

Such a thing by professionally published authors would never have occurred to me. But "Ellory is only the tip of the iceberg" in this practice, some appear to believe: http://m.guardiannews.com/books/2012/sep/03/rj-ellory-secret-amazon-reviews

Don't worry. You are much better-looking than Camilla, and that was more than enough for the Royals to accept commoner Kate. (Or does some exotic dynasty's royal blood throb through your veins? )

Giving new meaning to pig bottom!

Sorry: Noah Driver. Benjamin Nicholas. Guaranteed flaming-thread topics (whether justified or otherwise).

Does seem bacon ice cream has become a trend. http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all-we-can-eat/post/burger-king-joins-the-bacon-ice-cream-party/2012/06/13/gJQAIhDHaV_blog.html

If they get this foppish but symbolically potent thing done before we manage to get rid of DOMA, it will be a bit dispiriting. http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/20/mps-to-plan-for-gay-royals-marrying-same-sex-partners-and-their-children-becoming-king-or-queen/

Ah. Thanks. I was entirely ignorant of AdultSearch. Any characterizations of it vs., say, eros.com?