AdamSmith

Our cousins across the Great Water can't resist one last laugh. Neither can I: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactiv...andom-generator

True enough -- by being relatively closed, the Apple universe bypasses a lot of trouble that Microsoft can't avoid. But give Jobs credit for putting infinitely more weight on the user experience than Microsoft ever has. Even Gates gave him that plaudit in a joint on-stage interview a couple of years back. That deficit at Microsoft stems not from interoperability requirements but rather, by Gates's own admission, from the two men's different priorities in setting product and corporate strategy. Also, in the past Apple charged a premium for a lifestyle statement. But today I think it charges a premium for technology that works better. Interoperability, again, was hardly the cause of everything wrong with Vista, for example. As for Microsoft, I used to think its worst mistake was not biting the bullet, throwing away Windows/DOS and starting over with a UNIX kernel, as Apple did with the Next O/S. But that is small beer compared with its continuing failure to do much of anything effective to meet the new twin threats of "cloud computing" on the one hand, and on the other hand the proliferation of iPhones and all the other personal devices that increasingly untether you from a PC. Gates has long had impeccable timing. His decision on when to leave the burning house was no exception.

Indeed. One gets the sense that he is standing back, watching as Caroline's poll numbers drift down, and sharply aware of the value of this public vetting period before Hillary is confirmed and the seat ready to be filled.

He cleared your cash? Happens to me all the time! P.S. Firefox is the answer to all troubles. Thank you too much!

Excerpt from a new Boston Globe article: ... •Singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge, who talked with Warren Saturday night when both spoke at a convention of Muslims, wrote an open letter in the Huffington Post, explaining why she, as a lesbian, was giving Warren a chance -- she even acknowledged that, "he invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids." An excerpt from Etheridge: "Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world's attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don't hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world. Maybe if they get to know us, they won't fear us. I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us." • Blogger Andrew Sullivan, a gay Catholic and longtime advocate for same-sex marriage, compared Warren's views favorably with those of Pope Benedict XVI, writing, "At least Warren appears open to dialogue, rather than recoiling in fear and loathing. In that he is somewhat more Christian than this Pope." Sullivan had initially been hostile to the Warren selection, but declared more recently: "I sense an understandable but, the more I think about it, misjudged response on the part of my fellow gays and lesbians. In our hurt, we may be pushing away from a real opportunity to engage and win hearts and minds...If I cannot pray with Rick Warren, I realize, then I am not worthy of being called a Christian. And if I cannot engage him, then I am not worthy of being called a writer. And if we cannot work with Obama to bridge these divides, none of us will be worthy of the great moral cause that this civil rights movement truly is." ... Whole thing here: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_...warren_lov.html

Thank you! OK, Safari cache cleared. And if trouble persists, very helpful to know that FireFox can be used as Liquid-Plumr. Or as "Ram-Out," a provocatively named drain opener based on, no kidding, sulfuric acid! An old apartment superintendent recommended it to me, then passed away, then I got in loads of trouble for eating holes in the drains. Of course in latter days I learned to pay if I wanted to eat a hole. Little Sally took a drink But she shall drink no more, For what she thought was H2O Was H2SO4!

For the past 2 or 3 weeks, the MER servers seem to have been particularly temperamental. Roughly half the time I try to access the site, it hangs up and eventually my browser displays a "server not available" notice. Thoughts?

Boston is not quite that bad. This morning I was panicked to click on cnn.com weather and see the current temp as 0 degrees, until I noticed my display was set to Celsius. Sometimes, to make it sound better to myself, I think of the local temps in degrees Kelvin. To rub it in, The Nuisance & Disturber (http://www.newsobserver.com/) reports today's high in Raleigh will be 55 degrees.

Conceivably Stu intended that not as a dig at me, but a general lament about life.

Thus the transfer of wallet to the front pocket! Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, wad to wad.

Wait til your 50th approaches. Amazing how quickly things can start falling off.

I get it at my local adult-video/sex-toy chain store. I've seen it in Manhattan adult-vid shops also.

Don't you just hate when this happens... Chinese 'classical poem' was brothel ad Science journal mistakenly uses flyer for Macau brothel to illustrate report on China A respected research institute wanted Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, something beautiful and elegant, to illustrate a special report on China. Instead, it got a racy flyer extolling the lusty details of stripping housewives in a brothel. Chinese characters look dramatic and beautiful, and have a powerful visual impact, but make sure you get the meaning of the characters straight before jumping right in. There were red faces on the editorial board of one of Germany's top scientific institutions, the Max Planck Institute, after it ran the text of a handbill for a Macau strip club on the front page of its latest journal. Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China, of the MaxPlanckForschung journal, but instead of poetry they ran a text effectively proclaiming "Hot Housewives in action!" on the front of the third-quarter edition. Their "enchanting and coquettish performance" was highly recommended. The use of traditional Chinese characters and references to "the northern mainland" seem to indicate the text comes from Hong Kong or Macau, and it promises burlesque acts by pretty-as-jade housewives with hot bodies for the daytime visitor. The Max Planck Institute was quick to acknowledge its error explaining that it had consulted a German sinologist prior to publication of the text. "To our sincere regret ... it has now emerged that the text contains deeper levels of meaning, which are not immediately accessible to a non-native speaker," the institute said in an apology. "By publishing this text we did in no way intend to cause any offence or embarrassment to our Chinese readers. " But publication of the journal caused some anger among touchier internet users in China who felt the institute had done it on purpose to insult China, or that it was disrespectful to use Chinse as a decoration. But generally, the faux-pas sparked much amusement among Chinese readers. On anti-cnn.com, a foreigner-baiting website set up after a commentator on the US broadcaster made anti-Chinese comments following the crackdown in Tibet in March, the reaction was mostly "evil fun". One wrote, "Next time, please find a smart Chinese graduate to check your translation", and another said they should try writing "I am illiterate". The journal has since been updated online and its cover now carries the title of a book by the Swiss Jesuit, Johannes Schreck (1576–1630). The Jesuit text in question was "Illustrated Explanations of Strange Devices". Chinese is a tonal language, which means words sounding the same can often have very different meanings depending on how they are spoken. There are tales of drunken teenagers walking out of tattoo parlours with characters reading, "This is one ugly foreigner" or "A fool and his money are easily parted". Another web-user wrote: "I recently met a German girl with a Chinese tattoo on her neck which in Chinese means 'prostitute'. I laughed so loud, I could hardly breathe." http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertai...ad-1058031.html

Time is the enemy, all right. I have not quite reached the point of asking my doc for Cialis, but I have tried several over-the-counter pills and capsules from the adult vid stores. The red capsule named StiffNights is the most effective one I've found so far... http://www.stiffnights.com/ ...and thus far it has not given me a headache or heart attack!

Sacrilege. But fairly funny. Inhale beforehand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU4TQ1NTo50

On one hand, this is disheartening. On the other, it may hold some only-Nixon-could-go-to-China potential. If moves like this cement Obama's cred with the center-right majority, then his authority and ability to push things through will be all the greater when he takes steps such as rescinding don't-ask-don't-tell, which he has vowed to do and in which I believe him. I was no Obama fan to begin with; I was rabidly for Hillary. But I have been won over by Obama's ability to blend idealism with steely pragmatism -- and his rather remarkable ability to do so without, I think, having his realism shade off into cynicism. Time will tell if that view of him is accurate, and if he can keep it up once the realities of governing descend on him in full. I hope so.

Keanu barada nikto! Or rather, in this case, not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto

Bit of Brit drollery occasioned partly by the new, evidently dreadful 'Day the Earth Stood Still' remake... How to write the perfect disaster movie As Roland Emmerich prepares his latest epic and The Day the Earth Stood Still invades cinemas, we offer a 10-point plan for the ultimate disaster film Roland Emmerich, the king of the disaster movie, is back. Not content with sending a tidal wave crashing over Manhattan in The Day After Tomorrow or allowing aliens to destroy the White House in Independence Day, Emmerich, in his new film 2012, is gearing up to unleash volcanic eruptions, huge cracks in the surface of the earth, enormous typhoons – and more floods. If you can't wait for that, today sees the release of a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which alien spheres suddenly turn up all over the world – including one in Central Park – heralding an attack on the planet that only Keanu Reeves can prevent. Any of this sound at all familiar? Allow me to refresh your memory with this 10-point guide to the perfect disaster movie. 1. Pick a good disaster A lot of the best disasters – asteroids, aliens, earthquakes, tsunamis – have already been taken, sometimes twice, as in the embarrassing simultaneous releases of Armageddon/Deep Impact and Volcano/Dante's Peak. So you'll have to be a bit creative. Pick something unusual: what if gravity started going sideways instead of straight down, say? Your opening scene should show life seemingly going on as normal – think of Will Smith going out to get a paper at the start of Independence Day. Your lead character should get up one morning, rumpling his hair and yawning, and head for the bathroom to clean his teeth. He turns on the tap, oblivious to the first signs of disaster about to strike. Gradually the stream of water begins to veer towards him. The soapdish suddenly tips off the shelf and crashes to the floor, and he starts to lose his balance. He falls flat against the bathroom wall, water streaming over him from the tap. Shaking his head, he pulls a small bottle of whiskey out of his dressing gown pocket and looks at it disapprovingly. 2. You need a scientist A scientist or professor of some kind – middle-aged, handsome – is crucial to a good disaster movie. We should first see him hard at work in the lab or out on a mission (perhaps briefly wearing glasses), as he starts to get the first inkling of what's going wrong. Perhaps some animals in a zoo have been spooked by unusual weather, or a car has been blown down a motorway upside down for no apparent reason. Baffled, he takes his findings to an older mentor, who adds a fact of his own: enormous wasps three times their usual size have been appearing all over the Arctic, say. It's the missing piece of the puzzle. "You've got to take this to the president," the mentor tells him. 3. You need a hero This is not the scientist. The hero has to be a bit more down to earth, a bit of a rough diamond. Flawed but noble – like Bruce Willis in Armageddon. A guilt-ridden cat burglar with an adopted, terminally ill orphan son would be perfect. 4. Send your scientist to the White House A quick meeting with the president of the United States seems to be the first stop for all worried scientists in disaster movies. But don't make it too easy. A sceptical and slightly sinister vice-president or secretary of state should stop him at the door to the Oval Office. He doesn't want to listen to any of this mumbo-jumbo about sideways gravity. "But this might be our only chance to save the world!" the scientist tells him. "Listen, Professor, you go back to your theories," sneers the veep, "and leave saving the world to us." 5. Mayhem across the globe Now it's time for you to up the stakes and sacrifice a couple of foreign cities – or even a minor American one like Chicago (you're keeping New York and LA back for later, of course). London or Rome would be perfect. Shanghai or Tokyo are great, too. In his lab, the scientist turns on the TV news (preferably a branded channel affiliated with the film studio) to see foreign buildings crashing down into the streets. Reporters jabber to camera and slide helplessly down the middle of the road. "It's started," murmurs the scientist. 6. Mayhem in New York As the scientist tries to alert an unbelieving public, things should really get serious: it's time to hit New York. In a flurry of special effects, the city should spectacularly fall over to one side as the effects of the disaster take hold, with various New York archetypes such as hip students and phlegmatic waitresses thrown across the streets while yellow cabs flip over and roll into the sides of skyscrapers and water towers fly off roofs and burst against fire escapes. It is crucial at this point to destroy an iconic building in a breathtaking scene you can feature in the trailer. A lot of New York's most famous buildings have been used before, however – some more than once – but how about the Guggenheim museum? You could have it flip on to its side and roll all the way down Fifth Avenue like a wagon wheel. 7. Back to the White House All this is enough to convince the president that the scientist is right, so he calls him back for a top-secret briefing in the White House situation room attended by dozens of worried-looking army chiefs. The scientist explains what is happening with a mixture of junior-school astronomy and outrageous psuedo-science, using whatever items are to hand, perhaps a ping-pong ball to represent the earth and a basketball to represent the sun. At this point it's the scientist's role to set out the plot in full. "You're aware of gravity, right? If you drop something, it lands on the floor, instead of floating in the air. Like this." He drops an apple on the ground. "Now, this meteor that hit the sun was powerful enough to switch earth's gravity in a different direction. In England, in Tokyo, and now in New York City, gravity's stopped going downwards – and started going sideways." As the vice-president protests, the scientist continues: "As that meteor continues its journey into the heart of the sun, the whole of the earth will switch to horizontal gravity." 8. The scientist puts together his team In a cave underneath Mount Rushmore, the president should introduce the scientist to a crack team dedicated to fixing the problem – which should turn out to include his attractive ex-wife as well as a droll Englishman. The three of them should come up with a plan to stop the disaster – the more unrealistic the better. A good one in this case would be to have someone jump off the Empire State Building like a diving board in order to activate a nuclear weapon that would destroy the moon and thus reset earth's gravity; anything like that, really. Watching a cable news channel as they discuss who could carry out this dangerous mission, the team sees a report from the devastated New York, where the cat burglar is leaping across sideways skyscrapers to save an old grandmother's life. "By Jove," says the Englishman, "I think we've found our man!" The celebratory mood should be punctured by a brief phone call to the scientist from the head of the army with the upsetting news that "we lost Canada". 9. Last-minute setback By now more and more parts of the world should have succumbed to the threat, and, after recalculating his figures for some reason, the scientist should report that there is a much smaller window of time than he thought to stop the sideways gravity before it destroys the whole globe. But while building the nuclear weapon to destroy the moon, something goes wrong, killing the hapless Englishman and damaging the weapon so that whoever sets it off will die with it. This should cause a huge row, with the cat burglar refusing to go through with the plan. A sentimental speech from either the scientist or his ex-wife will be enough to convince him, however, and he manfully agrees to sacrifice himself. Just before he sets off for New York, his little orphan son taps him on the shoulder, and whispers: "Mommy would want you to do this, Dad." The cat burglar puts his hand on the boy's head, and says: "I know, son." 10. Set-piece ending All that remains now is to put the plan into action. The cat burglar clambers precariously along the Empire State Building, almost falling at least twice, and prepares for the dive of his life from the tip of the spire. The scientist and his ex-wife share a meaningful glance. A group of minor characters toast the end of civilisation with one last drink. Crowds gather in Times Square and other locations around the world to watch what's about to happen. In the Oval Office, a sombre president murmurs: "May God help us all." The cat burglar dives. The scene cuts to outer space as the moon is destroyed. The sun tilts back on its axis, and back on earth gravity swings gradually back to its normal direction. Buildings right themselves and stand up straight again. Foreigners in turbans or Eskimo furs cheer and hug in far-off locations. The scientist reaches out for the hand of his ex-wife. And the little orphan boy runs up to his cat burglar dad for a dramatic hug, the Empire State Building back to normal behind them. He didn't die after all! http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/20...t-disaster-film

Being my own boss, the best I could come up with was to be at least as unproductive as on any other day.

Dire measures for dire straits!

A modest proposal for distracting the senses... Shortly before sacrificing oneself to the family scene, take a judicious dose of mescaline or psilocybin, as taste dictates, then absorb this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLq8h66oGt0

When you started out saying you visit family to relieve stress, I couldn't believe it. Then I read the rest of your post. I resemble your remarks! But at long last, I can accept as iron law that family has zero real interest in what's new with me. So to divert them from current gossip, I try to get them talking about the family's past. From their parents' generation, to as far back as they can remember of their parents' and grandparents' stories. This stuff is usually immensely interesting, and not something that will be around forever. Of course I am from Thomas Wolfe country, where reminiscing is still a religion. Maybe there are places & families where the past is not what it used to be.

Pitch-perfect! You have correctly transposed the key from Wolfe to Tennessee Williams. Any such thing would include, as the villain's wife, Anna Magnani rampant.

Great at massage: Forget about getting near my pipe, much less my hole.