AdamSmith

Update: Sometimes governments, surprisingly, do the right thing. Jodrell Bank's future secured by new funding http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/...ing-863500.html

Respectfully noted. What, in that case, do you look for in a review? Or are you saying you find no value in reviews, regardless of content?

This wheel will continue to squeak for all it's worth in favor of physical detail in reviews. Maybe this is the place to think through some clients' feeling that private details should remain private. I couldn't agree more. But in the transaction between escort and client, you could consider there are really four identities present, not just two. My last review reported in some detail what Andre did to and with AdamSmith. Where I cut off the detail and faded to white was at the point of noting, in addition to cocks and asses, the time spent sunk into each other's heads and lives. That is where the public personas of Andre and AdamSmith give way to the personal interactions of two private individuals. That (without reopening the whole symposium on managing the balance of fantasy and reality when hiring) is legitimately no one's business but ours. But, when composing a public performance review of a professional sex worker you enjoyed, it seems to me to be an actual disservice to that person not to provide enough detail about his physical performance to let other prospective clients form a judgment about whether they would also enjoy sex with the person.

And the beat goes on. Today Daddy posted a review of Jonathan Lowe/Las Vegas that had only this to say about the down and dirty: The one on one contact I will leave to your imagination but will share with you that jon was a pure joy to behold and to hold. I'll stop now, before making myself any more of a target for the ASPCDH.* *American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dead Horses

There it is, no? Article Six of the Constitution seems unambiguous: ...This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding... Let me highjack my own thread to say the question is specifically whether or not they'll ever get around to enforcing the Constitution's full-faith-and-credit clause, which also seems unambiguous: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. I have yet to comprehend how the second sentence could be construed so broadly as to allow DOMA, which blatantly defies the first sentence.

Whichever side of the Supreme Court's just-rendered Second Amendment ruling you come down on, this is an interesting commentary by lit-crit Stan Fish: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/w...mind/index.html

This is to reiterate the value of maintaining some minimum standard of reporting the sexual content of a session. I say this after being moved to irritation by yet another effectively sexless review published today on Daddy's site: http://www.daddysreviews.com/newest.php?wh...esar&page=0 When I saw from the sidebar listing that today's reviews included one of Caesar Mancini, I was pleased. I saw him a couple of years ago, had a good though not extraordinary time, and concluded that may have been at least partly because it was our first meeting, etc. He seems to have a devoted following, so something is going very right for a number of people. What could it be? Well, the reviewer carefully revealed nothing that would enlighten me: "Caesar and Raul were both generous with their attention to my needs as well as taking my cues for doing things to each other while I savored the sight. Knowing each of them as well as I do, we had a lot of laughs at each other’s expense over individual habits and methods. So, it was intensely sexual with everyone swapping positions and techniques and communicating in every way." What habits and methods? Which positions and techniques? "Every way"? Useless to me.

What's a penis worth? $795,000, court rules Romanian doctor ordered to pay compensation after surgery-gone-wrong UCHAREST, Romania - A court has ordered a Romanian surgeon to pay $795,000 in compensation to a patient whose penis he accidentally severed during an operation. In July 2004, Dr. Naum Ciomu made a surgical error while operating on the man's testicles, severing the penis instead of making an incision to the testicle. The Bucharest Magistrates Court ruled Friday that Ciomu had been "superficial" in his approach to the operation, ordered the fine and handed Ciomu a one-year suspended prison sentence. The ruling can be appealed. A piece of muscle from the man's arm has now been attached to where his penis was, but its function is aesthetic. "You don't have to be an expert to realize that the 33-year-old victim does not have a good state of mind," said Mihai Olariu, the victim's lawyer. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25526847/

Now we know! http://www.schickele.com/

If I already posted this here before, please excuse.

...Schoolgirl porn, bukkake, now this! Japan's Booming Sex Niche: Elder Porn Besides his glowing complexion, Shigeo Tokuda looks like any other 74-year-old man in Japan. Despite suffering a heart attack three years ago, the lifelong salaryman now feels healthier, and lives happily with his wife and a daughter in downtown Tokyo. He is, of course, more physically active than most retirees, but that's because he's kept his part-time job — as a porn star... http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...00.html?cnn=yes

In case your list of anxieties isn't long enough... Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth http://www.livescience.com/technology/dest...earth_mp-1.html

You'll hate this request. In the site's private-messaging function, it is annoying not to have any record of messages that one sends. This sounds like I am vastly enamored of my own words. Be that as it may, another reason is that, more and more, when someone replies to a message that I sent, I have little or no recollection of what I said to begin with. One solution would be, when one sends a message, to be able to send a copy to one's own in-box on the site and/or to one's external email address. At minimum, would it be possible to let message sequences cumulate, as normally happens when you hit "reply" to an email? So that the original message to which you're replying is automatically retained at the bottom of the new message you send, unless you manually delete it. I realize this would probably entail that greatest evil: customizing off-the-shelf code. Where is the icon for "recoil in horror"?

Controversial Court Ruling Upholds Homosexual's Right To Prance Around Demanding Attention And Being A Drama Queen HARTFORD, CT—The Connecticut Supreme Court on Monday upheld the right of individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, to engage in any number of "grandiose behaviors," including, but not limited to, sashaying across the room "like a hussy, yelling 'Oh my God!' at the top of their lungs while hopping up and down, and generally acting like Miss Thing." The court ruled 5-2 in favor of the plaintiff in Carmichael v. State of Connecticut, a landmark case overturning a lower court's decision against homosexual Michael Carmichael's right to excessive theatrics. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers argued that "although the loud and emotionally over-the-top behaviors of Mr. Carmichael may be considered annoying by the community standards established by both his heterosexual and homosexual peers, the question of whether or not an individual is acting overly queeny is not a matter for the law to determine." The ruling, which effectively affirms the right of all attention whores to make a complete spectacle of themselves, is already being contested by conservative groups and is expected to be appealed... Plaintiff Michael Carmichael gives the judges his whole life story, for crying out loud. The legal battle for gay rights began in 1972, when a Manhattan court granted homosexual couples the right to stand next to each other in public places "as long as they don't make a big deal about it." In 1981, 1983, and 1986, similar rulings in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco granted gays the right to attend movies, take walks, and tickle each other while cooking dinner together. Monday's ruling represents the first time that homosexuals' legal right to openly act "as gay as gay can possibly get" has been affirmed by the courts. "Carmichael's is an extreme case, but the precedent is far-reaching," legal analyst Jameson Drury said. "This decision protects not only full-blown flamers, but all homosexuals, even those swish enough to let their hands flutter occasionally during a season finale of Project Runway." ... "Plain and simple, the state cannot decide which bombastic, drama-generating behavior is deemed patently offensive," said the American Civil Liberties Union's Tom Gregor, a member of the legal team who represented Carmichael. "Although, to be honest, I am personally going to think twice before taking on any more pro bono cases for someone as high-maintenance as Mr. Carmichael in the future. Talk about your vampy divas. As happy as we are to have won the case, the afterparty was a nightmare." http://www.theonion.com/content/news/contr..._ruling_upholds

Thinking, however, upon Alice the while. Dirty old hatter! Your post also, quite irrelevantly and blamelessly, catapulted me into wondering what the Boy of Winander was really up to. Standing out there "alone / Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake. / ...with fingers interwoven, both hands / Pressed closely palm to palm..." Followed by that bizarrely orgiastic call-and-response with the owls, who ...would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call, with quivering peals, And long halloos and screams and echoes loud, Redoubled and redoubled, concourse wild Of jocund din; etc. Never mind that silence while he hung / Listening, much less all finally being received / Into the bosom of the steady lake. So that the whole soggy mass might better have been named "The Precum"? "The Prelube"? Forgive me. Must be the heat.

Agree. Feels like it is time to drop caution and start rolling the dice on this one. As MLK judged it was time in the early 1960s to roll with civil rights, after a decade of people living with the concept if not much actual implementation of Brown v. Board and of the 1950s civil-rights acts pushed through by LBJ as Senator. Having forced the issue in Massachusetts seems to be working, where 4 years of seeing gay marriage in practice has helped turn majority opinion from opposed to in favor.

Tomorrow's NY Times Book Review has a cheerful ad for The End of Food, newest tome from the author of The End of Oil. On top of the looming global crisis over potable water. Apres nous, le deluge. Or lack thereof, as may be.

Must admit I have read the brochure but not traveled there myself. Of course life is long, and unpredictable. If you were exiled to a desert island with just one beast instead of just one book, which species would it be?

Since no one seems entirely sure of the intent, we can only observe the consequence: "Featured Person" makes plain that, whatever else, this site will not be about bestiality! http://www.bestiality.com/ http://www.animalpornmovies.com/

Some of the reader talkback at the end of this is fairly interesting... http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/02/space...related_content And not to forget... http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/aso/zeroGtoilet.html

A rabid Hillary supporter, I find that with all of tonight's developments (and speeches), Barack is beginning to grow on me. And I am of 2 minds about it. I don't like it, but despite myself, I am starting to try on and enjoy the emotional stance of, well, if he is the one to grind McCain into the dust, good enough. Etc. I find this both troubling, and a little relieving. Odd...

Could it be to avoid stepping into the debate over whether we prefer our guys to be called "men" or "boys"? And then also to allow for femme types whom "guy" would not quite fit? So many pitfalls for a webmeister!

An undergraduate acquaintance of mine penned a brief parody of Middlemarch in which an estate modeled on the Brookes's Tipton Grange bore the name Hardasse.

This more properly belongs in the Beyond Vanilla forum. But more will see it here... Shitterton: The village that dare not speak its name ...This isn't the only place in Britain proudly to wear the Shit– prefix – an unholy trinity is formed with Shittlehope and Shitlington Crags, both in the North-east of England – but Shitterton is the only one of the three actually to be named after excrement. According to the mathematician Keith Briggs, who keeps an informative website on this burning topic, the name is probably derived from a river called Shiter, "a brook used as a privy". As I pass over Shitterton Bridge, I note that the stream that bisects the village – and was once presumably a cascading torrent of shit – is in fact a picturesque little waterway. The absence of any shit in the immediate vicinity is reflected in the distinctly unshitty names of the surrounding houses: Honeycomb Cottage, Rose Cottage, Sunnyside, Merrydown. But there has been an attempt to rewrite history. There is a row of ex-council houses on a road defiantly labelled Sitterton Close; Sitterton House has eradicated any whiff of ordure by dropping that all-important "h"; and even Wessex Water's local sewage pump, situated slap bang in the middle of the village, is labelled as being located in Sitterton. Is this really a village that dare not speak its own name? ... ...While there is no evidence that having an address that alludes to sewage, genitals, prostitution, bottoms, murder or masturbation makes your house any less pleasant to live in, Shitterton isn't the only place in the UK where residents have turned against their addresses, in spite of having decided to move there in the first place. Ed Hurst, who co-wrote three books (including Rude Britain) that look at the origins of rude place-names, recalls visiting a street in Lincolnshire called Fanny Hands Lane and knocking on a few doors to uncover some history. "I wasn't prepared for the sheer hostility that I encountered," he says. "They were sick of having their road sign pinched, they were sick of pizza not being delivered because the restaurant thought it was a hoax call. As it turned out, it was just named after a woman called Fanny Hands." Campaigns by residents to effect name-changes that might give the area a bit more class are, by and large, destined to fail, according to Hurst. "There's a Slutshole Lane in Norfolk that is still called Slutshole Lane, despite residents' best efforts," he recalls. "And there's a Butthole Road, which they're trying to change to – wait for it – Buttonhole Road. "Thing is, nearly all of these names have perfectly innocent origins. Butthole Road is just named after a borehole, a water source." Not someone's arse, then? "Well, exactly." ... What's in a name? Britain's rudest places Cockington Just a mile from Torbay's seafront lies the thatched village of Cockington, whose pretty houses are steeped in history. Nelson dined at Cockington Court, and Lutyens designed the local pub, where sniggering over the village name is kept to a minimum. Quiet and quaint, Cockington is a pricey place to live and its proximity to the "English Riviera" makes it a honeypot for holidaymakers. Lickey End In spite of large-scale development in the 1990s, Lickey End is a local beauty spot that makes up one part of the Lickeys, a collection of villages near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. It draws walkers looking to explore the Lickey Hills, and there's a good local school, making it popular with families. Residents ignore the wisecracks about their village's name, maintaining a dignified air in the face of ridicule. Nob End Nob End, near Bolton, Lancashire, is a 21-acre site that includes the southern half of the village of Little Lever. It was formed by the dumping of toxic alkali waste during the 19th century, which resulted in an unusual landscape of chalk-loving vegetation. This rare site of special scientific interest is offset by the distant industrial landscape of Greater Manchester and the quaint cottages that line the nearby waterways and weirs. Thong Thong is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it hamlet, south-east of Gravesend in Kent. It has absolutely no connection with skimpy undergarments. Travel links, however, are good – it's just 500 yards or so from the A2 (almost too close) and five miles from Ebbsfleet International station. The few shops that are there wouldn't see many people through the week. Luckily, the giant Bluewater centre is close at hand. Ugley Ugley in Essex is anything but; it sits between Saffron Walden and Bishop's Stortford, in prime commuterland. The name probably means "Woodland clearing of a man named Ugga". The Ugley Women's Institute grew so tired of the juvenile jibes that they changed its name to the Women's Institute of Ugley, a rebranding exercise not yet repeated by the Ugley Farmers' Market. Pratts Bottom Located just within the M25 motorway, to the south of Orpington in Kent, Pratts Bottom was first recorded as Spratts Bottom in 1773, but it quickly changed to its present form, meaning "valley of a family called Pratt". Very expensive and very desirable, its moniker seems to make no difference to people seeking rural bliss in close proximity to London. The village website admits that it is "often the butt of jokes". Lower Swell Fans of the puerile will love Lower Swell in Gloucestershire. Not only does its name raise eyebrows, but the river Dikler and the Golden Ball pub rarely fail to raise a smile, too. That said, it has some of England's finest countryside, a tranquil village green and plenty of mellow stone cottages – and the quintessential Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold is just up the road. Wetwang Wetwang is a Yorkshire Wolds village that sits on a busy main road along the coast. Debate surrounds the origins of its name; it means either "field for the trial of a legal action" or just "wet field". Whatever the meaning, the name attracts so many sniggers that the late Richard Whiteley was bizarrely made the honorary Mayor of Wetwang, a title now held by the BBC Look North weatherman Paul Hudson. Twatt Fifteen minutes' drive north of Stromness in Orkney lies the hamlet of Twatt. The name comes from ancient Norse, meaning "small parcel of land" – and there's not a lot there apart from a clutch of unexciting buildings and the A967. The beauty of Twatt, though, lies in its wild setting, breathtaking views and a sense of total isolation. Houses here are decidedly affordable. Balls Green Sounding more like a reason to visit the doctor than a dot on the map, Balls Green is a tiny hamlet between Tunbridge Wells and East Grinstead, close to the borders of Surrey, Kent and Sussex. It has pretty peg-tile cottages and detached, oversized houses clustered along its one quiet lane. Too small even for a pub, drinkers need to look a few miles up the road to the Dorset Arms in Withyham to slake their thirst. Penistone Penistone is a thriving market town west of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, in the foothills of the Pennines. Its name derives from the Old English "tun", meaning farm or village; Penstun and Penstone are early versions of the name. The Domesday Book simply refers to it as "wasted". It has all the amenities you'd expect in a rural town of 8,500 residents, including a cinema, farmers' market and, er, morris dancers. Bitchfield Five miles south of Grantham, Lincolnshire, is the delightfully named village of Bitchfield. But the name's definitely its main attraction; there's nothing to see, just two groups of buildings connected by Dark Lane, and a small chapel. Beware: avoiding Bitchfield because of its name may land you up in nearby Bulby, Aslackby, Sproxton or Burton Coggles. Not much of an improvement. Tosside Tosside in Lancashire is considered by residents to be the smallest place in the world. Its origins stretch back to the Vikings, with its name derived from "tod", meaning fox, and "saetr", meaning high summer pasture. Located between the villages of Slaidburn and Wigglesworth, within the Forest of Bowland, it's a designated area of outstanding natural beauty that can be explored on foot or bike. It may be tiny, but Tosside does have a pub – the Dog and Partridge. Prickwillow Prickwillow is set on the banks of the river Lark, four miles east of Ely in Cambridgeshire. The "Prick" in Prickwillow is said to be a reference to the "prickets" of willow – long, thin skewers used to make thatch – that grew in the nearby marshes. The village lies below sea level and a series of pumping engines were installed to ensure that the land remained arable. Some of them can be enjoyed at Prickwillow's Museum of Fenland Drainage. Crapstone Crapstone in Devon is to be found on the western edge of Dartmoor, one mile away from Yelverton. The locals are fiercely defensive of their village, even starting a campaign on Facebook complaining about a television advert that claimed to be set in Crapstone but was actually filmed near "the Pimple" in Tavistock. It has been noted that Crapstone's industrial hub is the Crapstone Business Park, while its financial district is the counter of the local post office. Bell End Five miles up the road from Lickey End is the minuscule hamlet of Bell End. Set on the busy A491, between the M5 and Stourbridge, in the Bromsgrove district of Worcestershire, it consists largely of the Bell Inn pub and a couple of houses. So there are very few residents to suffer the shame of living in Bell End. Cockermouth Cockermouth in Cumbria sits at the confluence of the rivers Cocker and Derwent. It's an ancient town, with Roman, Viking and Norman influences, which has grown over the centuries to a population of nearly 8,000 people. It's the birthplace of William Wordsworth and Fletcher Christian. In spite of its proximity to the Lake District, it suffers much less from summer tourists than close neighbour Keswick (that means Cockermouth is not as popular or pretty). It's also home to the Belfagan all-female morris dancers. Spital in the Street Boasting just a few buildings and a public phone-box, Spital in the Street joins a long list of Lincolnshire places with a hint of unsavouriness. It's on the busy intersection of the A15 and A631, north of Lincoln, and has the equally daft Owmby-by-Spital and Normanby-by-Spital as near neighbours. Not as remote as it seems, Spital in the Street is half a mile west of Hemswell Cliff, which has a school, museum, pub and hotel. Titlington The cheekily named Titlington is six miles west of Alnwick in Northumberland and 10 miles from the coast. The population has dwindled over the years, and it now consists of a few houses and the spectacular Titlington Mount, a country pile used for corporate functions and weddings. Upper Dicker Originally the site of a medieval trade centre ("dicker" means barter), Upper Dicker sits within sight of the South Downs near Polegate. Not the prettiest village (or name) in the area, the housing stock is a mixture of Downland vernacular and modern boxes, slightly blighted by a fast through-road. There's a smattering of shops along the main road and the posh St Bede's senior school is in the village. Lower Dicker is just down the road. Muff Muff – from the Irish word "magh" – is a village in County Donegal, on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Over the last decade, Muff has seen a huge growth in population, with people from Northern Ireland moving across the border. The first week in August sees the Muff Festival – and there's a diving club in the village called, yes, the Muff Diving Club. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...ame-831420.html

Then again... Clinton Questions Obama's Ability To Greet World Leaders CHARLESTON, WV—Hillary Clinton once again attacked Barack Obama on the issue of experience Tuesday, this time questioning the Illinois senator's ability to effectively smile, make appropriate eye contact, and offer sufficiently delicious finger foods when welcoming visiting world leaders. "My opponent has never greeted foreign dignitaries such as the Japanese Minister of Forestry and Fisheries, as I had the opportunity to do when I was first lady," Clinton said, adding that she has an extensive background in both double-clasped hand shakes and idle small talk with political luminaries from several nations. "Do the American people really want a president who doesn't know when it's appropriate to gesture toward a chair, indicating where a head of state should be seated?" At a previous speech in Indianapolis, Clinton had challenged Obama's ability to create a health-care reform initiative that would ultimately fail and hand Congress over to the Republicans in an electoral landslide, as she did in 1993. http://www.theonion.com/content/news_brief...uestions_obamas