lookin

As a general rule, I'd prefer my government to have fewer secrets, and to let me have more. It just feels a little cheerier somehow. The New Yorker ran an interesting article some years back, soon after 9/11, in which they contrasted Germany's views on government intelligence with our own, and noted that the Germans believed their government should be transparent to the citizenry, and the citizenry should be opaque to the government. They were reacting to the excesses of the Third Reich, of course, but it seemed like a pretty good formula to me. I worry about a government with a lot of secrets. First of all, there's the apparatus that needs to be put in place to make sure the secrets don't get out, and then there's the vulnerability that arises when they eventually do. And then the apparatus gets further hardened and a cycle continues that generally does not bode well for the masses. Another problem with secrets is who gets to decide that something's a secret and how they make that decision. Since it's a secret, we don't get to know the who, or the why, or the what. We just have to rely on faith that it's all good. And that's another trajectory that doesn't always make for happy landings. It's not clear, to me anyway, that someone in government who decides that something should be a secret is necessarily morally superior to someone outside of government who decides that it shouldn't. If we all start believing that government is the last word in moral superiority, then aren't we on our way to a dictatorship? And, finally, why should we take it as fact that exposing a government secret will necessarily cost human lives? Isn't it equally possible that exposing a government secret might save human lives? Bradley Manning's Wikileaks caused a lot of embarrassment, no doubt, but, in spite of the hue and cry, I haven't yet seen an analysis that his exposed secrets cost any more lives than they saved. In fact, I wonder what the body count would have been if the secret 'intelligence' that got us into the Iraq war had been exposed before Secretary of State Powell fired up the UN, rather than after. I guess, at this point, I have a lot more questions than answers. The only thing I'm fairly sure of is that the government has more resources for keeping secrets from me than I have for keeping secrets from it, even with guys like James Rosen 'conspiring' to level the playing field. Extra Credit Question: Why is it a 'conspiracy' when a citizen unlocks a government secret, but not when a government functionary locks it up in the first place?

Skid marks on my bed sheets make me crabby. Skid marks on my pillow make me gag. Skid marks on the duvet look so tacky. Skid marks nearly always are a drag.

Whaddya mean the sixteen hundred dollars went down the washer?

55 20 32

The average person has 0.14 grams of fecal material on their "perianal surface" that can rinse into a pool if a person doesn't shower first, according to the report. Perianal surface, my ass!

I'll do my best to get along. It could not hurt to chill a bit. To carp and bicker just feels wrong. Life's much too short for all that shit. I'll try to be a kinder fellow, Ignore all jibes, and let them pass. But if you plan to harsh my mellow, Please pucker up and kiss my ass.

My hero! Never even noticed that switch and must have inadvertently toggled it in a prior paroxysm of posting. Thank you!

It's a Philco Predicta which was introduced in 1959. The glowing knob below the rotating (!) picture tube is the VHF channel changer. I think there's an outside ring on it which tunes UHF channels, an unusual feature for the time. The TV's were very advanced when they were introduced and are quite collectible today.

A couple of weeks ago, the formatting menu in the 'Post' window stopped working. All the buttons are grayed out. I can't select fonts, sizes, colors, or even bold and italic. No way to center text or images, no way to insert a link, and even smilies are gone. It's like all the tools that allow for any kind of expressiveness are gone. When the 'Post' window first comes up, the formatting menu looks normal for about a half-second, and then all the tools become grayed out and unavailable. I Googled all the terms I can think of for Invision board formatting tools, and I can't find anyone who has had this problem. I don't recall changing any settings, and I checked all the settings I can think of to see if I screwed something up. But no luck. As a workaround, I've been trying to use HTML tags, but it's a whole lot harder than just clicking an icon in the formatting menu. I see others are managing to format their posts, and nobody's bitching, so it must be just me who's having these problems. So what am I missing? Is there just some box I forgot to check? Thanks in advance for any help.

Gosh, so how do we know these posts are really coming from Lucky? What if someone - or some thing - has commandeered his account over here too? I'm feeling Lucky today, Dave.

A very generous offer, and quite titillating too, even though 'probity' and 'penury' turned out to mean something other than what I first hoped they did.

I just gargled my first Bacon Scope, And then rinsed with a great deal of hope. Now my breath smells so clean, If a trifle porcine, That I've ordered some hog tallow soap.

Gosh! I didn't see that coming.

He says he's just here in town visiting someone. My, that's some mighty big hair. And the shoes! I sure hope my Bubba doesn't take a shine to him.

Please pass the mayo, I'm thinkin' Turkey sandwich!

Might I suggest one of unrestrained concupiscence?

I would say Step 1 is to stop refusing decent sums of money.

How delightful that you've returned! I'm a bit embarrassed to mention where I thought you'd gone.

No, like other online sites, Amazon didn't collect tax. So I just added up what I bought every year, calculated the tax, and paid it with my State income taxes. That's what California wants you to do, and they made noises about it, but most folks just ignored it. Now Amazon has started collecting state sales taxes, which helps level the playing field for retailers. My reasons for buying from Amazon were never to avoid paying sales tax. They're just really convenient for certain items, and sometimes their prices are better, tax or no.

Call me crazy, but I've been doing it for a few years now. Amazon's my most used site, and I run a report at the end of the year and figure the sales tax. California calls it a 'use tax' and I add it to my State income taxes in a box they thoughtfully provide for just that purpose. It never tops a couple hundred bucks. I figure as much as I bitch when local companies go under, or state services get cut, I'd feel kind of hypocritical not to kick in my share. This way, I can continue to kvetch freely and without a shred of guilt. After Amazon complained for years about the near-impossibility of doing the bookkeeping and collecting the tax, they started doing it this year with a minimum of fuss and bother. I'm sure the rest will too.

Y'know, something tells me you guys already are married! The gentle cooing sounds, the affectionate bickering, and no doubt separate bedrooms on either side of the nursery, why not just put your hair up in curlers and make it official?

I had the same issue some time back and decided to come at it from a different direction. Rather than constantly chivvying my private parts to keep up with my sex drive, I had a heart-to-heart with my libido and let it know that it was beginning to cause problems in the ranks. Over the years, it has fallen nicely into line and now waits patiently until I formally notify it that its services are required. Or someone else does.

In September, the National Security Agency's new Utah Data Center will come on line.

Oi! The issue for me is that the United States of America has people, not charged with any crime, under indefinite confinement and none of us ever got asked if we would like to become a country that does that. We fought two world wars to avoid being a country like that and, when we were done, we asked everybody else in the world to avoid being a country like that too. We helped form international organizations to advance our values, and we helped write international agreements and laws that we are now violating. Why is it unbalanced for prisoners under our direct and exclusive control to request a trial under the Geneva Conventions? Are we now against what we fought for? Who sez? If anybody's interested in discussing balance on that issue, please let me know.

Dare we hope?