MsGuy

Is it too late to get a bet down on the Packers? I'll have to wait a few hours to make my pick on Steelers/Jets.

There is a tribute to Reynolds Price on Charlie Rose tonight (1/21). Probably too late for you to catch it now, but maybe you can find it somewhere on the net. The first segment is a piece on PRC/US relations. Sorry for your feelings of loss, AS.

Daniel Radcliffe was not underage when he performed in Equus. ---- Like porn laws in general, the anti-kiddie porn laws run into the "well, surely you didn't mean to include this" problem. No matter how rigorous your formulation, it will include stuff that isn't porn and exclude stuff that is. Ambiguity at the edges comes with the territory.

Read this article and thought of this thread. Makes you wonder which of Michael Vick's sports is the more brutal. How different are are dogfighting and football?

Never hurts to wrap up loose plot lines. Loved this story.

Maybe I'm misremembering all this, but I believe that Soviet era archives released in the 90's revealed that warheads had been installed on a few of the missiles and the local Soviet commander had been authorized by Moscow to use them against the Second Fleet deployed around Cuba if the US attempted to destroy the missiles with a surprise air strike. At the time the Pentagon and the CIA were advising Kennedy that the missiles were not yet fully operational and could be safely taken out with a surprise air strike. Many in Kennedy's cabinet were pressing for an air strike as the safest, least provocative way to destroy the missiles. From such intelligence failures wars are born. Just saying...

For the record, your post # shows as 29 and Slyktkl's was his #1 post. Welcome to the party.

Assange views any organization or association that conducts business in a less than transparent manner as a form of conspiracy. "He [postulates] that the most effective way to attack this kind of [non-transparent] organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer [operate effectivly]." source Not unlike the way the CIA repeatedly savaged and purged itself in the 60's in response to a never found KGB penetration that may (or may not) have actually existed. Or the way the Nixon administration turned on itself in an effort to root out the source of very real leaks. Or the way a Mafia family is disrupted by the suspicion that one or more of its members have been turned by the FBI. Non-tranparent organizations don't tend to react well when forced to operate in an open enviroment.

Assange may be a bit of a nut case. He has stated that his purpose in repeatedly releasing confidential US government internal data is to disrupt the flow of information between and within the various US bureaucracies, thereby making efficient administration of the American Empire impossible. Hey, I don't make this stuff up, I just repeat it.

BBB, you snooze, you lose!

As you can see, I'm reading them down to the very last sentence! [many of them more than once. Just to savor all the nuances. ]

And Raul Castro may be anticipating the early arrival of TY to sample some of that cock. Having to find some sort of employment for the 1,000,000 (+or-) workers scheduled to be laid off the state payrole in 2011, the government has designated 178 specific trades that will be opened for licensed private self-employment. Along with palm tree pruner (#34),shining shoes (#61), cleaning spark plugs (#62), and refilling disposable cigarette lighters (#125) is the trade of "dandy". Unlike the remaining 177 job categories, the trade of Dandy* is left without an explicit technical definition, but surely it can mean nothing other than male escort. ---- "Allow specific licensing [of visas for Cuba] to organize or conduct non-academic clinics and workshops in Cuba for the Cuban people." TY, you want to get together and work up a proposal to the State Department for a trip to Havana for the purpose of conducting workshops for all those newly minted Dandies? We have a moral obligation to help them elevate themselves to international standards of excellence after all those years of Communist repression. ---- * I promise I'm not making any of this up. See the Wall Street Journal, p.A15, 1/10/11, "So Much For Cuban Economic Reform" by Jose Azel.

Wikileaks publication of private US comments on the curruption and nepotism of the "sclerotic" Ben Ali regime in Tunisia is believed to have played a role in generating the mass demonstrations that toppled him from power Monday. World's first 'Wikileaks Revolution??

If you have any cash left over after paying your latest assessment to the Scientology gurus, you might want to check out Quantum Jumping.. L. Ron as channelled by Burt Goldman. You gotta love the internet.

He that spares the rod hates his son; but he who loves him chastens him in good time. Proverbs 13:24.

A would-be suicide survived a jump from his 9th floor window when he landed on a giant heap of uncollected garbage. Housing Court announced his eviction hearing would proceed Tuesday as scheduled. Gotta love NY

LOL, had something similar happen to me at LAX about three years ago. Wound up costing me about $1,500 when all was said and done. I hope you get off a little cheaper than that.

Well, a month's worth of adventures in Rio's saunas ought to provide plenty of material for 25 posts. I'm looking forward to reading each and every one!

Over the years several of his fellow science fiction writers have disclosed that ole L. Ron used to brag to them about how much more money he made out of his Dianetics con than any of them ever made writing. Arthur C. Clarke (one of our own ) for one, and maybe L. Sprague de Camp. Seems like Asimov mentions it somewhere also. I doubt that anyone caught up in the CoS scam is going to pay much attention to yet another expose.

I stand corrected. ---- On being queried by the Brooklyn Public Library as to why his books should not be banned for their "coarseness, deceitfulness and mischievious practices", Mr. Twain himself came out foursquare for censorship: "I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave."

I hope we can look forward to daily posts of your adventures.

Back in the day ('50s/'60s), the polite word for African-American was colored. Negro was usually restricted to formal/legal settings. N----- was a term of contempt; to use it in the presence of a colored person was aggressively insulting. It's usuage occupied the same linguistic space that queer does for us. Currently the use of N----- implies a rejection of the civil rights era and the change in status of Black folks in the last half century. Hence it's banishment from the public discourse. I suspect that N----- had a different weight in Twain's day. If one were trying to convey the same effect in today's English, Slave Jim might even be truer to Twain's intention than N----- Jim. If I recall the book correctly, the crux of Huck's personal difficulty with Jim was his status as a runaway slave, not his race. ---- Damned if I can see why we have to use god-awful circumlocutions like "N word" or "N-----" to discuss this here. TV, OK, I can see the problem there, but MER? Do we really fear a word that much?

At least one of the gay sailors aboard the Enterprise is supporting Captain Honors: ---- (letter to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network) This letter is in reference to the SLDN's recent comments against Capt. Honors previously of the USS ENTERPRISE. By making statements against him your organization has become a participant in the action that so many gay men and women face every day in the service, harsh and uninformed judgment. In your hasty remarks against Capt. Honors, you forget those videos were for the eyes of USS ENTERPRISE sailors only. You are condemning a man on events that have happened over four years ago. Every gay man or woman that has joined the military has done so knowing that they weren't walking into an environment that would be appealing to their sense of delicacy. Sexual orientation aside, every man or woman joining the military does so with the knowledge that the only way to get through is with tough skin. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has done so much for the recent repeal of the much hated "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy it is truly a shame to see you take such a biased stance against Capt. Honors. As a gay man that served onboard the USS ENTERPRISE during both the '06 and '07 deployments I was never once offended by Capt. Honors' choice of humor. I have begun to make contact with my fellow gay service members who were also on those deployments. We will band together to show our support for Capt. Honors. I ask that you, at this time, retract your statements against Capt. Honors until the full investigation has been completed or you have attempted to discuss this issue and hear the thoughts of those who served him on the '06 and '07 deployments. Full Article ---- Not that any of this makes any difference. Honor's been relieved of command of the Enterprise. Regardless of the final outcome of the Naval inquiry, at this point it would take a special act of Congress to salvage his career.

I agree. The guy's a naval aviator. I think this type of humor kinda goes with the territory.

Yer welcome, OneFinger. I'm way too far gone to be embarrassed about displaying my ignorance. ---- TY, I kinda figured that they were fuck vids. Could you be a little more specific? ---- 1 down, 24 to go!