MsGuy

"Any place I can't take my Cool Mist Swiss humidifier, 6 outlet flexible surge protector power strip and Sonicare rechargeable electric flosser isn't worth visiting." "Travel light is all well and good but I find one must have at hand the necessities of civilized life." Oz and helpful friends making their way to Bangkok International Airport. "You keep rolling your eyes, Nattapong, and our dear farang is gonna notice!" "Just remember, their ways are not ours."

A different point of view: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/12/27/judge-rules-nsa-phone-surveillance-legal/WaF4dgUZoZFdsCfYAWZoAO/story.html

Mary Christmas

Sorry about posting this, folks. I know it only encourages AS but I just had to do it.

And it was ever so much more fun for Oz than another 2 hours discussing the state of his soul with Auntie Polly.

" I got a great idea, Mo! "Let's shoehorn Keanu Reeves into a remake of one of the most beloved stories in Japanese literature ever! "How could that possibly go wrong?" "Hell, Yeah! And we could save big bucks with all those costumes from The Last Samurai we got in storage."

Might explain why he rushed to defend the Duck Dynasty patriarch. However, it's not entirely clear whether Jindal, Sarah Palin or Sen. Cruz managed to get a statement out first. Seconds count when you're trying to elbow your way to the head of the line. After all, who wants their quote buried way down in the 4th or 5th paragraph.

Ken Doll? I cut the bitch. Cut him bad... Cut your bitch ass too if you don't give up that watch right now!

TY, you're right, the OBE rather than the VC was the honour Turing received (and it was for the War work). Sorry, I was posting from memory, a dodgy enterprise for me now-a-days. You're right about the origin of the pardon too. What politician cares about some academic faggot being fucked over way back when? lookin is also correct. The code work at Bletchly was a closely guarded secret at the time. Under the Official Secrets Act, Turing would not even have been able to mention his war efforts to ameliorate his punishment. Where I read about the Constable's later regrets is a complete mystery to me. Possibly it was from PBS type documentary I watched. I have no idea how factual it is but I'm pretty certain it didn't come from some fever dream of my own. ==== Turin's story has stuck in my craw ever since I found out about it. Maybe (for me) it represents the epitome of mindlessly cruel homophobia. I forget about him for months at a time but then I see his name somewhere and get pissed off all over again.

LOL, my medicare premium is way more than 20 bucks a month and I don't think it gets much cheaper than that. Really, if Micky D is going to farm out their website, they ought to at least have someone reliable on the payroll curating the content before it goes out.

Alan Turing, mathematician, founding father of cybernetics and one of the leaders of the Bletchly Park team of code breakers that allowed the English to read German military communications during WWII, was pardoned this week by the British government for being queer. Turing, who was something of a naif in worldly matters and open about his sexuality, was robbed by a rent boy in 1952. When he reported the theft to his local constabulary, the coppers promptly prosecuted Turing for being homosexual. He was given a choice between years in prison or chemical castration. I've read somewhere that the chief constable responsible for the charge later regretted pursuing the matter saying that he had not been aware that Turing had been awarded the Victoria Cross (= Congressional Medal of Honour) for his war work. (Not sure if that is true or that, if true, it makes the Chief Constable less of an asshole or more.) http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-royal-pardon-british-codebreaker-turing-20131224,0,7253815.story#axzz2oQWSPfqO

"The iPotty – a bizarre combination of iPad and potty designed to help young children with potty training – has been named the worst toy of the year by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC)." Latter day luddites fighting a rear guard action against the coming of the Singularity.

If there had been a few more ministers like this guy around when I was 13/14 years old, I might not be an atheist now.

Probably some big brained cloned clown who will whip up a world killing virus with the biolab play set his parents get him for his tenth birthday. "Please, Mom, I just gotta have it. I promise I won't make a mess."

Yeah, but... Human adaptability is pretty much measured in generations. We're kind of stuck with the mental and social adaptive tools we inherited from our stone chipping ancestors. Our genotype just doesn't change all that fast. Just for instance, it took until the mid-60's (about a generation) before folks in charge of nukes finally figured out that nukes couldn't be used, not even against the little pesky types who didn't even have them. And it took another whole generation before they figured out that, in many ways, the more of them you had, the less secure you were. Many people still haven't figured that out. (I'm talking hard headed realpolitik logic here, not mushy moral considerations.) Now the two technological examples you cite allowed folks plenty of time to fiddle around and muddle through until they finally found something that more or less worked. The one I cited, well it was a close run thing whether we would survive long enough to get it right. And as I said before, some of us (PRK, Iran, Pakistan and India (?), & are Japan and Saudi Arabia edging over to get in line?) still haven't quite got it. It's so easy to see how much you gain by having nukes and so hard to understand how much having them constrains your freedom of action. And now-a-days we are having the social/economic equivalent of nukes popping up every year, it seems. And the pace keeps picking up. It's not just more every year, it's more more every year. So maybe we'll luck out and hit some kind of technological plateau and have time to catch our breath. Figure things out. But does anyone really believe we've milked all we are going to from chemistry and physics? And really cybernetics is just starting to come into its own. Biotechnology? Still in its infancy. So no plateau in sight; in fact the tech slope seems to grow steeper and steeper as far out as we care to peer. It seems to me we're in danger of seeing our best efforts to adapt to new tech being strangled in the crib by even newer, more radical tech that replaces the old tech we're trying so hard to find a way to live with. LOL. and soon enough, aborted before it reaches term. Picture a bunch of grammar school kids taking batting practice. First they're doing coach pitch, then it's Pony league, then minor league, then major league, then Cy young winners. And while the kids are trying to keep pace with all that, they need to keep in mind that the guy waiting in the bull pen is Cy Young himself, zombiefied up by the miracle of modern bio-tech engineering. So, in summary, it is that bad and worse, 'cause good enough just won't cut it.

Not looking forward to trying to train myself to put 2014 on my checks. I'm still writing 2012. Or 200x or even 1998 sometimes; all depends on how much my gears are slipping on any given day. On the up side, I almost always know what month it is. Usually don't even have to think about it very much. Go figure. ==== Now what was the question again?

OK, AS, I admit it, you got me... I did mean you.

"The US researchers looked into a long-term, confidential study about reproductive health, and found that 45 of the 7,870 women involved said they had become pregnant without ever having had vaginal intercourse or going through in-vitro fertilization, AFP reports. Of those, 31% had made a "chastity pledge" of the type popular among Christian groups." Clearly chastity pledges are a leading cause of unplanned pregnancies (at least among virgins). Who would have thunk it?

But note the search for new models of funding is being triggered by a technology driven collapse of the old business models. And my main point is that, even if any (or all!) of these new models should prove effective, before any of them can gain some traction ever newer technology will have rendered them obsolete. Picture humanity as a hamster on a motorized exercise wheel programmed to turn faster and faster in a logarithmic progression.

No, of course I didn't mean you! Why on earth would you think that?

Especially for RA1:

One of the things I regret is that I won't quite live long enough to greet the Singularity. LOL but then maybe nobody else will either. ==== One can applaud these folks efforts without believing for an instant that human institutions can adapt anywhere near as fast as new technology can be deployed. And if modern history teaches anything, it's that any technological advance that can be deployed, will be deployed.

Speak of the devil... http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/14/21903224-federal-judge-strikes-down-key-parts-of-utahs-polygamy-law-in-sister-wives-ruling?lite It's all coming true just like those social conservatives prophesied! Personally I'm waiting until I can marry my goat.

Thank you for remembering to give us a link to the definition of bracha, lookin. You're the best!

It's not entirely clear to me why 'street walking' adds to the health or safety of prostitutes. Nor is it obvious why prohibiting street walking is "grossly disproportionate to the deterrence of community disruption that is the object of the law." Most folks would not want their kids on their way home from school to have to elbow their way through a horde of whores. Not exactly what Mom had in mind when she handed over little Billy's weekly allowance?