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Au contraire! In fact, I was hoping you'd join me at Martha's upcoming Chile Reception; assuming, of course, I can do something with this drooping derrière.

In 1957, Ford showed off its nuclear-powered concept car, the Ford Nucleon. Rumors swirled that GM was close behind with its Chevy Chernobyl.

Missed the show, so I'm playing catch up, but would relish any tips she had for sagging buns.

Howdy, There may be better way, but here's a way that works for me. Pick the chunk you want to respond to and type [qu0te] at the beginning of that chunk and then type [/qu0te] at the end of that chunk. (Except spell "quote" the right way with "o" instead of "0"; I had to misspell it, or my words would have appeared in quotes.) Then you can type your response to that chunk. When you're ready to quote the next chunk, just type [qu0te] at the beginning of the chunk and [/qu0te] at the end of the chunk, and it will appear in quotes. As you noticed, when you hit the "reply" button, the [qu0te] and [/qo0te] commands are inserted for you automatically, but for the entire post you're responding to. To break it into chunks, you have to insert the extra [qu0te] and [/qu0te] commands yourself. Far out! I never noticed that. I have no idea what that button does, and maybe it's the secret to a whole better process. In the meantime, thank you, I'll just enjoy flipping between red and blue. You're welcome, and happy quoting!

"I will not exaggerate its size, or minimize its potential."

To think my perversion helps foster subversion!

Personal proclivities aside, I'm not sure I understand the question. I can make the screen any size I want, up to the edges of my computer display. Which I usually do. Or are you referring to the blank spaces along the sides of the page? I hadn't really noticed until you asked the question, but this site does have more "air" around the content than most. If that's what you're asking about, I think it's fine the way it is, but I wouldn't complain if you took back some of that real estate either. If I've totally missed the point, I hope you'll ask the question again. I like the way you guys look for improvements.

Not so fast, Mister! You're not going to leave us hanging, are you, without finishing up that story? I understand if you don't want to highjack this worthy thread, so I'll follow you anywhere to hear more, except possibly that highfalutin Country Club of yours.

Your memory serves you well. You first introduced us to the 32 fouettés of Cicero in a thread about last year's membership upgrade, of all things. It was part of an elaborate highjack in English, French, and Latin, as I recall. AdamSmith joined in with quotes from Milton and a picture of a horse pissing into the dirt. I wish I could remember what forum that ended up in.

I thought it was a boy. Pretty major camel-toe if not, poor thing.

Same here. When suggestions were being taken for site improvements, mine was that log-ins be allowed directly from the forums. As far as I can tell, that's still not possible, and the only way to log in is to exit the forums, log in, and then return to the forums. The one change seems to be that I am now told that I'm logged in while I'm in the forums, even though I'm really not, until I perform the same terpsichorean maneuvers with which you have begun your day. Does keep one nimble though.

One of my favorite expressions from days gone by, "(We) must have lunch!" is a line that always makes me laugh. First time I heard it was in response to my telling a new trick how cute he was. He wanted to keep the relationship going too. The line is delivered with the emphasis on "Must", and a slight flounce of the wrist completes the effect. I guess it comes across better in person. I feel so old.

Must have lunch!

TY, thanks for sharing the email from the mystery reviewer, and your response. They're both helpful in bracketing a range of opinions about which reviews should see the light of day, and which should be hidden under a bushel basket. My own take is pretty far to one side, so I've kept it to myself thus far. But, hey, I'm in the middle of cleaning out a very dusty attic, and need a break, so here comes a minority opinion. First, for me, I'm really interested in reading what others care to share. If I'm interested in a guy, I'll read everything I can find. The worst that can happen is that I get misled with bad info. My insurance against that is to look for more than one review, and/or credible reviewers. If I can find only one review, and it doesn't have much information, or it's unrealistically positive or unrealistically negative, I figure I'm no worse off than I was before. I don't recall ever being so rushed for time that I regretted the two or three minutes it took to scan a review, no matter how useless it might prove to be. Maybe if I were one of those guys who used to spin two dozen pie plates at once on the Ed Sullivan show I'd feel trifled with but, for now, I've got a few minutes to waste reading a useless review. I can just move on. But more important than that is that I just never know what it is that's going to make the difference between hiring a guy or not. A reviewer may write no more than the fact that the guy had a warm smile and dimples, and it could be just what I wanted to hear. Or he might say only that the escort was dressed to the nines; if I'm not in the mood for a GQ type escort, that could very well send me scurrying to the next guy on my list. Sometimes the littlest detail will help tip the scale. And I don't always know in advance what's going to do the trick, so to speak. On the other hand, when I read a review that's chock full of the nitty gritty, I sometimes wonder how I'd react if I hired the guy and he said he's not really in the mood for any nitty, and I can forget all about the gritty for today. Those reviews are fun to read (and write!), but I've never looked at them as any kind of ironclad guarantee. So, I'm going to cast one lone vote for printing all the reviews that aren't obvious fakes. But I'll also acknowledge, as others have, that you're the one who sets the standards for a very helpful site, and I'll gratefully eat the kibble that's in my bowl. Thanks for the break, and back to my dusty attic!

What amazes me, and is shown so clearly in the link you posted, is the incredible effort involved in applying a centuries-old document to situations that were difficult or impossible to foresee. Of the three branches of federal government, I've always liked the Judicial branch best. They're the ones most directly involved in ensuring that we ordinary citizens continue to enjoy the freedoms and liberties promised by the Founders. If they fail, we fail. But how can they possibly keep up with all the new situations that arise, and the thousands of new laws that get on the books every year? The "Patriot Act" alone would seem a full-time job.

I think that's exactly what it means, as long as the Court finds those local laws unconstitutional. Laws mandating racially segregated schools were vigorously defended by several states, until the Supreme Court determined there was a constitutional issue involved and overturned them. Whether or not they'll ever get around to gay marriage is anybody's guess, although I wouldn't mind presenting them with a pair of briefs.

True, but for all we know there's a Romanian surgeon swaggering around Bucharest with a smile on his face and a gypsy hooker on each arm.

I’d like to be able to log in from anywhere on the site, or else get a contextual log in box. For example, when I tried responding to your post just now, I got the following error messages: This menu has been disabled Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information. The error returned was: Sorry, you do not have permission to reply to that topic You are not logged in, you may log in above But I couldn’t log in above. I had to exit the error screen, go back to the main page, log in, come back to the Forums, go to The Pub, re-open your thread, and then reply. On Daddy’s site, if I try to respond to a post while I’m not logged in, I get an automatic log in box with autofill, and am returned directly to the reply screen, without having to bounce around the site. Makes it a little easier. Thanks!

The price of gas is definitely in the news these days, but what’s more interesting to me is “What are we going to do about it?â€. Last year, I concluded that my next car will be a hybrid that averages at least 40mpg. This year, for the first time ever, I started calculating the cost of gas when I was planning a discretionary trip. It’s about time I started thinking differently. Europeans have been doing it for decades. We’ve had a cheap gas policy in the U.S. forever. Most countries have a long history of taxing the hell out of gas in order to affect consumer decisions, and to fund alternative transportation as well as social programs. And a few countries subsidize gas even today. Recent gas prices ($/gallon): Norway 10.37 Netherlands 9.73 Denmark 9.31 Italy 8.78 Germany 8.74 Sweden 8.71 United Kingdom 8.56 Hong Kong 8.33 France 8.06 Israel 7.95 Spain 7.34 Switzerland 7.12 Singapore 6.06 Brazil 6.02 Japan 5.83 Canada 5.49 India 5.15 South Africa 4.66 Thailand 4.47 Pakistan 4.01 United States 3.99 Russia 3.79 China 2.80 Kuwait .79 Venezuela .19 Source: Wikipedia Compared with the rest of the world, we’ve still got cheap gas, primarily because we don’t tax it very much - about 15%. It’s possible things will cool down in the Middle East, and speculators will get their wings clipped, but I’m not counting on it. If everything breaks our way, prices may stabilize for a while, but I don’t see how they could ever return to the $2.00 a gallon we paid in 2005. If we want to keep our gas budget where it was a couple of years ago, we’ll have to cut our gas usage in half. That’s what the rest of the world is doing, and now it’s our turn. The good news is we can do it if we want to, and I think we’re finally starting to want to.

Crabs, with my luck.

I can't match your two cents, but I'll throw a penny into the pot. There are plenty of people like you who need PC's for specific applications or for work, and who aren't afraid of tethering their cell phones as an 800K/s modem. Right now, you're not Apple's market. There's another group of PC users who are saving 20% - 30% on their PC's, but would love a Mac if they didn't cost more. And those are the people that Apple's got its eye on. What makes them switch, even if a Mac costs more? As far as I can tell, they do it when they start putting a value on their time. A friend of mine bought a $700 PC laptop for his parents for Christmas. He also offered to help them set it up, get it connected to the internet, and transfer their software from their old PC to their new PC laptop. I saw him when he was one week into the process, and he was bitching up a storm. He had spent at least ten hours getting almost everything to work, but he was still having trouble getting all their data transferred, and their email still wasn't working. He had spent the morning on hold with tech support, he was on his way to Radio Shack to buy a cable, and he was going to have to spend most of his weekend trying to get everything working. He was not a happy camper. We figured out he had saved almost $400 by not buying them a Mac laptop, but he would gladly have paid $400 to save himself the aggravation he had already gone through, and it wasn't over yet. Without rubbing it in, I told him what I had gone through when I bought my Mac laptop a couple of years ago. I turned it on, and it asked me a few easy questions, one of which was "Would you like to transfer information from another Apple Macintosh?" After I said yes, it told me to connect the two computers with a firewire cable, and to restart my old computer while holding down the "T" key. That set my old computer up as a target drive. Then my new computer asked me if I wanted to bring over everything from my old computer, or just certain applications and files. I told it "everything", gave it my password, and it told me it would take about an hour. When I came back and restarted my new laptop, it was the spitting image of my old desktop. Everything was there, my desktop wallpaper, my applications, my files, my old emails, my browser bookmarks and cookies, even my passwords. No more to do, and everything worked. A month ago, my friend got an iPhone. His next computer will be a Mac. He's the guy that Apple is after.

ET, listen to Raul. Step one is to make sure you’ve got a speedy internet connection. The speed tests will tell you that. If you do, then a new computer should do the trick, whether it’s a Mac or not. That’s because it will have plenty of memory, and the hardware and software will be fast and up-to-date. The Mac isn’t inherently faster than a PC for internet browsing, assuming it’s similarly configured. But, if you’ve got a slow internet connection, neither a new Mac nor a new PC will help much. The other thing I’ve learned is that connection speed is quite variable. In the middle of the night, I get 6mb/second from my Comcast cable connection. In the evening, I might get only 2mb/second. It’s the difference between reloading this page in one second, versus three seconds. See what you get. If it’s taking you a lot more than three seconds to reload this page, you probably have some issues with your DSL connection. Get the phone company to check their signal at your place. Once you’re sure you’ve got a fast connection, then listen to Oz and EXPAT. Get a Mac! They’re pretty and they’re fun. It’s easy to do stuff, and things just work. I listen to my PC friends bitch about the time they spend downloading fixes, trying to figure out why stuff stopped working, and re-installing all their software. Some people love doing that stuff, and some people hate it. You sound like you hate it, so you’ll enjoy a Mac. You mentioned you’re looking for a desktop, and may have a good reason. But there are some advantages to a Mac laptop too. You can plug a laptop into a big monitor if that’s what you need. But you can also unplug it and take it into the kitchen, out by the pool, or to bed with you, and still be connected to the internet. You can do that with a PC laptop too, but the Mac makes it dead easy. All Macs have built-in wireless capability, so all you need to do is plug in an Airport Express (mini-router), plug in your DSL cable, answer a few questions, and you’re good to go. (You can also plug your stereo into an Airport Express, and play all your music from your laptop. Plug your printer into an Airport Express, and print from anywhere in the house.) And a Mac laptop travels very well. Flip it open, and it will find a wireless signal at Starbucks, your hotel, or hundreds of other places, and ask you if you want to connect. All the technical expertise you’ll need is to be able to click “yesâ€. If you really like being connected to the internet, a Mac laptop is as good as it gets! Well, except for an iPhone.

I think you and James are right, and thank you. But there are others who are also victims of grave sexual dysfunction due to minimal and/or useless dicks (blushing prettily, and trusting my secret is safe here), who do not dedicate themselves to "supervising the morality of the public". They hire escorts, or take up a hobby, and let the public get along under its own steam. What I'm trying to figure out is why only certain people decide to hoist themselves up onto the bench, and pass judgement on others. What's their motivation? There must be some payout, or they wouldn't keep doing it. I appreciate any ideas folks care to share. It's a question that's been nagging at me for a while, and the Comstock-Spitzer brouhaha moved it front and center again.

Nice article. It ends with this paragraph: He certainly had no choice but to resign (as he did on March 12th) if, as it seems, he broke the law. But that still leaves the bigger question of whether the law is an ass. George Bernard Shaw once defined “Comstockery†as “the world's standing joke at the expense of the United Statesâ€; but it is hardly a joke for the people who are caught in its tentacles. There are enough real problems for America's law-enforcement officials to worry about. Like many of your posts, this one sent me looking for information on a subject I didn't know about. This time it was “Comstockeryâ€. Once again, Wikipedia to the rescue: Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was a former United States Postal Inspector and politician dedicated to ideas of Victorian morality. He was born in New Canaan, Connecticut. As a young man, he enlisted and fought for the Union in the American Civil War from 1863 to 1865. He served without incident, but objected to the profanity used by his fellow soldiers. Afterward he became an active worker in the Young Men's Christian Association in New York City. In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of both "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material as well as any methods of, or information pertaining to, birth control. George Bernard Shaw coined the term "comstockery", meaning "censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality", after Comstock alerted the New York police to the content of Shaw's play Mrs. Warren's Profession. Shaw remarked that "Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all." Comstock thought of Shaw as an "Irish smut dealer". Comstock's ideas of what might be "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" were quite broad. During his time of greatest power, even some anatomy textbooks were prohibited from being sent to medical students by the United States Postal Service. Comstock aroused intense loathing from early civil liberties groups and intense support from church based groups worried about public morals. He was a savvy political insider in New York City and was made a special agent of the United States Postal Service, with police powers up to and including the right to carry a weapon. With this power he zealously prosecuted those he suspected of either public distribution of pornography or commercial fraud, his twin obessions. His efforts to suppress public information on sex education materials and birth control are now often viewed as misguided and medically irresponsible. He was also involved in shutting down the Louisiana Lottery, the only legal lottery in the United States at the time, and notorious for corruption. Comstock is also known for his persecution of Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, and those associated with them. The men's journal The Days Doings had popularised lewd images of the sisters for three years and was instructed by its editor (while Comstock was present) to stop producing images of "lewd character". Comstock also took legal action against the paper for advertising contraceptives. When the sisters published an expose of an adulterous affair between Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, he had the sisters imprisoned under laws forbidding the use of the postal service to distribute 'obscene material'—though they were later found 'not guilty'. Less fortunate was Ida Craddock, who committed suicide on the eve of reporting to Federal prison for distributing via the U.S. Mail various sexually explicit marriage manuals she had authored. Her final work was a lengthy public suicide note specifically condemning Comstock. Comstock claimed he drove fifteen persons to suicide in his "fight for the young". He was head vice-hunter of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock, the self-labeled "weeder in God's garden", arrested D. M. Bennett for publishing his "An Open Letter to Jesus Christ" and later entrapped the editor for mailing a free-love pamphlet. Bennett was prosecuted, subjected to a widely publicized trial, and imprisoned in the Albany Penitentiary. He had numerous enemies, and in later years his health was affected by a severe blow to the head from an anonymous attacker. He lectured to college audiences and wrote newspaper articles to sustain his causes. Before his death, Comstock attracted the interest of a young law student, J. Edgar Hoover, interested in his causes and methods. During his career, Comstock clashed with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. In her autobiography, Goldman referred to Comstock as the leader of America's "moral eunuchs". Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing 'objectionable' books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures. Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides. I continue to be amazed by people who invest so much time poking their noses into other peoples’ business, with sex often at the center, and suicide sometimes the result. Why do you think they do it?