AdamSmith

You really think? My fourth-grade class went on a very enjoyable school-bus outing to the N.C. Museum of Art (this was1969) and saw plenty of classical nudity on canvas. The very good docent explained all the classical mythology, etc. behind it. We all enjoyed it and learned from it very much. It was not any news or surprise to us that classical art had nudity in it, even when we were that young. None of us thought anything of it. Maybe what is really objectionable here is the sub-basement standards to which U.S. public education has sunk. And, as noted above, PC run amok. As is also happening with 'trigger warnings' squelching discourse and true learning across U.S. college campuses today.

Pretty interesting. Words fail Trump but for supporters his message is loud and clear Language experts have pored over speeches that have translators tearing their hair out and some find his macho bluster surprisingly effective Presidents are often remembered for their words as well as their actions but at the close of one of the most tumultuous years in White House history, Donald Trumphas linguists scratching their heads. He is routinely mocked as incoherent, yet gets his message across to supporters clear as day. Philip Roth has declared that Trump “speaks jerkish”, while Columbia University professor of linguistics John McWhorter calls his speech “oddly adolescent”. Others see it as one of the reasons he got elected... Cont.: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/31/words-fail-trump-but-for-supporters-his-message-is-loud-and-clear

Actually I thought it has had to be self-supporting entirely for some fairly many years now?

'of the piece'? What goes up must come down: a http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/what-goes-up-must-come-down-a-brief-history-of-the-codpieceory of the codpiece

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eppie_Lederer

Likewise the Navy's new Littoral Combat Ship, the first -- very expensive, of course -- instance of which just recently out of Bath Iron Works has been plagued with problems.

Oral even better

In the offshore platform industry, where the subsea-platform part is typically constructed halfway around the world from the so-called 'top sides,' there is a saying about the physical mating of the two: 'Beat it to fit, and paint it to match.'

'verbal' = 'oral' ?

The intended joke (prunes)...

Exactly the same situation! Before I became an arty-farty English major, I was in training (high school course tracks) to be a chemical engineer. I do NOT like the current state of engineering understanding of composite materials AT ALL.

P.P.S. I also, repeating myself from a couple years ago, still have uneasiness about the longer-term structural integrity of the composites that make up a lot of the 787's fuselage. We just do not understand that stuff with anything approaching the engineering confidence that the program managers wanted to believe. Numerous engineers and structural-analysis discipline leads told me they were being pushed by their managers (can anyone say 'Challenger O-rings'?) to approve designs to meet schedule without remotely enough testing, experiment and software simulation. And we have NO idea how to inspect crafts made from it, from flight to flight. I think it is a mess in the making.

EXCEPT for this nonsense (I overstate, but still) of going down to just two engines for long over-ocean flights. As stated here before. I hate that the airlines, and the airplane makers, have to try to make money by cutting engine count down that drastically. How long until they decide to try to fly on just one-half an engine? There have to be business models out there that would get them out of these financial woods without sacrificing engineering good sense.

Also: "The standing water breeds reptiles of the mind." "Damn braces; bless relaxes." [Guess which he favored more.] And then my personal life motto & credo... "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

P.S. None other than William Blake proclaimed: "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."

Nat Hentoff: The Free-Thinking Quick-Change Artist of the Village Voice 1925-2017 By JACK SHAFER December 28, 2017 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/28/nat-hentoff-obituary-216188

I disagree in whole with that view.

I am as rabid lefty as they come, but SJWs do exist. People for whom cold rigid principle in the abstract overrules the hot realities of lived life. Since you raise the question, exactly how would you describe who you are? And which brand of bullshit you believe?

Polls directed by a campaign's own paid staff may be viewed with some caution. I, being a poll-taker myself (among engineering software users), have a certain [statistically quantified by chi-square method] degree of confidence in them. As you yourself will have a certain quantified degree of confidence -- and, as appropriate, skepticism -- in new-engine and -airframe certification methods.

Agree more and more guys seem to be getting fed up with the online contredanses on grindr etc that seldom seem to lead anywhere, and are going back to in-person hookups. I just the other day made the most delightful acquaintance with this very cute early-30s Uber driver! (I am 58.) A marvelous affair-in-the-making.