AdamSmith

I've fallen and I can't get it up!

Interesting! I didn't know that.

One of the benefits of creeping senescence.

How Do Court Reporters Keep Straight Faces? These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while the exchanges were taking place. ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning? WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?' ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you? WITNESS: My name is Susan! _______________________________ ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact? WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks. ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active? WITNESS: No, I just lie there. ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth? WITNESS: July 18th. ATTORNEY: What year? WITNESS: Every year. _____________________________________ ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you? WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which. ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you? WITNESS: Forty-five years. _________________________________ ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all? WITNESS: Yes. ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory? WITNESS: I forget.. ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot? ___________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning? WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam? ____________________________________ ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he? WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ. ___________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken? WITNESS: Are you shitting me? _________________________________________ ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th? WITNESS: Yes. ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time? WITNESS: Getting laid ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: She had three children , right? WITNESS: Yes. ATTORNEY: How many were boys? WITNESS: None. ATTORNEY: Were there any girls? WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney? ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated? WITNESS: By death.. ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated? WITNESS: Take a guess. ___________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual? WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female? WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male. _____________________________________ ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney? WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work. ______________________________________ ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people? WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight. _________________________________________ ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to? WITNESS: Oral... _________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body? WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished. ____________________________________________ ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample? WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question? ______________________________________ And last: ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing? WITNESS: No.. ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? WITNESS: No. ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor? WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

Wonder if he would have cottoned any quicker if you had suggested a window display after the style of Boss's Hitler Youth uniforms?

Let me try: We know Flannery O'Connor's deadly crack about To Kill a Mockingbird -- "It's interesting that all the people that are buying it don't know they are buying a children's book." If this first chapter of Go Set a Watchman is representative of the rest, it might be that O'Connor simultaneously, rather miraculously, identified the thing that raises Mockingbird at least partway toward the plane of art. Without reading all of the new (old) book obviously I can't form a fair judgment. But the writing in this excerpt is not so encouraging. I went back and looked at some of Mockingbird again and liked just the prose and voice a good bit more than in this sample from Watchman. I will read the whole thing when it comes out.

I used a MacBook Pro 2008-2012. True that MS Office for Mac tended to lag behind the Windows version in release history. BUT Office for Mac has always tended to be a good bit more stable and reliable than the Windows version. My moles inside Microsoft tell me that the Office for Mac developer team takes a contrarian pride in doing a better job than their internal competitors on the Office for Windows team. And are proud to see themselves as aligned with Apple in general that way -- in doing a better job for the end user than Microsoft has typically ever done.

ROFLMAO How did he react?

Read the first chapter: http://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2015/jul/10/go-set-a-watchman-read-the-first-chapter

How the Greeks must feel along about now...

Chance! Thank you. I love it. Your link doesn't work for me but I found your plant by name in Wikipedia. ...Nepenthes hemsleyana appears to rely on different prey trapping strategies as compared to N. rafflesiana. Unlike the latter, the upper pitchers of N. hemsleyana have an expanded waxy zone and watery, less viscoelastic pitcher fluid.[2][15] They also appear to lack UV patterns and produce less nectar and odour attractants.[2][15] Hardwicke's woolly bats (Kerivoula hardwickii) commonly roost in the upper pitchers of N. hemsleyana.[2][16][17][18] This relationship appears to be mutualistic, with the plant providing shelter for the bats and in return receiving additional nitrogen input in the form of faeces. It has been estimated that the plant derives 33.8% of its total foliar nitrogen from the animals' droppings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepenthes_hemsleyana P.S. Aren't you glad there aren't any of these in the Great Smoky Mountains? Hope IP is keeping you out of trouble.

Just what I was thinking about the jock in their ad.

I was unclear. Speer's title (after being promoted from Chief Architect) was Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. The Obergruppenführers were apparatchiks a level beneath him who, in guarding their own turf, mainly frustrated his efforts.

I first came across the word 'Obergruppenführer' in Speer's grimly (and occasionally comically) fascinating memoir Inside the Third Reich. Various holders of the title were among the many figures throughout the Reich government who alternately thwarted and aided Speer's efforts to save the Nazi war-production program from misorganization in general and Hitler's increasingly counterproductive interventions in particular. Wikipedia enlightens: Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA, and adopted by the Schutzstaffel one year later. Until 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank, inferior only to Reichsführer-SS (Heinrich Himmler). Translated as "senior group leader",[1] the rank of Obergruppenführer was considered senior to Gruppenführer.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergruppenf%C3%BChrer Gottlob Berger, commander of the SS-Hauptamt, wearing the rank insignia of an SS-Obergruppenführer and a superimposed Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross

Exactly. What I always think of is that tutoring franchise for kids who are not quite bright. http://www.sylvanlearning.com/

I agree. These discrepancies smell very bad.

If I were in NYC right now, I think I would risk the $50 to find out. (Limiting the risk by using a prepaid card with only fifty bucks on it.) Curious to watch if anybody gives them a whirl.

Here’s Why Your Poop Habits Get All Messed Up When You Travel Pooping? No way! You’re on vacation, and so is your butt. http://www.buzzfeed.com/carolynkylstra/vacation-poop

Where you been hiding? Always glad to see you here. Don't be a stranger.

Greenwald: What Portugal Can Teach Us About Decriminalizing Drugs http://www.newsweek.com/greenwald-what-portugal-can-teach-us-about-decriminalizing-drugs-349992

Delightful! Lawrence Ferlinghetti: 'Most of the poets were on something, but somebody had to mind the shop' The publisher of the Beats talks about Ginsberg the showman, the Albert hall happening and how one of his own poets emptied the City Lights till http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/lawrence-ferlinghetti-interview-poets

When Titian was mixing some madder For a nude he had posed on a ladder, Her position to Titian Suggested coition, So he stopped mixing madder and had her.

Scalia's Originalism Opposed by Madison/Jefferson dailykos.com Scalia's cramped view of the US Constitution, which he describes as being rooted in the original intent of the Constitution's authors, was explicitly opposed by the primary architect of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Madison, as well as by Jefferson. Scalia's version of original intent fails even on its own terms: the original intent of the Constitution evidently was to create a living document in which definitions of liberty would continually be expanded. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the majority held that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment protects same sex couples from discrimination, because discrimination based on sexual orientation clearly violates the principles of equal protection. The 14th Amendment says: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Scalia claims that "equal protection of the laws," within the context of its time, was intended only to apply to issues of discrimination against African-Americans. So, Scalia fulminated, in his Obergefell dissent: When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, every state limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. Scalia claims that his original intent doctrine requires him (and he believes, all right thinking Supreme Court Justices) to apply the standards of 1868 to what equal protection means, and to stop there. This would also mean women and people with disabilities, for example, are, according to Scalia's reasoning, outside the protection of the 14th Amendment (and such interpretations are another reason why the Equal Rights Amendment is important), but that's a different argument for a different day. Even applying his own standard, Scalia fails to explain why the authors of the 14th amendment wrote the general principle of "equal protection of the laws" into the constitution if they only meant "equal protection of the laws on the basis of race." But what did two of the most important "founders" think of this form of constitutional interpretation? Madison is best known today as the "father" of the Bill of Rights, since he drafted the provisions and introduced them into Congress. Madison was actually the primary architect of the US Constitution as a whole. Originally, however, he opposed a bill of rights. What was his main objection? He presciently feared that some future politicians or jurists (e.g. Scalia and his co-dissenters) might calcify the enumeration of rights they specified into a finite list that excluded the recognition of all other liberties. Madison was convinced by the vociferous debates in the states over ratifying the Constitution, which included denunciations of the lack of a bill of rights, and by arguments by Jefferson among others, to change his mind and propose a bill of rights himself. Even so, in Madison's speech introducing the Bill of Rights to Congress, on June 8, 1789, he discussed his own fears: It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow, by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution. In a sadly futile attempt to prevent future Scalias (and Robertses, Alitos, and Thomases) from arguing that the rights as enumerated in 1789 were the be all and end all of liberty, Madison wrote the "last clause of the fourth resolution." That clause is now the (unjustly neglected) 9th Amendment to the US Constitution: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Madison was most concerned about violations of the rights of the minority by the majority. In a 1788 letter to Jefferson discussing the idea of a bill of rights, Madison wrote: In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. Scalia ignores, or has so far refused to understand, that just because the rights of same sex couples have been violated by the majority for hundreds of years (including in 1868), that this is not a valid argument for continuing to violate these rights. The repudiation of the idea that a tradition of violating rights is a legitimate constitutional justification for continuing to violate rights has been a central argument of Kennedy's string of sexual orientation cases since Lawrence and Garner v. Texas. Scalia and the three other dissenters in Obergefell haven't seemed to get this yet. Ending the violations of a minority's (same sex couples') rights by a homophobic (mostly straight) majority are exactly the kinds of violations that Madison told Jefferson he hoped a bill of rights, at its best, would eventually help end. According to Michiko Kakutani's NYT review of historian Joseph Ellis's new book, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, Ellis ends the book with a telling quotation from Jefferson that directly warns against freezing the interpretation of the Constitution into Original Intent oblivion: Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I know that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country.... But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. Roberts echoed Scalia's supposed "original intent" doctrine when he claimed in his Obergefell dissent (which was joined by the other three dissenters) that the majority opinion "had nothing to do with" the Constitution. Apparently, Roberts is ignorant of, or chose to ignore, Madison and Jefferson's views as enumerated above, but also of the 9th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. The dissenters refuse to follow Madison and Jefferson's original intent and apply the "progress of the human mind" to interpreting the meaning of the US Constitution. In this refusal, their "original intent" doctrine fails to apply the principles of equal protection and liberty to our own time. Even worse, at least at the level of logic, their decisions fail even their own putative original intent test. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/02/1398441/-Scalia-s-Originalism-Opposed-by-Madison-Jefferson#

Marshall Islands This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste -- and it's leaking http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste

In NYC there must be a fetish bar for people who love people in your condition?? Sympathies -- get well!