AdamSmith

For the innocent... Three moles are tunneling along. One pokes his head above ground, says 'I smell barbeque.' Second one pokes his head up, says 'I smell Brunswick stew.' Third one, stuck beneath the other two, says 'Dang! All I smell down here is mole asses.'

Whence my 'Location' label here. THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE By H*NRY J*M*S [From A Christmas Garland, Max Beerbohm] It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left it. But just where the deuce had he left it? The consciousness of dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon," between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality somewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, against a good number of "teasers;" and the function of teasing them back—of, as it were, giving them, every now and then, "what for"—was in him so much a habit that he would have been at a loss had there been, on the face of it, nothing to lose. Oh, he always had offered rewards, of course—had ever so liberally pasted the windows of his soul with staring appeals, minute descriptions, promises that knew no bounds. But the actual recovery of the article—the business of drawing and crossing the cheque, blotched though this were with tears of joy—had blankly appeared to him rather in the light of a sacrilege, casting, he sometimes felt, a palpable chill on the fervour of the next quest. It was just this fervour that was threatened as, raising himself on his elbow, he stared at the foot of his bed. That his eyes refused to rest there for more than the fraction of an instant, may be taken—was, even then, taken by Keith Tantalus—as a hint of his recollection that after all the phenomenon wasn't to be singular. Thus the exact repetition, at the foot of Eva's bed, of the shape pendulous at the foot of his was hardly enough to account for the fixity with which he envisaged it, and for which he was to find, some years later, a motive in the (as it turned out) hardly generous fear that Eva had already made the great investigation "on her own." Her very regular breathing presently reassured him that, if she had peeped into "her" stocking, she must have done so in sleep. Whether he should wake her now, or wait for their nurse to wake them both in due course, was a problem presently solved by a new development. It was plain that his sister was now watching him between her eyelashes. He had half expected that. She really was—he had often told her that she really was—magnificent; and her magnificence was never more obvious than in the pause that elapsed before she all of a sudden remarked "They so very indubitably are, you know!" It occurred to him as befitting Eva's remoteness, which was a part of Eva's magnificence, that her voice emerged somewhat muffled by the bedclothes. She was ever, indeed, the most telephonic of her sex. In talking to Eva you always had, as it were, your lips to the receiver. If you didn't try to meet her fine eyes, it was that you simply couldn't hope to: there were too many dark, too many buzzing and bewildering and all frankly not negotiable leagues in between. Snatches of other voices seemed often to intertrude themselves in the parley; and your loyal effort not to overhear these was complicated by your fear of missing what Eva might be twittering. "Oh, you certainly haven't, my dear, the trick of propinquity!" was a thrust she had once parried by saying that, in that case, he hadn't—to which his unspoken rejoinder that she had caught her tone from the peevish young women at the Central seemed to him (if not perhaps in the last, certainly in the last but one, analysis) to lack finality. With Eva, he had found, it was always safest to "ring off." It was with a certain sense of his rashness in the matter, therefore, that he now, with an air of feverishly "holding the line," said "Oh, as to that!" Had she, he presently asked himself, "rung off"? It was characteristic of our friend—was indeed "him all over"—that his fear of what she was going to say was as nothing to his fear of what she might be going to leave unsaid. He had, in his converse with her, been never so conscious as now of the intervening leagues; they had never so insistently beaten the drum of his ear; and he caught himself in the act of awfully computing, with a certain statistical passion, the distance between Rome and Boston. He has never been able to decide which of these points he was psychically the nearer to at the moment when Eva, replying "Well, one does, anyhow, leave a margin for the pretext, you know!" made him, for the first time in his life, wonder whether she were not more magnificent than even he had ever given her credit for being. Perhaps it was to test this theory, or perhaps merely to gain time, that he now raised himself to his knees, and, leaning with outstretched arm towards the foot of his bed, made as though to touch the stocking which Santa Claus had, overnight, left dangling there. His posture, as he stared obliquely at Eva, with a sort of beaming defiance, recalled to him something seen in an "illustration." This reminiscence, however—if such it was, save in the scarred, the poor dear old woebegone and so very beguilingly not refractive mirror of the moment—took a peculiar twist from Eva's behaviour. She had, with startling suddenness, sat bolt upright, and looked to him as if she were overhearing some tragedy at the other end of the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrest it. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind to make him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, if she abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did he! It was simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values," as painters say, and there you were! He was to feel that he was only too crudely "there" when, leaning further forward, he laid a chubby forefinger on the stocking, causing that receptacle to rock ponderously to and fro. This effect was more expected than the tears which started to Eva's eyes, and the intensity with which "Don't you," she exclaimed, "see?" "The mote in the middle distance?" he asked. "Did you ever, my dear, know me to see anything else? I tell you it blocks out everything. It's a cathedral, it's a herd of elephants, it's the whole habitable globe. Oh, it's, believe me, of an obsessiveness!" But his sense of the one thing it didn't block out from his purview enabled him to launch at Eva a speculation as to just how far Santa Claus had, for the particular occasion, gone. The gauge, for both of them, of this seasonable distance seemed almost blatantly suspended in the silhouettes of the two stockings. Over and above the basis of (presumably) sweetmeats in the toes and heels, certain extrusions stood for a very plenary fulfilment of desire. And, since Eva had set her heart on a doll of ample proportions and practicable eyelids—had asked that most admirable of her sex, their mother, for it with not less directness than he himself had put into his demand for a sword and helmet—her coyness now struck Keith as lying near to, at indeed a hardly measurable distance from, the border-line of his patience. If she didn't want the doll, why the deuce had she made such a point of getting it? He was perhaps on the verge of putting this question to her, when, waving her hand to include both stockings, she said "Of course, my dear, you do see. There they are, and you know I know you know we wouldn't, either of us, dip a finger into them." With a vibrancy of tone that seemed to bring her voice quite close to him, "One doesn't," she added, "violate the shrine—pick the pearl from the shell!" Even had the answering question "Doesn't one just?" which for an instant hovered on the tip of his tongue, been uttered, it could not have obscured for Keith the change which her magnificence had wrought in him. Something, perhaps, of the bigotry of the convert was already discernible in the way that, averting his eyes, he said "One doesn't even peer." As to whether, in the years that have elapsed since he said this either of our friends (now adult) has, in fact, "peered," is a question which, whenever I call at the house, I am tempted to put to one or other of them. But any regret I may feel in my invariable failure to "come up to the scratch" of yielding to this temptation is balanced, for me, by my impression—my sometimes all but throned and anointed certainty—that the answer, if vouchsafed, would be in the negative. Still more here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14667/14667-h/14667-h.htm

As in: I just posted this on another site and was promptly told to GET STUFFED.

http://crappytaxidermy.com

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/judge-thokozile-matilda-masipa-the-woman-with-oscar-pistoriuss-fate-in-her-hands-9715986.html

Text of the letter: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-veterans-letter-netanyahu-military-chiefs

Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories Innocent people under military rule exposed to surveillance by Israel, say 43 ex-members of Unit 8200, including reservists http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-reservists-refuse-serve-palestinian-territories

US supreme court to review same-sex marriage petitions from five states Private review will determine which, if any, gay marriages cases the court will take up in term beginning in October http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/sep/11/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-petitions

US threatened Yahoo with $250,000 daily fine over NSA data refusal Company releases 1,500 documents from failed suit against NSA over user data requests and cooperation with Prism compliance http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsuit-documents-fine-user-data-refusal

Dining in the sky: does fear make food taste better? By Harry Wallop, video by Julian Simmonds 4:01PM BST 11 Sep 2014 telegraph.co.uk A hovering restaurant, winched 100ft above London's Canary Wharf, opens this week. Our intrepid writer - who suffers from vertigo - braved the first flight of the day London boasts some of the finest restaurants in the world, many of them with spectacular views over the capital. So, it is baffling why anyone would actively chose to spend £50 on breakfast at the most recent venue to open: London In the Sky. Unless you were a pepper pot short of the full cruet set. But I am surrounded by 20 fellow customers, most of whom seem to be looking forward to our flight. I say flight, but in fact it is more like a slow winch to a certain death. Thats because London in the Sky is a table suspended from a crane, 100 foot in the air. Attached to the table - by rather insubstantial-looking poles - are chairs that look as if they have been ripped off a fairground roller coaster. The middle of the table is cut out, and replaced with a platform on which stands an oven, three waiters and the chef, Anna Hansen. They are all strapped into harnesses. In all, there are seven tonnes of steel, human bodies, and cutlery, which are due to dangle from a single wire, high above a park in Docklands. There is a flimsy transparent plastic sheet above to stop any rain, but otherwise it is completely open to the elements. The floating restaurant, developed in Belgium nearly 10 years ago, has appeared in Britain quite a few times, but only as part of corporate events. This is the first time it has been open to members of the public, who will have to fork out £250 for an hour-long dinner, where some well-known chefs will be cooking, including Atul Kochhar and Alyn Williams. Apparently, nearly all bookings are full. Restaurants that feel the need to boast about their health and safety records are usually dodgy kebab shops and about as welcome as a dose of Ebola. But a man from London in the Sky shows me a sheet of instructions informing me that no loose footwear is allowed, neither are pregnant women. And then comes the killer line: Each Dinner in the Sky event is covered by £10 million public liability and third party insurance. I am seriously starting to question what I am about to do. Thats because I suffer from vertigo -- not cripplingly so, but enough to make me feel deeply anxious when I stand near the edge of any roof, cliff or ladder. [Photo] Telegraph writer Harry Wallop tucks in to breakfast at 100ft Ive not been up in this yet. I am slightly apprehensive, says Hansen, the founder of Modern Pantry restaurant in Clerkenwell. This does not comfort me, as I, along with all the other guests, are strapped into our seats with double safety belts. She adds: I dont really like heights. So, I am not sure why I agreed to do this. It was a moment of madness. Then, the crane slowly starts to winch us up, and the above the roof of the nearby Docklands warehouses is revealed the O2 Arena and various impressive-looking ships docked near Greenwich. But I am unable to enjoy the view as I spend most of my energy making sure I do not look down. I can sense, out of the corner of my eye, the ground steadily receding beneath my feet but I am studiously looking ahead at Hansen and Dale Agar, who runs London in the Sky and is acting as a waiter. After five minutes, you wont notice that you up in the sky. You will just enjoy yourself, he says, trying to soothe me. It is a lie. My entire body is frozen into a corpse-like stiffness and I dare not loosen my vice-like grip on the table. This makes eating difficult. My toasted oats, nuts and seeds, green apple, roast apricot and The Collective Straight Up Yoghurt -- posh granola -- is, I think, delicious. But my taste buds appear to have shut down. I was wondering if fear might make food taste better, says Dr Marcus Posner, a young eye doctor, and one of my fellow guests sitting at the table. I inform him that I dont think it does. He agrees He won a seat on the flight in a competition and says he is up for trying any new experience. He seems unfazed. But he has been skydiving. This is different from sky diving, he says. Dangling is a bit more unnerving. We all have very small foot rests under our chairs, but this does nothing to alleviate my profound unease. I can feel the wind whipping up my ankles. I just want to get down. Halfway through the meal, the entire open-sided contraption swings around, so that we can see another view. This causes even more discomfort as we all gently sway, like an abandoned puppet. To add to the insult, the view is actually very dull - the back of various tall, ugly skyscrapers. The crane, unfortunately, is situated on the east side of the Docklands, which means you only get a slither of a view across to the city between a gap between the HSBC and Citi buildings. [Photo] Suspended above London's Docklands, the 'hovering restaurant' with views over the City The food continues to impress, I think. Some tea-smoked salmon with yuzu hollandaise at least took my mind off where I was, for a bit. Though it turns out that eating a meal while strapped into a fairground chair is rather uncomfortable, as I find it impossible to lean forward. After half an hour, the moment comes that I have been waiting for: we descend. Each metre, as we sink down, is a blessed relief. Eventually we touch down and I am released from my torture chair. It is only then that I realise that I have spent the last half hour so screwed up with tension that I have failed to digest anything. As a result, I have stomach ache. Agar is keen to find out how I found it. I tell him. He looks a little crestfallen. But I am not sure my opinion will have any impact on the success of his venture, which is running until September 21, with nine flights a day. I hope his future diners enjoy themselves more than I did. For more information on London in the Sky, visit www.eventsinthesky.co.uk/events/london-in-the-sky/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/11090110/Dining-in-the-sky-does-fear-make-food-taste-better.html

Hot Alaska gossip: Sarah Palin's whole family was in a nasty brawl By Adam Weinstein, gawker.com America's favorite Irrelevant Grizzly Mom reportedly screamed "Don't you know who I am?" and had to smooth things over with local police after her whole damn brood got involved in a physical fight at a "snowmachine" party last Saturday night in Alaska, multiple sources say. The altercation, first reported by several local politics blogs and largely confirmed with police by Wonkette, apparently started over a disagreement between Track Palin and man who had once dated his sister Willow. At its height, police say, the melee involved 20 people. Blogger Amanda Coyne explains the details as she received them, not all of which have been confirmed: The details are a little sketchy, but there's enough of them, from enough different sources, that a story emerges, a story that according to the gossip Gods, looks kind of like this: There's some sort of unofficial birthday/Iron Dog-type/snowmachine party in Anchorage. A nice, mellow party, until the Palin's show up. There's beer, of course, and maybe other things. Which is all fine, but just about the time when some people might have had one too many, a Track Palin stumbles out of a stretch Hummer, and immediately spots an ex-boyfriend of Willow's. Track isn't happy with this guy, the story goes. There's words, and more. The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he hadn't. At this point, he's up against nearly the whole Palin tribe: Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their chests. Word is that Bristol has a particularly strong right hook, which she employed repeatedly, and it's something to hear when Sarah screams, "Don't you know who I am!" And it was particularly wonderful when someone in the crowd screamed back, "This isn't some damned Hillbilly reality show!" No, it's what happens when the former First Family of Alaska comes knocking. As people were leaving in a cab, Track was seen on the street, shirtless, flipping people off, with Sarah right behind him, and Todd somewhere in the foreground, tending to his bloody nose. Another blogger reported that Todd Palin "apparently puffed up his chest and made some threatening remarks. (The 'C' word may have been uttered at one point)." He added that Bristol Palin had slugged the owner of the house where the party was hosted, and identified that owner as "2010 Iron Dog winner Chris Olds." The Iron Dog bills itself as "The World's Longest Toughest Snowmobile Race." Wonkette's Rebecca Schoenkopf confirmed with the Anchorage Police Department "that a huge bloody mess of a brawl between multiple subjects took place Saturday night, and that the Palins were 'present.'" But police added that since no charges were pressed by any of the parties, the participants' names haven't been released... yet. More information to follow. Needless to say, if you have additional details or, say, video of the Saturday incident, drop a comment or email adam@gawker.com. http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/hot-alaska-gossip-sarah-palins-whole-family-was-in-a-n-1633502806

Talk about occupational hazards.

So the Scottish independence referendum is fast approaching. Wonder what posters here think?

Melissa's eulogy: http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/entry/view/id/527273

Only way to survive.

ATTACK THE POST, NOT THE POSTER!

Some light etymological musings not on 'stiffie' but just the generic root (so to speak ). Research continues! Lumpy 05-25-2003, 04:43 PM "Penis" is from Latin, and every other commonly used word for it in English is an obvious slang phrase. What was it's proper name back in ye olde times? MC Master of Ceremonies 05-25-2003, 05:15 PM 'Cock' astro 05-25-2003, 05:50 PM Possibly "pintle". (http://www.bartleby.com/61/0/P0320000.html) pintle SYLLABICATION: pin·tle PRONUNCIATION: pntl NOUN: 1. A pin or a bolt on which another part pivots. 2. Nautical The pin on which a rudder turns. 3. The pin on which a gun carriage revolves. 4. A hook or a bolt on the rear of a towing vehicle for attaching a gun or trailer. ETYMOLOGY: Middle English pintel, penis, from Old English. Johanna 05-25-2003, 05:53 PM Wrong, MC Master of Ceremonies. Cock means a male chicken and was used to refer to the penis only metaphorically. Besides, it isn't from Old English at all. It came from French, derived from Latin coccus, a cackling. The real answer to the OP is pintel. The word survives in Modern English as pintle, meaning a pin on which a rudder or gun pivots. Also the second part of cuckoopint (http://www.edensong.com/garden/plants2001/cuckoopint-fruit2.jpg), originally cuckoopintel, a flower (Arum maculatum) with a phallic shape. Joseph Wood Crutch writes in his great book of botanical folklore, Herbal,No "signature" is more immodestly evident than that provided by the very phallic central column (actually a spadix bearing the small male and female flowers) and most of the popular names embody evidence, now somewhat obscured, that the folk imagination had deciphered the signature. Cuckoopint is short for Cuckoopintel, and Wake-Robin (though now gently poetic) was clear enough to those same Elizabethans who snickered when the mad Ophelia sang "For bonnie sweets, Robin is all my joy." ...It is the later Herbalists who stress the supposed effectiveness of the Arums as aphrodisiacs.... Here is what Coles has to say of the Cuckoopint: "It hath not only the signature which will sufficiently declare itself but the virtues also according to the signature, for they are notable for stirring up of inclination to copulation, being either well roasted under the embers or boiled." He then adds that among other names are Sacerdotis Penis, or, In English, Priests Pintle. Johanna 05-25-2003, 06:02 PM astro, I woula been first out of the box if I hadn't taken the time to delve deeper into the philology. I just want everyone to be conscious that answering GQ questions is more than merely a matter of Googling. To really dig into a question, often it helps to have read widely, to be able to draw upon a wealth of associations in one's memory, and to have a library of books at hand to research knowledge further than Google can take you. Agback 05-25-2003, 07:47 PM G'day 'Pintle' is originally derived from Old English 'pintel', which was a general term for pointed things. So even this is probably a euphemism, just an obsolete one. 'Prick' is another word for a penis that originally means 'pointed thing', and there are similar words in lots of other languages (eg. Danish 'pic', Swedish 'pick', Dutch 'tump', Russian 'chuj', Greek 'charkion', Spanish 'carajo'). 'Zerd' is another old word for penis (now spelled 'yard'). It originally meant 'rod' or 'staff'. In Old English there was also 'woepned' (the 'oe' is a ligature), which is a masculine form of 'woepen' (weapon). And 'teors' (related to the term for the boss of a shield-- it survives as the dialectal 'tarse', meaning penis). And 'teran' (etymology in doubt). Records of Old English are sadly few, so the undoubted use of words meaning 'swelling', 'tail', 'tassel', 'nail', 'tool', 'powerful thing', 'creative object', 'spear', 'sword', 'peg' etc. is not attested. According to Carl Darling Buck the Prote-Indo-European word has been reconstructed as '*pes-' or '*pesos-', from which Greek 'peos', Latin 'penis', Sanskrit 'pasas', Old High German 'faselt', and Modern English 'pizzle'-- my suggestion for the 'proper' English word for the membrum virile. Regards, Agback bibliophage 05-25-2003, 08:03 PM Just to throw in a few dates from the OED for synonyms older than "penis" in English (not all derived from Anglo-Saxon): ca. 1000 tarse ca. 1100 pintle ca. 1300 pillicock ca. 1400 verge 1483 tail 1523 pizzle 1592 prickle/prick 1618 cock Agback 05-25-2003, 08:09 PM Originally posted by Agback According to Carl Darling Buck the Prote-Indo-European word has been reconstructed as '*pes-' or '*pesos-', from which Greek 'peos', Latin 'penis', Sanskrit 'pasas', Old High German 'faselt', and Modern English 'pizzle'-- my suggestion for the 'proper' English word for the membrum virile. My apologies, you weere asking for an Old English word, not the Modern English word of native etymology with a non-figurative derivation. 'Pizzle' is not attested in writing before 1532, and its existence in some form such as '*pisel' or '*fisel' in earlier times would be conjectural--it might be derived from Dutch, or Frisian rather than Middle English. The words actually attested from Old English (a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon) would be the euphemisms I gave above: woepned, teors, teran, pintel. Regards, Agback Lumpy 05-27-2003, 07:17 PM Hmm... so we have a part of the body that effectively has no name of it's own, but has been referred to by euphenisms in every Indo-European language as far back as we have records. There's a profound implication somewhere there. Agback 05-27-2003, 07:35 PM Originally posted by Lumpy Hmm... so we have a part of the body that effectively has no name of it's own, but has been referred to by euphenisms in every Indo-European language as far back as we have records. Not exactly. PIE "*pesos", Sanskrit "pasos", Greek "peos", Latin "penis", OHG "faselt", and modern English "pizzle" are all 'proper' (ie. non-figurative) words for the male organ of generation. Cognate, too. But euphemisms, metaphors, and joke terms are rife. on the other hand, there is something to be said for the position that in English anyway, any masculine personal name and any improper noun or noun phrase can be used to refer to the genitals with perfect comprehensibility. If I tell you that so-and-so got kicked in the coach and horses, or that I want to try out my socket wrench, there is no doubt what I mean, even though (as far as I know) neither metaphor has ever been used before. I think that tells us something. Regards, Agback http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-186295.html

Being from the South myself I can illustrate: Bless his heart, MsGuy is from Mississippi so he really can't help the way he is.

Of course in the context of most of Chomsky's writing, the piece linked above is positively an S.J. Perelman bagatelle.

See also: http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/22030-sources-of-necromancy-in-charles-dexter-ward/

Let me just ponder a bit...

Study: Science and Religion Really Are Enemies After All September 9, 2014 by Chris Mooney Are science and religion doomed to eternal warfare, or can they just get along? Philosophers, theologians, scientists and atheists debate this subject endlessly (and often, angrily). We hear a lot less from economists on the matter, however. But in a recent paper, Princeton economist Roland Bénabou and two colleagues unveiled a surprising finding that would at least appear to bolster the conflict camp: Both across countries and also across US states, higher levels of religiosity are related to lower levels of scientific innovation. Places with higher levels of religiosity have lower rates of scientific and technical innovation, as measured by patents per capita, comments Bénabou. He adds that the pattern persists when controlling for differences in income per capita, population and rates of higher education. Continued: http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/09/study-science-and-religion-really-are-enemies-after-all/

http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/09/noam-chomsky-are-we-approaching-the-end-of-human-history/

There is some distressing news being reported by the New York Daily News. Not confirmed yet anywhere that I can find, but that paper has seemed to be closest to the whole story since it first began. http://m.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/clinic-denies-joan-rivers-surprise-biopsy-article-1.1934795 http://m.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/joan-rivers-surprise-biopsy-cut-air-supply-source-article-1.1934178