AdamSmith

What a great name. Like a Henry James character.

This rather dreadfully named web site "Findadeath.com" confirms your recall about Jack: http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/c/Jack%20Cassidy/jack_cassidy.htm BTW, TV actors from this era seldom got more than their pay for each show -- residuals were nonexistent unless you had the foresight and clout to negotiate them. Or unless you had the business savvy to own your production company a la Desilu or, I think also, Gleason did. About 20 years ago I happened to get to know Chris Knight a little bit due to his then career in software marketing and he said he and his Brady Bunch compeers were forever kicking themselves over this state of affairs.

Also reminds a bit of the running gag on old SNL shows about the family that all had huge asses.

You know, I have seen some recent scholarship to the effect that the word was mistranslated, and that the promised reward for holy jihad is not so many virgins, but actually so many grapes. There may be some disappointed self-martyrs!

It very much matches the way I read the forum, which is by clicking the View New Content button. Thanks, Oz!

Agree wholeheartedly! That is the only regret I have ever had from chasing dick & ass -- when I let it get away.

P.S. If musical instruments do that to you, you will definitely want to avoid this passage from The Merchant of Venice where Shylock is saying... Some men there are love not a gaping pig, Some that are mad if they behold a cat, And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose, Cannot contain their urine. (Made the weirder in performance by Elizabethan pronunciation of "urine" having a long "i.")

Sorry about that. Just doing one's modest best.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? W.C. Fields

North Korea is running out of virgins for Kim Jong-un's dance troupe. It's every dictator's nightmare By Tim Stanley World Last updated: August 20th, 2013 Kim Jong-un may have to turn to other forms of entertainment A quick recap for those of you who aren't obsessed with North Korea. The Democratic Republic long ago realised that it couldn't do the basics like grow food or keep the lights on, so it decided to focus on the fields of military and light entertainment instead. Of course much of its military output is entertaining and much of its entertainment has a decidedly military feel – from mass games to girl bands singing about the birds, the bees and nuclear fallout. And all of this variety performance is being slowly undone by the country's continued slide into mass poverty. The missiles are old and probably unusuable. And the entertainment corp is starting to look a little frayed, too. The Kim family has long been entertained by dance troupes comprised entirely of virgin girls. But – oh, the irony! – the Kims' taste for Stalinist economics is reducing the number of virgins available for recruitment. A defector told the Chosun Ilbo, "Dire economic straits compounded by a weakening regime have led to an increase in prostitution, drug abuse and human trafficking in North Korea." The regime blames this on the decadent influence of capitalism (as if every household has HBO), but the sad reality is that empty bellies are forcing young girls to sell their bodies in order to feed their families. The result: "A physical exam for the military draft of 16-year-olds … in Chongjin showed that more than 60 percent of the girls had had sexual experiences". The defector reports that this means the dance troupes are becoming understaffed – although the cynical would point out that virgins who entertain the Kims don't stay virgins for very long. They're a family of "playboys", in the way that seedy old men who put a coin in a slot and watch a naked woman slowly rotate behind a window think they're a veritable Roger Moore. Poor old Kim. His harem has lost its traditional purity and, to add insult to injury, his sportsmen are escaping the misery of North Korea life by getting high. The defector adds that, "more than 30 percent of athletes tested positive for drug use in a doping test for a sporting event in 2012 to mark late leader Kim Jong-il's birthday on Feb. 16". That must've been fun to watch: a game of football in which 30 per cent of the players think the ball they're chasing is a white rabbit. And Kim can't even get his own, horribly real white elephant off the ground. His plan to build the world's coolest ski resort has hit the barrier of trade sanctions, with the Swiss refusing to sell him more than $7 million in ski lifts and cable cars – and they've rubbed salt into the wound by extending the trade embargo to include luxury items like golf clubs, horse saddles and perfume. Then again, it was always doubtful that a North Korean ski resort was going to become the Zermatt of East Asia. Cocktails with the William and Kate in the shadow of a gulag? I think not. Under the Kims, North Korea is part barracks and part brothel – an odd outcome for a society supposedly dedicated to peace and ending exploitation. But then it's probably inaccurate for us to regard the regime as communist anymore. A recent change to the constitution excised the remaining commitment to building socialism and replaced it with the importance of keeping the Kim bloodline in power. Virgin dance troupes and lavish ski resorts: this is an ossified monarchy, not a socialist state. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100231814/north-korea-is-running-out-of-virgins-for-kim-jong-uns-dance-troupe-its-every-dictators-nightmare/

What is wrong with me? My first thought was... http://www.stsulpice.com/

No need, I have it:

Oh, that too...

Gratifyingly dyspeptic corrective viewpoint... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/royal-baby-pictures-william-kate-george

You dirty old man!

It is pointless to argue with you about this. But merely to note that the bad apples now include: - The current president - His predecessor - The Director of National Intelligence - The leaders of Congress - The members of the FISA Court - The officers and staff of the NSA A "few" indeed.

Your point is on. One indeed feels old. And she is a genuine talent ... and yet, and yet ... why does it seem faintly hilarious to use "essential" in the same line as "Britney Spears"?

Slate has a pretty sharp evisceration of Christie's anti-gay-marriage position: http://mobile.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/08/chris_christie_s_legal_brief_on_gay_marriage_pure_nonsense.html?original_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dchris%2Bchristie%2Bgay%2Bmarriage%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari

Of course not. It should be wielded behind me.

Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship Posted on 08/19/2013 by Juan Cole How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps: 1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year. 2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret 3. Create a class of 4.5 million privileged individuals, many of them corporate employees, with access to classified documents but allege it is illegal for public to see leaked classified documents 4. Spy on the public in violation of the Constitution 5. Classify environmental activists as terrorists while allowing Big Coal and Big Oil to pollute and destroy the planet 6. Share info gained from NSA spying on public with DEA, FBI, local law enforcement to protect pharmaceuticals & liquor industry from competition from pot, or to protect polluters from activists 7. Falsify to judges and defense attorneys how allegedly incriminating info was discovered 8. Lie and deny to Congress you are spying on the public. 9. Criminalize the revelation of government crimes and spying as Espionage 10. Further criminalize whistleblowing as “Terrorism”, have compradors arrest innocent people, detain them, and confiscate personal effects with no cause or warrant (i.e. David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald) Presto, what looks like a democracy is really an authoritarian state ruling on its own behalf and that of 2000 corporations, databasing the activities of 312 million innocent citizens and actively helping destroy the planet while forestalling climate activism http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/greenwald-terrorist-dictatorship.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+juancole/ymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29

David Miranda: 'They said I would be put in jail if I didn't cooperate'Partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald gives his first interview on nine-hour interrogation at Heathrow airport Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013 16.30 EDT Glenn Greenwald, left, meets his partner, David Miranda, at Rio de Janeiro airport after he finally reached Brazil following his nine-hour detention at Heathrow – an experience that has changed Miranda’s view of Britain. Photograph: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist who broke stories of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency, has accused Britain of a "total abuse of power" for interrogating him for almost nine hours at Heathrow under the Terrorism Act. In his first interview since returning to his home in Rio de Janeiro early on Monday, Miranda said the authorities in the UK had pandered to the US in trying to intimidate him and force him to reveal the passwords to his computer and mobile phone. "They were threatening me all the time and saying I would be put in jail if I didn't co-operate," said Miranda. "They treated me like I was a criminal or someone about to attack the UK … It was exhausting and frustrating, but I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong." Miranda – a Brazilian national who lives with Greenwald in Rio – was held for the maximum time permitted under schedule seven of the Terrorism Act 2000 which allows officers to stop, search and question individuals at airports, ports and border areas. During that time, he said, he was not allowed to call his partner, who is a qualified lawyer in the US, nor was he given an interpreter, despite being promised one because he felt uncomfortable speaking in a second language. "I was in a different country with different laws, in a room with seven agents coming and going who kept asking me questions. I thought anything could happen. I thought I might be detained for a very long time," he said. He was on his way back from Berlin, where he was ferrying materials between Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on stories related to the NSA files released by US whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Miranda was seized almost as soon as his British Airways flight touched down on Sunday morning. "There was an announcement on the plane that everyone had to show their passports. The minute I stepped out of the plane they took me away to a small room with four chairs and a machine for taking fingerprints," he recalled. His carry-on bags were searched and, he says, police confiscated a computer, two pen drives, an external hard drive and several other electronic items, including a games console, as well two newly bought watches and phones that were packaged and boxed in his stowed luggage. "They got me to tell them the passwords for my computer and mobile phone," Miranda said. "They said I was obliged to answer all their questions and used the words 'prison' and 'station' all the time." "It is clear why those took me. It's because I'm Glenn's partner. Because I went to Berlin. Because Laura lives there. So they think I have a big connection," he said. "But I don't have a role. I don't look at documents. I don't even know if it was documents that I was carrying. It could have been for the movie that Laura is working on." Miranda was told he was being detained under the Terrorism Act. He was never accused of being a terrorist or being associated with terrorists, but he was told that if – after nine hours – his interrogators did not think he was being co-operative, then he could be taken to a police station and put in jail. "This law shouldn't be given to police officers. They use it to get access to documents or people that they cannot get the legal way through courts or judges," said Miranda. "It's a total abuse of power." He was offered a lawyer and a cup of water, but he refused both because he did not trust the authorities. The questions, he said, were relentless – about Greenwald, Snowden, Poitras and a host of other apparently random subjects. "They even asked me about the protests in Brazil, why people were unhappy and who I knew in the government," said Miranda. He got his first drink – from a Coke machine in the corridor – after eight hours and was eventually released almost an hour later. Police records show he had been held from 08.05 to 17.00. Unable immediately to find a flight for him back to Rio, Miranda says the Heathrow police then escorted him to passport control so he could enter Britain and wait there. "It was ridiculous," he said. "First they treat me like a terrorist suspect. Then they are ready to release me in the UK." Although he believes the British authorities were doing the bidding of the US, Miranda says his view of the UK has completely changed as a result of the experience. "I have friends in the UK and liked to visit, but you can't go to a country where they have laws that allow the abuse of liberty for nothing," he said. The White House on Monday insisted that it was not involved in the decision to detain Miranda, though a spokesman said US officials had been given a "heads up" by British officials beforehand. The Brazilian government has expressed grave concern about the "unjustified" detention. Speaking by phone from the couple's home in the Tijuca forest, Miranda said it felt "awesome" to be back. "It's really good to be here. I felt the weight lift off my shoulders as soon I got back. Brazil feels very secure, very safe," he said. "I knew my country would protect me, and I believe in my husband and knew that he would do anything to help me." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-interview-detention-heathrow

AOL is still around? Tim Armstrong's tantrum reveals the anomaly that is AOLThe CEO's brutal firing of a Patch staffer lays bare the stress AOL is under as it fails to answer the big existential questions Michael Wolff theguardian.com, Monday 19 August 2013 10.45 EDT The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington and AOL chief Tim Armstrong, in happier times in 2011. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian For a generation of media folk recast as digital strivers, AOL remains as evocative a brand as Google – except for polar opposite reasons. Google became the harbinger of an industry going up, and AOL of one going down. In 2000, AOL, then the world's foremost digital company, bought Time Warner and, in short order, ruined that company and helped precipitate the end of the first stage of the digital revolution with an across the board share price wipeout. Out of those ashes, Google would rise. AOL, however, is still around, occupying a pained and awkward place in the digital world. Last week, its CEO, Tim Armstrong, threw a tantrum that again prompted questions about where AOL might be heading, and about the peculiar nature of its efforts to get there. That is, it has been heading in the wrong direction for so long, why would it continue to think it might ever find the right one? (In the short memory department, BusinessInsider called Armstrong's tantrum "one of the most bizarre sequences in AOL history". More bizarre than having lost $163bn in value?) The moment at issue last week had to do with Patch, an effort to create a national local or micro news network, that, surprising to almost no one – except perhaps Armstrong himself – has come to grief. In one of those company-wide retrenchment or downsizing conference calls that are like the cruel ceremonies that accompany the defeat of nations, Armstrong, as he admonished his troops and cast great blame on the waters, was distracted by someone with a camera. In a sudden, whiplash spasm of anger, Armstrong publicly fired the camera wielder, a senior Patch employee, on the spot. This opened up several windows into the state of AOL. The first let the world see directly into the company's culture: headquarters employees gathered around and sitting on the floor, and a CEO sounding like an angry headmaster. Digital companies often work with disproportionate numbers of young people, many in their twenties, many credited with much brilliance, and we tend to see them as a lucky group (free food, lax dress codes, etc). But suddenly, in the permanent and viral record of the Armstrong tantrum, it was possible to see the other side of this vaunted status, when the kids are not performing so well: it's an infantilized and demeaning world. These aren't professionals, who, even in extremis, command a certain degree of respect and human-resource ritual; these are children being upbraided and punished. Then, there is the window into Armstrong himself. He has always been one of those odd figures in the digital world, always straining for and never quite attaining legitimacy. He's not a founder, in a world where that is the sine qua non of leadership and status; nor is he an engineer or developer, with that valuable currency. Armstrong is simply a salesman, an advertising guy – someone apart from digital culture and understanding. A fungible Joe. Armstrong got his CEO role because nobody else with legitimacy wanted it, and because he hoped, on the basis of pure ego and ambition and desire, that running a public company, even a discredited one, would by some miracle give him that authority stature. Frst, of course, he has to hold on to his job, an effort of exertion and fire-extinguishing that might not necessarily bring out his best side. Indeed, lashing out at the photographer had the ring of personal embarrassment. He knows what he looks like. And then, there is Patch. Adding to the discomfort, Armstrong himself founded Patch. Then, worth a raised eyebrow, he got AOL – often a buyer of last resort – to acquire it after he joined the company as CEO. In other words, for all that Armstrong may reprimand his young staff and bawl out a nearby photographer, Patch is all on him. I don't know anyone (who has ever given Patch a moment's thought) who has regarded it as anything but preposterous. Nor do I know anyone among the myriad people who have cycled through its staff who hasn't been aghast at how dysfunctional it is. And I don't know anyone in the digital business who believes that local news has, at this time or in the foreseeable future, any mathematical way to success as an advertising model. Local news is a low CPM business (that is, ads are bought on a per thousand views basis) and low CPMs demand mass audiences. So, again, what exactly was the thinking here? And then, there is the window into the raison d'etre of AOL itself, which was opened up once again by Armstrong's public display of temper. Patch is just one more odd lot piece of the mishaps and happenstance and aborted strategies and nutty legacy that have left AOL with the wherewithal to continue but not to get any place. It is no longer a technology company or, in any significant sense, part of the digital world. AOL is, the company sometime maintains, an ad-driven digital media company – in a world where no such thing has ever proven to be successful. Its one foot forward has been the acquisition of the Huffington Post, which, while hardly a financial advance, nevertheless made AOL one of the more important news outlets in America. Unfortunately for Armstrong, almost since AOL's acquisition, Huffington Post founder and namesake Arianna Huffington has rather openly been planning for its exit, with Huffington and Armstrong operating as parallel entities within AOL. So, now, what happens to AOL? That's one of those peculiar existential questions that could have been asked about the company at any point since 2000. It exists, practically speaking, by no one's design or intentions. It goes on because it exists, but without any real hope that it will ever exactly justify its existence. It is led by people who, no doubt, would prefer to be leading something else. The same goes for most of the people who work there; they do so only by default. AOL is a historical mistake. It's only surprising that more people don't lose their cool there. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/tim-armstrong-tantrum-patch-aol

http://beastsofman.tumblr.com/post/58660048405/alexander-skarsgard-frontal-on-true-blood-season-6