AdamSmith

Another for hitoall, to know what he will be getting into when he finally finds that husband...

We do understand each other too well. Keredomo , the mode of entry into eternity is of some small interest nonetheless. As my shrink long ago advised, "You need to take these suicidal feelings and make them homicidal."

That can be arranged.

Welcome to doing business under European governments.

Fingering her Box? or maybe A little taste of white meat never hurt anybody

Once again hitoall is making me jealous that he will not share his obviously top-notch psychoactive substances.

Sex addiction? Sorry, chaps, it's just plain old lustScientists no longer believe the condition exists, which is bad news for US politician Anthony Weiner and his ilk Catherine Bennett The Observer, Saturday 27 July 2013 Although the New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is unlikely ever to trouble British voters, that is not to say Mr Weiner can be filed away, with complete confidence, under the category "US politicians who have incautiously disseminated images of their private parts, using the alter ego Carlos Danger". For one thing, given the reach of social media, and the man's irrepressible ambition, it must only be a matter of time – unless some sort of technology can be invented to block transmission – before a young British subject, switching on her telephone, suddenly finds that she is Carlos Danger's latest penis pen-pal. In the more immediate future, it seems quite likely, should Boris Johnson stand again, that Londoners could soon be asking related questions about sexual behaviour and fitness for office. Has Weiner really done enough, with his lame "sexting", to be considered a serious contender? In London, evidence of vigorous and sustained priapism has become so strongly associated with mayoral ambition as to be pretty much a prerequisite for office. Long before Boris Johnson showed the world how to brazen out a vibrant history of extramarital impregnations and assignations, both short and long term, Jeffrey Archer, the perjurer and prostitute's john, was the Tories' favoured candidate, followed by a man actually nicknamed "Shagger". Shagger was beaten by Ken Livingstone, an unlikely but notably successful ladies' man, whose idea of drinks party chit-chat, awed Guardian staff once discovered, is the line, delivered with tremendous nasal authority: "When a woman opens her heart she opens her legs." Until last week Mr Weiner appeared to be getting an equally tolerant hearing in New York. He had become a mayoral candidate having been forced to resign from the US Congress, in 2011, after sending photographs of his penis to, he finally admitted, "about six women". He said he would seek "professional treatment". Announcing his candidacy in May he asked for a second chance and let it be known, via an emotional, New York Times interview, that he had undergone therapy. And before he was exposed as Carlos Danger, his comeback suggested considerable acceptance of ostensibly resolved sexting issues. Weiner was ahead in the polls when news broke, last week, of another, illustrated, six-month, "cyber liaison" forged on a website called the Dirty, which seems to have coincided with his period of supposed penitence. Within days, the Carlos conquests had multiplied to three; at least, Mr Weiner said, comfortingly: "I don't believe I had any more than three." Even then, some reporters' questions suggested that, if Weiner's conduct could be defined as an illness, some further extenuation might be available. Was he in therapy? Was his difficulty, as many have speculated, sex addiction? Although Mr Weiner demurs – "I don't believe it is" – this could well be a reluctance to over-dramatise activities he has characterised as "background noise"? For Weiner has been happy to exploit, as a token of his seriousness about rehabilitation, the language of addiction, therapy and recovery. "I worked through these things," he reminded a press conference. He had professional help, he went on a journey to triumph over a problem that, if not actually that big a deal, was way more complicated a tale, you gathered, than some undignified urge to get pervy with strangers. If his Carlos problem needed "work", as well as acknowledgement, then the public probably owes Weiner the same kind of support it has previously extended to alpha sex addicts such as David Duchovny, Tiger Woods and Michael Douglas, and our own premier sufferer, Russell Brand, former owner of "a harem of about 10 women, whom I would rotate in addition to one-night stands and random casual encounters". "I think there is such a thing," Brand writes in My Booky Wook . "Addiction, by definition, is a compulsive behaviour that you cannot control or relinquish, in spite of its destructive consequences. And if my life proves nothing else, it demonstrates that this formula can be applied to sex just as easily as it can be to drugs and alcohol." Neuroscience, on the other hand, tends to take issue with Mr Brand's analysis of his harem-keeping. Recently, sex addiction was excluded from the DSM 5, the US manual of mental disorders, along with behavioural addictions to food, the internet and caffeine. "We looked at sex addiction," said one of authors, "but there was no science at all. None." Now a new study casts such doubt on previous assumptions about sex addiction that questions are even being asked about Boris Johnson's alleged satyriasis. Could he be, in fact, normal? Shouldn't NHS Choices take another look at its claim, on its sex addiction page (with hilarious, addict-face illustration) that: "This addiction is similar to substance abuse because it is caused by the powerful chemical substances released during sex." Who wrote that – Tiger Woods? Because researchers at UCLA tested brain activity in self-diagnosed hypersexual people and found no evidence to separate their participants' reactions from those of normal people with a high sex drive. "One of the frequent critiques of sexual addictions is that it pathologises normative, socially unaccepted, sexual behaviours," say the authors. "These data appear consistent with that perspective." For sufferers such as Duchovny, Sheen, Douglas et al, their feelings on discovering that their affliction is no more than a culturally constructed disorder designed to buttress sexual norms can only be compared to the female shock and fury each time that another cherished diagnosis, PMS, is discredited, as a convenient means of portraying women as hormonal nutters. What will the sex addicts do now? If celebrities must quickly find an alternative to incarceration in a private clinic, as the immediate response to a sex scandal, the de-addicting of compulsive sexual behaviour also leaves civilian sufferers without an accessible, 12-step approach to their troubles, one that a US psychologist has disparaged as "the addiction made me do it". Beyond that, it's hard to see the disappearance of sexual addiction from the lexicon of celebrity/political excuses as anything but an advance. Not only because of the lack of physical evidence for sex addiction, but because any definition of out-of-control sex must relate to social norms. When harems were in, for example, Brand's outfit might have been quite appealing. Compared with Boris, or Clinton or Berlusconi, or even John Major, Weiner, phone sexing in his bedroom, is Saint Anthony of the Dirty; US politics' answer to Nicholson Baker. Suppose Weiner had not had, at his disposal, the routine narrative of inexplicable compulsion followed by much work and hard-won redemption, the public might have had to consider the gravity of his online experiments, their implications for his politics and, given that she has volunteered for popular inspection, for his wife. If diagnoses of sexual addiction help promote repressive or unrealistic definitions of normal sexual behaviour, they also provide a watertight defence against allegations of betrayal: "God knows – I must have been mad." http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/28/sex-addiction-not-real-illness

A rabbi walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says, "Wow, where did you get that?" The parrot says, "In Brooklyn -- they've got thousands of them!"

Proof of Gates's genius was he knew when to slip out the side door.

Starting with the CEO. But even if the board could somehow be convinced to sack Ballmer, it would take a Lou Gerstner to fix the place. A few people I know who work there say it is fully as bad inside as it looks from the outside: that it has gotten to be like Digital Equipment Corp. in its waning years. Visionaries fled long ago, internal processes stifle everything, politics uber alles.

His neighbors whom he terrorizes with his driving certainly agree.

There are so many frog jokes to make here that it's impossible to decide where to start.

Agree that greed does not seem a front-and-center motive. There are so many less punishing ways to make money than running for, then serving as, president.

Indeed. My divorce was the most gratifying way to lose 170 pounds that I can think of.

In this case, my "Like" means Eek. At least I have not put myself into Gmail. Yet.

Same here. Funny that, for all their reputation for rudeness etc., New Yorkers in the main are not like this. Wait people or other people. Feeling free to say and be what you like, it seems, yields this benefit that what you see is what you get. Is my irritation with the South's brittle veneer of politeness showing?

I must say "it will collapse" is a rather rosy and bloodless-sounding way to describe World War II, the American revolution, the U.S. Civil War, etc.

Your post reminds why anyone who would even want to be president has to be at least a bit loony. Except for Ford who as you note had the job dropped on him.

Like when?? I hold with Truman Capote when he said, "Literary prizes are meaningless but if they're gonna have 'em, eventually I want to win 'em all." Irrelevant to this he also said “I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.”

We had a man down in my state that did not agree with anybody about anything. He found that cabbage didn't agree with him, and thereafter he wouldn't eat anything but cabbage. Sen. Sam Ervin

Revealed: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'• XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data • NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches • Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history Glenn Greenwald theguardian.com, Wednesday 31 July 2013 08.56 EDT One presentation claims the XKeyscore program covers 'nearly everything a typical user does on the internet' A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do." But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata. Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity. Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst. One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst's ability to query the databases at any time. The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a "selector" in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted. Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used. One document notes that this is because "strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability" because "a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous." The NSA documents assert that by 2008, 300 terrorists had been captured using intelligence from XKeyscore. Analysts are warned that searching the full database for content will yield too many results to sift through. Instead they are advised to use the metadata also stored in the databases to narrow down what to review. A slide entitled "plug-ins" in a December 2012 document describes the various fields of information that can be searched. It includes "every email address seen in a session by both username and domain", "every phone number seen in a session (eg address book entries or signature block)" and user activity – "the webmail and chat activity to include username, buddylist, machine specific cookies etc". Email monitoringIn a second Guardian interview in June, Snowden elaborated on his statement about being able to read any individual's email if he had their email address. He said the claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the NSA. One top-secret document describes how the program "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents", including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites". To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual's email address into a simple online search form, along with the "justification" for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought. The analyst then selects which of those returned emails they want to read by opening them in NSA reading software. The system is similar to the way in which NSA analysts generally can intercept the communications of anyone they select, including, as one NSA document put it, "communications that transit the United States and communications that terminate in the United States". One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications: Chats, browsing history and other internet activity Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media. An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages. An analyst can monitor such Facebook chats by entering the Facebook user name and a date range into a simple search screen. Analysts can search for internet browsing activities using a wide range of information, including search terms entered by the user or the websites viewed. As one slide indicates, the ability to search HTTP activity by keyword permits the analyst access to what the NSA calls "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet". The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies. The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn "call events" collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added. William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications." The XKeyscore system is continuously collecting so much internet data that it can be stored only for short periods of time. Content remains on the system for only three to five days, while metadata is stored for 30 days. One document explains: "At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours." To solve this problem, the NSA has created a multi-tiered system that allows analysts to store "interesting" content in other databases, such as one named Pinwale which can store material for up to five years. It is the databases of XKeyscore, one document shows, that now contain the greatest amount of communications data collected by the NSA. In 2012, there were at least 41 billion total records collected and stored in XKeyscore for a single 30-day period. Legal v technical restrictions While the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 requires an individualized warrant for the targeting of US persons, NSA analysts are permitted to intercept the communications of such individuals without a warrant if they are in contact with one of the NSA's foreign targets. The ACLU's deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans' communications without individualized warrants. "The government doesn't need to 'target' Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications," said Jaffer. "The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans" when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance. An example is provided by one XKeyscore document showing an NSA target in Tehran communicating with people in Frankfurt, Amsterdam and New York. In recent years, the NSA has attempted to segregate exclusively domestic US communications in separate databases. But even NSA documents acknowledge that such efforts are imperfect, as even purely domestic communications can travel on foreign systems, and NSA tools are sometimes unable to identify the national origins of communications. Moreover, all communications between Americans and someone on foreign soil are included in the same databases as foreign-to-foreign communications, making them readily searchable without warrants. Some searches conducted by NSA analysts are periodically reviewed by their supervisors within the NSA. "It's very rare to be questioned on our searches," Snowden told the Guardian in June, "and even when we are, it's usually along the lines of: 'let's bulk up the justification'." In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that NSA analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance. Acknowledging what he called "a number of compliance problems", Clapper attributed them to "human error" or "highly sophisticated technology issues" rather than "bad faith". However, Wyden said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: "These violations are more serious than those stated by the intelligence community, and are troubling." In a statement to the Guardian, the NSA said: "NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against – and only against – legitimate foreign intelligence targets in response to requirements that our leaders need for information necessary to protect our nation and its interests. "XKeyscore is used as a part of NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system. "Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring." "Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law. "These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully – to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data