AdamSmith

Hee hee. This is why we like having you back.

Not much change. Scan the topic headings -- that'll tell all. Except OZ just created some new arty-farty forums for theatre, film, lit'rature. Goody!

I just made a standalone thread welcoming you back before I saw this one. So, repetition -- just to show we mean it! As for keeping email straight -- just create a hotmail or yahoo account separate from your work account, and link that one to your profile here.

...Please stay around awhile.

Occurs that I will possibly have met the future love of my life once I find someone else mad enough to want to vacation on Easter Island... http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/travel/easter-island-travel/index.html?iid=article_sidebar ...fascinated ever since long ago reading Thor Heyerdahl's Aku-Aku.

Indeed!

hitoall, meet Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

The Economist excoriates the administration's continued trampling of civil liberties: Transparency and secrecy Score one for the thicket Jan 3rd 2013, 21:43 by J.F. | ATLANTA WHILE everyone was watching the fiscal-cliff debacle, Congress and Barack Obama decided that they could still eavesdrop on Americans' putatively private conversations without putting themselves to the trouble of obtaining a warrant. The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Amendments Act, which Congress extended following weeks of fierce, impassioned a rushed single day of debate, allows federal agencies to listen to the phone calls and read the emails of American citizens' international communications (even that one day of debate, by the way, was hard won). The government must get approval to snoop from a FISA court, which is untroubled by niceties such as probable cause, and the communications in question need only pertain to "foreign intelligence information", a phrase so broad as to be utterly meaningless. In extending the FISA Amendments Act, the Senate rejected four sensible amendments. One, proposed by Ron Wyden, would have compelled the National Security Agency (NSA) to tell Americans how many people they have spied on. Rand Paul's amendment would have reminded government that Americans have fourth-amendment protections against warrantless searches. Jeff Merkley's amendment would have compelled the government to release any FISA court decisions that contain interpretations of what the FISA Amendments Act actually permits in practice. And Pat Leahy's amendment would have reduced the term of the extension to three years rather than five. Do you know what none of them would have done? Forced the government to stop snooping. They would not even have curtailed the government's snooping (Mr Paul's might have, if it could have been made to have more teeth than rhetoric, but its actual import is far from clear). Mr Wyden's and Mr Merkley's amendments simply asked for more information about the NSA's spying to be made public, and Mr Paul's would have merely reminded the government that the constitution exists, whether they like it or not. Mr Obama's administration won another victory for secrecy yesterday, when a federal judge declined to force the Justice Department to turn over legal memos detailing the justification for drone strikes, particularly drone strikes that kill American citizens. One of the plaintiffs, the New York Times, requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) both "all Office of Legal Counsel opinions or memoranda since 2001 that address the legal status of targeted killing" and one year later memoranda and opinions "analyzing the circumstances under which it would be lawful for United States armed forces or intelligence community assets to target for killing a United States citizen who is deemed to be a terrorist". The other plaintiff, the American Civil Liberties Union, made a similar request, although it specifically requested information pertaining to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American accused of being a terrorist who was killed in a drone strike, along with a second American citizen, on September 30th 2011 (another drone killed Mr al-Awlaki's 16-year-old, Colorado-born son two weeks later). Though the judge sided with the administration, her reasoning was acid: "I can only conclude," she wrote, "that the government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules—a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and procedures that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusions a secret." In other words, I would if I could. Both plaintiffs have promised to appeal, and there is a good chance this case will ultimately wind up before the Supreme Court. But who knows when, and that is part of the problem. Mr Obama first ran for office five years ago promising to roll back some of his predecessor's more outrageous violations of civil liberties. He has done nothing of the sort. Mr Obama signed the FISA extension into law on December 30th, and he won the right to keep his rationale for killing Americans secret three days later. He deserves full measures of opprobrium for both, but this is no more about him than the Patriot Act was about his predecessor. The extension lasts for five years, by which time Mr Obama will no longer be in office. This is about America's imperial presidency and the fourth amendment, which it has trampled into irrelevant ink smudges. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/01/transparency-and-secrecy

...Courtesy of the online version of Cracked, once my favorite funny mag of 'em all... http://www.cracked.com/article_19467_5-sexual-innovations-from-people-in-your-history-text-books.html?wa_user1=5&wa_user2=Sex&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=yesincite

This review really convinces me I want to see "Lincoln": http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/27/a-civil-war-professor-reviews-lincoln.html?obref=obinsite

P.S. I document this here partly so as not to be able to deny it as memory fades, or deliberately obscures itself. Dry for 7 days now, obviously some of the tags are: AA 90/90. Intensive CBT. Inpatient?

We can at least thank God the butler didn't make off with clandestine photos of Ratzinger in his bath. Imagine those all over the Internet.

I am envisioning a queer parody: The Prepuce-Driven Life

On reflection, I might add that off-the-strip Vegas is a far, far better -- from being weirder in its way, and much more human -- thIng than the plasticized mainstream there. I liked the dive bars a lot. Even though the bartenders were absolute Mother Superiors about no hanky-panky back there. Local laws, I guess?

I really do apologize for not letting you know. And yes, I guess it will have to change then. In fact you had better have a GPS transmitter implanted in me so you can find me whenever I'm passed out somewhere.

Real, or something a la Sasha Baron Cohen?

Sorry for being so rude! I have been a bit ... distracted. After a software conference in Vegas, spent the following three weeks on a bender there. (So much for sobriety.) The 2nd and 3rd of which hardly even bothering with hotels, just drifting from FunHog Ranch to the Garage to other watering holes, chatting up and occasionally enough picking up or getting picked up by whomever to my left or right. Learning to nap at the bar with my eyes open ("NO sleeping at the bar!"); also discovering that in the better casinos the restroom stalls are solidly built and private, thus excellent nap spots. And since I don't gamble, and everything else in Vegas can be had cheaply if not for free, a little dough goes a considerable way. Come to think, my most expensive single purchase was a couple hundred for a couple of excellent hours with a beautiful Asian tranny. Got home a few minutes before Christmas Eve. Don't think I've had such a blast since the adventure of wandering homeless around Manhattan for a month early this year.

Indeed. I liked this guy because of his making your points exactly, in Swiftian sabotage of the enemies' constructions.

Why is this word, this morning, sounding like a long fast-walking multi-legged worm?

For anyone who has interest, Jim Lovell's account of Apollo 13: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-350/ch-13-2.html

You may now change your screen name to Skinner. Correct, though. To drop the high humor, touching a whole lot of them made them really humanly (how else?) knowable and known and just gorgeous. Attached to the hot responsive (stop now before I string together more adjectives than Faulkner) flesh beneath.

This is to my sensibilities just about the funniest thing I've seen in many a moon. I think it might tickle Tampa Yankee's funny bone too. http://m.guardiannews.com/science/brain-flapping/2012/dec/13/moon-landings-faked-science-confessions

This is so weird. But honest I hope. I hated tatts. But the more I saw them on big Harlem or other ethniciities of guys on whom you might think they might not work -- the better. I uJsed to really dislike tats, but now i really like them. Go fig.

One of the most thoughtful commentaries I've seen yet: http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/16/newtown-americans-resist-obama-gun-laws

I follow TY in saying good for you for fighting this and getting a good outcome. And in a way that did not eat up your peace of mind for months or years, as chasing them through the courts can surely do.