lookin

Locals accused them of defecating in the citys moat, causing accidents by driving recklessly, and defacing several tourist attractions, according to the Bangkok Post. Apparently, the Chinese have rather more casual views on excretory functions than most Westerners do. From birth, children are taught that taking a whiz or a dump in public is quite acceptable. And, after reading this little blurb on Chinese public toilets, I can see why pooping in a moat in a Thai garden might seem like a welcome upgrade from the typical Chinese loo. Most of them are squat toilets with little, if any, screening, no hooks for coats or packages, and a floor that has not been washed since Chairman Mao put the finishing touches on his Little Red Book.

Now San Francisco has joined Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and Portland in filing friend of the court briefs in support of the Massachusetts lawsuit. I guess I'm a bit unclear on what these folks have in mind for a strategy to curb what they call "sex trafficking", particularly as it relates to minors. If I were serious about tracking down underage prostitutes and their pimps, I think I'd be inclined to use Backpage as a very handy list of the folks I want to track down, along with their current contact info. I'd be setting up appointment after appointment to find these underage, unwilling prostitutes and get them into supportive environments before another week went by. I'd also get them to help me find their pimps and lock them up, again on a very aggressive timetable. It seems that shutting down Backpage before I snared all these folks would take a very useful tool out of my hands before I had a chance to use it. Perhaps these attorneys general think that, by shutting down Backpage, all the underage prostitutes will go back to school and all their pimps will find lawful employment elsewhere; but I'm gonna need some convincin'.

Nowise a surprise. In fact, fairly predictable when food company managers get paid on profit and not on the nutritional value of their products. With no correlation between nutrition and profitability in the food industry - in fact, some may say a reverse correlation - our capitalistic system virtually ensures a steady decline in the healthfulness of our food supply. The past half-century has brought us where we are today and it's a crapshoot where it will bring us in the next fifty years. Not that I'm pimping for the replacement of capitalism, primarily because I can't think of a better system. But what I do advocate is a better allocation of costs within our current capitalistic system. For a long time, cigarette companies found increased profit in pretending their decisions didn't worsen the health of their customers, but they eventually had to factor in more of the costs of their decisions and modified their products and their marketing tactics to be less harmful. And, in my opinion, one of the most helpful outcomes of Obamacare is the deeper discussion and focus on how our healthcare system can be rewarded financially for actually promoting better health rather than merely trying to fix bad health. A small start, no doubt, but it's a start. Eventually, my hope is that the food industry will find more profit in better nourishing their customers and see increased costs in promoting malnutrition. They certainly have the expertise, or at least a good shot at developing the knowhow, to put healthier food on the table. And, while government regulation is another way to get us there, many of our politicians will fight such regulations on principle. I'd very much like to see a system of cost allocation that puts the expense of caring for malnourished folks right back on the companies that feed them chazerai. Once food companies become responsible for the costs of removing nutritional value from their products, it's up to them to deal with these costs better than their competitors and figure out how to make a buck by improving nutrition. If they do, their stock and compensation will go up. If they don't, they'll go out of business. And isn't that what successful capitalism is all about?

I usually take a few extra, just to be sure.

You know, MsGuy, I've been thinking the exact same thing and you have put it much more elegantly than I could express it. I would indeed feel blessed if I could someday write a sentence in which the words carried their own rhythm along with them so that everyone who read it would hear just what I did when I wrote it. Some years ago, I posted another sentence which was a verse strung together and it was so awkward that no one realized what it was. Or, at least, were too kind to mention it.

Well it started out as a verse: He abjured the serial comma And it wasn't hard to see That sooner more than later A frisson would come to be For I had some things to say to him And no doubt he to me But if punctuation had no role It would drive me up a tree. And then I thought I'd take you up on your earlier challenge: So I turned it into a sentence that lacked a serial comma and, since I wasn't sure what a serial comma was, I left out all the commas one after the other. I thought perhaps it would be understandable without any commas at all. Clearly it was unclear. Its awkwardness and lack of intelligibility has given me a new respect for commas so I plan to go back to using them, liberally, serially, and, perhaps, in places, where I did not, before. And thanks for indulging some antics.

He abjured the serial comma and it wasn't hard to see that sooner more than later a frisson would come to be for I had some things to say to him and no doubt he to me but if punctuation had no role it would drive me up a tree.

. . . and seventeen calls from AdamSmith. He says he found your gym bag. He can be reached at the Peabody.

Big you say?

No doubt you are correct. Even today, we have those who snicker at their colleagues who are skittish about setting someone on fire. I'd like to think, though, that they are in the minority. And while your nasty nautical Norsemen got most of the press, my hunch is there wasn't room in the boats for the large majority who stayed at home and led their lives in a somewhat more familiar and convivial manner. Harald, dinner! Go get Bent. Not walrus again! They were out of herring. Here, have some mead. Where's Lars? Outside, tuning his fiddle. Not a duet with Garth, I hope. I never heard such an awful lyre! Did you guys see the way Harald is walking? A little light in the leggings, huh? Pul-leeze! He's gay as a lingonberry!

It took me a while to tumble to your comments in this thread but I finally came to suspect that you're conflating actions with religion, or with sexuality. I don't believe they are very closely related at all and, when you assume they are, you may fall into the very traps that are best avoided. While it may take an extra step to separate Netanyahu's actions from his religion, it's not that difficult and, I believe, well worth the effort. There are plenty of folks in Israel who consider Netanyahu an unpleasant piece of work and they are every bit as Jewish as he is. Does that make them bigots? Not in my opinion, although he would probably like to paint them as such. Often, those Jews who oppose political Zionism or nationalistic extremism are labeled self-hating Jews and it's a small step from there to be labeled anti-Semitic. Even though they themselves are Semitic. Similarly, if I were to take umbrage at the actions of another gay person, does that make me anti-gay? I've seen folks on some of the very websites we frequent call others self-hating gays because they dislike something another gay person has said or done. This is, again in my opinion, nothing more than jingoism to cover up an inability or unwillingness to separate individual actions from general affiliations. Pardon me for droning on about the distinction between the group someone belongs to and his or her actions but I've come to the conclusion that the failure to make this distinction is at the root of many of the world's problems today. And probably yesterday. And, unless we learn our lessons, tomorrow as well. My own hard-won views are that the vast majority of people the world over are pretty decent folks and don't want to cause trouble for others. But there are definitely some troublemakers, in every religion, in every nationality, in every sexual orientation, in every political party, and in just about any other group you care to mention. In my opinion, Netanyahu is one of those troublemakers and I hope the good folks in Israel will find a way to sideline him next month. And, besides a general feeling that Israel would be better off with a Herzog-Livni ticket, it just somehow tickles me to think of a Prime Minister named Tzipi.

As you say, you're not alone. He pretty nearly pissed off the Pope. Apparently, last year he gave the pontiff a book on the Spanish Inquisition. It was by Bibi's father, Ben Zion Netanyahu, and explained that the Jews were burned at the stake not because they weren't serious about converting to Catholicism but because of racial hatred dating back to the Egyptians. In other words, it was secular persecution and not spiritual. Here he is telling His Holiness there's no hard feelings.

Don't be glum. With luck, Netanyahu will wrap up early and Congress will also have time to repeal Obamacare. Something for everyone, except maybe for the ten million folks who thought they were getting health insurance. And, who knows, perhaps Bibi will invite them to come to Israel.

And now the Israeli election chief has required a five-minute broadcast delay in Netanyahu's speech to Congress so that anything smacking of campaigning can be be stripped from what the Israelis will hear on-air. I wonder if he knows how to speak without a clenched fist.

I barely made it through your post.

Hey, Guys, room for one more? I brought beer!

Is it just me or is that fringe in the middle a lot darker than the others? It is a fringe, isn't it?

Perhaps she could find a stand-in.

I found out I'm allergic to corncobs.

You very nearly snared me in to your centireading post the other day with the Wodehouse bait but, at the time, I had places to go and things to do. But two Wodehouse lures in a single week is too much to resist! I haven't read any of his stuff a hundred times, but I'm up in the dozens easy. What's more, I can pick up any of his stuff and get a good yok, day or night, rain or shine. For instance, I went looking for one of the phrases that suggested critiquing Wodehouse's writing was like "taking a spade to a soufflé" and I came up with Stephen Fry's page on him. Right there in the middle is Fry's experience in flipping open a random book and finding a bit of dialog between Bertie Wooster and Jeeves 'discussing a young man called Cyril Bassington-Bassington'. "I've never heard of him. Have you ever heard of him, Jeeves?" "I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family - the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons." "England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons." "Tolerably so, sir." "No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?" Now I know that some folks may think the only thing remotely funny about this is the desperate and unoriginal light it casts upon me for stealing from another website but, honestly, I laugh harder every time I read it. Who's to say what tickles a funny bone? One of the things I like about this Board is that folks can come on here and feel free to post what they enjoy and feel like sharing with others. Sometimes, though, some posters limit themselves to showing up only to criticize what others post and sometimes even try to make a poster feel like he's the reason more posters don't participate. And, to some folks, that may seem like a spit in the eye. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And, as far as any talk of ‘stealing’ the post from another site, perhaps it would help if I were to turn full rights over to the OP with my compliments. Hell, I’d have hauled the thing over here myself it I thought I could lift it!

Perhaps a nice new Chia Earth. Has anyone seen my car keys?

Thanks, MsGuy! Very helpful.

Well, perhaps you could go and start a High Rollers Poll and leave the rest of us to lick our wounds as best we can.

OK, there's a lot of stuff about Thomas's and Scalia's dissenting opinion, but is there also somewhere a majority opinion that gives the views of the other seven justices? It sounds like all they did was say "no" to Alabama's request to intervene. I guess that's all they have to do and probably all that's appropriate for them to do. A second question would be how common is it for there to be a dissenting opinion in the absence of a majority opinion? Did Thomas and Scalia do something unusual by issuing one? Not trying to look up anybody's robes, but I'd appreciate it if anyone has some juicy insights to share.

So did I, sorry to say. Well, simultaneously would be more apt, as it an opening like that just doesn't come along every day. Not at all proud of this, but I guess my journalistic cynicism has become so advanced that I was quite willing to believe that both Maureen Dowd and the New York Times had jumped the shark and let a typo through. It was another one of those too-good-to-be-true moments, right up there with Harper Lee's release of a second novel, although that one may yet prove out. In the meantime, thanks for the votes of confidence. Going forward, though, my plan is to rely on others to separate the wheat from the chaff. When AdamSmith says it's in, it's in.