lookin

Ah, yes, but there are bargains to be had if you know how to climb a pole. Some say as much as half of India's electricity is pirated, making it harder to fund new infrastructure. Turns out I'm no stranger to power outages myself. Every winter, falling branches from winter winds and rain knock out electricity where I live. Until state regulators started charging the local utility twenty-five dollars a day per customer, we were often dark for days at a time. Usually found something to do.

Have you lost your marbles?

Cabaret Fantasia

Sarah and Todd Palin showed their support, dropping by a Woodlands, Texas, store on Friday. CNN is taking heat for playing Pink's Stupid Girls track when reporting the story today.

I am relaxed damn it!

Thanks for your link, AdamSmith! Senator Ervin sure said it better than I did. Senator Sam Ervin, the author of groundbreaking legislation in this area, warned eloquently in June 1974 of the dangers that arise when the “natural tendency of government to acquire and keep and share information about citizens is enhanced by computer technology” without legal and judicial restraint. “Each time we give up a bit of information about ourselves to the government, we give up some of our freedom,” he said. “For the more the government or any institution knows about us, the more power it has over us. When the government knows all of our secrets, we stand naked before official power. Stripped of our privacy, we lose our rights and privileges. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.”

I think the reason the thread didn't get more traction here is the same reason the issue doesn't get more traction in the public debate in general. Actually, I believe there are several reasons: First and foremost, the primary enabling legislation, the Patriot Act, was passed in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The federal government had been caught with its pants down in not processing information that it had already legitimately acquired under existing laws. As is so often the case when the government fails to act under existing laws, it creates some new ones. It took less than seven weeks for both Houses of Congress to pass this massive law, with many alleging that not a single Senator had even read the bill before voting in favor of it. In a stroke of propaganda genius that would have impressed Josef Goebbels, even the name of the bill was selected to deliver quick and unthinking passage. The fact that it had nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with limiting constitutional guarantees was lost in the frenzy to be seen to be doing something, anything, to protect American lives. Again lost in the discussion was the fact that the three thousand lives lost on September 11th, while to be deeply mourned, were a small fraction of the lives lost in protecting the freedoms that this legislation stripped away. In spite of not having read it, every U. S. Senator, with the exception of Russ Feingold voted for it with little to no hesitation. (To this day, Feingold considers his vote against it "one of the best things I've ever done".) The second reason is that, like the legislators who passed it, hardly any of us have much of an inkling what this legislation allows. You can see it here in this thread, and those who have responded are among the most informed and active of U. S. citizens. Imagine the lack of awareness among the less-informed majority. Third, very few of us expect that we will ever be affected personally by the loss of privacy and constitutional protection under the law. And, by the time any of us is affected it will almost certainly be too late to do anything about it. Fourth, we want to believe that others will assume responsibility for protecting us. We assume that organizations like the ACLU and the EFF will make sure that our rights are not abridged. However, they are as much under the thumb of this law as we are, and are themselves unable to see most of what's happening behind the scenes. And, fifth, I believe that, for the foreseeable future, the worst invasions of privacy allowed by this law are not likely to occur. I believe that most of those who are in charge of collecting and analyzing information on individual citizens are not ill-intentioned. I hope that that continues to be the case for many centuries into the future. The difficulty with that argument, however, is that our civil liberties should never be linked only to the intentions of whoever is in power at the moment. They should remain enshrined in the Constitution and in every law in the land. That link, however, has now been broken. It remains to be seen whether or not it can be forged again.

I cannot say why I am here.I wonder now and then. When I'm away I feel so queer, I'm sure I'll come again.

Looks like all he needs is a little head.

(I moved this from the James Holmes thread as it was a bit of a highjack and may get more interest here.) If, that is, they knew about it. When you have a few minutes, please read this article and tell me if you think anything in it is incorrect. If not, I think you'll have to agree that very few, including the ACLU, have much of a clue what information is being collected. And even fewer have any interest in limiting it. As far as I can tell, this on-going process of collecting, and mining, data on U. S. citizens is nowhere in the public debate. It appears to be going in one direction only, and that is the collection, storage, and eventual analysis of all electronic data. I have yet to find an exception. Still lookin' though.

Decided to move my post and start a thread in the Politics Forum, where it won't be such a highjack. Recent posters, Peace Be Unto You, it's often the case that politically-tinged threads do stay here in this Forum, as discussions tend to remain quite civil. This is typically by common consent though, from time to time, Management does weigh in.

Interesting subject, and one that I expect will be heavily debated in the months ahead. Like many of us, Holmes left his footprints all over the internet. In addition to the arsenal he ordered on line in the not-so-distant past, he apparently belonged to a dating site at the top of which he recently asked, "Will you visit me in prison?" And it won't surprise me if we learn that he left other tracks that, in hindsight, and taken all together, would suggest that there was a better-than-average chance he would make headlines one day soon. And not in a good way. I expect there are some who are asking today whether or not it would be a good idea to proactively look for such patterns and keep a closer watch on those who manifest them. The technology is certainly there to do so. And, although there are laws and organizations in place to protect individual privacy, it seems pretty clear that the current trend is toward fewer guarantees of privacy. My guess is that the Holmes case will move us another step toward more intrusive tracking of on-line behavior patterns. This is veering a bit toward the political, so I may end up launching a thread in that Forum. Unless, of course, I get sidetracked.

This happened a couple of years ago, I think. I remember noticing the number of users on line before the last vacation was 247. Since then, I don't think the maximum number has got above a hundred. OZ, I've always felt your easiest new user is from that site when it's down. All those guys (and girls) and nowhere to play. I just checked and it seems the "DaddysOnVacation" domain name is unused. The fact that it may also lure those looking for a DaddySonVacation is just a happy coincidence.

Despite the tantalizing hints, I'm not clear on the final vision OZ and TY have for the site. My guess is that it's more than a name change and a new logo. I expect there will be some advertising and promotions to significantly build traffic, which suggests that those who are here now will become a minority. If it works, and traffic increases tenfold, our opinions will become much less important than the opinions of the many new members. Whether we like the new site identity or not won't matter very much. We will not be the target audience for the new site. On the other hand, if traffic merely doubles, and many of today's stalwarts drift away, it may not be worth the effort to rebrand the site. And if new traffic doesn't double, the site may even become less populous than it is today. I'm sure OZ and TY have thought through the different scenarios and it will be interesting to see what happens. For me, the pleasure of being here has always revolved around the folks I'm likely to run into on a daily basis. That will continue to be more important than the logo at the top of the screen. As an outsider looking in, I'd be tempted to leave the site name as is and do a healthy slug of advertising just to see if it works. That way, I wouldn't run the old folks off until I was pretty sure I could bring some new folks in. Just a few random thoughts. Always fascinating to watch the marketing mavens ply their trade.

I'm with you, TY, although I was sorely tempted to at least try Chik-Fil-A when I was back East last month. Turned out the only day I had free was a Sunday and they were otherwise occupied. There aren't any around where I live and, thankfully, this thread popped up just in time to save me from myself when I travel again. The one thing I'd really appreciate though is for someone to post that their chicken is highly overrated and that their slaw is limp and brown around the edges. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Los Angeles police Sgt. . . . says uniformed vice officers were conducting a routine investigation of the theater shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday and saw Willard engaging in a lewd act. Good to know the LAPD is keeping the porno theaters family friendly. Wonder what kind of uniforms the vice officers wear?

True enough, AdamSmith, and what saddens me is that we the electorate, who bear the ultimate responsibility for swallowing this horseshit, don't seem to differentiate or even to care. Granted, we once had Walter Cronkite and even Dan Rather to help us separate the wheat from the chaff but we don't even seem to realize that our pundits have been outsourced to the lowest bidder. The question for me is what does democracy become when voters swarm around only the issues that sell ads and boost profits the quickest. I guess we're finding out.

Titillating as this story is, I'm saddened it takes precedence over Romney's promise to repeal our nation's first national health care and his hawkish statements on war with Iran. Money is money but lives are lives.

You might want to lose the capri pants too.

Great story! Thanks, Oz. Love their parents too. They're a straightforward, outspoken family, the Kellys: all they've ever wanted for their children is a fair chance in life. And if their youngest twins have made anyone think twice about their preconceptions about race and colour, they don't mind that in the least. "It's good to challenge people on race and sexuality and other issues where there's prejudice," says Alyson. "If knowing my boys encourages anyone to think a bit more deeply about how we label people, then that's just great as far as I'm concerned." Labels are so yesterday!

He was very lucky to get the Uncut Latin license plate. Must have known someone at the DMV.

Lurker, congrats indeed! Sounds like you're doing three things that will keep you fit for the long term: First, you said goodbye to the old habits. It will get easier to forget them with each passing month. Second, you're not going crazy tracking every pound every day. You've made a permanent change and you're willing to relax and let it work, as it will definitely do. Third, you're focusing on the payoff from your new lifestyle. Not just the health benefits, but the pleasure of slipping into last year's pants. The other thing you're doing that I think is really smart is thinking about about exercise as the next lifestyle change. That's another one that will pay off gradually throughout the rest of your life. Couldn't be happier for you! And, Lucky, congrats to you as well! I think the worst thing you can do when you indulge is to feel guilty about it. If you end the day with calories plus guilt, you've got the worst of both worlds. Also, heartiest congratulations on having a boyfriend! Nothing healthier, in my opinion, than having a Main Squeeze!

There's just one simple trick to add to the ones you already know: Before you hit the Link button and paste the link address, just select and highlight the word in your draft post that you want it to link to. For example, to link your cocktail recipe to the word Sazerac, just highlight the word Sazerac before you hit the Link button. When the Link dialog box pops up, paste the link address into the URL box and hit OK just as you usually do. This way, instead of the seeing the link address itself being displayed, you'll see that the word Sazerac will be underlined and it will be a hot link to the recipe. (It won't be clickable while you're in the Preview window, but it will be after you actually Post.) You don't have to limit yourself to just one word for the clickable link. You can select and highlight a phrase or a sentence or probably the whole damned post. Whatever you have selected will become a clickable link. Hope this is simple enough. If not, add another jigger of absinthe and try again.

Bet you'll like it when we're in on the ground floor of the MER IPO.