MsGuy

Maybe, maybe not. Strangely enough a gay attack ad can backfire on the wingnut, especially if the target is both fairly conservative and married. Many traditionist rightwing types get offended by public accusations of homosexuality not backed up by solid evidence. The concept of straight acting married men being gay just weirds them out.

This is a bit off topic but, when you were a kid, did you ever want to buy one of those rocket motors on offer on the back page of comic books? Assemble/build your own rocket and fire it off in the back yard? I craved one as a kid but the parental units seemed convinced that I would blow up something important. To this day I suspect that they were just too cheap to spring for the cost.

If you're terminally bored with all the good news coming out of Afganistan lately, you might want to read this piece by Seymour Hersh featuring cameos by all the players in the Pakistan nuclear security game (Taliban excepted). Keep in mind the Pakistan military is a state within the state. When the article discusses mutiny, it's talking about possible power struggles within the Army, not whether or not the brass will send the civilians packing again. The latter is understood to be a given, even by the civilians. from the New Yorker

It was the wheelchair that gave you away.

Sometimes coming out to the parents just doesn't work out like you imagined. Gotta love her

TY, at least give us the hour back. "It is a setting in the forum software. I thought it was set at an hour but I will ask Oz to check and reset if necessary." TY

To my great surprise this obvious area for HIV research is just now being seriously pursued. I actually assumed that scientists had been checking all this out for decades. Maybe the cost of DNA analysis has finally declined enough to make this approach feasible. Whatever the reason, I am certainly glad that the research on the reason(s) long term non-progressors so successfully resist the virus is finally going forward. Rare 'Outliers' drive research

Scientists acknowledged that an HIV vaccine recently tested in Thailand may be less effective than they originally suggested. WSJ article

Ouch. Too direct.

Matrix, what is your connection to the blog you are promoting? If it's yours why not just say so? Should we expect to see material taken from MER threads posted there if anyone here manages to piss you off? Just asking.

Could be a 2 for 1 deal for some "first time reviewers."

TY, I don't know if you read the Miami Herald so I though i'd post this link for you. Cuban travel bill moves forward. I am so looking forward to you posting from Havana someday.

O.K. I admit it. I am an absolute fool for a straight faced put on. Can anybody here tell me if this really happened at a Major League ballpark? Donna Sachet sings the National Anthem If Michael Musto says it, must it be so?

Well, that's certainly one way of answering my question!

Link, maybe? I'm so very very lazy.

So when should we expect a ruling on the VV link? Personally I could do w/o this kind of stuff but you and Oz seemed to have talked yourselves into a logical corner (who could have guessed that the Village Voice would run a celebrity gossip piece that made a point of revealing an escort's real name? ). Look, quit trying to work up an airtight verbal formula for this problem. We all should be able to agree that the purpose served by the rule is to protect the privacy of members. Why not just change the rule to provide that any post or link calculated to expose the real identity of a member has to be vetted by TY or Oz before posting. I for one am content to trust your good judgement on the issue of whether the information offered is important enough to the safety of members (punter or rentboy, it cuts both ways) to warrant publication here. We got an Andrew Cunanan type on our hands, yeah let me know. Most other stuff, I'm not so interested. Just a suggestion. P.S. StuCott's idea seems workable. Put a note on the escort's reviews if warranted and give him the usual opportunity to rebutt. Certainly solves the identity problem w/o turning the board into a gossip column.

Frankly I find it hard to take computer generated predictions of climate change too seriously when my weatherman still can't tell me whether it's going to rain next week. Evidence from the geological record is a lot more convincing. Turns out that the last time atmospheric CO2 hit 400 ppm, the earth shed it's ice caps, ocean levels were 80 to 130 feet higher than today & average temps 5 to 11F higher. Since we are due to hit 400 ppm sometime in the next decade and spike to over 500 ppm (before declining) even with substantial world wide anti-carbon measures, younger members of this board might want to consider buying their retirement property in Minneapolis/St. Paul. New climate data

For those who want to hear Obama's speech to the HRC today (10/10), CSPAN will be rerunning it Sunday (11th) sometime in the afternoon. Among other things Obama explicitly reaffirmed that he would (eventually) put an end to DADT. Brief analysis of Obama's speech

Here is a different more Euro-centric slant on Obama's Nobel. From the European bureau chief of the Toronto Globe & Mail The author points out that the Nobel is a European prize and explains why, from their POV, the award makes sense. (link cribbed from DuchessIvana)

Ty, you did better than I did. I first read it as "new diamond tiara."

Now I know my brain has turned to stinky cheese. My apologies. P.S. Though it's good to see you're on top of things.

TY & OZ, my bad for not reporting the thread as soon as I realized the post was questionable. My default assumption was that you two monitor the board 24/7 and that the post staying up for several days meant y'all were o.k. with it (which assumption seems even sillier now that I've typed it out ). Next time I'll try to be a little better citizen of the board.

Thanks for the explanation. Personally I think the thread should have come down earlier. A quick skim of the linked blog made it obvious that the poster was pursuing a personal grudge against the escort.

Not exactly X rated. Must be one of those eye of the beholder things.