Forum posts made by byronlord

I think that there is a big problem with these laws because they are passed as if they are a referendum on sex crime rather than as an honest attempt to achieve a policy goal. They sound like a good idea in theory but the violent sex offenders that are purportedly the target of the laws are a tiny proportion of the offenders they affect. Slapping a life sentence on any offender is something society should think very hard about. I don't think the representatives think at all.

Actually I do not believe your statement about a war with North Korea being fought with F/A-18, Nuclear Armaments, and Aircraft carries to be correct. The reason for this because of NK own nuclear arms. Crude though they may be, nuclear technology is still desired for the legitimacy it give to nations that posses it (reference Iran), and it's (obvious) destructive/lethal capabilities.


That is the reason that an escalation to nuclear weapons is considered likely. North Korea has a crude nuclear device but does not have the ability to put it on a missile. So the response would be to try to knock out the North Korean army and their nuclear facilities as soon as possible. That would mean using nuclear weapons.

China is not going to allow that of course. But they don't want to engage in a war with the US. So their best option right now is to liquidate the leadership of NK in a coup d'etat.

Very true Lurker! You point out the benefits of the 20% down bank policy. However, 1st time homebuyers do not have 20% (100,000 X .2 = 20,000 cash!). What 22 year old has $20K cash? And, that is a modest home for a suburb in St. Louis. The FHA does provide lower down payments (3%), but one does have to pay PMI until reaching the 20% equity requirement.

The problem with 0% down is loaning money to riskier consumers. Obviously, a retail bank would require the purchase of PMI. Higher risk = higher defaults/higher interest rates.

My generation is called the boomerang generation. Many go to college and end up moving back home because they cannot afford a house and have to save money. Rental is an option, but financially one builds no equity. Personally, I believe in a culture of ownership, not rental.

If someone does not have $20K cash then they probably should not be buying a house at all. Most 22 year olds should not be buying.

Buying a house is a big financial commitment. There are costs that you would never expect when you are renting.

The big problem for your generation is that most of you overpaid for a college education that was overpriced to start with and you probably won't see a return on. I have no idea why college costs so much. They pay the staff almost nothing and the students pay top dollar

So you get this call. Your partner is at some event miles away and they happened to meet Angelina Jolie and/or Brad Pitt in a bar (or substitute your partner's favorite). For whatever reason, they are really into your partner but only if you agree to it. What do you tell them?

Well can it? Or does it depend on what kind of activity you have her?

Judging from divorce filings, yes!

But so can looking at another woman/man. The fact that some things can be considered cheating does not mean that they are or should be.

I have to say that if you do anything you know your partner doesn't know about because you know he/she "wouldn't understand and or appreciate" you are cheating. I have been on the wrong side of this and learned the hard way. I know this isn't going to be a popular sentiment but it is what it is.

And judging by your age, well maybe your partner is from the era when sex was never mentioned and looking at porn was considered a really big deal. Views have thankfully changed.

If he couldn't even allow you to imagine being with someone else, well that is rather sad.

It is up to the people of North Korea to change their government. Foreign intervention is useless without the support of the people of the country being invaded as was shown by The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Soviet invasion of Afganastan, the US invasion of South Vietnam, the US invasion of Iraq and many other invasions and occupations.

If the North Korean people ever do revolt the results will depend on which side the North Korean military support, the people or the government. In Lybia, the military supported the people for the most part and Qadaffi was overthrown. In Syria, the military is supporting the government for the most part and the government still stands.

And even if the revolution is successful when it comes is no guarantee of democracy or freedom.

More likely it is up to the government of China.

North Korea is acting out because China refused to back them in the Security Council which is in turn because they are fed up of North Korea which is an economic basket case and an embarrassment.

At this point the regime is getting rather too embarrassing. Which is actually a quite logical thing to do if you are a North Korean party member. Having the Chinese ome in and rid you of your vile govt. is probably your best way out. If you try to do anything yourself you are going to be sent to one of their gulags. About 20% of the population ends up in a gulag at some point. Less than half survive.

So provoking the Chinese to perform a coup or invade or otherwise rid you of the corrupt government probably looks like a really good idea. It is what I would do in that position.

Of course.

Smoking is a filthy habit and the less of it the better. Not sure what marihuana is, perhaps it is how people spell marijuana after they have had too much of it?

Well that's why we have seperation, to keep religious institutions from having the authority to go around killing people. That was the right call for the king to make in my opinion, sounds like he was protecting the minority British subjects from the majority of other British subjects. I don't know anything about that specific trial though so I'm only going by what you said. It seems like the king took some of their freedom away after they took away the freedom of that girl by killing her. I must have misread something because it seems like a prime example of protecting innocent people from religion unless you mean it as an example of the church being cleansed from a bad batch of apples.

That was one concern. But the reason they split from the Church of England in the first place was they thought the state had contaminated the church. Beginning with Constantine actually.

The New Testament has a whole slew of rather obvious edits. For example where is the rest of The Acts of the Apostles? It was being written after the fact so why end on a cliff hanger? It would be like having a history of Napoleon that ended on the eve of the battle of Waterloo.

Later edits were worse. One of the early popes got Mary Magdalene confused with another Mary and gave a homily about her being a prostitute. He had completely the wrong Mary but nobody could tell the pope he was wrong and the Catholic church stuck to that interpretation till 1961.

Actually the idea in that was to protect the state and the people from tyranny by religion as well as keeping religion safe.

That was a concern but not the only one. The non-conformists original complaint was against the established church as being corrupt. The Quakers were concerned that the new state would have an established religion and return to persecuting them.

Persecution of the Quakers is one of the factors that led to the revolution, albeit indirectly. The reason Massachusetts lost its privilege of self government in the first place was the execution of Mary Dyer for her faith. The King ordered the colony to hold no more trials for religious offenses and when the colonists refused put the colony under direct control.

Psssht. No. When I was in school, we didn't have to say it, just stand there and be quiet if we refused to pledge. I think that is fine and stands in line with who we're supposed to be.

Want to teach patriotism? That's another thread.

There is actually this thing called the constitution that means that it is illegal for a school to require it.

My church and Ben Franklin fought for the first amendment to protect the church from corruption by the state.

According to Byron Lord the CIA replaced the Australian government in a coup. Did I miss this part of your history? How long have you lived under the evil influence of the CIA? Do you have free elections over there? Or is it now under control of the Tri Lateral Commission? Or is it the Free Masons? Before reading that post I was lead to believe you had a pretty cool country down under. Now he has me wondering.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis

The role of the CIA is pretty well established. The crisis happened at a time when the CIA was pretty much a rogue agency running its own agenda. Carter and Regan both worked to bring it to heel. Particularly after their incompetence led to the Iranian hostage crisis. A faction in the CIA preferred to have a right wing administration in Australia. People who spend their time bringing down inconvenient governments inevitably end up attacking their own.

What really forced the CIA out of that business was the loss of interception capabilities when the cryptanalysis of the Enigma machine became public and when electronic codes replaced the weaker mechanical systems.

The TriLateral Commission does exist. I know the North American Chairman quite well, I have worked with him. It is not the world government people think and never has been.

Railing against groups like the Tri-Lateral commission and blathering on about black helicopters is how people who are actually in the business of dirty tricks discredit scrutiny.

YES YES, YES, MY FAMILY AND OTHERS FOUGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY AND I BELIEVE YOU SHOULD HAVE TO!!

Maybe if you had been taught to question authority rather than follow it like sheep your country would not have followed Bush and Cheney into their war justified by lie upon lie ten years ago.

Those soldiers died because there were not enough US citizens patriotic enough to ask hard questions before the fiasco. Instead the cowards shouted down those brave enough to ask and called them traitors.

Between 100,000 and 600,000 people are dead because of that war and Iran now controls Iraq.

Bush was a liar and so was Nixon before him. Last week the LBJ tapes came out confirming that Nixon had illegally sabotaged the Paris peace talks to prevent an end to the war before the 1968 election.

Thatcher was also a liar and a cheat. She made a big public show about being anti-communist but she begged Gorbachev to send in the tanks to crush the demonstrations in East Germany that brought down the Berlin war.

What we need is more people who will stand up to governments that lie and oppress.

Close the gulag in Guantanamo and put the war criminals who authorized torture on trial. Then lets talk about whether that flag is worth anything.

In Australia it used to be commonplace for school kids to pledge to the Queen. Somehow in the later part of the 20th century it stopped happening.

Yeah funny how a CIA instigated coup replacing a democratically elected government in the name of the Queen's representative might have that effect.

It reminds me of communism and fascism. It is a despicable practice.

My children are UK citizens. Why should they be pledging allegiance to another country?

My church objected to the pledge before they inserted 'under god'. We don't take oaths and we certainly don't take oaths in the name of God. Its called taking the Lord's name in vain.

I lost friends fighting against the communists. I do not like seeing their methods here.

FYI: just checked it and had the same issue myself.

Me too, it looks to me as if it is a code issue. Have to wait for Gav to fix.

a sudden illness maybe?
He refuses to call the senior members by the correct name for they are not lords but brothers in his mind. he refuses to live and work as any other pope...and he is going to clean up the Vatican and ensure all practice humbleness.
Yup I see some sort of assassination happen.. Do you?

Quite a few Popes have been assassinated, the most recent one possibly being John Paul I who died suddenly and mysteriously during investigations into the corrupt P2 lodge and Banco Ambrosiano.

I don't think he will have much of a problem though as the bigger tension has been the districts being upset at being told what bigotries to peddle, first by John Paul II and then by Benedict. The opposition to gay marriage was not bottom up, it was coming straight from the top of the curia.

Francis does have a big constituency in the wider church though. He has the Jesuits behind him for a start. This is a huge departure for them, they don't usually take positions of power. He is popular with the non curia cardinals because he greets them as equals after election as pope.

His problem is going to be the curia. But the reduced dress etc. is part of a means to that end. He has already dispensed with the cape and shoes. The hat will probably go next and after that the Cardinal in charge of all the nonsense. It is a smart move because thats the guy who was going to be working for the new pope by day and bunking with Benedict by night.

If guns ever become banned, we miss out on stories like these - in the future.

Do not ban guns!

http://upload.lushstories.com/1786041077-CaliberKate.JPG

Oh I assure you it won't.

One of the reasons to cuff a woman behind her back is this particular trick. She is not the first to try it.

Still kind of risky if she happens to be in a police car and it goes over a bump and happens to be leaning forwards at the time.

Sponsored by: Working America

Right now in this country, more than 26 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have just given up looking for work. Meanwhile, corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. That just isn't right.

The working families who have shouldered the biggest burden throughout the recession are still struggling. Corporations need to step up and do their part to help us recover by using their massive cash reserves to put people back to work.

Corporate America is experiencing it's own private recovery, with record profits and exploding bank accounts. It has the money to start hiring and spread the recovery to the rest of us. But so far they are unwilling in invest in jobs.

Companies shouldn't be allowed to keep this money. Urge your state legislators to pass a "Hoarder's Tax" to make businesses either pay a small tax on their liquid assets or invest it to jump start our economy."

Companies in the USA are taxed under the current Tax Code on cash reserves, should they be taxed again or forced to hire people for work that does not exist?

The Cyprus tax was 10%. A cretinous way to maintain faith in the banking system. If it hadn't been struck down there would have been runs.

For some reason, only Paul Krugman seems to be pointing out the blatantly obvious. But that seems to be because all the other pundits are completely invested in the Euro and can't see that withdrawal is the only viable option.

The Cypriots have rejected the deal which means that either Germany accepts setting a non zero target for inflation or Cyprus will leave the Euro which will cause Greece to exit as well. Both are highly desirable outcomes.

The only reason for avoiding a Grexit was the risk of a run on the banks. Now that has been put in play by Merkle and co.

How about Twiglets? You foreign folk have these?

http://www.americansweets.co.uk/ekmps/shops/statesidecandy/images/british-twiglets-snacks-case-of-30x-45g-bags-6089-p.jpg

You can keep the marmite but that picture just cost me $20 which is the cost of getting Twiglets shipped to Boston USA.

One of the things about being an ex-pat is you end up paying a fortune to buy what are essentially cheap comfort foods in the UK. The most ridiculous being paying for imported Heinz Baked Beans in Boston (the US version is horribly sweet because it is full of added sugar).

Threesome, foursome, well as many girls as I can get in a lesbian orgy actually.


Perhaps a meetup for all the lushies of like mind on this? Seems a popular one.

If you want to see how the courts might react to this sort of case, take a look here:

http://www.ims-expertservices.com/blog/2013/fee-request-expert-challenge/

The case was a smoking wrongful death lawsuit, the court found for the plaintif awarding $275,000 in damages which were reduced to $27,500 because they found the plaintif 90% liable.

So the first observation would be that any damages in the Match.com case would likely by rather less than the above which are typical of wrongful death. They might award $50 million but $50K would be much more likely.

The second is that expert witnesses cost more than lawyers and the dispute over the expert witness fees is likely much more than the jury award. The plaintiff is almost certainly out of pocket in this dispute.

There isn not very much Match.com could have done to avoid this situation but it isn't nothing. Match.com is a substantial organization with substantial revenues and profits backed by a public company. If I was CISO for Match.com I would expect that my legal counsel would be monitoring the situation to make sure that the company was aware of best practices in protecting customers and that those were being followed.

That is how regulation works in the US. And it sucks.

I would much rather operate in the European or Australian regime where the government makes regulations that are sensible and companies know more or less what is expected of them. But that is not the system we have here. What happens is that the corporations have lawyers who work to prevent rational regulations being passed and the only accountability mechanism left is jury awards in liability cases.

The main motivation for bringing the case is likely that the lawyer is looking to make a name for themselves as the person with experience of handling the cases that arise in the future.

Not now! I'm watching the X-Factor.

my last boyfriend told me i was weird and creepy for wanting anal as i really enjoy it, is this true, and do guys actually like it or are they all like this?

Like women, there are guys who are into anal and others that are not. And remember that we are all wired differently so what is delicious for one person can be meh for others.

Sitting at the back of seminars at the MIT AI lab, I learned a little bit about neurology. Almost enough to persuade me to open a textbook (bit late now that books are obsolete). One of the things they discovered in experiments is that the nervous system has a huge amount of crosstalk and if you know how to use it you can have fun...

This is the basis of acupuncture and reflexology, some girls can almost come if someone plays with their toes. Others it has no effect on at all.

The anus is wired up to the same nerve bundle as the clit. So stretching the anus while the clit is busy causes a circuit overload, oh oh. Also the angle of the penis is often just right to drill the girl in her g-spot, more oh oh oh.

And add to that the forbidden, taboo nature etc. and we are into some serious sexual excitement here.

For the guy there is all of the above plus a really tight hole.

Leaving over it seems rather excessive. If you really want it, maybe sex with a butt plug or alternatively a different cock.

China burns half the coal burned in the world. From what I understand the air in Beijing is practically unbreathable. Does anyone think China is going to give up it's economic progress without a fight?


And they know that they have a very big problem there with pollution and that is why they are on a crash wind power program right now.

It really isn't that difficult to deal with the carbon load of power generation. The capital costs are actually modest next to nuclear. First off, incandescent lightbulbs are about 10% of power use. That is going to be all but eliminated by LEDs which are 95% more efficient, give any type of light you like and never need replacement.

I replaced all my lightbulbs with LEDs and saved a fortune. Its not just the electricity for the bulb, its the fact that I don't have to run the AC to get rid of the heat again in summer.

LEDs are potentially cheaper to make, the cost comes from the fact that the infrastructure is a hundred years old and built around incandescents.

London is starting to replace the buses with hydrogen powered, next they will do the taxis. Its actually cheaper to run them than on petrol, its the low volume that makes them expensive.

lol, Quantum Physics is a good start to understanding magick.


Lol, my doctorate happens to be from the Nuclear Physics dept :)

Yes, I am quite aware of the theological implications of QM. Basically the universe is not deterministic in the Newtonian sense. So there is plenty of room for intervention without requiring any laws of physics to be broken.

I have no problem with magic, what I object to is claims to special powers or secret knowledge.

I don't like the idea of a 6000 year old earth created with the light already enroute from distant galaxies. It seems small mean and narrow. Like deciding to live in one room of your house and never leave for no particular reason. A hundred billion galaxies of a hundred billion stars is much more impressive to me.

Secret knowledge is the pretext people use for setting themselves up as intermediaries and I see no use for them.


Not sure about wicca being a recovery organization as I don't practice wicca. I am old school taught by my mother, whom was taught by her mother and so on. Wicca was in the in 1960's. it is a new religion which has been recognized by many governments and as such does deserve the right to be respected in its own right.

also you could try to understand healing such as Reiki (Japanese energy healing with scientific studies backing up the results without understanding the healing).


Well the Wicca folk did make some effort towards continuity with earlier traditions. But yes, it is essentially a new invention. But so was the Pauline church which transformed a small Jewish sect into a proselytizing religion.

The Catholic church recently tried to shut down nuns from offering Reiki. They really don't like the idea of women doing something that might look like laying on of hands.

But in general I consider anything to be positive that gives people permission to do things that are pleasurable that don't harm or hurt or exploit other people.

@ ByronLord - I know what you're getting at, and the fact that people have to pay to be members, makes it slightly different.

The fact is though, that this guy could have been absolutely squeaky clean, a background check would probably have revealed nothing, certainly nothing about his psychological issues.

I wrote this proviso into our terms and conditions, I think it should be enough to cover our backs, should anything unforeseen happen (heaven forbid):


I can't see the case getting very far unless Match.com did something pretty egregious.

But T&C are a contract and you can't exclude negligence in a contract. I suspect that the real strategy here is to get Match.com to pay up or face more bad publicity over this while they are selling themselves as a 'safe' match site.

If they don't provide some controls then OKCupid does the same thing better and for free!

Absolutely ridiculous. Their site is basically a glorified database, matching member's variables (oh stop!), showing profile photos, and various ways for people to get in touch with each other. That's the same as the majority of those dating sites. Some have larger databases of members, and are better at pairing members than others, but that's all it boils down to.

What duty of care are they expected to perform? Background checks on their members?

The same thing could happen on Facebook, Craigslist, even lushstories.com. Would I be sued if a date between 2 members went horribly wrong?

The whole thing is absurd if you ask me.

There is actually a test for what is reasonable called the Hands test. Basically if the cost of the harm times the probability of the harm is greater than the control measure and there is a duty of care then there is a duty to implement the measure.

The reason people pay Match.com for the service is because they say they check member IDs and provide other safety measures. So they have explicitly accepted a duty of care. I can't see background checks being reasonable, the cost of doing them is very high and the likelihood that they would identify a rapist rather low.

If on the other hand another member had reported the person as an attacker/stalker whatever and Match.com had ignored it AND there was no mechanism in place to deal with such reports AND Match.com could be shown to be aware of them as being useful. Well then they would likely have a liability problem.

I really don't think it very likely that Match.com has met the standard for negligence here. But the legal definition of 'reasonable' for IAC (owner of Match.com) with a public listing and 3.5 billion market cap is very different to the definition that would apply to Lush.

She knows who she is but I am not saying.

After that, Angelina Jolie of course.

http://img2.hebus.com/hebus_2002/07/10/preview/20020710101656_61.jpg

That is like someone suing a coffee shop if they meet someone there that later assaults them. It doesn't make sense. I don't think match should put a disclaimer about dates being potentially dangerous either. That is just common sense. It's nerve racking enough to meet someone from online, a huge disclaimer saying "1 in 50 dates ends in attempted murder" will probably dry up the company's business.

Actually not.

Match.com exists for the purpose of getting people together, coffee shops do not. There is thus a duty of care and an expectation that Match.com would employ reasonable precautions to mitigate the risk of attack. Including warning people to meet in a public place, filtering out those reported as abusers, etc.

There is a duty of care but I don't think it is an unreasonable one or one that Match.com would have any difficulty meeting. They have serious people who are serious about safety. And their underwriters will make sure that they are taking reasonable steps before issuing their E&O policy.

So it is not a frivolous suit by any means. Whether she will win is another matter.

If I was working for Match.com or advising them I would be looking to keep a tight reign on the lawyers to STOP them from arguing that there is no duty of care because the whole value proposition of Match.com is based on the idea that there is.

Not at the moment but it is something I might want to try in the future.