Posted on 06/11/2006 7:39:20 AM PDT by Mo1
They're both straight.
LOL. Wouldn't that be suuu-weet !
It is sweet.
Went to a friend's holiday party down on the river, came back home this morning. They built a new summer house a few years ago for when they retire. Turns out they're already spending more time there than they do in town. LOL. Watched a lovely fireworks display.
FOFLOL. Well, at least you won't have to clean out the refrigerator this month :)
Are you able to take Tyler to work with you ?
The bikini clad one. Make her features a little more afro-american, and give her freckles, and she'd be a ringer for owner of the dog that caused me so much greif.
FOFLOL. K
Whoa ! Yes, I remember. Good that your basement is empty now. It is empty now, isn't it ? LOL
I think so...
FOFLOL
Christopher Hitchens: This July Fourth, ignore polls on America’s image
Jul 4, 2006WASHINGTON - Here’s what I want to know, and here’s why I want to know it. At what point in history, exactly, did the Pew Center decide that it knew how to measure world opinion?
I ask this because almost every week I seem to read a study of how the rest of the globe thinks (or at any rate feels) about the United States. The polls in this country are unreliable enough and are often used to measure intangibles, such as “approval ratings,” which is why there is so much fluctuation within and between them. But who’s doing the random samples in Somalia and Tajikistan and Ecuador?
I ask because these polls tend to inform Americans that the rest of the world has a decidedly low view of them. That this is true in large parts of the Middle East, and among large swathes of European intellectuals, is something that I can already tell you from experience.
For that matter, it was at one point true that the majority of Pakistanis, say, believed not just that all Jews had left the World Trade Center on time, but that (therefore) they had all reported for work on time, hung around for a bit — presumably whistling and wearing unconcerned expressions — and only then left; doubtless offering some clever Semitic excuse. Not even al-Qaida’s pilots had as exact a schedule as that.
Nonetheless, and despite the absurdity and hysteria of much of what is said and believed, we seem almost ready for a poll of Americans on what they think the rest of the world thinks of them in opinion polls, where the “finding” would be that most of those Americans polled think that most other people polled think they stink.
There are several possible responses to this.
One of them — no doubt to be found in the presumed “red states” — is to say “who gives a flying flip?” Another is not to surrender to impressionism, and to do some work of one’s own.
Large numbers in India, for example (another multiethnic federal and secular democracy), report highly favorable views of the U.S.
A very important poll in Iran (where polling is illegal) found that a huge majority of Iranians considered better relations with America to be the single most urgent priority. One of those who conducted the survey was a former American embassy hostage-taker, who was jailed for publishing his findings.
Then there is the question of method. Polling in the U.S. depends on finding a lot of people who are identifiable by name, and at home in their kitchens when the poll-taker calls. How is this feat replicated in the Andes, say, or in the Congo? Who pays for the work? When is it decided that the time is right?
For example, I am quite certain that an opinion poll of any kind, taken in the Muslim world in 1992, would have discovered enormous resentment at the failure of the United States to intervene militarily in Bosnia. But this ingredient in the famous mixture of Islamic grievances is seldom, if ever, mentioned, and certainly wasn’t head-counted at the time. As a result of that just and necessary intervention, large numbers of Orthodox Christians, not just in Serbia, now record strongly “anti-American” opinions. Which goes to show that you can’t please everybody.
It also goes to show that you probably shouldn’t try. A country that attempted to be in everybody’s good books would be quite paralyzed. The last time everybody said they liked the United States (or said that they said they liked the United States) was just after Sept. 11, when the nation was panicked and traumatized and trying to count its dead. Well, no thanks. This is too high a price to be paid for being popular.
Measurements of opinion are in any event static, and they assume passivity, and a consensus upon knowledge. If you had asked people in 2001 whether they thought it was likely that Afghans and Iraqis would be holding free elections in a couple of years (not that any polling group ever did even suggest such a question), I doubt you would have got a very good response. And how, in any case, could people have known enough to know what they were supposedly talking about?
If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech (most notably in the absurd recent debate on “flag-burning”) and this is apparently what we hire Karen Hughes to do in our public diplomacy.
Faced with a complete beast like the late Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been trying to kill us for several years, millions of Americans appear to believe that he only appeared in Iraq because in some way we made him upset. Well, even if this was true — which it is not — it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. (What would you say to a policy that made him contented, instead?).
Thus, for a Fourth of July message, I would suggest less masochism, more confidence on the American street, and less nervous reliance on paper majorities discovered by paper organizations.
Happy Independence Day.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is “Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.” Examiner
Bikinis still abreast of fashion 60 years
by Jo Biddle, 29 Jun 2006
Sixty years ago the bikini exploded onto the world, and a trip to the beach has never been the same since. Once banned in several countries as indecent, today few women's wardrobes are complete without it.
And if women today are covering up more, it's more out of fears over the dangers of long-term exposure to the sun rather than out of any lingering coyness, with the last itsy bitsy shreds having been discarded long ago.
One week after the first US post-war nuclear tests on the South Pacific Bikini atoll, French designer Louis Reard launched his two-piece swimming costume on the public on July 5, 1946.
Made of three triangles of material held together with ties, the bikini was considered so shocking that Reard had to use a nude dancer from Paris' famous Lido nightclub to model it, French fashion historian Olivier Saillard told AFP.
"It was banned in a lot of places at the time by countries and by several mayors in regions in France before imposing itself due to the power of women, and not the the power of fashion.
"The emancipation of swimwear has always been linked to the emancipation of women," he said.
Two-piece costumes existed before Reard's creation. Early Greek mosaics appear to show women wearing two-piece costumes, but they were probably designed for sports not swimming. And US Olympic swimmer and actress Esther Williams also appeared in two pieces in her 1930s films.
But to a bikini, size makes all the difference.
Reard's version was smaller and lighter (small enough to be passed through a wedding ring) and most controversially stopped below the navel.
The first costume, which was made of cotton printed with images of newspaper headlines was named after the Bikini atoll, because Reard "knew it would cause a bombshell in the fashion world."
Although Reard's costume caused a sensation, it was not an immediate hit in a world struggling to recover from World War II with little time or available money for frivolous visits to the beach.
But by the end of the 1950s, it had become a fashion item de rigueur, thanks in part to Hollywood and star power.
"I think it was the precursor of all swimming costumes. In fact the bikini is the simplest and the most minimalist of all swimming costumes," said Saillard, an exhibitions planner from the Museum of Fashion and Textiles in Paris, and author of the French book "Les Maillots de Bain".
Some experts have dated the bikini's phenomenal success back to US singer Brian Hyland's 1960 summer smash hit song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini," which had American girls rushing out to the shops.
The invention of lycra in the early 1960s also revolutionised swimwear, replacing cotton, scratchy nylon and even soggy wool as the bikini's material of choice.
Another milestone was passed in 1964 when Sports Illustrated first used a bikini-clad model on its front cover, says American writer and socialite Kelly Killoren Bensimon who has written "The Bikini Book," laden with pictures celebrating the bikini's 60th birthday.
Since then the bikini and its wearers have passed into legend, becoming iconic images of 20th century culture.
"This bikini made me a success," said Ursula Andress, with a huge amount of understatement, of her role in the 1962 James Bond classic "Dr No" in which she slinks from the waves in a white bikini, a knife slung casually round her hips.
And who can forget the sensual Brigitte Bardot in her bikini in the legendary 1956 film "And God Created Woman," or Raquel Welch's wild little fur number "One Million Years B.C." in 1966 which turned her into a bestselling poster girl.
"The bikini is a snapshot of fashion in the second half of the 20th century, at once scandalous and forcing women to become ever thinner," said Saillard.
"The bikini transforms women into an object of seduction and desire, such as garage pin-ups. But on the other hand it shows that women are becoming increasingly independent and masters of their own bodies.
"In fact the biggest gesture by women to prove their independence is when in the 1970s they throw away their bikini tops."
Today fears over skin cancer as well as the changing use of the beach as a place for sport, rather than for tanning, means topless is out and women have several costumes and bikinis to suit all occasions.
"The beach used to be a place for swimming, but also for seduction, almost like a nightclub, before turning back into a sporting area," said Saillard.
"Being too tanned is no longer chic, and we are seeing a return to elegance on the beach."
I'm around.
Been lurkin'.
Been busy, sorta.
Someone said they thought you had been sent to the woodshed.... were you misbehavin ? :)
Nopers.
At least, not that I was aware of.
No, been lurking mostly, and been busy.
The flooding in Pike County PA had an impact on my weekend, and I've been busy dealing with the aftermath of it.
Even though I myself didn't get flooded.
http://www.freerepublic.com/~darkshear/
I must have typed in this guy.
Watching the semi-final of the World Cup - it will be Italy versus France or Portugal ---- France is is winning 1-0 at the moment.
About 20 mins to go.
Possibly.
That was the doppleganger I picked up during teh tub girl troll event.
Thankfully he got toasted before he could post anything.
I hope its an exciting game. I'm pulling for an Italy vs Portugal final.
K. :) Glad you're still with us.
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