Free Republic

Public displays of affection are everywhere, sex in public places is on the rise and more people are joining the Mile High Club... So how far is too far when it comes to public displays? Quick question: does the sight of couples making out in public make you to feel jittery, uncomfortable, jealous, outraged, or a little turned-on? Do you find yourself shouting "Oh get a room people!" when a saucy couple decide to turn the afternoon train ride into a lap dance? When a pair in the grocery store won't stop canoodling by the frozen peas section? Or what...

Bed and Breakfasts Must Admit Homosexual CouplesLONDON – A new UK law prohibits restaurants from preventing homosexuals from public displays of affection under pain of prosecution. The same law mandates that bed and breakfasts and hotels give rooms to same-sex couples or face legal backlash. The Department of Trade and Industry announced the new rules Monday, which also forces retail shops to grant wedding registry lists to same-sex couples. The law expands previous provisions against discrimination in the workplace to include guaranteed access to “goods, facilities and services” for homosexuals. The new rules place homosexual disposition on an equal footing...

Matthew Almodovar likes holding his girlfriend's hand during lunch or when they're walking to class. But at Culver City Middle School, that display of affection could land the couple in trouble. At the only public middle school in Culver City, it is against school policy for students to hold hands, hug or kiss on campus. Perhaps more important, the "no contact" rule also prohibits students from hitting, shoving or pushing classmates. Schools nationwide have policies to prevent violence and sexual harassment, but some go further — such as creating a rule against touching. In March, one middle school student in...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A federal judge ruled that a lesbian student can sue her school district and her principal for revealing her homosexuality to her mother. Charlene Nguon, 17, may go forward with her suit claiming violation of privacy rights, U.S. District Judge James V. Selna ruled in a decision dated Nov. 28 and announced Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Orange County’s Garden Grove district had argued that Nguon openly kissed and hugged her girlfriend on campus and thus had no expectation of privacy.

NEW DELHI — India may be the land of the Kamasutra (search), the famed ancient treatise on sex, but in the country's hinterlands, public displays of affection remain strictly taboo. An Israeli couple discovered just how staid the small towns of India can be when they were fined 500 Indian rupees (U.S. $11) each for embracing and kissing after getting married in the Hindu holy town of Pushkar (search) in northwestern India, the Asian Age newspaper reported Wednesday.

CHICAGO, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Phil Hammond carries a PalmOne Treo personal digital assistant with him almost all the time. "It's like carrying my office in my pocket -- I can get my e-mail, my contact list, my notes, even my combination to my locker at the Y," Hammond, marketing director for the Boston-based interior design firm of Margulies & Associates, told UPI's Wireless World. By Gene Koprowski

BEND, Ore. - Public displays of affection are against the rules at Sky View Middle School in Bend, and 14-year-old Cazz Altomare found that out the hard way. She got detention earlier this year after hugging her boyfriend in the hallway as he headed to lunch and she went to gym class. Her mother, Leslee Swanson was infuriated by the punishment — in fact, when she went to pick her daughter up from detention, she gave her a good, hard hug. "I'm trying to understand what's wrong with a hug," said Swanson, 42. But administrators said such policies are standard-issue...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Secretary of State Kevin Shelley told police that a handheld computer device containing sensitive information was taken from his San Francisco home. Shelley, who announced his resignation earlier this month and will leave office next week, reported the incident Sunday morning after discovering a window ajar in the study of his home, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday. He told police he had left the window open overnight, but that it appeared someone had opened it farther. He also said he had wiped a smudge from the window that could have been left by an intruder....

Ah, my little friend, how I have loved you. The heft of you in my hand. The window you gave me on a world beyond the confines of where I was at any given time. The pleasant rush when you went off in my breast pocket, adjacent to that other rhythmically vibrating organ—my heart. I loved you not wisely, but so well. Yet now ... Article link: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/bing/0,15704,1012881,00.html

WASHINGTON (AP)--A South Korean man who met with John Kerry's fund-raisers to discuss creating a new political group for Korean-Americans was an intelligence agent for his country, raising concerns among some U.S. officials that either he or his government may have tried to influence this fall's election. South Korean officials and U.S. officials told The Associated Press that Chung Byung-Man, a consular officer in Los Angeles, actually worked for South Korea's National Intelligence Service. A spokesman for the South Korean consulate office said Chung was sent home in May amid "speculation" he became involved with the Kerry campaign and...

Far from the razor-wire capped protest prison in the shadow of the flag-bedecked Boston Fleet Center, progressive activists shared center stage with their Democratic Party champions before a crowd of 1,000 at the Roxbury Community College Gymnasium. The occasion was a founding conference for a new organization, the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) (www.pdamerica.org) which vows to build a sustained movement to transform the Democratic Party into a force for social justice and environmental sanity. Referring to the event in Roxbury and Tuesday's "Building the Peace Movement" Forum at the Boston Paulist Center, which was attended by a standing room...

The next big thing that wasn't---or was it? IS IT time to declare the demise of the handheld computer, also known as the personal digital assistant (PDA)? A lot of people suddenly think so, for despite high hopes that the devices---made by such firms as Palm, Sony, HP and Dell---would someday become ubiquitous, annual sales have stayed flat at around 11m units worldwide. This compares poorly with PCs, around 130m of which are sold every year, and mobile phones, with sales of around 460m units. ---The PDA market will never be a mass market,--- says Cindy Wolf, an analyst at...

I just ordered a Soni Clie PEG-SJ33 PDA and haven't yet been able to find a user-oriented site for Clie owners. Am interested in tips 'n hints, opinions/reviews of accessories, software etc. What I'm looking for the most is a good appointment/to-do manager. I've never found anything better than Sidekick 98 and don't like Outlook much at all, but realize I need to find a replacement that accurately hotsyncs with the Clie. I'm sure there's at least one FReeper with one of these gadgets out there.

CLINTON SEX ROMP CAUGHT ON VIDEO! CLINTON Bill Clinton has been caught on videotape cheating on Hillary -- and the steamy sex romp could torpedo her political career! Now foes of Hillary are in an all-out race to obtain the tape and publicize it, an exclusive ENQUIRER investigation has discovered. The issue that goes on sale Friday reveals how Clinton was taped having sex in a pickup truck with a department store clerk, how Hillary's opponents plan to use the video to sabotage her political plans … and more. Published on: May 30, 2003

<p>Texas Instruments breaks new ground with its bundling of three technologies into a single chipset.</p> <p>Back in September, I wrote a column lauding Texas Instruments for its breakthrough designs that reduced from four to one the number of chips needed to operate a cell phone. Looks like the company is at it again.</p>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Handheld computer shipments slumped in 2002, as an expected boom in demand from corporations failed to materialize, according to an industry study released on Monday. Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants, or PDAs, the pocket-sized digital companions that can store thousands of appointments, contacts and notes, fell 9.1 percent to 12.1 million units in 2002, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of research firm Gartner Inc. "The more lucrative enterprise market has been stagnant because of poor economic conditions and a perception that PDAs are not yet capable of delivering sufficient return on investment," said Todd...

Okay. I need your assistance. I'm interested in tapping the resources around here and finding some good palm downloads. In particular, I have struck out trying to find a NAB version for download, and I'd like to hear how the various PDA bible readers and versions have been received.