Now you know...

[Shankara20]

Huang Chunyi, 94, of Taiwan, told a reporter from China Daily in May that the secret to his longevity is that he likes to look at photographs of pretty women every day, and he showed off his collection of 100,000 that he has amassed from newspapers and magazines over the last 20 years. His favorites are Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and Chinese model Chiling Lin. "I hope these scrapbooks will become family heirlooms," he said, "so that my grandchildren can get a look at them." [China Daily, 5-16-06]

 

[Shankara20]

Garrett Sapp filed a lawsuit in July seeking compensation for injuries from a 2004 auto accident in West Des Moines, Iowa, in which Christopher Garton's car, turning, hit Sapp's because Garton's attention was diverted by (according to a police report) the oral sex he was receiving from his wife. [Des Moines Register, 7-26-06]

 

[Shankara20]

Ldr?

In August, zookeepers at Apenheul ape park in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, said they had arranged with counterparts at a park in Borneo to establish a live Internet video connection to provide companionship to their respective rare orangutans, treating the connection as sort of a visual dating site. An Apenheul spokeswoman suggested the apes might learn to push buttons to transfer food to each other, creating a mutual fondness that might lead (if transportation can be arranged) to mating. [Toronto Star, 8-15-06]

 

[Shankara20]

A Connecticut company (454 Life Sciences) and Germany's Max Planck Institute have made recent breakthroughs in developing the genome of a Neanderthal man, which shows a 99 percent-plus similarity with that of humans, according to a July New York Times report. If they succeed, it might be possible to bring the species back to life by implanting the genes into a human egg (provided, of course, that some woman volunteers to bear a Neanderthal baby). [Austin American-Statesman-New York Times, 7-21-06]

 

[Shankara20]

About one-fifth of professional rodeo bull riders have given up their cowboy hats and now wear modified hockey helmets with face masks because of the prevalence of serious injuries. Said one diehard, though, "I don't wear a cowboy hat because I'm a bull rider. I wear a cowboy hat because I'm a cowboy." [Los Angeles Times, 10-21-06]

 

[Shankara20]

At least 30 Texas death-row inmates have pages on dating Web sites, according to a November Associated Press report, and the murderers usually describe themselves in cuddly terms. Wrote convicted cop-killer Randy Halprin, "I think I'm a pretty funny guy. I have a wacked (sic) sense of humor. I can be a big kid at heart. I'm a hopeless (and I mean hopeless) romatic (sic)." [Amarillo Globe News-AP, 11-11-06]

However, also in November, Calvin Bennett, 26, a suspect in two Arkansas murders, was traced by police to Rothschild, Wis., by the personal ad he had placed on a dating Web site, describing himself as shy and giving his ideal evening as "a nice romantic dinner with soft music, followed by a romantic walk or a carriage ride." [Minneapolis Star Tribune-AP, 11-20-06]

 

[Shankara20]

What is a "gunsel"?

When Hammett wrote the novel The Maltese Falcon, he described Wilmer as a "catamite" (a young man in a sexual relationship with an older man). The publisher objected, so Hammett changed it to "gunsel," an obscure bit of street slang with the same meaning. Because so few people were familiar with the term, it snuck past the Breen Office and into the finished film.



GUNSEL

In modern American slang a gunsel is a criminal carrying a gun. So it was natural that it should be spoken in the episode of Deadwood aired in the US. The two saloon keepers Al Swearengen and Cy Tolliver both refer to the brothers Wyatt and Morgan Earp, who had supposedly saved the stagecoach from road agents, as gunsels, meaning gunslingers. The summary of the plot on the Home Box Office Web site says: “Cy presents to Hearst his plot to engender a duel between Bullock and Wyatt Earp; ‘...whether Bullock or this gunsel stood at the finish there’d be no losing in it for you.’”

Wyatt Earp, the famous marshal of Wichita and Dodge City, was certainly recorded as being in Deadwood in 1876, so the historical setting is right. But nobody could have called him a gunsel for two reasons: the word didn’t exist then, and even when it came into existence, about twenty years later, it didn’t mean a gunman but a raw youth. In particular, in convict and tramp slang a gunsel was a young homosexual male, especially one who was the companion of an older man. It is generally taken to derive from the Yiddish gendzel, a little goose, from German Gänslein, a gosling.

A plausible story of the way the word changed sense was set out by Erle Stanley Gardner in an article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1965. He claimed it was the fault of Dashiell Hammett. Together with Gardner, Raymond Chandler and others, he was a contributor to the old Black Mask pulp magazine edited by Joseph Shaw that featured naturalistic crime stories. But Shaw was dead against including vulgarisms and blue-pencilled some of Hammett’s underworld usages. To retaliate, as Gardner told the story, Hammett laid a trap for Shaw. In his next story he included the term gooseberry lay. Shaw pounced on this and rejected it, though it wasn’t a rude term at all but tramps’ slang for stealing washing off clotheslines to sell. But Hammett also included gunsel in the story, which Shaw left in, thinking it meant “gunman”.

The significant appearance of the word was in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, serialised in Black Mask in 1929 and published as a novel the following year: “‘Another thing,’ Spade repeated, glaring at the boy: ‘Keep that gunsel away from me while you’re making up your mind. I’ll kill him.” The word was spoken by Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in the 1941 film of the book and so became much more widely known. If you read Hammett’s description of the boy, you’ll realise that he was subtly making the point that he actually was gay, but if you hadn’t been tuned into that you might miss it.

 

[Shankara20]

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup truck in the driveway.

Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson -- thinking quickly, if not clearly -- cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.

On Thursday, a grand jury handed up a manslaughter indictment against the wife, not the husband.

In a case likely to reinforce the state's reputation for don't-mess-with-Texas justice, the grand jury declined to charge the husband with murder, the charge on which he was arrested by police.

"If I found somebody with my wife or with my kids in my house, there's no telling what I might do," said Juan Muniz, 33, who was having lunch Friday with one of his two small children at a restaurant in the middle-class suburban Dallas neighborhood where the Robersons lived. "I probably would have done the same thing."

Tracy Roberson, 35, could get two to 20 years in prison in the slaying of Devin LaSalle, a 32-year-old UPS employee.

Assistant District Attorney Sean Colston declined to comment on specifics of the case or the grand jury proceedings but said Texas law allows a defendant to claim justification if he has "a reasonable belief that his actions are necessary, even though what they believe at the time turns out not to be true."

Mark Osler, a Baylor University law school professor and a former federal prosecutor, said the grand jurors evidently put themselves in the husband's place: "I can see one of them saying, 'I would have shot the guy, too. I was just protecting my wife."'

The December night before the shooting, Tracy Roberson sent LaSalle a text message that read in part, "Hi friend, come see me please! I need to feel your warm embrace!" according to court papers. LaSalle apparently agreed.

Darrell Roberson, a 38-year-old employee of a real estate firm, discovered the two, his wife clad in a robe and underwear.

When Tracy Roberson cried that she was being raped, LaSalle tried to drive away and her husband drew the gun he happened to be carrying and fired several shots at the truck, authorities said.

Darrell Roberson's attorney did not immediately return a call for comment.
His wife also was charged with making a false report to a police officer -- for allegedly saying she was raped -- and could get up to six months behind bars on that offense. It was not immediately clear whether she had a lawyer.

She had not been arrested as of Friday afternoon.

 

[graceanne]

Serves her right.

 

[Shankara20]

something you need to know about work

no thanks needed....

 

[Shankara20]

Call Her Madam -- and a Lot of Washington Nervous
By Dana Milbank - Tuesday, May 1, 2007

The alleged "D.C. Madam," Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is a woman of many talents.

Palfrey, who is terrorizing Washington men by threatening to reveal the 15,000 clients of her, um, escort service, also revealed herself yesterday to be an expert stock picker. Moments after dismissing the lawyer who was defending her in a federal racketeering case, she rose to ask U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler a question.

The defendant, in high heels and bright-red lipstick, told the judge she holds 5,000 shares of Dolby Laboratories in her Schwab account. "The stock has increased in value approximately $13 a share" -- to $37 -- "since this particular asset was seized," she explained after a brief struggle to operate the courtroom microphone. "I really do believe it's at its peak. I'd like the court to order this stock be sold as soon as possible."

The judge declined to play portfolio manager. "At this point, I cannot do that," Kessler said.

In a bit of felicitous timing, Palfrey had a status hearing in her prostitution case yesterday, only three days after she forced the resignation of a former client, Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. But her performance made her look more mad than madam. In the space of a few minutes, she dismissed her highly regarded public defender, watched as another lawyer she brought to the witness table was kicked out by the judge, and gave a news conference explaining her "ethically conscientious choice" to give her phone records to ABC News in hopes that outed clients will serve as defense witnesses.

"Surely, most people have established by now that mine is a very bizarre and rather unusual case," Palfrey told the television cameras after the hearing. Moments later, she added: "I believe there is something very, very rotten at the core of my circumstance."

On these points, no objection will be sustained.

The fourth-floor courtroom was packed with reporters, curious lawyers and a couple of sex-trial tourists. "Do you know where the D.C. Madam is?" inquired a perspiring man in a yellow plaid shirt and white jeans as he wandered the hallway. At the prosecution table, one of the government lawyers was in a wheelchair inscribed with the word "QUICKIE" in big letters on the back.

Palfrey arrived with a freelance writer carrying a National Wildlife Federation tote bag and with a flamboyant lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, who represents Palfrey in a civil case against the government.

"Do you have anything to say going in?" asked WRC-TV's Pat Collins.

"Yeah," Sibley answered. "Get out of my way." Sibley, wearing a moth-eaten suit and penny loafers, pulled out a chair and poured a cup of water for Palfrey; it was a gentlemanly way to treat a madam.

"She's asked me to sit next to her to explain what's going on," Sibley told the judge.

"Excuse me, Mr. Sibley," Kessler replied, evicting him from the defense table. "You are not in this case."

Palfrey wore a snug blue jacket, striped pants and 2 1/2 -inch heels. She had dangling teardrop earrings and heavy mascara, and lipstick applied to enhance her Cupid's bow. She sat quietly as Kessler granted her motion to dismiss her public defender but denied a request for $150,000 in taxpayer money to hire a new lawyer.

"You are operating under the Criminal Justice Act because of indigent issues," the judge explained. "It does not give you the right to select counsel."

Madam nodded her understanding and stole pouty glances at the spectators.

The judge spoke gently, as if addressing a child. "This is a serious criminal case, with serious charges, as Ms. Palfrey knows," she said, later adding, "You're a very intelligent person." Kessler even agreed to remove Palfrey's electronic monitoring, rejecting prosecution arguments that "the defendant has a history of flight." Only when prosecutors noted that Palfrey had already filed various pleadings before the appeals court and the Supreme Court did the judge gently suggest to the defendant that she might first consider "whether you want to ask for a hearing before me."

Madam nodded again, then left the defense table to go on the offensive in the courthouse plaza.

She began by saying "how genuinely sorry I am for Mr. Tobias," but she then made an example of him for the other clients in the "46 pounds of telephone invoices" she is releasing. "My hope [that] defense witnesses could be found by combing through the information indeed is being realized," she said, scolding Tobias and the "many, many others who have used my company's services" for not coming forward to defend her.

"How can this be described as anything else but blackmail?" one of the reporters asked.

"I call that due process of law, sir," Sibley shot back.

"What about the argument that this is witness intimidation?" asked The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig, seeking to direct the question to Palfrey.

"Everyone would like to hear Jeane and none of you will," Sibley answered.

Gabe Caggiano of "Inside Edition" tried to question Palfrey again as she left. "Unprofessional!" roared Sibley. "Please do not have 'Inside Edition' call me again." With that, the madam, her lawyer, her photographer and her biographer sped off in a black sedan.

Shares of Dolby Laboratories fell 2.07 points, to 35.42, on the New York Stock Exchange.

 

[@}-}rebecca----]

Re: Article above

Irrespective of her charges it never fails to amaze me at how both the Judicial system and the media will infantalise woman or denigrate the argument to the status of pouts and cat fights. Imagine rewriting that entire article describing character, demeanour and attire of a man in a similar situation.

Makes for entertaining reading as it's obviously not bland . Does tend to make the reader rather dismissive to the validation of the subject however. I sense huge frustration for anyone not fitting within a criteria of typical.

 

[Shankara20]

Irrespective of her charges it never fails to amaze me at how both the Judicial system and the media will infantalise woman or denigrate the argument to the status of pouts and cat fights. Imagine rewriting that entire article describing character, demeanour and attire of a man in a similar situation.

Makes for entertaining reading as it's obviously not bland . Does tend to make the reader rather dismissive to the validation of the subject however. I sense huge frustration for anyone not fitting within a criteria of typical.

I was disappointed with the Washington Post for publishing an article written the way this one was. There are so many ways I could go off with this story - but not today.

 

[@}-}rebecca----]

I was disappointed with the Washington Post for publishing an article written the way this one was. There are so many ways I could go off with this story - but not today.

Fu I am not upset . I am 'experienced' . Never wear kitten heels to Court .

In fact part of me enjoyed reading the article. The 'sane' half baulked however

 

[Shankara20]

Servicing someone by giving them a blowjob makes everyone happy.

read the article below and then blow.....


If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A01

The e-mail came from the next room.

"You gotta see this!" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.

As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe's head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests: One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually forgo eating.
What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time.

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry -- rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and propagate.

Moral decisions can often feel like abstract intellectual challenges, but a number of experiments such as the one by Grafman have shown that emotions are central to moral thinking. In another experiment published in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with damage to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lack the ability to feel their way to moral answers.

When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers. Damasio said the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that when confronted by a difficult issue -- such as whether to shoot down a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city -- these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with normally functioning brains.

Such experiments have two important implications. One is that morality is not merely about the decisions people reach but also about the process by which they get there. Another implication, said Adrian Raine, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral people.

Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse. Without that awareness, people relying exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to sort their way through moral thickets. Does that mean they should be held to different standards of accountability?

"Eventually, you are bound to get into areas that for thousands of years we have preferred to keep mystical," said Grafman, the chief cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "Some of the questions that are important are not just of intellectual interest, but challenging and frightening to the ways we ground our lives. We need to step very carefully."
Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by philosophers and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's basic propensities.

Moral decision-making often involves competing brain networks vying for supremacy, he said. Simple moral decisions -- is killing a child right or wrong? -- are simple because they activate a straightforward brain response. Difficult moral decisions, by contrast, activate multiple brain regions that conflict with one another, he said.
In one 2004 brain-imaging experiment, Greene asked volunteers to imagine that they were hiding in a cellar of a village as enemy soldiers came looking to kill all the inhabitants. If a baby was crying in the cellar, Greene asked, was it right to smother the child to keep the soldiers from discovering the cellar and killing everyone?
The reason people are slow to answer such an awful question, the study indicated, is that emotion-linked circuits automatically signaling that killing a baby is wrong clash with areas of the brain that involve cooler aspects of cognition. One brain region activated when people process such difficult choices is the inferior parietal lobe, which has been shown to be active in more impersonal decision-making. This part of the brain, in essence, was "arguing" with brain networks that reacted with visceral horror.

Such studies point to a pattern, Greene said, showing "competing forces that may have come online at different points in our evolutionary history. A basic emotional response is probably much older than the ability to evaluate costs and benefits."

While one implication of such findings is that people with certain kinds of brain damage may do bad things they cannot be held responsible for, the new research could also expand the boundaries of moral responsibility.

Neuroscience research, Greene said, is finally explaining a problem that has long troubled philosophers and moral teachers: Why is it that people who are willing to help someone in front of them will ignore abstract pleas for help from those who are distant, such as a request for a charitable contribution that could save the life of a child overseas?

"We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn't face the other kind of situation," Greene said. "It is comforting to think your moral intuitions are reliable and you can trust them. But if my analysis is right, your intuitions are not trustworthy. Once you realize why you have the intuitions you have, it puts a burden on you" to think about morality differently.

Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has found that people all over the world process moral questions in the same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human brain, rather than a product of culture. It may be useful to think about morality much like language, in that its basic features are hard-wired, Hauser said. Different cultures and religions build on that framework in much the way children in different cultures learn different languages using the same neural machinery.

Hauser said that if his theory is right, there should be aspects of morality that are automatic and unconscious -- just like language. People would reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a sentence without having been trained in linguistics. Hauser said the idea could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances.

U.S. law, for example, distinguishes between a physician who removes a feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who administers a drug to kill the patient.
Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more emotionally charged -- and therefore feels like a different moral problem, when it really is not: "In the end, the doctor's intent is to reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead."

 

[neonflux]

I know that I was a little silly and flip about this article on your other thread (and certainly your intro is, LOL), but I found this article fascinating, and very reassuring at a certain level.

It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint that bands of proto-humans whose members were more likely to exhibit altruistic behavior would be more successful than their less altruistic counterparts. We are physically weak in comparison to most other species - all we got is our culture and each other... This so contrasts with the "survival of the fittest" madness so apparent in modern American society.

Now, how does this relate to your BDSM play? *said with a wink, a chuckle and a silly grin*

Oh, no, no, no, now I see! We give and you receive? Is this really just a sly request for panties? Or were you really only interested in a blowjobs, LOL!

Neon

 

[@}-}rebecca----]

drive by posting.............vroooom

PHILANTHROPIST, n.
A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

 

[Shankara20]

Now, how does this relate to your BDSM play? *said with a wink, a chuckle and a silly grin*

big question
little caffeine
late for work
will be back later

Oh, no, no, no, now I see! We give and you receive? Is this really just a sly request for panties? Or were you really only interested in a blowjobs, LOL!

of the items/actions in your post - listed in order of my enjoyment level
1 - giving a blowjob
2 - receiving found panties
3 - receiving a blowjob

That list can be discussed later, but I am a Top who gives first and foremost

 

[Shankara20]

PHILANTHROPIST, n.
A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.

does he have a hole in that pocket or what?

 

[@}-}rebecca----]

does he have a hole in that pocket or what?

I don't know Fu, I refused to put my hand in there :laughs:

 

[Shankara20]

Damn Pussies...

Why Do Cats Hang Around Us? (Hint: They Can't Open Cans)

Genetic Research Suggests Felines 'Domesticated Themselves'

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 29, 2007;

Your hunch is correct. Your cat decided to live with you, not the other way around. The sad truth is, it may not be a final decision.

But don't take this feline diffidence personally. It runs in the family. And it goes back a long way -- about 12,000 years, actually.

Those are among the inescapable conclusions of a genetic study of the origins of the domestic cat, being published today in the journal Science.

The findings, drawn from an analysis of nearly 1,000 cats around the world, suggest that the ancestors of today's tabbies, Persians and Siamese wandered into Near Eastern settlements at the dawn of agriculture. They were looking for food, not friendship.

They found what they were seeking in the form of rodents feeding on stored grain. They stayed for 12 millennia, although not without wandering off now and again to consort with their wild cousins.

The story is quite different from that of other domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, goats, horses -- and dogs, cats' main rivals for human affection. It may even provide insight on the behavior of the animal that, if not man's best friend, is certainly his most inscrutable.

"It is a story about one of the more important biological experiments ever undertaken," said Stephen J. O'Brien, a molecular geneticist at the National Cancer Institute's laboratory in Frederick, Md., and one of the supervisors of the project.

"We think what happened is that cats sort of domesticated themselves," said Carlos A. Driscoll, the University of Oxford graduate student who did the work, which required him, among other things, to befriend feral cats on the Mongolian steppes.

Today, there are 37 species in the family Felidae, ranging from lions through ocelots down to little Mittens. All domestic cats are descended from the species Felis sylvestris ("cat of the woods"), which goes by the common name "wildcat."

The species is indigenous to Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. The New World, Japan and Oceania lack wildcats. North America's closest counterpart is the lynx.

There are five subspecies of wildcats, and they look very much like many pet cats, particularly non-pedigree ones. The Scottish wildcat, for example, is indistinguishable from a barn cat with a mackerel tabby coat. These animals, however, are a true wild species. They are not escaped pets that have become feral, or reverted to the wild.

Driscoll and his collaborators, who included Oxford zoologist David Macdonald, took blood samples and ear punch biopsies from all wildcat subspecies as well as from fancy-breed cats, non-pedigree pet cats and feral cats. They analyzed two kinds of genetic fingerprints: nuclear DNA, which carries nearly all of an animal's genes and reflects inheritance from both parents, and mitochondrial DNA, which exists outside the cell nucleus, carries only a few genes and descends through the generations only from mothers.

Both fingerprints showed that domesticated cats around the world are most closely related to the wildcat subspecies (called lybica) that lives in the Near East. (War prevented the sampling of Iraqi wildcats, but the researchers believe those animals are of the same species as animals they collected samples from in Israel and on the Arabian Peninsula.)

One might think that people in each region would have domesticated their local wildcats. In that case, European pet cats today would genetically most closely resemble European wildcats and Chinese cats would be descended from East Asian wildcats. But that isn't the case.

Why not?

Genetics can't answer the question, but history and archaeology can provide a good guess.

Large-scale grain agriculture began in the Near East's Fertile Crescent. With the storage of surplus grain came mice, which fed on it and contaminated it.

Settled farming communities with dense rodent populations were a new habitat. Wildcats came out of the woods and grasslands to exploit it. They may have lived close to man -- but not petting-close -- for centuries.

Eventually, though, natural selection favored individual animals whose genetic makeup by chance made them tolerant of human contact. Such behavior provided them with things -- a night indoors, the occasional bowl of milk -- that allowed them to out-compete their scaredy-cat relatives.

For people, it was a great package -- agriculture, food surplus (and all the civilizing effects that came with it), with domesticated cats thrown in to protect the wealth by eating the mice.

"When that technology was transferred to other cultures, so were the cats," said Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California in Los Angeles. Therein lies the reason other cultures didn't domesticate local wildcats, he said. "Why reinvent the wheel?"

This is not true with other acts of animal domestication.

Genetic studies have shown that cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and water buffalo were all domesticated at least twice in independent events. With horses, it happened many times.

The consequence of one other feline behavior -- the average cat's uncertainty about whether it wants to be indoors or out -- was also written in the genes Driscoll studied.

He found that a significant fraction of wildcats in Europe, southern Africa and central Asia were hybrids. They carried genetic evidence of having tomcatted around from time to time with their domesticated relatives.

 

[Shankara20]

Five Painful Places to Get a Tattoo

Being pricked repeatedly with a needle hurts no matter where it's done, but some body spots are more sensitive than others.
By Temma Ehrenfeld | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 7, 2008 | Updated: 8:45 p.m. ET Feb 7, 2008



Part of the experience of getting a tattoo is not knowing in advance how much it will hurt. For some it can be a terribly painful procedure. Others describe it as simply irritating, a "hot scratch" that is easily forgettable compared to the pleasure of wearing a work of art. If you want a tattoo but have a low threshold for pain, opt for fleshy spots like the thigh or bicep. The most painful places are generally the areas with a dense concentration of nerves or wherever the skin and bone are close together, without a layer of fat in between. Unless you go to a doctor for "permanent makeup" tattoos (like eyebrows) rather than a design, you won't get much help with the pain, says Charles Zwerling, a Goldsboro, N.C., eye doctor who specializes in permanent makeup (he uses local anesthesia). Only a doctor can give you a shot of painkiller, and tattoo artists often avoid numbing creams because they require 20 minutes or so to take effect and can prolong the procedure. Like the tattoo itself, pain is personal. What one person finds excruciating might be quite bearable to another. But since you may not know what your tolerance level is until you actually go under the needle, here's a short list of the most potentially painful places for body ink:

1. The eyeball. Believe it or not, some people do get permanent makeup inside the eye, says Zwerling About once a year, a patient asks him to put pigment into a disfiguring blind eye to make it look like a normal one. The many nerves going into the front of the eye would make this an excruciating procedure without anesthesia. (Two other popular spots for permanent makeup—the eye brows and lips—are also painful, the lips especially so because of the many nerve endings located there.)

2. The mons pubis. The pain of getting a tattoo down under runs a close second to the lips, says New York laser surgeon Bruce Katz, who specializes in removing tattoos. There are a lot of nerves, which provide pleasure (as opposed to pain) under different circumstances. If you try this in a tattoo parlor, ask for a cream, advises Katz.

3. The top of the foot or ankle. Lots of women opt for tattoos in this area so the eye-catching designs will be visible when they're barefoot or wearing sandals during the summer months. But it's also ouch-inducing because of the absence of fat.

4. Behind the ear. A tattoo here can be endearingly sexy. Just remember ladies, there's nothing in this spot but skin and bone—and nerves (though not as many as on your lip surface).

5. The chest (above your rib cage). If you're thin, this might be one time you'd be grateful for a layer of fat around your middle.The absence of padding makes this one of the most painful places for men to get a traditional tattoo.

Some other tips: Don't take aspirin before getting a tattoo, as it can increase bleeding (though other pain-killing pills can help). Schedule a time when you won't feel rushed, advises Karen Hudson, editor of "Chick Ink: 40 Stories of Tattoos—and the Women Who Wear Them." An average-size tattoo takes about two hours; ask the artist beforehand for an estimate of how long yours will take. If you're afraid of needles, consider a spot where you can't see the needle go in, or resolve not to look. Another option: a henna tattoo painted on the outer layer of the skin. There are no needles involved. As the skin exfoliates, this kind of tattoo slowly disappears. If you miss it, you can replace it with permanent body art. If not, you'll be relieved you only got a temporary tattoo. Removing an inked tattoo is painful, too.

Editor's note: The original story incorrectly referred to "black" henna; after being alerted to this error by readers, we deleted the word "black."
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/109282

 

[Homburg]

Garrett Sapp filed a lawsuit in July seeking compensation for injuries from a 2004 auto accident in West Des Moines, Iowa, in which Christopher Garton's car, turning, hit Sapp's because Garton's attention was diverted by (according to a police report) the oral sex he was receiving from his wife. [Des Moines Register, 7-26-06]

In my many years of getting Road Head, I've never once lost control of the car, and never once deviated into another lane. Someone obviously needs to work on control.

 

[DeservingBitch]

Irrespective of her charges it never fails to amaze me at how both the Judicial system and the media will infantalise woman or denigrate the argument to the status of pouts and cat fights. Imagine rewriting that entire article describing character, demeanour and attire of a man in a similar situation.

Makes for entertaining reading as it's obviously not bland . Does tend to make the reader rather dismissive to the validation of the subject however. I sense huge frustration for anyone not fitting within a criteria of typical.

You will have fun with this: The Regenderizer.

 

[YourCaptor]

CALIFORNIA CODES
PENAL CODE

261.5. (a) Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual
intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the
perpetrator, if the person is a minor. For the purposes of this
section, a "minor" is a person under the age of 18 years and an
"adult" is a person who is at least 18 years of age.
(b) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual
intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years older or
three years younger than the perpetrator, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

286. (a) Sodomy is sexual conduct consisting of contact between the
penis of one person and the anus of another person. Any sexual
penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the crime of
sodomy.
(b) (1) Except as provided in Section 288, any person who
participates in an act of sodomy with another person who is under 18
years of age shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison,
or in a county jail for not more than one year.

288a. (a) Oral copulation is the act of copulating the mouth of one
person with the sexual organ or anus of another person.
(b) (1) Except as provided in Section 288, any person who
participates in an act of oral copulation with another person who is
under 18 years of age shall be punished by imprisonment in the state
prison, or in a county jail for a period of not more than one year.

In short
Having sex as a minor is a misdemeanor
Having anal sex as a minor is a felony
Having oral sex as a minor is a felony