TBD on Ning

All Blog Posts (2,380)

Once Upon a Time, I Was Invited to the White House.....

Note: This is not my personal story, but it sure made me think about how tolerant we've become. Just switch out the location, characters, and particulars and insert your own - we all share a similar story.

We have acquiesced many times in the face of confrontation --- even at our greatest expense. And where are we now? Faced with challenges that seem too much to handle, so we expect someone else to come in a clean up the mess. Well, clean up costs big money. And in the case of our… Continue

Added by OCNaturalDoc on July 22, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Cool article.....

Nice article in yesterdays paper about my National Track meet competition and the upcoming premier of my film "Ballbusters" .. can read it at http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/news/dundee/1675575,Talk-about-town_el072109.article

Added by Andrew R. Boyce on July 22, 2009 at 1:37pm — 3 Comments

Let 'em Whine!

I post a blog now and then to keep track on the wackiness of the frenzied cRyght, just to see what their latest piss and whine is. I see the truly ignorant are still after a "legitimate birth certificate", regardless of the fact that the Clinton Machine dug, the State Department investigated and was satisfied, as did a number of other legitimate sources....the drivers of the cRyght keep the true idiots circling the chum in the… Continue

Added by Madhatterat60 on July 22, 2009 at 8:03am — No Comments

It's All Done

The surgery went textbook perfectly. Plates and screws and bolts are all in place, and she's resting as comfortably as can be expected.

Many thanks to all of you who had us in your thoughts and prayers.

~q.

Added by Quilty on July 21, 2009 at 2:03pm — 1 Comment

!!!! BEWARE !!!! Scamers are lurking

This is also posted on message board.

Do you think that we should have a place to post the names of scammers?

This is a message that i wrote to some one warning them of a person trying to run a scam for money

well i got a friend request on 7/2 and it was Justina. By the forth of july she was in love and wanting to come here. As soon as she started to talk about wanting to come here and marrying it was obvious that she was a scam. I decided to string her along… Continue

Added by GIL on July 20, 2009 at 4:06pm — 1 Comment

Does Referring to a Town in Austria Constitute a Prohibited F-Bomb?

I left a post on "All Drift All The Time" about the town of Fucking, Austria. It was meant as humorous, and I think it would be viewed as humorous by any reasonable standard. I do not believe that referring to the name of a town in Austria, whether it be Vienna, Linz, or Fucking constitutes the use of offensive language. It does not even constitute an F-bomb by any stretch of the imagination.

Several days later -- I emphasize, several days later -- I was deleted from the group on the… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 20, 2009 at 11:38am — 5 Comments

Bing - Two thumbs down

I'm a fuddy duddy. Yes it's true. So I forced myself to try Microsoft's new search engine Bing. I did a taste test: I searched for "FTP client torrent" on Bing. I got a list of commercial FTP client sites, and a link to the uTorrent client. Hurrah.

Then I googled the same thing. Got a link to the BulletProofFTP client with crack on Pirate Bay (still alive!). The link brought me to a torrent description. The torrent appeared to be valid, though "I did not download it, install it or… Continue

Added by Alendar on July 20, 2009 at 11:11am — 1 Comment

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

While joining the in-laws at their annual reunion in East BFE, Mississippi, my 16 y/o daughter, Sara, twisted her ankle and broke both leg bones. The thin one is splintered vertically, and the big bone is cracked open horizontally.

Three doctors concur that it will take surgery to set the bones. Which can't be done at least until tomorrow, when they open their "SurgiCenter," where her orthopedist practices.

Mercifully, the ER doc loaded us down with GOOOOD drugs, so I'm… Continue

Added by Quilty on July 19, 2009 at 8:57pm — 5 Comments

This is getting ridiculous.

If I were a superstitious man, I'd start to think that my ex was still placing curses on me....

But then, I remember that she could never do anything right - So it's just more of the usual Weird Luck...and one very sick fiancee. Gotta stick to those priorities...

I sincerely hope to be back on the air next Sunday. My apologies to all that tried to listen in....

Added by Snagg on July 19, 2009 at 4:26pm — 8 Comments

On the Problem of Censorship--on TBD and Elsewhere

I guess the rules of some of the groups on TBD preclude me from quoting some of my favorite passages from James Joyce's masterpiece, the novel "Ulysses." Can you imagine getting deleted from a TBD group because you have quoted from a masterpiece of literature? Ha, absurd! I suspect that some of the TBD group administrators are just a clinamen away from insanity.

Speaking of Ulysses, my tenth-grade (1968-1969) English teacher, Thomas Horan, a proud Irishman, wrote his Ph.D. thesis on… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 19, 2009 at 12:30pm — 3 Comments

Whatever Happened to Ben Greenberg?

My thoughts go back 19 years, to the year 1990, when I worked at the Washington, DC office of the Dallas-based law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. And, yes, those were the happiest times of my life, working for my mentor, Bob Strauss.

During the summer of 1990 the firm hired three temporary employees. They were college students: Ben Greenberg (University of Pennsylvania); Robert Wyman (Brown University); and Matthew Erskine (University of Virginia). Greenberg, Wyman,… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 19, 2009 at 11:00am — No Comments

Sonic Youth, St Louis, Mo, 7/17/09

My, My - What a difference thirty years makes.

Not for Sonic Youth, exactly - They have remained remarkably dedicated to their vision of experimentalism, musical independence, the beauty that can be found in the tension between extremes, and squalling, ear-shattering racket.

Maybe that was a part of the point; A band whose staked-out territory is usually thought of as heaving, sweaty clubs and gnarly, art-damaged New York critical discussions, playing a free show on the… Continue

Added by Snagg on July 18, 2009 at 3:50pm — No Comments

A death in the family

It is always interesting to me at what events in my life and in the world I shed tears. A friend once told me you can’t help how you feel. Tonight, I learned of the death of Walter Cronkite. As I saw his face on the television and heard the sound of his voice once again, the tears started to come. I found this odd, at least at first.

Growing up black in America was not as hard on me as it was on my parents, grandparents, or even my older sister, but it was no walk in the park either.… Continue

Added by Vernon Windsor on July 18, 2009 at 1:29pm — 11 Comments

All hope abandon ye who enter here

Hope

It has been said:

"All Ye Who Enter Here

Abandon All Hope".

I'm here to tell Ya

I ain't buyin' that dope.

If You are soo transfixed by the truth

that it demands bloodshed to be proved,

than perhaps the truth has lost it's luster.

instead proving itself worthless and unimportant;

hence the belligerence.

I review the common denominators.

I may have missed the nick… Continue

Added by Michael J Masiko on July 18, 2009 at 12:01pm — 4 Comments

On Talking About Toothpaste in Non-Toothpaste Groups on TBD

I got a message from George V. Richards yesterday about wanting to keep his group "All Drift All The Time" light. He doesn't want toothpaste comments on his site. He thinks it's inappropriate to talk about toothpaste there. And we all know about the sites where they talk about toothpaste and related issues all the time.

But I'm a nonconformist and a free-speech advocate. So, what the heck, if I want to talk about toothpaste, I'll talk about toothpaste! Here goes.

I do it… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 18, 2009 at 11:00am — 6 Comments

The Master

The great swordsman Yagyu Tajima-no-kami became a teacher at the shogun's court. One day, one of the shogun's personal guards came to him and asked him to give him training in fencing. The master looked at the man and said, "As I observe, you seem to be a master of fencing yourself. Tell me to what school you belong before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil."

The guardsman said, "It shames me to confess it, but I have never learned the art."

"Are you… Continue

Added by Bill on July 18, 2009 at 12:01am — 3 Comments

Why Isn't Joan Nathan Preparing for Shabbat?

It's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon at the Cleveland Park Public Library in DC, and Joan Nathan, the world renowned authority on Jewish cuisine is talking to Barbara Gaunt, one of the librarians, about research on her latest book. Wow, a celebrity in my midst! I can't believe it. At this very moment I'm looking at the face of a woman I've seen on Martha Stewart. My heart is racing. I'm in the presence of a real-life personage. I wonder if she's ever read my story, The Dinner Party?

Wow,… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 17, 2009 at 2:00pm — 2 Comments

The Other Seinfeld

Jeffrey Seinfeld, Professor of Social Work

BA City College of NY; MSW Hunter College; PhD New York University

jeffrey.seinfeld@nyu.edu | (212) 998-5978

Dr. Jeffrey Seinfeld, professor of social work, joined the faculty at NYU in 1987. He served as chairperson of the Human Behavior and Social Environment area from 1998 to 2001. Dr. Seinfeld’s professional areas of interest include Object Relations Theory, Social Philosophy, and Existential Philosophy. He has received… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 17, 2009 at 1:30pm — 2 Comments

Why Obama's Health Care Reform Will Destroy US Jobs and Devastate the Economy

If you want to know why U.S. businesses increasingly outsource jobs to other countries, just add up the cost of doing business in America: As an employer, you have to pay not only higher wages than most other countries, but you also have to pay for the lost productivity and missed days due to the astonishingly poor health of the U.S. workforce.

Now, under the new Obama health care reform bill, you'll have to pay an additional eight percent of your payroll as a new tax to cover the… Continue

Added by OCNaturalDoc on July 17, 2009 at 11:00am — 20 Comments

The Ore and Aura of the Real

I swim in a sea of reality, but that makes me no more a fish than Moby Dick was. Mine is an unreal universe in which the exceptional is commonplace, in which the transient states of frustration or depression or meaninglessness are the norm. I am not a character whose life conforms more or less to the life of the ordinary man. I am an anticharacter in my experiences and in my sense of the world of reality. I require the fabulous and the bizarre. That is my metier. My purpose and philosophy of… Continue

Added by Gary Freedman on July 17, 2009 at 10:59am — No Comments