Mmm, so many tempting choices to be made!  For politics and punditry, I think I'd invite the P.J. O'Rourkes, Mr. & Mrs. Jonah Goldberg, Condoleeza Rice  and Thomas Sowell.  For pure pleasure I'd have Doc and Mrs. Jay, Dave Carter, Madeleine Peyroux, Itzhak Perlman, and Loreena McKennitt .   I'd ask Loreena to bring her harp, Itzhak his violin, Madeleine her amazing voice and Doc and Dave their senses of humor.    

Intros would start with homemade crostini and bruschetta with Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc/Viognier or vodka martinis then on to dinner with French onion soup and  Luigi Bosca Malbec.  Next  there'd be grilled Porterhouse steak, sautéed mushrooms, steamed green beans with bourbon-maple-pecan glaze and baked potatoes, and a good Brunello.   Poached pears  with vanilla ice cream and chocolate pastilles for dessert, plus  Galway Pipe tawny port, and French roast coffee.  (Sorry Dave, no chicory in the coffee.  Life can be cruel.)   

 Wha a sweet fantasy -  all that brainpower, experience, humor and music in one terrific night!

 Indaba - re:  post #65 - I2 with leopard skin - is that the young Michael Caine from "Zulu"?  Handsome enough to be.  I love the tartan and leopard look, particularly on a braw bonny Scot!

Hmm, Crow's Nest, there are as many denominations in Buddhism as in Christianity.  Samurai warriors and shoguns were Buddhists, as were about a quarter of the mongol horde, the  Shao-Lin monks and many of the great warriors of China.  Many  Gurkhas are Buddhist or quasi-Buddhist.    As for Tibetan Buddhists, I'd recommend that you look at the history of the Tibetan Resistance movement in 50's and 60's.   The TR's were incredibly brave, tough fighters, given the circumstances.

The core belief in reincarnation and expiation of karma makes Buddhists pacifists for the most part, but also gives them a very different approach to death than you find in Judeo-Christianity.   That approach can make for unusually bold, fearless warriors. 

Some Buddhists are contemplative to the point of seeming inert to Westerners, sort of like Trappists or the Christian hermits.  Some are not.

Excellent points, Barkha!   India did a very fine thing.  Still, I understand why the Dalai Lama laughed so - it's better than crying.  China's demographic conquest of Tibet has been frighteningly successful.  Will there be any real Tibetans left in Tibet in a few decades? 

Kyle, do you never tire of making snide reckless comments regarding people about whom you know nothing?  What IS your major malfunction where women are concerned?  You sure seem to have a lot of anger towards them.

You've turned this thread into a flame war over abortion and other liberal policies.  Okay, so you don't like the doctrines of liberals, democrats, the left, nanny staters and creatures from Planet Gore.  Neither do I.  But how are those folks fiscal conservative/social liberals? 

What would you call P. J. O'Rourke or Larry Elder if not a fiscal conservative/social liberals?  

Whether Anita Hill was lying or telling the truth, things started to change for women in the workplace, in their credit and financial lives, and in other legal and business relations in the late 80's, and for the good.  

Clearly there are  negative consequences of feminism but please, guys, do not pretend that women got fair deal under the old regime.  And as for men suffering from dangerous workplace conditions, disproportionate diseases, etc., it's true .   But when this happened to men, their families suffered, too, and there was no way for the wives or daughters to adequately make up for the lost income.

KEDavis - you wrote: "The bad old days were bad for men, too.  Women should not be allowed to shroud themselves with special blankets of pity or whatever, just because their difficulties involved things like giving birth that couldn't directly effect men (indirectly they affected men too, because mens' wives, daughters, sisters, etc were affected).  But the bad days for men didn't directly affect women so much either:  workplace danger, diseases that affected men more, "

Where do you come off with this "special blankets of pity" stuff?  I've never asked for pity, just to be given  equivalent treatment with similarly situated males.  What I got due to my female status, from the 1950's until Anita Hill,  included  being demeaned by male relatives, the example of female family friends trapped in physically abusive marriages because they had no way of supporting themselves,  discouragement from pursuing higher education by guidance counsellors, lower pay for the same work, sexual harrassment by supervisors and coworkers (grabass, tongue in my ear, offers of advantage if I slept with a supervisor), denial of opportunities and promotions offered to less-qualified men, and veiled threats if I complained.  To be continued.

Come again?  How do you come to the conclusion that we fc/sl's are afraid to vote republican?  Most of us ARE republicans, or republitarians anyway.

Heck, yes, as a fiscal conservative/social liberal I have repeatedly voted for fiscal conservatives despite my disagreement with some of their social policies.   As a sensible voter I take the one who seems the best of the lot when it's all added up. 

Crime does break my leg and pick my pocket.   Just because someone else may be the victim this time doesn't mean that it doesn't affect me, since I could very well be the next victim.  Plus I have to pay, through taxes, the costs of policing, prosecution, public defense, judicial bodies and incarceration in the criminal justice system.  And the cost of my insurance goes up.  And there are the secondary costs for kids on the dole because their parents are incarcerated or unemployable due to their criminal records. 

Kylez, if you were 7 during the Dukakis campaign, you are not old enough to remember the bad old days for women.  Red Feline is correct; they stunk.

How about "First Beer I Actually Enjoyed"?

I was 19, 1974, working as a hawker for a bowling booth at the SoCal Renaissance Faire in Agoura.  It was a hot 3-day weekend, the Faire  was packed and they ran out of water in the huge water vats midway through Sunday.   Hawking is thirsty work - constantly talking, making jokes, encouraging people to come in and play.  I'd usually go through a gallon or more of ice water each day, but when the water ran out, all the booth owner had was beer.   I didn't like beer up to that point, but by ring out Monday night I had learned to enjoy it. 

Count me in the social-liberal/fiscal-conservative camp.  To paraphrase Jefferson, if it doesn't pick my pocket or break my leg, I don't much care what others do.  Foolish government spending picks my pocket.  Foolish social policies (tolerance of addicts and unwed motherhood, compensatory racial discrimination, tolerance of bad schools) picks my pocket.  Homosexuals getting married or pregnant girls without the means to raise a baby having an abortion does not , and neither do they harm me physically. 

Same-sex marriage is probably the healthiest thing that could happen to the gay male community, where self-destructive promiscuity is a serious problem.  Anything that slows some of those boys down is a win for public health.  

I'd like to see a cutoff for abortion at 4 1/2 or 5 months, save for situations where continuing the pregnancy endangers the physical health of the mother.  If you can't make up your mind to get an abortion by the halfway point, you probably shouldn't have it at all.   Issues of extra-uterine viability come up at this stage, too.  

Many will disagree with these views, but so be it.

Fred, thanks for the great post!

The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Michael Crichton - nearly everything you need to know about human nature between two covers.

Good shot of a Quetzal, but you left out the end of the tail with the distinctive round dealy-bobber there. 

I saw one in Monteverde in 1995.  Our guide was agog - he said that they rarely appeared any more, and fleeting glimpses were the best that anyone got.  This one was sitting on a branch right over the entry to the trail.  Except for a little portion covered by the branch, it was in full display.

So, will that get me a facelift or some saddlebag lipo?

It makes me feel all gushy inside and so cared-for  when my dragon slayer does one of those Mr. Fixit things.  Mmmmm, manly man protect woman from leaky-faucet dragon!  If I get to watch his arm muscles flex while using he's using the tools, even better!

EJ's right: unless he can get the copy translated, there's no way that the principal can be certain of what's being said.  And, yes, student pranksters "saying the pledge" in a language unknown to the language teachers on staff could get away with a prank, but so what?  It's not like hearing some unintelligible words is going to harm anyone, or that students trying to pull a fast one on the principal is of lasting significance.

Then again, I've never treated the pledge as a sacrament.  I stopped saying it in school as soon I could fully appreciate the words - a pledge to a piece of cloth?  Or the republic for which it stands?  As has been made too clear recently, even republics can corrode into parodies of representative government.  To me it's a rote, dumbed-down form of patriotism lite.

The oath that I do cherish, that chokes me up and swells my heart when I say it, when I even think about it, is the vow to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. 

I have a little daydream where the men who design women's shoes  are condemned to spend all eternity wearing them.  It comforts me to think of this when trying to massage the cramps out of my poor bunioned and hammertoed feet.  

I was wondering earlier today about how DO I dress for my age?  What does proper dress for age 57 look like, anyway?  Judging by the latest Chico's catalog I should be mixing skin-tight floral capris with an Ikat patterned blouse and a striped jacket that hits at the place where most women, including me, are at their widest, all balanced on top of 6" spike heeled sandals.  I think not.  

The requirements of a very conservative workplace help to prevent most fashion faux pas.  For the rest I try to stay up to date but away from anything too short or revealing.  One ominous trend this spring is the resurrection of day-glo colors in women's wear.  Who actually looks good in fluorescent pink or tennis-ball green?  Perhaps the same women who look good in the horizontal stripes that have been pushed on us for the last year.