mike carey

@Wolfer, I can't claim the expertise of others who have commented here, I can only make uninformed comments that you are entitled to ignore. I would say find other things to do. Jump on your bicycle and spend a weekend in Flanders or the Ardennes. It's not all about sex. Find non-sexual things to do. I joined a gay camping group, it was fun and the only sex was between people who came to the group as couples (well, I think that was all there was!). Of course don't ignore serious mental health advice, those suggestions are important. I don't know your circumstances, but I was closeted for years, from the world and from myself, I came out only slowly. I had uninspiring sex, and I met my first escort a few years ago. I've met some wonderful guys through this site (in various ways, I'm not talking about face-to-face meetings) but it's not the only place to meet them. I've found the vicarious engagement here important, I'm not chasing sex every minute of the day. Scale back, do what you want to do, don't rush because you think you should. As others have said, seek a therapist if things seem to be getting out of control.

In Australia and I suspect in Canada, especially francophone Canada, the word `Christian` used as a name isn`t weaponised the way it can be in the US. I've read a bit about Christian and seen some of his videos, no indication of nominative determinism.

What would be really odd would be if someone called in Petrograd. For me, one of the transformational moments was when Russia reverted the name of Leningrad to St Petersburg and the Russian navy commissioned a ship called Пётр Великий (Peter the Great).

I still have cheque books for a small number of bank accounts, suffice to say they have 19... printed at the end of the date field, and two of them are for banks that no longer exist (the old banks have been bought out and the accounts migrated to the new bank, but the old cheques still work). Last time I called an electrician, I made sure I had cash to pay him. Interestingly, when I had my car serviced last month ($1600 - some major work needed, new brake pads for example, it was the 250,000 km service) they gave me the bill and asked my to pay it by bank transfer on-line, they were sick of the credit card costs (note, here companies are allowed to charge you what it costs them to use CCs but they didn`t do that). I may offer to pay by cheque next time (although I suspect that having me do it on-line works better for them). Also, when I had a furniture removal a couple of months ago they were happy for me to pay by bank transfer.

Oh, yes, the Romans were paragons of virtue in their kindness and respect for human life. They were justified in stopping evil druidic practices. Do you actually listen to and think about things that you are saying?

There are two separate concepts that are widely confused and conflated, often deliberately to enable people to deny any sort of responsibility. One is collective guilt, the other is some sort of collective or historical responsibility. I agree that there is no place for collective guilt, at least not after the immediate time has passed. Even then the concept of collective guilt is often misused to condemn a whole group when only certain parts of the group were responsible. To use your example, white people today are not guilty of things that some white people did to other racial groups in the past, nor are they collectively responsible for them. What they do have a responsibility to do is recognise the inherent disadvantage that POC suffer because of past discrimination, and the inherent advantage they have because of they way that discrimination caused society to be structured. Yes, individuals have responsibility, but it's delusional to think that there is now a level playing field. Certainly there is individual disadvantage that occurs within ethnic groups, but there is also systemic disadvantage that is structural. It's not as simple as telling the people who face this disadvantage that overcoming it is all down to them. Our forbears created the society that this happens in because it suited us, to refuse to acknowledge that is an act of historical blindness. (This acceptance is a separate issue from anything that might be done to redress it.)

Human sacrifice is uncivilised, burning witches is civilised. Gotcha.

There is pushback here on the idea that Cook 'discovered' Australia. He hadn't of course, with the partial exception of being the first European to chart the east coast. Terra Australis had long existed in the imagination of Europeans. Torres had charted the straits between Australia and New Guinea, the Dutch (Hartog) and the English (Dampier) had landed on the west coast, Abel Tasman had charted Van Diemen's land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand, all before Cook's first voyage. Makassans had been frequent visitors to the north of the continent. In geographic terms, 'European discovery' is still a valid term, as were the discoveries of Antarctica and some oceanic islands, although in the Pacific Polynesians had discovered most, even incredibly remote ones like Rapa Nui. Beyond geography, 'discovery' in its unqualified sense can be applied to scientific and biological discoveries. The word is often used carelessly or in a general sense to describe the arrival of a dominant group in an area, but it can and is used deliberately to deny or minimise previous inhabitants in settler countries. There is no harm in celebrating the voyages of Columbus or Cook, but that should not be used to underplay 65,000 or 14,000 years of previous continuous human history. Aka 'theft'. And yes, it was brief and largely forgotten (and extensively denied by southern European settler communities in the Americas). There are speculative early accounts of other Europeans reaching North America before them, but given the documented extent of Viking settlements across the North Atlantic (they discovered Iceland and settled Greenland), the accounts of Vinland are hardly implausible. Finally, don't forget that in the US imagination, native Americans are the plains 'Indians', but they are not the only previous inhabitants of North America. Mexico is also part of North America, and there was a flourishing civilisation there when the Spanish arrived (as there were, and previously had been further south in both continents).

Of course Columbus didn't discover America. People had known it was there for at least 14,000 years.

Quite so, I have never met a dog or a giraffe that uses an Oxford comma.

No, I can't! In any case, WA is another country.

No argument there, Australian and other contributions were at the margins for WW2. Japan did invade Russia in 1919 but that's a separate conversation.

No, you weren't excluded! In 2017 the second dinner was after the main formal meal, and was organised using the email addresses that all the attendees had provided. There was a Thursday get together at DavidSF 's place but I missed that. Anyway, none of that matters, there will be dinners for all of the attendees, private gatherings and individual arrangements at the 2019 function. What we did this year or in 2017 won't matter.

Quite so, I was contesting Avalon's assertion that it was US involvement in WW1 that was decisive. They certainly helped, including American forces under the command of an Australian general. I would contend that Monash was at least as important in the allied victory as the presence of US forces. (And yes, it may have been exhaustion rather than defeat, but the armistice favoured the allies.)

Take it to a watch maker, or adjust to correcting the time. My 40yo Seiko loses time, especially when I don't move my arm enough to keep it running. But seriously is your watch your main time-keeper?

So, what?

That is highly contestable. There is no doubt that America determined the outcome of WW2, but it is by no means clear that the US determined the result of WW1. It may have affected the timing of the result but not the outcome itself.

Amen to that, and bon anniveraire!

And people wonder why, despite not yet meeting him, I talk Peter up in here.

I was going by last year when there was one meal planned in advance but a second one was organised by e-mail in the couple of days before the weekend.

`American fare` is whatever the restaurant wants it to be.

I don't see airline food as a big deal. There is always more than enough over the course of the flight (note, my reference point is QF not US carriers), some of the food is good, some questionable. I've had some really good meals on flights. But if I don't like it, it's not as if I'm going to starve to death.

The basics are that there are several restaurant meal meetings and a pool party at Oliver`s house. There is a mixture of working guys and clients, some of which are paired off, but some just come for the chance to meet each other. If you search this site for threads about the Palm Springs weekend you will find several of them covering previous years. It`s a great weekend, friends, fellowship and intimate relationships all rolled into a few days. You can be as sexual or as social as you like, or not, it`s just great fun with a twist.

Bon anniversaire! Hope you had/have a great day. You plan events, I hope you have planned this one well.

I have fond memories of some of the restaurants in the old market district of Omaha.