For some of us risk is essential for feeling human. Without it life is unfullfilling. Perhpas risky sexual behavior is your friend's thing and without it her life just wouldn't be fullfilling. It all sounded pretty consensual to me. It sounds like this wasn't the first time she'd gotten drunk and screwed strangers so she must have been aware of the consequences. STDs can be a serious problem but so can avalanches for extreme skiiers, but if that's their thing and they know about it and consider some kind of protection, then we shouldn't hold 'em to the same standards that we hold for ourselves.

...of course Rush might not be such a flip flopper now what with the sex tourism trips for underagers in central america and the viagra. No matter what Rush says should be of little consequence. If it's serious, it probably originated somewhere else and usually it's not too serious as it all comes out of that kapok locker he calls a brain.

...if there isn't a similar dynamic in our own culture which is simultaneously focused on sex as recreation not as procreation and our compulsive desire to consume, consume and consume whether it's food or anything else..but produce so little in the way a of genuine personal product.

I enjoyed Horowitz's "Confederates in the Attic" and so look forward to this new work. I would recommend that anyone interested in this might want to also take up Charles C. Mann's "1491: Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" from 2002, in which the author spells out the state of historical understanding. Quite an eye opener and I presume Mr Horowitz visits the same sources. Indeed historical research has not stood still and even greater revelations await our persistence, including the emerging awareness that human presence was far more sophisticated that the land-based european histories would indicate and far more influenced by the occasional period of catastrophe, currently diregarded as expressions of divine intervention but indeed "stones do fall from the skies".

That Sam Harris and Rick Santorum would find common ground on their perspectives regarding Islam. It becomes clear that such an alignment is mostly a result of our common perceptual lens of the single axis political spectrum instead of seeing the political landscape as it more accurately should be represented in a multi-dimensional world. In the meantime we preferr to watch the shadow puppets.

It's funny how strong is our instinctive desire to be near the natural features we love so much but how ignorant we are of the natural consequences and how unwilling to accept them as part of the total package. So we build amid the wilds and then eliminate all the inconvenient or misunderstood aspects that cause us any distraction let alone discomfort.

Perhaps the only way to end the incessant erosion of natural balance as humans build their mini-mc mansions in the undeveloped margins of our cities is to restrict it all to the area we can "protect" under giant buckkminster fuller-esqe domes that are a couple of miles across and a mile overhead...they'd be distant enough to appear transparent but would allow us to feel as if we lived in an ideal natural balance, one suited to our needs and not sacrificing the natural components in the illusion that nature shouldn't be in the least inconvenient.

...which is why he's funny. I do laugh at the stupid gags, and he does execute them with such outrageous aplomb that sometime you can't help but laugh out loud, but never the less, you are correct about wishing there were a really good satire and it sounds like it's "c'est tout droit". I'm looking forward to it a lot more than the next Mike Meyers project but in fact I will probably laugh at both and appreciate 'em on their perpspective levels.

I can see the stylistic similarities but as far as substance goes, and these days substance "goes" very little as it is typically too complex for our cable-TV-adlepated mentalities which are totally focused on sex scandals and sports celebrity's paychecks along with simplistic notions of patriotism thrown-in for good measure, there is very little to compare. Obama is good looking and smart and sophisitcated and appeals to the young for obvious reasons but is certainly not the scion of the eastern elite that Kennedy was. And McCain, is a conservative in name only and comes from Arizona..other than that? Goldwater himself couldn't get on the ticket with today's neo-con dominated quasi-conservative agenda. The world's on its ear spun topsy turvy and this comparison only underscores how vastly different it all has become despite the stylistic echo of the past.