kitten

Different people have very different attitudes to sex, especially sex with strangers... I have a friend (yes, really! strange but true) who had very religious parents and who went to a religious school. As he grew up he was brainwashed to believe that all sex (including heterosexual) was disgusting and dirty, so should only be tolerated in marriage and only then when it was intended to try to conceive. Now, many years after he left home, he knows intellectually that sex isn't dirty and disgusting, but deep-down, subconsciously and emotionally he can't shake off the feeling that it certainly isn't 'nice'. Of course, he still has a sex drive but because of the ingrained attitudes, his most satisfying sex is only with strangers. After all, if he really likes and respects someone, how could he do something dirty and disgusting with them? Kit

You're not allowed to change system-level application folders unless you're logged in as an admin user. Kit

I'm not sure what 'folder in an application' means as opposed to just an ordinary folder but... Go to the folder in Finder, single click on it and get info (either by menu or Cmd-I) - does it say the folder is locked? If so, just untick the locked box. If it isn't locked then maybe the folder belongs to another user and you don't have permission to get in. You may be able to get around that if you log in as an admin user. Kit

This is probably one of the wisest things I've read anywhere. To these wise words I would add: enjoy what you have rather than lamenting what you don't have. Kit

There is a discussion on this: https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/topic/23802-discussion-vote-up-and-down-in-forums/

A most entertaining and amusing read! Perhaps it will win a prize for the most double-entendres in a short short story? It would be great if the space station be big enough for our Members of Parliament as well as your Congress! Thanks, CJ!

Most of us use generalisations (I use them probably more than I ought to) and they can often be useful, but they are fraught with dangers. Some people have an aversion to generalisations because, when applied to people, they can amount to stereotyping. Those who have suffered as a result of being stereotyped may have a very negative response to such generalisations. Also, I'm not getting at you, but just trying to explain why you may get negative reactions to you statements about 'tendencies'... Perhaps part of the problem lies in the inaccurate use of words such tendency, which can often vary in meaning. Thus people may misinterpret what you mean. Saying a group of people have a tendency to be or to do X is not quite the same as saying one tends find behaviour X more commonly in a particular group. Maybe it would be more accurate and less controversial to say that members of a particular group are more like to show behaviour X. Perhaps another part of the problem is that before making generalisations you should be sure that they are in fact true, preferable with some real statistics. Even if they are true in your personal experience, it doesn't mean they are true overall and on a global level. So unless you are sure that the generalisation is globally true, and have some sort of numbers as evidence of that, it is best to try to defuse possible negative reactions by prefixing such assertions with something like 'in my experience...' Assuming that the generalisation is indeed true, another question to ask is whether it is actually useful or merely stereoptyping. i.e. if, as you say, you don't intend the generalisation to mean that ALL members of a group ALWAYS have some quality X, then the generalisation isn't going to be much use when dealing with individuals as you won't know before meeting them if that particular individual conforms to the stereotype. Perhaps it might have some use if you are dealing with the group as a whole, but most of us deal with individuals more often than we deal with large representative groups. Another thing to bear in mind when saying that members of a particular group are more likely to show behaviour X is that you need to be sure that group is clearly defined and that it is clear what other groups you are comparing it with. So, to take your example and trying to express it more accurately: " (In my experience) Christians are more likely to have negative feelings towards homosexuals" Is the group 'Christians' homogeneous? Catholics, Evangelicals, Anglicans are not necessarily all the same and may be very different from people who self-identify as Christian but who never go to church except for weddings and funerals. Having defined your group 'Christian' and then saying that members of that group are "more likely to have negative feelings towards homosexuals" you need to have the comparison for "more likely". More likely than Buddhists, Athiests, Agnostics, Muslims, Jews? Even if you defined your original group and the group(s) to which it is being compared, then took care to check the accuracy of the generalisation and/or gave the caveat that it was merely your personal observation, you would still find some people would react negatively to your generalisation. This may be because their experiences and conclusions are different from yours, or it may be that they are members of that group and don't want it to be assumed that the stereotype applies to them. Thus, my conclusion is that even if you are accurate and think your generaliusation is of practical use, you must expect that negative reactions will be possible or even likely. Kit

You should have a third option in your poll - Neither. Kissing with mouth closed is an embarrassing waste of time and kissing with mouth open is a disgusting sampling of another person's saliva and oral germs. Is it not true that the human mouth contains more germs than the anus? Kit

Personally, I don't think the 'why' is of any practical significance to the way I would deal with it, though it may be of some academic interest. You can't protect yourself or others completely, but after you experience it for the first time you can reduce the chance of further such episodes by taking a severe and unrelenting vengeance. Just as bullies can't deal with being bullied, cruel people usually don't cope well when they are made to suffer. Make sure that you hurt them many times more than they hurt you and let them know that you are prepared to go to any lengths to make them pay dearly for any hurt they cause to you or to those you care about. That way the perpetrator will hopefully be so scared of further reprisals that they will be driven away or at least they won't be inclined to risk hurting you or those close to you in future. Basically, it's a little like weapons of mass destruction; once the bad guys know you have them and that you are prepared to use them then they won't start a war. Kit

There is one thing that I don't think has yet been specifically stated, though it has been alluded to in regard to the situation depending on the seriousness of the offence: some things are just totally, absolutely unforgivable. This is not just because I would have an inability to forgive but also because I don't believe that some things should ever be forgiven. Forgiving someone who accidentally steps on my toe is so effortless that it happens without thought. Forgiving someone who murdered a person I love would be impossible for me, and I'd never even consider wanting to forgive them. Between those two extreme examples are things that may or may not be unforgivable, depending on circumstances. For example, if someone told a deliberate lie about me then the whether or not I could forgive them, and whether or not I felt they deserved forgiveness, would depend on the particular lie and the consequences it had. Another example in this 'depends' area would be breach of trust by a friend; it would depend on the seriousness of the breach and the consequences it had. Also between the two extreme examples, there are offences that I could only consider forgiving after the offender has been severely and adequately punished and then shown genuine regret. Thankfully, in my life the serious unforgivable offences have been perpetrated against me only very rarely. Kit

It depends on what exactly you mean by forgiveness and the relative seriousness of the offence.. If you mean losing your anger and/or any desire for vengeance then it is a process. It can't be controlled (ie switched on or off) but it can be influenced by various things such as how genuine the apology is, your relationship with the offender and your own abaility to achieve and maintain emotional equanimity. Losing one's anger and/or desire for vengeance is a good thing because those emotions have bad effects on oneself as well as others. If, however, by forgiveness you mean returning to the state the relationship was before the offence then I don't think it is either possible or desirable, especially when you have been seriously hurt. Even when you are no longer angry at the offender, the fact remains that he/she has hurt you and may do so again. Therefore you need to treat that person with more caution in future and things can never go back exactly to the way they were. If you are burned by fire, you don't feel anger toward the fire and have no desire for vengeance, but in future you would be wise to treat fire with more caution. For myself, in most cases I find it relatively easy to forgive (as in setting aside anger and revenge) but almost impossible to forget that I've been injured, and so my attitude to the offender will never be the same as it was before the offence. Kit

In that case, IMO you are far too trusting. All government is evil. It may be a necessary evil, but it's still evil. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So the more power we allow a government to have, the more corrupt it will be. Knowledge is power. From a governmental POV information about individuals is power. So the more information they have about us, the more power they have, and the more corrupt they will be. Kit

And if you'd found no evidence of cheating? Would you have carried on looking? Would you have still mistrusted him? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Regardless of 'right' or 'wrong', IMO the fact you'd distrusted him so much that you went behind his back, hacked into his emails, etc, shows the relationship was over. If he'd not been cheating and you did that then he'd not only be 'right' to dump you but would be very wise to do so. Are you confusing the concepts of 'hiding' and 'privacy' (see my post above)? If he doesn't want you watching him in the toilet, do you think he's hiding something? Do you think that it's okay for governments to monitor all your mail and phone calls, to know where you are at all times, to know all your purchases, to keep records of who you meet? They, too, use the argument that if you've nothing to hide then you should not care if they monitor everything that you do. So hopefully you feel it would be wrong to do it without his knowledge? KIt

As others have said, every couple/relationship is different. They each have to set the boundaries with which they are comfortable. Asking why someone wants particular boundaries is like asking them why they like some foods and not others, why they don't like going to parties, why they like reading gay fiction, etc. It's just how they are and there should be no need to justify it. There is a difference between privacy and secrets. For example, I insist on privacy when I use the toilet, but this does not mean I'm trying to keep it secret. Another example is if my best friend confided in me some important and/or embarrassing secret - it would be wrong to give that secret to others, even my SO, without first asking my best friend if that would be okay. Yet another example: if my work (legal, medical, military, etc) involved confidential information then by going throgh my emails without asking my SO might breach that confidentiality. If I had a SO and he wanted to read my emails, then all he would need to do is ask and I'd be happy to show them to him. However, if he went through my emails without asking, I'd be very annoyed. Because (apart from any other considerations) the fact that he didn't just ask would indicate to me that he doesn't trust me and that he thinks I would be hiding something if he did ask. By showing that he didn't trust me he would be causing damaging our relationship. Kit

I presume that the missing apostrophe is accidental...

Actually, he's not really my pet. More like I'm his pet. His version of 'fetch' is when he throws the ball and I fetch it!

Yes, I agree. (I mentioned children as possible beneficiaries of a relationship.) However, it is possible to maintain many of those obligations without maintaining an unwanted relationship. Financial obligations can be covered by 'divorce settlements'. With good will there is no need for such settlement to apply just to married couples. Without good will the relationship won't continue anyway. The question of obligations to children is, of course, not just financial. Obviously having two parents living together in a loving relationship is ideal. However, from personal experience I believe that a child is better off with amicably divorced parents than being stuck in a 'home' full of parental fighting and bitter recriminations. It is even worse when one or both parents tell the children that they are staying in the relationship merely for the sake of those children. Then the children not only have an unhappy home but they also feel that the unhappiness is at least partly their fault. Perhaps sometimes breaking up a relationship might actually be the best way to deal with the obligations. Kit

I'm not sure I understand exactly what is meant by 'a greater good' here. However, if it means something practical rather than something philosophical, then I agree. That implies that each relationship must be considered individually on its merits. What are the 'greater goods' in that particular relationship and how minor are the desires or needs that are sacrificed? A relationship that is worth sacrificing for must provide both parties (and/or any dependent children) with something that is worth those sacrifices. The idea that a relationship is a good thing just because it's a relationship is just as absurd as the idea that any relationship is better than no relationship at all. A relationships is not a mystical goal but merely another form of human activity, and should be judged accordingly. Are the benefits worth the sacrifices? Once one or both partners no longer wish to be in the relationship then there is no point in making sacrifices for something they don't really want. Kit

Looking through the above responses I get the impression that most people consider that it's a bad thing if relationships don't last forever (or at least for a very long time). Although I agree it is nice when relationships do last happily for a long time, I don't think it's a bad thing when both people realise that the relationship has run its course and decide to break up and move on. For one thing, it is usually impossible to know if a relationship will work until the participants have tried it out. That is why there is dating, engagement periods etc. However, it's my impression that nowadays people enter into supposedly committed relationships after much shorter engagements or periods of dating. Thus they are having the trial period as part of what they call the relationship, and if such a relationship doesn't work, it's not a 'failure' but a learning experience. If you really think about it, even after a successful and suitably long trial period, the chances that a relationship will last a long time (10+ years) in the absence of external pressure is quite small. By external pressure, I mean things like: marriage with divorce made difficult; necessity to stay together for children; financial dependence of one partner on the other; social pressures. In past times, another pressure was that the main support network for an individual was family, but nowadays, because we have more support from society as a whole (e.g. child welfare, unemployment benefits, etc.) we are not so physically dependant on personal relationships with individuals. Over a period of 10+ years most people change, and younger people change much more. Isn't that one of the main arguments against relationships between (legal-age) teens and much older guys - that if an 18 yo and a 36 yo enter into a relationship? Even if two younger people (say under 25) of similar age get together, it is likely that they will change at different rates and so not remain compatible. We can control how we change, much less how our partner will change, and it may well be that at 30+ years old we and our partner are both different people than we were at 21 years old, and we no longer even like one another. Maybe if people didn't enter into relationships until they were older (say 25+) then they would have a better chance of staying together, not only because they may change less with age after that, but also because their expectations of a relationship are more realistic and they know what they want from it. When we evolved as a pair-bonding species, and for most of our history until relatively recent times, the average life span was considerably less than 40 years, and the chance of both partners living so long was very small. Thus there is no natural reason for us evolve mechanisms to maintain relationships for 10+ years, especially once the children are no longer infants. Of course, all relationships go through difficult times and we often hear that a relationship can be rescued by work, perseverence and patience. This is true for the rough patches in relationships which are still beneficial to and wanted by both partners. However, it's not the rough patches that cause the breakdown of a relationship, it is the lack of will to keep the relationship going. Why should either partner want to work, persevere, and have patience when the simple fact is that he or she simply doesn't want that relationship anymore? Yes, we can celebrate relationships that have remained happy for a long time, but one reason to celebrate them is because they are both practically and theoretically rare. It is right that we should celebrate the good luck of people who are in such relationships, just as we celebrate their good luck in other things. However, we shouldn't assume there is something 'wrong' when people don't have such good luck. I'm happy if my friend wins the lottery, but I don't think there is any 'fault' if he doesn't, and if his relationship doesn't work out, I won't say that his relationship 'failed' or suggest that he could have saved it if only he'd worked harder, persevered more, or been more patient. Kit

Some 'romantic' relationships fail because not everyone is suited to be in one and not everyone really wants to be in one. However, society tends to treat such people as somehow defective, or at best worthy of pity, and thereby pressurises them into entering into relationships. Such a relationship will eventually fail. Kit

Bear in mind that with this question you are basically asking about individual tastes in stories of the people who respond, and their response will depend on how they interpret the summaries you give and match them up with their tastes. This shouldn't be about what people want to read but what you want to write. (Unless, of course, you are writing for financial reasons!) Do all of the four outlines get you equally excited? Isn't there one (maybe two) that stimulate your creative juices more than the others? My feeling is that the quality of the end product will depend very much on how much you want to write the story, whether you have something you feel you really want to communicate, and how much enjoyment you get from working with the plot and characters in your head. Anyway, for what it's worth, 2 seemed most interesting to me. Kit

It's amazing how you can pack so much insult and inaccuracy into one sentence. Your sampling of the country's food is either woefully out of date (pre 1990) or was based on a very unrepresentative sample. Your knowledge of history is equally lacking. The centuries of warfare between England and Scotland culminated in a Scottish King James VI being crowned King James I of England. That may be interpreted as Scotland taking over England. If you are referring to the later unification of the two kingdoms, then the Scottish parliament agreed to that, so it was hardly a takeover, except in the financial sense that Scotland was in financial difficulties and they agreed for financial reasons. In the past I've advised ignorant people not to advertise their ignorance, but I no longer bother giving that advice as I've found they were too ignorant to take it. Kit

I voted that I never peel an egg. This is because I detest them in any form and however they are cooked. Even just the smell of an egg makes me nauseous. Apart from the disgusting taste and texture, how could anyone consider eating part of a bird's reproductive equipment that has been passed through the same passage as the bird's sh*t? I know they are in cakes, which I usually like, and I can usually pretend to myself that they are not there... though sometimes I can detect an egginess in some cakes and then it makes me feel like puking. YUCH YUCH YUCH YUCH!!!

It was imagined because the contract with the Italian/Portugese workers was confidential, so they couldn't know what was it it. So they just guessed that it might be unfair. Even if they knew for a fact that the foreign workers were paid less, it was a contract put out to tender, not employment as a job. If the foreign contractor offered to do the job for less, then it's the British contract firms fault for wanting to charge too much. Provided they both offered the same quality of work, would you pay a British roofing contractor more than an Italian roofing contractor to repair your damaged chimney? If so, then you are much richer than I am! Holding up signs like 'UK jobs for UK workers' and suggesting foreigners don't get to work in England seems bordering on anti-foreign to me. We are (like it or not) part of the EU - a free market area where citizens can work anywhere in the EU. Should the French go on strike when British people get jobs in France? If so, then it really makes nonsense of the idea of the EU as a free trade and employment area. It has been reported that the majority of workers on oil rigs in the Adriatic are British. Perhaps the Italians and/or Croats should go on strike qand picket the local ports becase the Brits are taking 'their' jobs? Again, these were workers on a contract. Had the successful contractor been British but undercut the British competition by employing British workers for less, do you think the wildcat strikers would be equally angry? Personally, I doubt it. I believe that most of their anger was because the workers were 'foreign' and so I believe it was, at least in part, an anti-foreigners strike. Has it been reported how much the foreign workers were paid? Do you know for sure? Or is it just what the strikers allege? Don't forget, the strikers were contract workers, not actual employees of Total. It was a specific contract job (like getting someone to fix your roof). Just because one roofer gives a lower quote for the whole job doesn't mean he's paying his workers less. He could just be more efficient and/or taking less profit for himself. Furthermore, people seem to forget that the directors of a company have a legal duty to maximise profits for their shareholders. Whether or not you disagree with that, it is the way things are. They would be negligent in their duty if they paid more than necessary for a contract. The best way to settle disputes of any kind, not just employment disputes, is to negotiate before taking action. People can easily be roused by a good orator putting forward as 'facts' which are in fact mere suppositions, insinuations, or downright lies. That is one reason the strike laws were introduced - so that the workers can be given the facts from both sides before being asked to vote. Then the decision is taken by a majority after giving time for thought. Surely that is better than instantaneously going on a wildcat strike based on the word of a few rabble-rousers? As for 'sympathy' strikes - IMO they are totally wrong. Why should one employer and his customers in one part of the UK suffer because a because of a dispute between a totally different employer and his workers. Therefore, even if the Total workers in England had been correct in going on strike, the workers in Scotland working for a completely different company should not have gone on 'sympathy' strike. Would you like all your local transport to be brought to a halt in your local city because they had 'sympathy' with transport workers in a different city, employed under different contracts by a different employer? Yes, people have a right to demostrate and/or go on strike, but if those demonstrations or strikes are 'sympathy' (ie relating to something not affecting them directly) and if they harm innocent people then the strikers should be punished. If I had any workers and they went on a wildcat 'sympathy' strike then I'd sack the lot of them, and if they demonstrated violently or caused obstruction by picketing then I'd have them charged and (hopefully) thrown in jail. Kit

It really IS a question of economics. The smoke alarm ot fire extinguisher is MUCH cheaper than having your house burned down, even if no one is killed. People really have worked out how much it costs to buy and maintain snow clearing equipment, plus paying people to maintain them and to be available for just a few days every couple of years. They can calculate how much business is lost and how much it costs and have decided it isn't worth it. Anyway, with all the money the government has been spending to bail out rich bankers, where are they going to find money for snow ploughs? Sadly, on an economic level, lives are not worth very much. That is why we allow thousands to die every year from tobacco and alcohol - the cost of the deaths is much less than the revenue in taxes. That is why NICE decide that some life-extending anti-cancer drugs are too expensive for the NHS. Resources are limited and there isn't much economic value in a human life (especially that of someone who is ill). Kit