northerntantra

Good luck tomorrow. We all wish you a speedy (and full) recovery!

(That last one is especially for you ladies!)

Since starting this thread I've had several inquiries about where to find lingerie, usually related to specific pictures. When I can, I try and figure it out from the URL or picture caption and pass that along. But some photos are uploaded to general picture-sharing sites, so there's no way to tell where they came from. I've posted quite a few from the Lise Charmel collection (as Gia mentioned). We've also seen lots from Luxa, Aubade, Agent Provocateur, Fauve, Boredelle, etc. There are quite a few good online sources, but brands like Lise Charmel are hard to find in North American stores. I used to live in Halifax, but I have no idea who might carry fine lingerie there now. Ottawa's not so good either, and I even had a tough time in Montreal. Ogilvies and The Bay had some nice designs (Aubade mostly), but no Lise Charmel and I wasn't able to locate any boutiques via online search, I think because most of them are small privately-owned shops with little nor no online presence. Here are a few online links or sites I was able to scrounge from this thread ... http://www.lingeriediva.com http://www.nancymeyer.com http://www.spurst.com http://www.lingerieforum.org http://www.honeyslingerieboutique.com http://www.so-sensuelle.com http://www.dessus-dessous.fr/ http://www.flirtylingerie.com http://www.luxxa.ca Additional Comments: And here are my pics for today (appended to the above, since I can't create separate postings on the same day. Romanian Catrinel Menghia often models for Lise Charmel and Aubade. You may have also seen her in the recent Fiat commercials (with Charlie Sheen.) So many great pics of her to choose from, it's hard to know when to stop!

I've worked for the same company for many years now. At one time I knew everyone, but as the years passed and we expanded, a lot of new and younger faces kept appearing all around me. I was getting on the elevator one day, and the doors started to close. Someone inside hit the open button so I could get on, then held it for a few more people. Being old enough to remember the story of the Little Dutch Boy, and how he saved Holland by plugging a leak in a dike with his finger, I made some related comment to the person holding the door open. Something like "thanks for putting your finger in the dike!" It was at that moment, as I surveyed the look of horror on the faces of my young colleagues in the elevator, when I realized that some expressions which we're commonplace in my youth don't translate well to this decade!

If you have children who like to play in the Ball Room at IKEA, you might want to leave them at home on your next trip to Cambodia ... And especially ... watch out for those tourists with "stupid disease"!!!!

Pacino at his best, looking his worst as he becomes more haggard by the hour due to lack of sleep while on a manhunt in Alaska. If you've ever gone without sleep, this movie will resonate with you. Directed by Christopher Nolan, btw. I visited Anchorage once, in September I think it was. Weird seeing people cutting their lawns in broad daylight at 1 am. Bonus: a villainous Robin Williams and the ever-lovely (and great thespian) Hillary Swank.

The choker can add a certain finishing touch to an outfit, and is great for ladies with long necks ... And though I'm not that much into the leather look, this outfit would be certainly draw some attention:

Nntsci, I do get your point. And I agree that laws against gambling, prostitution, etc. tend to encourage criminals to organize in order to subvert those laws. I just don't agree that these laws cause organized crime. Note also that we're actually talking about two different sets of laws here. There's the set of laws prohibiting certain activities (like gambling), and then there's the set of laws targeting criminal organization. I agree that substituting regulation for prohibitive laws can lead to a reduction in organized crime. It doesn't necessarily lead to a reduction in the behaviors being prohibited -- just shifts the profits from criminals to licensed purveyors (often government). Whether one considers that an improvement or not may depend on your moral stance on the activity being regulated. Personally, I think government's job is to protect it's citizens from each other, but not from themselves. Unfortunately, excessive drinking, gambling or whatever often leads to dangerous consequences to others. So as a society we feel compelled to either prohibit or regulate the activity. It just vexes me to see government profit from their regulation of an activity at the expense of private enterprise. Alcohol sales in Ontario being the classic example. If alcohol consumption is considered morally reprehensible, as it was in the US during Prohibition, then government has no business being a purveyor, let alone the sole purveyor. If it's not morally reprehensible, then why can't private enterprise engage in a legal activity? In other words, prohibition and regulation are both imperfect solutions to the problem of crime associated with high risk activities that are easily manipulated for criminal profit.

This is like concluding that because cities that have the most fires also have the most firefighters, then firefighters must cause fires. Correlation doesn't always imply causation. In this case, I would agree that there may be some indirect causation between policing and organized crime, but the root cause of organized crime is the desire for criminals to get richer while remaining safe from external threats, including police but also including rival criminals. To lay the blame for organized crime entirely at the feet of law enforcement is to suggest that in the absence of law enforcement there would be no organized crime. That, I think, can be proven untrue. I think the justification for having special laws that specifically target organized crime is related to the fact that sometimes organized crime is a response to law enforcement's measures to curtail crime. It is a type of escalation, by the criminals, and as such needs to be treated more harshly than the crime itself. The reasoning is similar to that used to justify banning radar detectors or making resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer serious offenses. Eliminating the laws against organized crime might reduce it, but wouldn't likely eliminate it. It might even flourish once law enforcement (and the courts) have fewer tools to combat it.

Here Comes the Boom ... a new movie with Kevin James and Selma Hyack due out in October.

Apparently, even with that suit of armor on, Iron Man is still Tony Stark, billionaire playboy ...

1993 Jean Claude Van Damme, Lance Hendrickson, and Yancy Butler.

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In case you missed this on the Humour thread, there's an hilarious text message conversation between a mom and her son concerning Uncle Dick and her car (a Volvo) ... Don't you just love Autocorrect!

Watching the Olympics ... In men's gymnastics they call them the Parallel Bars. In women's gymnastics, they are the Uneven Bars. Why aren't they called the Non-parallel Bars?