azraelle

PERSONALLY, I like wearing heels between 2.5" and 4". Anything lower and I don't get relief from my ankle pain. Anything higher and I experience ankle pain.

The same for me, amazingly, except that it also extends to relieving pain in my right knee as well (if I'm in a situation that requires it to remain bent at ~90 degrees for any length of time, such as driving).

FOR SALE by Owner-- inquire within

OH PSHAW!!! Given the choice I not only would, but actually DO, wear other colors besides black, when I can find them in my size that is. If we are truly fighting for "men's fashion freedom" then the wearing of colorful footwear, as well as pants and shirts, should be a major part of the conflict. Otherwise, what is the point--Why F***ing Bother? I cannot abide Henry Ford's "You can have it in any color you want so long as it is black" applied to boots and/or shoes. I am not saying that I would wear bright blue boots or shoes, now, but if by some fashion miracle it becomes generally fashionable for the ladies, I might consider it. Because a men's version (in an "appropriately subdued" color or style) usually comes down the pike in a year or two. Specifics that I own, and wear: two pairs of very narrow ~4" heeled boots from PayLess, one in "peanut brittle", one in tan; and another pair of PayLess boots with 3" modified blade heels in cordovan (deep dark reddish brown). Nothing blue, mainly because of lack of opportunity to buy non-fetish styled colors in my size. Again I say give the guy a break. And yes I (for one) HAVE seen women wear such colors in heels, albeit for very dress-up affairs, which I might point out, was what Mr. Ritter was attending...

How about using a sprayer filled with Round-Up (wide-spectrum sunlight-degraded herbicide) and "painting" I am a nosey neighbor on his lawn some dark night. It'll only take a few days, and the effects should last for months. No way to trace it back to you either.

Tthe color matches his shirt, perhaps not the tint, but the color. Being a guy, it might have been rather more difficult to find the perferct tint in his size than it would have been if he was a girl, with a typical female foot size. Give the guy a break!!!

In my 51 years on planet Earth, I have never been a fan of "news", whether TV, newspaper, magazine, internet, or radio. You might, incorrectly, refer to me as a newsphobe--I'm not afraid of it, I just have the same attitude toward it as I do towards team sports and soap operas--why bother--in general, the stories stay the same, only the names change. I have found that the most neutral, unbiased news reporting, at least as far as availability on the internet is concerned, is from reuters.com. When it was only a wire news service, newspaper stories originating from them had far less bias than either "AP" or "UPI". If you notice bias in FOX or CNN (sort of ideological opposites, if you know what I mean), why not just "avoid the rush" completely and fish somewhere else (such as Reuters)??

Cruxshadows' "Ethernaut"

Here You Go:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2003/05/01/efflip01.xml

May I offer an alternate viewpoint? Feet is feet, male or female, they're both the same, gender-wise. But not all feet are the same. Some humans have a genetic abnormality (I don't remember the name or technical details, only that it was discussed on this forum some time ago) where heel wearing above, say 1-1/2 inches caused extreme discomfort, which can be alleviated SOMEWHAT by lots of practice, but even "moderate" heels will never really be comfortable. I believe that my mother had this problem. There are other genetic predispositions that make higher heels more comfortable than low heels (or at least as). Flat feet with heel spurs fall into this category, one which I have. I have long known that heel wearing can alleviate pain from knee tendon injuries associated with driving for several hours at a time--again because I have that problem. I recently found that they help a backache, first from posts by genebujold. One of my flatmates was squatting in what to me would be an intensely uncomfortable position right after work. To him it was more comfortable that standing flat-footed because it relieved the pressure on his back to be squatting on his toes. I lent him a pair of relatively low-heeled very ugly block heeled boots (maybe 1-3/4" at the back) to see if it would help--immense relief on both our parts--I got rid of the damn things! More recently, heels helped ME with a backache. My convoluted point is that heels in the range of ~ 1" to 2-1/2" or so are immensely uncomfortable, to me, but heels in the range of 2-3/4" to 4" are more comfortable than most flat shoes, anti-pronation running shoes with double Spenco arched insoles inserted being the sole exception. Maybe some women out there who find what Daz calls low or moderate heels to be excruciating have feet with problems similar to mine, and contrary to what logic would seem to suggest, might find relatively higher heels, especially with a curved arch, to be much more manageable. Most probably never will try them though, because to many women (my ex-wife and oldest daughter come to mind), heels are at best unimportant to their self-image. Why bother?? They don't HAVE to in this day and age, unless they aspire to be exotic dancers or cocktail waitresses, or highly paid models or COMDEX product demonstrators. I also think that most of the "lies" are from predominantly male shoe salesmen, trying to sell sexy shoes to women in shoe stores. They seem to believe that exaggeration of heel height will lead to higher sales. Who knows, maybe they do. But I think that most women who put forth an exaggerated aproximate heel height are just repeating what the salesman (or saleswoman) said--I don't think there are that many that carry a measuring tape with them in their purse to verify the claims. Like I surmise a lot of guys here do.

Anyway, my main reason to post this all here is more the "making the commitment in public" so I stick with it this time. What usually happens is that "lift happens" and fall off because of stuff going on and then the usual "Oh well, I will start next week then" and then go on to eat tons of junk food the rest of the weekend. This time I won't be able to hide that because I will have to answer to everyone here

Later,

Scotty

You might try this forum--it has helped me stick with it.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/index.php?

Heels were generally thicker, and more underslung. Many of the more fancy versions had a somewhat Bell-bottom appearance as well, (or elephant's foot look--the heels getting slightly larger again near the base). Many of the boots had a back zipper; side-zippers weren't put in boots until the mid-60's. Since back zipper boots are much easier to put on, I don't know why the change was made.

Let's think about this, OK Jinxiekat? Starvation for short periods of time was the rule rather than the exception, if you believe the evolutionary theory of the origin of man, for nearly the entire length of man's 1-3 million year history. The role of ketosis, the chemical reaction that the body goes into when real starvation occurs, as well as when you drop your carb intake below 50-60 grams a day, is to keep the body, and brain, healthy and functioning rationally for as long as possible during periods when food is no longer being eaten. So that eventually, when food is found again, it can be safely prepared and eaten again. The very fact that the human race has survived because of this very process kicking in time and time again, should be ample reason to conclude that it is more than safe, certainly not dangerous, regardless of what doctors may think. They have been known to be wrong before!!! ROFLMAO. It should be pointed out that the human race has survived and flourished without those same doctors, perhaps even BECAUSE they weren't there! Finally, one should not get caught up letting the forrest mask the trees. Which is more dangerous to a person in the long run--enduring a natural built-in bodily survival mechanism for a few months, or carrying an extra 50-100+ pounds/kilos around for years?? Or even for a lifetime. And a foreshortened lifetime at that.

I hit my all time high of 260 in early May, 2003. I am now at 201, and still slowly losing, due to adopting a low-carb lifestyle--not diet. I went from 260 to 240 in 9 days eating very little more than bacon, eggs, canned tuna fish, a handful of almonds, and another handful of vitamins and essential oils capsules every day. I didn't eat lettuce salads because up until that time I got horrible heartburn that no antacid did anything for (TUMS, Rolaids, baking soda, Pepcid, Xantac, Tagamet, Axid), for about 5 hours afterwards. Same was true with bananas. I had also been experiencing intense heartburn (GERD) about 2 hours after every meal, unless I had taken Pepcid about an hour before eating, for nearly as long as I can remember. The heartburn completely disappeared after the first 3 days. I found out on the 9th day that I could eat lettuce without heartburn due to a meal prepared by a friend's mother from Costa Rica, that I couldn't get out of eating. The next day I tried a banana--same thing. The only time my heartburn returns is when I eat more that about 100 grams of carbohydrates in a given 12-18 hours. I went from 260 to 225 without increasing my level of exercise--basically the same as the average couch potato/computer nerd. I have since January been bicycling an average of 3-4 miles a day, and if anything it slowed down my weight loss, probably due to increasing my leg muscles.

For "in the sticks" users I have found that Windows 2000 is more stable than XP, and that Panda antivirus runs rings around Norton (safely removes viruses/worms from the windows kernel that Norton can't even quarantine effectively against the next time you reboot). It is also less expensive. And, it "plays well with others". I've also found that running Ad-Aware, then Spybot S&D, works better than either one alone. Agree with you gene on the LinkSys router though.

Frankly, I must be one of the 0.07% out there because I detest the song, both because of its lyrincs and the way I feel when I am listening to the haranging and yawing of the music. I get more jollies out of listening to Scriabin's Black Mass (9th Sonata?).

I knew a man (a department manager, actually) at the Nevada Test Site, who was at the time working for REECo, a DOE general contractor, who was fired for using the word stercoracious to describe another department manager. He probably wouldn't have been except that he was so convinced of his self importance, and the rightness of his position that he audaciously mailed, hard copies of his 3 page diatribe to all the other department heads, and the Company President. Point is, use of substitute "high English" can get you into trouble too.

You're right, they ARE a humourless bunch. I did get a positive reaction to one post, though. And another told me to go back to hell where I came from--I had the audacity to disagree with her diatribe against Israel championing the pooor Palestinians that have been deprived of running water by the big bad nasty mean Israelies in retaliation for being bombed. Imagine that.

Rather than snip and snipe at them why don't you, nicely, intelligently, invite them to our site?? Human beings DO have the capacity to change, and learn from mistakes made, just like other animals. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt??

"For 60 years we believed in quote-unquote stability at the price of liberty, and what we got is neither liberty nor stability," the strategist said. "So we are taking a fundamentally different approach toward the Middle East. That is a huge doctrinal shift, and the people who have given their lives, careers to building the previous foreign policy consensus, see this as a direct intellectual assault on what they have devoted their lives to. And it is. We think what a lot of people came up with was a failure — or at least, in the present world in which we live, it is no longer sustainable."

This is the most lucid part of your post, Hiluc, and as far as I am concerend, the only part worth reading, though I admit that I did suffer myself to read the post in its entirety, unlike another, apparently.

J-turbo, I find your post to be lucid, to the point, relatively nice, and oh so truthful, especially on the subjects of pollution and the behavior "former" British Empire.

Europeans tend to think of Americans as wasteful polluters because we continue to drive gas guzzling monsters, mainly because we can! It is NOT America's fault that the price of petrol in Europe is more than twice what it is here. My best guess is that we don't tax the shit out of it the way European Nations apparently do. One wonders why a 60-70% income tax rate isn't enough to support their national health care system--they have to tax everything else as well?? The average tax rate on fuel varies from state to state, but I doubt that it accounts for more than 40% of the total retail amount per gallon, even in the highest gas tax state--California.

The point is if we had to pay $5 per gallon instead of $ 2.25 or so, we would be much desirous to buy gas conserving cars, including the new gas-electric hybrids than we are now. Gas guzzling, however, does not equate to pollution; indeed, when I was in the Army back in 1984, it was bloody nigh impossible to buy a car in Europe and bring it back to the States because the pollution restrictions here at the time would have, in most cases, necessitated a whole new engine specially tuned to handle the emissions requirements. I don't know whether this has changed recently or not (e.g. European anti-emissions standards catching up to the US standards?).

It has always seemed incredible to me how anyone could honestly believe that we were "Imperialistic" in any way. Even Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" policy (not too far different than the current administration, actually, at least in principle) did not involve us interferring with some potentate's sovereignity other than to secure the safety of Americans or American businesses abroad (see for example

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/Morocco.htm).

In the days of the British Empire, native people in the empire were second class citizens, when they were free at all. At least we gave native peoples the right to vote, eventually, be it the Indians, Cubans, Okinawans, or Filipinos. And we didn't use our "colonies" for penal colonies either. Or shoul I say lifetime indentured slavery, er, servitude.

If you buy the kind with reinforced toes, if you can find them, they almost never fail. I prefer Thi-Tops, Thi-His, etc, with a wide elastic band at the top, usually I buy from Sears, as they sell them with reinforced toes--Leggs, or even JustMy Size do not. @ othe tricks that have worked for me, especially when I had to wear steel toe boots/shoes at work. The hard toe would rub holes in acryllic socks even. I took to putting a piece of duct tape about 1-1/2 inches long over just the big toe. They never ripped through after that, or not until after half a doxen wearings or so. Also, don't just "trim" your toenails, round over the edges towards the front of the toe with a good, fine grit, padded emery board, then apply a couple coats of polish (clear or whatever) to the edge at least.

If I were to be so outrageous as to wear nail polish at the same time as open toe sandals, I would wear whatever color was my favorite in polish--after all if you're going to be that bold, you might as well wear whatever color "takes your breath away". With me that would be either a medium blue or bright purple metallic. I detest "classic" bright red nail polish--on either gender--it screams conservative, no guts, no imagination--it was the only color you could buy before ~1960.

If this war was always about giving freedom to the iraqi people, why did GWB need all that false evidence about WMDs to storm in there? Why didn't he just say "We're going to free the oppressed people of Iraq, who's with us?".

Personally I believe that the WMD will eventually turn up, but in the hypothetical case that they do not, the answer to your question is the same as the answer to the question of "why didn't FDR do anything about the foreknowledge that he had that Japan was going to attact the US?". And that is simply that neither president could have convinced either Congress, or the American people generally, to go to war, because, contrary to popular belief, both inside and outside the US, when it comes to world politics, Americans in general prefer not to get involved, especially for altruistic "it will make the world a better place to live in" reasons.

Girl, Lindsay Lohan, moves to new High School, befriended by a couple of semi goth outcasts, then by the leader of the in-crowd (e.g. the mean girls). The goths convince her to be their spy inside the in-group, but she ends up becoming even more mean than them all. And it goes on from there. eventually nearly everyone in the school gets their comeuppance in one way or another, and most is forgiven.

Dr. Shoe: first of all, try this for a little levity. Go to google.com, type in "weapons of mass destruction" and then click on "I feel lucky".

Now for something that I posted on another forum.

To answer you, I ask you to step back, apparently a LONG way, to look at the bigger picture for a moment. Concentrate not on Al Qaida, or the terrorists who, FINALLY, decided to carry the Muslim fanatics' long-term threats to America's shores, but instead on those threats themselves, on how many years that America has been the target of a general Muslim Jihad, and on ALL those various groups AND GOVERNMENTS who have been mouthing the threat, and listen to the words of African-American columnist Thomas Sowell last year:

"The greatest curse of the 20th Century was the inability of decent people to realize that what was unthinkable to them was both thinkable and doable to others--like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Are we to wait until Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and we wake up one morning to find a couple of American cities obliterated?"

As someone else has pointed out, the fact that we haven't found the WMD doesn't mean they don't exist. Saddam had 12 years to hide them. He had several months to move them to other countries. Which ones?

The technology to produce organophosphate insecticides is in the hands of many countries who have sworn ill towards America. This same technology can be used with very little modification to produce the nerve agents in our chemical weapons stockpile. Heck, why modify it at all? TEMIK, an organophosphate insecticide works the same way. Granted it is only ~1/4 as lethal as VX, but when you're talking 0.4 milligrams per KiloGram of bodyweight to kill, you don't need a huge amount of it to contaminate the water supply (or the bevereges of, say, some local bottling company) to cause widespread sickness. Or better yet, since it is oil-based, why not contaminate the meat at some beef packing plant? The FDA doesn't routinely check raw beef for that sort of thing, to my knowlege--only bacteriological contamination. Or incorporate into the permanent press treatment applied to newly-manufactured (overseas) cotton-blend clothing? The possibilities are practically endless to a dedicated, imaginative, and well-financed terrorist organization or government.

I forgot to mention something that apparently most people do not realize about organophosphates (and nerve agents) is that the lethal dose figure stated above for TEMIK applies for SKIN TRANSMISSION, e.g. the oily nature causes the normally protective barrier of the skin to be fooled into "thinking" that this is a friend, instead of a foe, and it ACTIVELY transports it throught the skin into the bloodstream. Taken orally, or worse yet breathing it in, has the effect of reducing the amount needed to cause death by a factor of 100 to 1000 or so, so the figure would then be ~ 4 micrograms for oral transmission, perhaps as little as 400 nanograms for breathing it in. And that is for a legal insecticide. The least lethal nerve agent, VX, has, as I recall, a skin Lethal dose of less than 0.1 milligrams per Killogram of body weight.

This is just CHEMICAL WMDs. Biological WMDs are even easier to hide. Or transfer across the border. Or send through the mail. Why bother with high-tech Nuclear WMD?? Perhaps the rumours of Saddam posessing them were, in fact, rumours. Only a megalomaniac idiot, which Saddam was not, would have failed to put together WMDs of a Biological or Chemical nature--indeed we KNOW that he posessed Chemical WMDs becaused he used them, both against Iran, and again against his own people, the Kurds. I believe, as mr. Sowell pointed out, that it was only a matter of time before Saddam used them against us--or the UK, for that matter.