for wisely avoiding jumps to conclusions, respecting the ambiguity in this result, and noting that the study raises more questions than it answers. Like: How many IQ points? and, Is the (possible) effect due to intake of fish, or to reduced intake of other foods avoided by mothers who eat more fish?

Significant in the WP report is the additional finding related to “more behavioral and social problems” in the youngsters whose mothers ate less fish. We know that intellectual development, behavior, and social functioning are all related to quality of early attachment. Do mothers who tend to eat more fish (and maybe less fast food or highly processed food) also tend to be more responsive and nurturing caretakers?

Eat healthy, but don’t allow the debate to distract from what is most important in child development – quality of early attachment.

and I doubt it has much to do with Hollywood.

There are significant biological and behavioral differences among African and European evolutionary lines, one of the most important related to family, life cycle, and social groups. Among African lines, “family” may mean structures beyond the American conception of nuclear patriarchal family, including matriarchal groups and extended groups which include non-kin, with resources and support coming in from a variety of sources. Females coming into reproductive maturity may receive overt or covert messages: “there are males out there, and there is also your group for continued support and security”. Perhaps not coincidentally, rates for marriage are much lower for females in this line.

The archetypal pattern and message for European females is quite different and stereotyped in Jane Austen’s world of highly ritualized mating behaviors and displays. The message for the pre-reproductive female is: “you are about to lose the support of your family of origin, and your continued well-being depends on your being selected by a male with property and resources” and the corresponding understanding for the female of “To be secure and provided for, I must be selected, and to be selected, I must be more [something] than the others”.

What makes sense from an evolutionary perspective is that the [something] which gets the female selected and gains security may be thinness, because thinness signals youth and virginity, and those signal to the male that the reproductive resource is not yet fertilized and has years of prime reproductive value ahead. Behaviors aimed unconsciously or consciously at being selected, like other biological drives, may become pathological. It is also not likely coincidental that social/family correlates or antecedents of anorexia involve a young woman’s perception of not being valued and provided security.

That is, women of African lineage may be less driven to thinness because they carry the idea that security and support do not depend so much on being selected by a male.

BTW, I think Beyoncé and Christina Ricci look great. Also? I think Kate Bosworth and Jennifer Hudson look great. They all look great! Christina and Kate not only look great, all things being equal they’re gonna live longer than the average female too. That’s because fat kills.

I also got what Sandra L Hubsher (p. 2) and Jess (p. 3) picked up but maybe with a more positive view of its value and meaning. The elements of Sara’s experience of spirituality seem largely independent of the institution of religion: unmediated connection with the transpersonal as a child; the comfort of nurturance and the loving touch of another (atheist) human; communion with inner experience (which she calls “prayer”); the profundity of an empathic connection with a friend; the transpersonal nature of the merging, giving, and joining of flesh, of the body. All without need of church, religion, or sanctification.

"It's not about the church," I said. "It's about -- "

Exactly.

I hope that you have gained something from this, and that you will think twice before lowering yourself again to become involved with System.

You’re too smart and brave for that.

No wonder you have some negative views on females! Sounds like they can cause you a lot of trouble. Sounds like this particular female violated some boundaries – being needy and complaining to you about her sexual relationships.

It also doesn’t help to feel like other posters are accusing you of something sinister, but I’m not sure that anyone actually accused you of that. Maybe I missed it.

Anyway, it sounds like the problem is nearly resolved, so I wonder why you would move away? Maybe that’s a tactic you sometimes have to resort to, to get away from the trouble?

Sometimes bouncing stuff like this off of someone you trust can generate different solutions, even new ways of looking at the problem.

Good luck in solving this issue.

but coffee with God? That’s uppity.

UPPITY I say!

Uppity.

Ms. Dickerson’s seemingly genuine appreciation for and homage to loyal and competent underlings is diminished only slightly by a somewhat condescending, or one might say uppity, tone.

I suppose it is insignificant that eggs are commoditized. We have reached a point at which we accept that the venality inherent in the free market and which will inevitably apply to eggs as to every other commodity – the deceit, false claims, psychological manipulation, etc. in the service of increasing payment received or demand – is unremarkable in the egg market.

Also, a correction: there is, of course, no sense in which a sperm (or egg) donor “has children” or is a “parent”.