One way America is NOT like Rome is in our respect for basic scientific research. The Romans didn't expand on science beyond what they learned from their Greek slaves. They were good at engineering, but they never produced any great mathematicians or scientists of their own. And they didn't even put their foreign scientists to good use. They turned them into glorified nannies.

China can make all the "stuff" they want, but they're not going to produce any new ideas either. They're more like ancient Rome than we are in that respect. They're good at engineering but basic science lags behind, because the tolerance for independent thinking is just not there yet.

Basic science sounds sort of beside the point when we're talking about important things like lawyers, guns and money. ;-)

BUT it's not beside the point. Given the sustainability challenges looming on our horizon, it could turn out to be the only point that matters.

The world has to get a lot smarter in the next 20 years. But some countries like China have political systems that will only allow people to become so smart before they get in trouble. I think those countries will be the losers in the end.

Of course Tucker has been inaccurate himself, but one particular time stands out for me: When he had me on his show last year to attack Salon for running the second set of Abu Ghraib photos, he insisted their publication would lead to anti-American violence.

And I insisted that their publication amounted to amazing hypocrisy, since Salon refused to give Arnold the tiniest bity of credit for his efforts to solve the human rights problems in California prisons.

And you never criticized Gray Davis for all the many things he did to help those problems escalate out of control.

As long as we're all keeping score here on the different reasons people might have for criticizing you on Abu Ghraib.

I wonder if there are any photos anywhere of California prisoners dying in the prison infirmary from conditions that aren't normally fatal on the outside.

I'm a caregiver for someone with schizophenia. Psychiatric medications don't really cure mental illness. They return a lot of functionality, but they don't give society an automatic loophole from showing compassion for the mentally ill.

True. And the irony is -- for the neighbors, friends, co-workers etc. to get involved, they must first judge that the behavior of the abuser is unacceptable. This can't happen with the "live and let live," non-judgmental ideal -- in such a case, it would be verboten to criticize the abuser, lest anyone judge him and damage his self-esteem. And of course, that's ridiculous.

There is a big difference between setting limits on behavior and judging a human being. The difference is even encoded into the Bible.

The Ten Commandments ban certain behaviors, but at the same time, the message of the Bible is that the job of judging all humankind as good or evil is to be left up to God.

Suppose we say it this way:

Once you call someone "an abuser" then you have made a conscious choice to obliterate that person as an individual and label that person entirely by one type of bad behavior.

You can criticize a human being for having commited acts of abuse without turning that human being into a mere object called "an abuser."

Labeling a person by their bad behavior also is a very pessimistic wish upon the human race -- because a bad object can never change to become a good object again.

Objects can't do anything but continue to be objects, right?

When you turn human beings into powerless objects by the act of judgment, then you're giving up hope that there can ever be any change.

That's a very dreadful wish to make upon the world.

But as far as the sex goes, you know what? At this point, that'd almost be like telling a 90-year-old to stop smoking.

Didn't you women at Broadsheet read any of those news articles that came out in the last few years where scientists said they've discovered that the sperm of older men is more likely to produce offspring with schizophrenia?

That's because sperm cells are different from eggs. They go bad in different ways as we age. Eggs get old and dry up, but sperm cells keep on dividing until they produce harmful genetic mutations through mistakes accumulated over years of cell division.

This isn't just about the man's enjoyment of his elder years. It's about the health of the innocent children he's forcing to be born with defective mutated genes.

You're so eager to appear pro-sex that you're forgetting completely that there are innocent victims who have to live with the consequences of this man's macho arrogant narcissism.

He might want to consider experimenting with birth control. (Remember how older men's sperm may be linked to a higher risk for autism?)

I guess I missed this as I read. Why wasn't this the first thing you thought of instead of the very last thing?

I was so pissed off by comparing reproduction with smoking that I didn't even get this far.

You might consider thinking of his innocent victims first rather than last. The lifetime of hardship this man could be inflicting on his children and their mothers should not be tossed in as a casual afterthought.