Today we have increased gender equality because of the lessening of reliance on physical labor and overall physical hardship needed to survive in the world. The prehistoric world was likely one of greater physical hardship, not less.

Sure it was, but what on Earth makes you think that lessened women's status? Do you have even the slightest notion how heavy children are to lug around all day? How physically laborious it is to crawl and stoop and duck around digging up roots, seeds, grasses, berries, insects, etc.? How much work it is to plant things? Carry water? Drag household items around, repair huts and stone houses, and all the other countless tasks that would have to be performed in a hunter-gatherer or primitive farming community? I suppose the females lolled around while the males did all the heavy lifting?

Good grief, pull your head out. The physically frail, weak and helpless little woman incapacitated by pregnancy and childbirth and with barely the strength to life her arms over her head is a fairly recent player on the scene, a luxury of the contemporary world, and would prove herself a useless drag if even we modern humans lost even a fairly small thing such as our capacity to generate electricity.

I keep seeing stories like this one about all kinds of issues. What's the motivation? The "they did it first" fallacy?

Let's have more coverage on the research into the EFFECTS of deforestation, please.

Only Marxist-Lenninst-Anarchist-PETA-antiglobalist members need apply.

Only Marxist-Lenninst-Anarchist-PETA-antiglobalists would refer to a "lactating person" instead of a "lactating woman".

The guy isn't paying rent, the LW says, so I doubt he has a lease in the first place. If he's just a friend that the landlord allows to stay on his property, then that might make getting him out by the usual legal means exceptionally difficult. That aside, if he is as nuts as you say, I wouldn't be surprised if the landlord isn't at least somewhat scared of tossing him out. Making this an issue with the police, and enlisting the neighborhood to assist you, might give the landlord an out. "Sorry, buddy, they're making me, nothing I can do." Enlisting the "good ol' boy" network is a GREAT idea though. Find out which diner the boys go to for breakfast, stake out the counter, and start shootin' the breeze.

I don't think ignoring it, hoping it will go away, thinking you need to respect the man's "privacy" (who expects privacy when they decide to live their life in their front yard, ferchrissakes??) is a good idea. If he is as unpredictable as you say, then he is a danger to the neighborhood. Don't wait until he decides he doesn't like the way some neighbor parked his car and hurts somebody. This could be about more than your property values.

I'm seeing a lot of "tolerance preaching" hinted at in some of these letters. Pull your head out of your butts, people. Just because you are liberal lefty does not mean you should have no standards and stand there with your mouth hanging open letting drool collect on your chin while some violent nutjob runs amuck in your neighborhood.

To some of you for reminding me why I avoid "normal" relationships like the plague. Move things forward because "that's what people do?" What do I care about what "people" do. I do what I do, because it's right for me and whoever I'm with, at the time we're doing it. I'm under enough damned pressure as it is, without having to look over my shoulder to make sure I'm doing what "people" do. Most of it isn't all that impressive most of the time, anyway.

I too would be extremely unhappy with someone who felt he was "entitled" to my space. And I wouldn't be surprised if he had never had a key in all of the previous seven years, because she had roommates. And believe me, I would not have been happy with my (once, ever) roommate had he just decided to give his girlfriend a key to the apartment he lived in with me. Good grief, do people do this?

and to whoever wrote they would from now on refer to themselves as "an extremely intelligent type": YES! Please do so. I think I'll take your lead and call myself a "smart, private, and somewhat eccentric" type.

Are there really harmful long-term effects of overexposure to Paris Hilton?

Yes. A really bad case of Dumb.

More disturbing that the materialism, and the drug use, and the weird, robotic, performance sex, is the casual, blinding stupidity in which these halfwits wallow. If I had a daughter with a girl-crush on someone like Paris Hilton, I'd worry more that she was idolizing a drooling moron than that she was idolizing a slut.

Oh, and for anonymous - I believe when Terry says "she keeps kevin happy with oral", it means oral for Kevin, and not necessarily reciprocated (you think teenage boys got all egalitarian-enlightened since back in your day?).

"But when _____________ wanted to get to four he would say 2 - 6 X 8 / 16 to the third power and so on. He has no sense of logic."

Technically, his sense of logic was fine. His sense of efficiency, elegance, and (obviously) brevity were completely askew. That kind of thing makes the code way complicated, which makes it hard for the programmer to keep code on track with what has already happened in the program (again, obvious).

"Winnowing" might not have been a terrible choice of words here after all, if what the new programmer did was go through the old code and reduce these long, complicated snarls to shorter, logically equivalent pieces. Unfortunately, the information you were given described how this was possible without really explaining anything.

msmiranda, thank you so very much. Best of luck to you.