I know too many smart, ambitious, talented and capable women to believe in any way, shape or form that we are inferior to men. However, some men have problems accepting this fact. I've had to deal with far too many of these guys throughout my career and it's never been pleasant. Most of them resented female competition and had an elevated sense of entitlement. I find it very plausible that these attitudes are driving women out of higher-level academic jobs because they've been driving women out of higher-level corporate jobs for decades!

Second, the comment about women academics being hampered by not having wives is spot on. I'm currently working at a research institute for a university. The upper-level academic researchers/professors here work long, erratic hours and have to do a tremendous amount of job-related travel, sometimes for weeks at a time. Having a supportive wife allows them to have some semblance of family life and makes their own lives much less difficult. Again, this is paralleled by upper-level executives in the corporate world, who also must travel and work ungodly hours and are assisted mightily by their supportive wives.

In short, the problems women face in academia are mirror images of the problems they face in industry. Similar solutions may go far to address them.

I second Cary's advice to pick one wedding and give the other couple your most heartfelt regrets. But deciding whose wedding to attend is not easy. Besides what's already been mentioned, here are some other things to consider when you are making your decision:

- Which ceremony requires your presence most? If you're the best man or maid/matron of honor, for instance, it's a bigger deal to skip the wedding than if you're one of 20 bridesmaids/groomsmen or just an ordinary guest.

- Which friends will be more hurt by your absence? If your presence is more important to one couple than the other, you may want to attend their ceremony.

- Which one is less expensive to attend? If you can't make it to, say, your friends' destination wedding in the Bahamas without maxing out your credit cards, it's better to go to the one that you can actually afford.

- Who's going to be there? If you know and like a lot of people who are going to be at the wedding, you may prefer to attend that one.

- Where is the wedding being held? Is it in a city that you'd like to visit? Is it easy to get there? Will you need to take a day off to travel there? Can you drive or will you have to fly? Can you work it into your existing vacation or travel plans? All of these things may affect your decision.

In any case, I'd make plans to do something special with the couple whose wedding you are not going to attend. You could visit them when things have calmed down a bit and take them out to dinner, for instance.

Good luck!

I watched Louis Bayard's last Jeopardy game -- the one of "Balmoral" infamy -- although I have to confess that I rooted for one of his opponents! In any case, I wish him well and was delighted to read about his take on Jeopardy and "trivia culture" in his review of Ken Jennings' new book. He's an interesting and entertaining writer and I hope to see more articles by him in the future.

What I like about Salon is its mixture of different kinds of articles -- everything from sarcastic TV reviews to serious political journalism. So I'm glad to see a more personal, less serious story run as the lead today. The site would be less interesting if it stuck to a steady diet of gloom and doom.

As another person pointed out, runway models are basically human coathangers. Their job is to show clothing to best advantage; being thin, tall, and attractive is a requirement.

However, isn't the whole point of Fashion Week to show off the spectacular fashions that designers are creating? The current crop of runway models are so emaciated that their skeletal bodies are the first thing people notice -- not the clothes they're wearing! Most of the news stories I've been reading talk first about how dangerously anorexic all the models look and mention the latest designs only as an afterthought.

If the fasion industry (and I use this term to indicate collective responsibility) went back to hiring models that were closer to normal weight, clothes would again be the focus as they should have been all along.

By standing for nothing, they'll fall to anything.

If I'm forking over the dough for a mixed drink, it had damned well better contain about as much liquor as the one served to the guy sitting next to me. I paid the same amount as he did for my drink and would reasonably expect it to have the same makeup. If the bartender puts less alcohol in mine, he's cheating me.