The Wright brothers are responsible for the 9/11 attacks. They invented airplanes, which were used to bring down the World Trade Center. They're also mass murderers on the scale of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot, since airplanes have killed millions of people in strategic bombing, plane crashes, etc. in the past century.

Henry Ford, by making automobiles cheap and affordable, should be blamed for the thousands of deaths that occur yearly in automobile accidents, not to mention the contribution automobiles have made to global warming. And don't forget the people killed by tanks manufactured at Ford plants during the war.

The next time your co-worker bugs you, politely ask him to stop and explain what he's said or done that bothers you. He may simply be clueless about what kind of behavior is appropriate in an office setting. I've run into quite a few guys who were like this -- they'd say or do incredibly offensive and irritating things but thought they were just being funny and didn't understand why everyone was mad at them. Explaining the error of their ways usually gets them to tone it down. (Unless they are seriously bent on harassment -- but that doesn't sound like your co-worker.)

If this doesn't work, I'd talk to your manager about it and see what can be done from an organizational standpoint.

I'd also ask your manager to move the guy's desk. If he sits near the entrance and follows everyone who comes into the building, he's probably not getting a lot of work done and will be irritating your clients, guests and vendors. See if he can be moved someplace quiet and out of the way, where he won't have as many opportunities to annoy everyone.

In this novel by Ursula LeGuin, George Orr is a man whose dreams literally come true. His psychiatrist figures out how to control his dreams and eventually orders George to dream of peace on earth. So George dreams that aliens have invaded the Moon and all of the countries on earth have united to oppose them -- causing peace to break out worldwide. His girlfriend then tells George to get the aliens off the moon, so he dreams that they've invaded Earth! Finally his psychiatrist tells him to dream that the aliens are peaceful, and so they turn out to be; the invasion was just a big misunderstanding.

Short of having George Orr around to dream up a solution that will inevitably turn out wrong, two ways to unite people are to give them either a common goal or a common enemy. Absent a common enemy, is there a common goal that the West can work with the Islamic world to achieve? Nothing as sexy as battling giant robots or aliens comes to mind...

The longer you wait, the more her Mom's presence will seem like the new normal.

Talk to the subletter when Mom's not around and try to find out what's going on. Ask her about her illness -- if it's really as serious as her Mom says, what should you do if she suddenly gets sick? What are her plans for the summer? And, finally, how long is her Mom planning to stay with her?

If daughter tells you Mom's visit has a firm end date in the near future, wait her out. If daughter tells you that Mom is planning to stay longer or is vague about when she's leaving, go with the sublet agreement Cary mentioned. It may even be possible that your subletter would like her Mom to go home but doesn't feel up to a confrontation about it; in that case, the two of you will be natural allies.

However, be aware that Mom may have different ideas about how long she's staying than her daughter does. If the subletter tells you that her Mom is, say, definitely leaving on Wednesday but Mom's still around on Friday, go official on them as Cary suggested.

Also, if you're going to be out of town for the weekend, lock up all your stuff in a bedroom, a closet, or in some other securable area.

We finally broke down and got whole-house AC this year. My husband suffers from hay fever and has been feeling much better because the pollen is being filtered out of the air when we run the AC.

A die-hard social conservative is caught consorting with high-priced prostitutes ... and the only surprise at this point is that they're FEMALE prostitutes!

Anything a Republican politician does is fine, no matter how heinous, disgusting, illegal, or illicit. God is on the side of the Republican Party, you see, and they're the party of Good. Whatever a Republican does is therefore done in the service of Good and must be forgiven because Forgiveness is the Lord.

The only unforgivable sin is supporting something that Democrats believe in. The Democrats are Evil, no matter how virtuous, moral and upstanding any of them appear to be. They're just faking it. God is going to Get Them come Judgement Day, with none of this namby-pamby love and forgiveness nonsense.

Vitter is A-OK because he's God's Boy and is standing firm against evil homosexuals who take marriage seriously (unlike him) and just want to be good family men (again, unlike him). It's moral relativism, Republican style. Anything whatsoever that a Republican politician does is moral. Didn't you all realize that?