I've done a little bit of synchronized swimming and it's not as easy as it looks. It requires excellent swimming skills, endurance, strength, flexibility, and tremendous lung capacity. And then there's the artistic dimension on top of that. Try treading water upside down using only your hands, with your legs up in the air past your thighs, holding your breath all the time ... and now do it with a smile plastered on your face, precisely to the beat of your routine, and make it look graceful. Not so easy!

We think of Esther Williams and her lavish aquacade movies, forgetting that she was a national champion in the 100m freestyle and that her movie swimming and diving stunts entailed considerable risk. And if you're going to drop synchro from the Olympics because it's "too artistic," gymnastics and figure skating should be torpedoed as well.

If women can compete in synchro, men should be allowed to do so as well, simply out of fairness.

On the other, it makes it that much harder for him to step into the job as governor.

Count me as another fan who avidly read Arthur C. Clarke's work as a teenager and beyond. I liked the optimistic tone of most of his stories and non-fiction, his engineer's precision, and his sense of humor. He was one of the "Golden Age" greats who, along with Bradbury, was most prescient in his speculative predictions. Much as I love Ray Bradbury's writing, I wish we were living in a future that was closer to Clarke's vision than his (i.e., in a future like that of "2001" instead of "Fahrenheit 451").

I too have hung onto my original yellowing Clarke paperbacks. I've been handing them out to my oldest son, an enthusiastic reader who's constantly looking for new books to devour. He thinks they're great.

Plenty of women are jumping off the fashion merry-go-round. It is simply too exhausting and expensive to keep up with the latest trends. They are mostly recycled from the late 70s/early 80s, which IMHO was the nadir of clothing design. I consider that I get a free pass not to wear this junk because I wore a lot of it the first time around, when it at least was original (although still ugly). These clothes look horrible on anyone who doesn't have the body of a teenaged boy. They also look silly on any woman over the age of 30. No thanks! I'm waiting until they revive a more aesthetically interesting era, such as the 1920s, before I even consider getting back on.

Besides, a lot of women dress to please ourselves, not to impress men. I wear clothing and accessories that I like the looks of, that fit well, and that flatter my body type. Depending on the situation, this can include anything from cocktail dresses to ratty jeans and sneakers. And my husband notices when I wear something that he thinks looks good; he couldn't care less whether it's fashionable.

Also, working in a casual techie environment (where jeans, sneakers, and computer t-shirts are the preferred male dress) gives me the freedom to wear whatever I feel like, as long as it's appropriate for a workplace setting. Bonus: no requirement to wear pantyhose and heels!

I think my feminist cred is in pretty good shape after getting a degree in a male-dominated field and making my career in a male-dominated industry -- putting up with a great deal of sexist nonsense along the way. Femininity is a role like any other.

"I'm guessing you want them stripped naked and flogged then burned at the stake or something reasonable like that? Maybe cut off a hand a-la Sharia?"

I'd settle for them being pelted with rotten tomatoes. (After being stripped of their ill-gotten gains, of course.)

That's creative thinking! I hope their vanishing nail polish catches on.

We were forbidden to use lip gloss and lipstick back in my Catholic schoolgirl days, so we drank Faygo Redpop instead.

"... a front-loaded political calendar that has turned most partisan Democrats into now-irrelevant bystanders just when a real decision is needed."

Welcome to our reality! Pennsylvania voters have long been irrelevant bystanders when it comes to presidential primaries. Normally, the contests are settled well before we get to the polls.

Now, though, the tables are turned and the voters of Pennsylvania and other late primary states are getting a once-in-a-lifetime chance to affect who the Democratic Party's nominee for president is going to be. So I don't want to hear any whinging from the early primary states about not getting to affect the nomination. You already had your chance to cast your ballot ... and if you preferred to vote for Edwards or Kucinich, that's the breaks.