Gosh, I'd be really alarmed at the lack of peer review implied by moving academic papers to the Web -- if only peer review meant anything. After years of studying its (lack of) integrity in the medical field (and particularly AIDS research, an untouchable religion in most liberal circles), I have concluded that going to the doctor is a highly dangerous act.

Guess we're all on our own, then. We have to sift the information ourselves. Are we up to that? Personally, I don't think most people are. The tabloid mentality rules.

When we shift responsibility for critical review to ourselves without admitting it, and still think we're deferring to "authorities," we're creating a dangerously deceptive situation. "Space Aliens Take Over Brains, Cause Group-Think!"

As a longtime rebel against fake hormones -- I crawl under the barbed wire and get the cervical cap and love it -- I found myself surprised at my mixed emotions on this development.

On the one hand, I'm horrified at even the conventional birth-control pill, which nearly put me in the loony bin in 1986. And the no-period pill, which threatens to label women loony if they refuse to become little Stepford machines, horrifies me still more.

On the other hand, I'm old enough now to see the inevitable imperfections of life. Perhaps I avoided breast cancer, or a worse cervical cancer scare than I suffered three years ago, by staying off the pill (my doctors were, incredibly, trying to sell me on it even as I went through my biopsies; lesson learned: nobody cares about women, especially if they say they do). And it did nothing for my endometriosis and dreadful cramps, though it did indeed hold out that promise. But now I'm over 40 and loving my blissful painfree period, three days or four, not even missing those hormones I struggled so long to protect as "natural" and "healthy." I was going to win, but I only waited out the game.

What is the score then, in Me versus The Pill? In retrospect, I don't have an answer. If I could get back those years of sequential sick days, failed career dreams, moodiness, endless doctor visits, and just plain humiliation, I would. Would the no-period pill have done it for me? I don't know.

I just have to face a painful realization: Life is not perfect, health is not assured in some blissful "natural" Eden, and my rage against the machine has led to . . . plain-old middle age.

Good luck, girls. Still, don't believe everything you're told.

For heaven's sake, view the whole video, Joan. He's great.

Why is a black man who speaks his mind -- eloquently, and as his own views and not Obama's, I might add -- a "narcissist," but Bill Clinton isn't? Both could be accused of "sabotaging" their friend's/wife's campaign. Was Billy Graham a narcissist too when he supported Nixon?

Wright said white people get the black church wrong; they listen with white ears and little sense of history. Exhibit A is right here.

The attitude of so-called "narcissism," a certain cockiness, is part and parcel of black preaching. Maybe black preachers say what the rest of the congregation can't say, in the manner they'd otherwise get killed for saying it in. Listen to what they say, and you might learn something.

Obama called for "a national dialogue on race." What did you think that was going to look like, Joan? A polite game of Scrabble, with no dirty words allowed?

However, I did pick up that Wright's church has been involved in HIV/AIDS work for more than 20 years, and that he follows Horowitz's theories of a government-invented virus. In truth, HIV has never been isolated, and the test -- administered disproportionately to African-Americans -- tests for antibodies, not virus. And it does that poorly, too, as about 70 conditions can cause a reaction. The test packets themselves carry disclaimers seldom given to the recipients of these tests. The human devastation of this is immense.

So yeah, I'm gonna say it: "Yo mama" -- the black church -- is selling out its own people. This guy is misinformed on that one issue, and it's big. But what other facts does he get wrong? Anything at all? Or is just being "uppity" in public enough to indict him?

I wonder if TV and soundbites have ruined us so much that we can no longer follow an actual argument before condemning a man. If we can engage in racism while sounding so gosh-darned smart. A crushing banality in this country just kills all hope of positive change or self-examination.