Great going, Garrison! I have great respect for your progressive credentials and your intellectual power, and if you can discern an improvement in an individual's character as a result of military training, I'm willing to accept that.

Certainly it would have possibly eliminated the whining, arrogant, spoiled-brat Mama's boy who is in the process of destroying our nation as President; or if not, it might have shaped him up. And the same goes for his sneering sidekick, "had other priorities" Cheney.

I want to see more members of the corporate/social/educational/political elite serve in the military. I think it's a splendid idea to require a minimum of military service of any Presidential candidate.

Miriam Eldridge

I am not black and Southern, but I too grew up relatively poor; well, maybe not so poor in absolute terms, but my parents were Finnish immigrants whose emotional roots were back in the early 20th century (in my father's case I'd say the 19th). Furthermore, they had experienced the Depression. Also, my father was bitter at never having had a son and seemed to begrudge money spent on his two daughters. Consequently, I lacked a lot of the comforts that my schoolmates had. For one thing, my folks were strictly cash-and-carry people, and they claimed that my schoolmates' luxuries had undoubtedly been bought on the installment plan. Be that as it may, but I often felt deprived. My mother made bedsheets out of muslin grain sacks (we had chickens), and I slept on the damned things until I was able to earn some money and buy manufactured ones.

I can absolutely understand where Oprah is coming from!These girls are the surrogates for the biological children she never had (regardless of whether this was her choice, I think the primal maternal instinct may well remain), and she wants to give them what she never had, as most parents do. When I read the story in Newsweek or wherever, it never occurred to me to criticize her actions; instead, I thought how great it was that these poor, deserving girls would be able to live comfortably while being educated. Maybe I too was subconsciously longing for the childhood benefactor that I never had.

We in the USA view too many things through the lens of race. We ought instead to acknowledge class disadvantages and the permanent psychic scars they can leave.

Miriam Eldridge

I am disgusted by what has been happening to Kathy Sierra and also by the male scumbags who insist that she should not take any of this literally. Well, I'd like to post a little hate mail of my own, directed at men whose brains seem to be resident in their testicles and who think they are entitled to bash and threaten women on the Web, or wherever else they won't be held immediately accountable for their filthy verbal spew. I propose that they are all cowards.

I think an injectable drug should be developed that would lower the sexual drive of men from (say) age 14 through 29. If this were done, it would do more to bring peace on earth (or at least on line) than anything else I can think of.

Maleness, goddammit, is a birth defect! Note that an embryo is female by default, until at some point in its development it is flooded with male hormones that turn it into a male.

I am the mother of a daughter and two sons, all grown, whom I dearly love. I think little boys are mostly adorable up to about age 5. After that they become rambunctious, noisy and somewhat aggressive, while girls (whose nervous systems are more highly developed at any given age) are relatively civilized. And after that it's all downhill until about age 30, with concomitant danger to girls and women.

I'm not in favor of eliminating males altogether and resorting to parthenogenesis to ensure the continuation of the species. Men (once they have reached the age of reason) are entertaining, often helpful, and some of them achieve great things for humanity. But for Goddess' sake, their worst impulses have got to be restrained!

To establish at the outset my bona fides for commenting on this matter, I am a mother of three (grown) children and never experienced either a stillbirth or an abortion. I am also a committed pro-choicer, and in fact was President of the Westchester County (NY) chapter of NOW back in 1973 or thereabouts. Yet when I first read of this controversy in the SF Chronicle, my sympathies immediately went to the mother of the stillborn (even though I don't regard myself as ideally [excessively?]) maternal. I was surprised to learn that the objection was coming from the pro-choice side, and wonder if my pro-choice sisters might not be a bit too rigid in this case.

I can understand why the mother of a stillborn infant, who was able to see and hold the dead baby, might wish for a more dignified memorial than a death certificate. The birth certificate would acknowledge that she had indeed carried the fetus, with everything that that entails, and had intended for it to be born alive.

Since some states do issue birth certificates under such circumstances (a fact of which I was unaware), a precedent has been established, and I think my home state of California should follow suit.