You write: "...the problem of altruism has vexed biologists since Darwin. Why do people sacrifice their own self-interest, sometimes even their lives, in order to help others? Genes for such behavior should be selected against quickly and definitively."

I knew a researcher who studied altruism in the animal kingdom. The emergence of altruism in some animal populations is explainable, and has been successfully modeled by equations and computer simulations.

Basically, when you live among relatives, then under some conditions that arise in nature, helping them to succeed even at your own expense increases the likelihood of propagating genes you possess.

You could have picked a better example. As successful corporations go, I think Google is actually about as counter-culture and hippy as you're going to find. Much more so than Apple, to pick on your other poster child. If you wanted to hold up an example of a Silicon Valley standard that's as anti-hippy as any that exists, may I humbly submit Oracle, Cisco or 3-Com.

I own a 17-year-old genuine IBM Model M keyboard. Something about those buckling-spring key switches makes typing magic. I've used a great many keyboards worth anywhere from $5 to $400, and nothing beats the comfort and tactile response of those buckling springs. I'm sorry my keyboard is noisy. I'll buy you some earplugs.

This seems like an incredibly stupid idea, for the patrons. All but the cheapest of ladies' undergarments I've seen (in my limited experience) cost more than a drink. Who would trade $10 undies for a $5 beverage?

I think the state of California was being insensitive and, frankly, a bit tacky in putting "Party A" and "Party B" on the license form. It would have been more gracious to have picked a classier term like "Celebrant".

I am too old to have called anything "gay" unless it was directly related to homosexuals. For this I am grateful. We need not go into the stupid things my generation said as teenagers; the sooner forgotten, the better.

I expected all along that fuel prices would fall before the election. If for no other reason, it seems like prices trend downward at the end of summer every year. What does surprise me is that neither campaign has taken credit for bringing the prices down. Yet. Maybe the financial crash took the wind out of their sales.

It is okay for the VP candidate to look good; vital, even. The candidate's attire could affect the ticket. If they had spent $1,500 sprucing up the candidate's wardrobe, I'd only yawn. $15,000 would get a serious double-take from me. $150,000 is simply beyond the pale. It's insulting. It's nauseating. Above all, it's poor judgment, and that matters.

My heart goes out to everyone who stood (or maybe is still standing) in line. I went to my polling place in Santa Clara, CA at 8:45 am with three friends and we were all out the door by 9:00. It took me the longest because I experienced a technology failure: I had to borrow a pen.

I vote by drawing a line connecting two dots on a big paper card, which is tallied by computer in a central facility. This is the best voting system I've used to date. All you need at the polling site is a stack of ballots and a box of pens. The only bottleneck is the election judge who crosses my name off the register.

Even with DRE voting machines, something usually has to be physically carried to the central office to have their votes tallied, so it's not like the fancy machines save time or reduce dependence on a counting facility. They just add cost, complexity and risk.

Optical scan paper ballots are the way to go, at least until we all get to vote on the web.

As much as I dislike Norm Coleman, I am in total agreement with him about needing to set aside the election and call a new one. As I have consistently advocated since the 2000 debacle, any election that is decided by a margin less than the statistical margin of error should be repeated. And in order to forestall the debate over what that margin is, I'd draw the line at 2% of votes cast.

Memo to Arlen Specter: Having Congress investigate the Executive is the regular order. It would be the height of irresponsibility to expect the Executive, through the DoJ, to investigate itself.

As is so common in conservative screeds, William Saletan is just making up arguments with which he disagrees and ascribing those positions to a group of people he condemns.

The reason people do not donate their embryos to adoption agencies is not, as Saletan claims, because the biological parents are possessive. It is because -- let me put this bluntly -- MOST PEOPLE DO NOT WANT SOMEBODY ELSE'S CHILD. I am not saying this to be judgmental, it is a simple fact. Legal, ethical and moral considerations aside, there is essentially no demand for donated embryos.

The embryo adoption agency touted by President Bush (and, transitively, by Saletan), snowflake.org, claims to have successfully brought 143 babies into the world from donated embryos since 1997. Go team! By your own estimation, you have a success rate of ONE baby per month.

And that's in the US, where we do not have a strong cultural bias against non-biological parenthood, which I have heard (unsubstantiated) does exist in Japan.

@Nathan Coker,

Thanks so much for your helpful contribution. Here are some definitions used by real people:

It's a "baby" if it has been born.

It's a "fetus" if it is sufficiently developed as to be recognizably human. Sources vary, but typically in the second or third trimester.

It's an "embryo" if it is a collection of undifferentiated cells that have the potential to become a fetus. A single fertilized egg is a zygote.