http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Walter_Map

Twelfth century Arthurian writer in Latin. I was working on Geoffrey of Monmouth and Merlin, not Lancelot, so I think I'll forgive myself for blanking on it.

Must say that I doubt Queens Eleanor and Marie would approve of your mindset.

But the choice of name is way cool.

I believe I can live very nicely without the rhetorical questions, the back up and read Me again, and the "did you get that far" about what I've read.

I got quite far enough, thank you, that I don't need to be bothered with oneupmanship.

Good day to you. Challenge someone else. It's boring.

It isn't the challenge, it's the manners.

Yours are bad.

But I leave you to your illusions that the world is as you define it.

Having girls is a luxury?

Without girls, there are no boys.

Unless, of course, you've figured out how to have men conceive and bear live young.

Your point might have made more sense if you'd gone on to say that girls, who require a dowry and bring themselves and the dowry to another family, have represented a net loss of resources.

Girlchildren tend to be hardier: if they were treated (Nursed, fed, educated) on parity with boychildren, in an agrarian society, they would be highly useful. As it is, they seem to work hard enough.

Plus, those that survive bear children -- assuming they are permitted to carry to term AND assuming they are not murdered for reasons of dowry.

It isn't just selective abortion. It is a lifetime of work and being endangered for their gender.

That's one way to look at it.

Another way is that they're eating their seedcorn.

You know that for farmers to do that, the situation must be absolutely dire.

Yes, I realize that I'm looking further down the road. But where will your son get his female from to breed you grandsons if there are so few girls?

I think this is a short-sighted strategy. Either girlchildren will go back into purdah to protect a valuable commodity, or the parents of girlchildren will maximize their profitability as a reward for long-term planning.

Or, as one person implied, there will be a population crash. In any event, things will never again be as they once were.

If you're going to channel Pat Robertson's list of grievances, you forgot the witchcraft.

My pagan friends are all feminists.

Publishers think anyone who is not in publishing is fair game.

And they prize being not-stupid.

I don't like the Broadsheet lady, but I don't like New Yorker's Eustace Tilley, either.

I collect SF and fantasy art, and I think it's improved tremendously. One reason it's improved is the number of women as readers, writers, art directors, editors, publishers, dealers and artists. Some of us, alas, have a nostalgic fondness for the ol' Princess Leia look.

Thank you for the information, which was a nice summation of material I already knew. I think we should all listen to the woman from India, who is good enough to share her knowledge of things that cannot be comfortable for her to talk about.

Before you press for more commitment than she'll allow, please ask yourself whether you deserve more than being a cat-lady's once-monthly treat, right up (or down) there with a pedicure.

You have given away all your power in this relationship. Is it worth your self-respect, too?

Enticing as she may be online and once a month, ask yourself candidly if you could truly live with all the quirks that turn you on now.

This is a -very- bad scene and, as infrequent as your meetings are and as seductive as the online medium is, it could go on for years and years. Any decent, self-respecting person deserves better. If this is love, the heck with it.

I was thinking, before I read your post, of asking where -I- could get this type of pampering and had about decided that I'd have to go to a spa (they're on sale, apparently).

And then I read your post. I don't begrudge people time. I don't begrudge them pregnancy-concierge service (though I think some of this is a lot silly). I don't even begrudge them one-upping one another with Bugaboos or Bubagoos or whatever the overpriced things are.

But their Bugaboos stop about an inch before my ankle begins.

They need time and leave, and they should have it. I see no reason, however, for the perks to be applied unequally: Execumoms to be enskied and sainted (I know I'm swiping from Shakespeare) and equipped with the latest electronics so that if they're feeling corporate while practicing their breathing, they can Create while women working by the hour are pushing brooms and polishing doors until every decent employee tries to step in and do their work. Been there. Done that. Got the bruises on my ankle and the thank-you notes from the cleaning woman.

I am bored about baby bumps, annoyed when I'm coping with tendonitis and someone 30 years younger and in peak training and three-inch heels sashays in front of me on the subway and just smirks.

Can they have what they need without all the beatific stuff? It's giving me psychic diabetes. Let alone making my life harder when one of these mommy-princesses decides to leave and the rest of us get stuck with the rest of the work.

Yes, it's grinchlike. It took a long time for me to get to this point, and I'd rather enjoy people's development. But some people's grabbiness has made that impossible.

The problem with kill lists is that you still get the context: people replying to the trolls. But it's better than nothing.

I personally would eliminate the red stars altogether. People can read, and consensus flows indicate who's shifting the tide of the argument.

I'd give -you- a red star for your post, though.