HotRod, can you say "disingenuous"?

BECAUSE IT'S A WELFARE CHECK.

(deep sign of my own). Some years back, a woman (and single parent) in NYC worked her way up out of welfare, through college, and into Phi Beta Kappa and a Ph.D. program with full fellowship in the Midwest. They showed her sitting by a house much nicer than anything she could have afforded in NYC. Heck, it was nicer than anything -I- can afford, and I assure you, my individual effort and all that other libertarian dogma probably make you look like a tortoise, not a hotrod. Real estate price differential, don't you know.

THEN the stuff hit the fan. How dare she? She had used welfare to educate herself and now she was moving out of state, and she was going to be a PhD, when she should pay it back by teaching in the city schools.

But she wanted to be a professor. Regardless of the pay (which isn't all that), that was her goal, and her feet were firmly on the path. But the creeps were out because she had so far exceeded what they wanted to be her station in life.

Can you imagine if she'd been offered a job at THE NEW YORK TIMES?

So I think you're not only being disingenuous, but that you're spinach, and I say the hell with it.

Have YOU got a PhD or NYT publishing credits? I've got both; had a classmate who got off welfare and got tenure at an Ivy; and you don't know WTF you're talking about.

Go sigh at someone else or get your little buddies in here to help you out.

"deep SIGH" not sign, lest some of the trollfolk here decide to play Let's Invalidate the Post games.

HotRod, I think I've anwered your questions sufficiently. That you prefer to play gadfly doesn't constitute an obligation on my part to oblige you.

I suggest you contemplate your paycheck, your navel, or anything else you've got...whichever is smallest.

Mjwycha, thank you for your service and for your explanation.

If we're talking modern vampires here, what about Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count de Saint-Germaine, or however he spells it in whatever century he's living in?

He is one of the most cultivated, civilized creatures, human or vamp, in the literature.

And, like Quinn, he's vehemently in favor of women's autonomy, although he is often a rescuer.

It's good to see a man trying to put a feet in our Ferragamos! Oh, that sounded smutty, didn't it? At those prices, forget smut and go for erotica!

There are some assumptions made here: that women wear high heels only for men. Some do. But shoes, like chocolate, are one of those things that lure many women. I admit it: I'm a shoe-holic. I don't know how many pair I have. Most are useful. Some were just so pretty I had to buy them, and I doubt I'm the only one. It's like clothes. Sometimes, some women dress for men. Sometimes they dress for other women. Sometimes, they simply dress for themselves or, God forbid, for comfort or utility.

I -have- walked miles in 3-inch heels and hurt like hell for it. I have also got the pedicures to turn my feet back into feet, not pineapples that hurt. (Any comments about fish pedicures here are probably relevant.)

A good history of costume will tell you that men, too, used to wear high heels. Red ones. With wigs, and fancy silk coats and vests, and satin breeches, as at the French court before the Revolution. They were peacocks in those days. Sixteenth-century women wore chopines, which raised them very high above sometimes-filthy streets. They got way too high sometimes and garnered the usual clerical thunderations.

Shoes as a marker of sexuality, power, status -- they're a very important subject, and I think I know where I'm going at lunch!

Nice fishing expedition. My guess is that if there hadn't been instant outrage, birth control would have been defined as abortion before anyone could say "I'm not a feminist."

Prytania knows. Louis Bayard is reinventing slash fiction.

So glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read the article and accompanying letters, or you all would have owed me a new keyboard.

She needs to be tested, and so do you.

So why not get yourself tested before you say anything. If you can say that you're negative on STDs, you're going to spare her some of the initial freakout.

If you're going to tell her, you owe her that much for your own self-respect.

And if you test bad, then she must know in case she's planning children.

Please don't do this again. Good luck in school.

Tracy, you may have attempted a justification or a rationalization, but you created a verbal pretzel.

Not remotely convincing.

I'm a nonathlete -- adequately competent when I choose to be, but uninterested, due to the downplaying in school of personal best to winning at all costs, the lectures and hectoring about being Good At Games, and attitudes like Ms. Sey's.

However, I do occasionally like to watch the Olympics, but not what I call "little girls' gymnastics," which I find creepy and almost abusive.

Politics, money, and doping aside, Ms. Sey, like many Olympic officials, has forgotten the point of the Olympic Creed.

“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

How are you doing on the struggle, Ms. Sey? Ultimately, it's what we'll all be judged for.

East German judge awards you about a 2.