And while we're on the subject of the pageant, why are we snorting at a stupid answer when we don't bat an eye at the fact that Upton and her pageant sisters are smearing Vaseline on their teeth and parading around in bathing suits and evening gowns, hoping to be judged superior to one another and deemed emblematic of young American womanhood?

People already laugh at pageants. That's a given. There is no particular reason to bring up the details of why pageants are silly wastes of time and insults to women everywhere. Those arguments are background to the fun that people are having at this poor young woman's expense, but they do not need to be retread to understand the joke.

johnlars,

The most altruistic example of a GE crop I can think of is golden rice (www.goldrice.org). Golden rice is rice that has been genetically engineered to increase its the amount of beta carotene it includes . The idea being that golden rice would decrease mal-nutrition in populations dependent on rice as a staple food.

King,

I am not sure why the media hasn't jumped on this Thomas story. Maybe it is good sign for race relations that something like this is staying a local story. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the allegations are true. Both Thomas and Marbury usually come across as jerks in public, so it hardly surprising that they mistreat people they have authority over.

On happier news, is anyone around here watching the Women's World Cup? There have been some really great games,as well as some fun blowouts. The USA/North Korea game was a great match with a lot of drama. It is too bad the games are on in the middle of the night in the US and during such a busy part of the sports calendar. If people had watched the game, the images of Abby Wambach playing with a bloody jersey and a gash on her head might replace Chastain ripping off her jersey eight years ago. OK, maybe not, but it was still gripping soccer.

I haven't watched the US/Sweden game that happened over night, but if you missed taping it, it is on ESPN Classic this afternoon. That should be a good game too. Women's soccer still has huge discrepancies between the teams, but the upper echelon is getting bigger.

I am glad that nuclear power keeps getting brought up in these interviews, but you have let all of the candidates off the hook. Nuclear power's main problems are political, not technical. If we went back to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel as is done in many countries, the nuclear waste problem would be almost completely solved. (Stopping fuel was probably the single biggest mistake Jimmy Carter ever made.)

In the future, could you please push harder on the nuclear questions. I know that nuclear power is controversial with many environmentalists. It is, in fact, that controversy that is behind the troubles of nuclear power. Based purely on technical issues nuclear power would a large component of any rational energy policy.

The Fox shows that were mentioned are available for free from Unbox as well. NBC is also offering the pilots for some of its shows on Unbox for free. I have already watched two of NBC's pilots using Unbox and my TiVo, and they both exceeded my expectations. It always hard to sure how things will shakeout after a pilot, but Journeyman seems like a decent show.

It is one of the biggest reasons that I am not supporting Hillary Clinton. It is not good for this country to continue to going back and forth between two dynasties.

So I am supporting Bill Richardson.

Of course the Clintons and Bushes are not the same. The Clintons are not yet a dynasty in the same way the Bushes are, and I would like to keep it that way. It is not good for power to keep being placed in the same hands too often or for too long. I would have argued against Hillary Clinton even if the Bushes had never existed. I think that two terms for a Presidential family is enough, at least in a 20 or 30 year span.

Of course, the situation for Representative and Senators is a bit different, since their power is an order of magnitude or two lower. Even there I generally lean against legacy candidates, and we have had plenty of those in Minnesota. Let people stand on their ideas, not on their name recognition.

Maybe the best word for the Clinton machine is not "dynasty" (and they obviously don't compare to the to the Bushes), but that there is not a valid argument against Hillary here.

Having too much power concentrated in the same hands for too long is bad for democracy. You can argue that 8 years off of the Clintons is long enough, but I don't agree. Not only will Hillary and Bill be back in power again, but so will many of their cronies.

It is time for some new blood in the White House, even if some of the blood is not that new. Richardson, Obama,

Biden or maybe even Edwards would all be better choices than Hillary Clinton.

The meme that US cars are poorly made lags reality by 10 or 20 years. US cars on average show up in the middle of the pack in Consumer Reports reliability ratings - below Japanese cars, but above European cars.

American cars that get good mileage can be found, but the Big Three do make it harder than it should be. There should be more cars available with smaller engines and manual transmission. Those simple changes would do more to help fuel efficiency in the near future than hybrids.