Tasers are like any other weapon: they're useless if they're in your pocket or your purse when the bad guy jumps you, and they're worse than useless if you take it out but lack the training or nerve to use it properly. In a real fight situation, stress chemicals flood your body and you immediately become confused, uncoordinated, and frantic. If anyone here thinks about buying a taser for personal defense, it is CRUCIAL that you sign up for training under real-life circumstances, meaning low lighting conditions and foes who run at you screaming and threatening to harm you. This is what a good self defense class does, to inure you as much as possible to the effects of stress.

For those of you who care about animals, you ought to know that the Taser company is one of the worst abusers of animals. They persist in testing their painful weapons on pigs. Here's a link to a video of one such test (warning: it's terrible to watch): http://www.indymedia.org/en/2006/04/837479.shtml

Personally, I would never carry a Taser. I carry pepper spray, and also rely on my Krav Maga training. But mostly, I rely on my eyes and ears and common sense to avoid danger before I encounter it. If the little man or woman in your stomach cries out a warning, heed it and leave the area.

Obnoxious cowardly Anonymous, are you really Healthy Skeptic, or just an even lamer troll?

I hope not. Bebop-o is a joy to read.

Back to boring serious-man speak: early results show Clinton in the frackin' lead in NH. Crazy, but then only 20 percent of the precincts are in. Still, this gives me hope Edwards, my candidate, can pull ahead while Clinton & Obama duke it out. Time will tell.

Farm subsidies, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Big corn and other feedstuff growers get the money, while the fruit and veggie growers get hardly anything at all. The results are higher prices for healthy foods, and lower prices for the prime ingredients of junk food, such as corn syrup.

The system is sick.

I'm pleased by both results, but I'm still for EDWARDS!

You know you can be pretty reasonable on foodie threads. Can't you take that attitude over with you to Broadsheet?

Anyway, your points on eating good food are well taken. I eat like a frakkin' hog, but I eat good ingredients. Lotsa olive oil, lotsa fresh fruits and vegetables, lotsa whole grains and beans. I love tofu, by the way, but sprouts not so much.

The point is that Americans buy and large eat crap or cook crap. Cooking from scratch almost always results in healthier and tastier food. So again says I, teach Home Economics once more. It doesn't take a master chef to make a simple yet wholesome and delicious meal. After all, some of the best grub around is often derided as "peasant food." Fine. Give me a stew made with beans and root vegetables and spices, and a loaf of hearty wholegrain bread, and this peasant is one happy eater.

I disagree with Tricki1. Most of the world eats a diet heavy in whole grains (rice, corn, others) and vegetables, with meat used in small amounts as a flavoring (the traditional Chinese diet, for example). Diabetes is not prevalent among the populace of countries that eat in that way, though it's on the increase as, for example, the Chinese up their consumption of red meat and junk foods like processed grains and corn syrup.

I favor a vegan diet, but vegetarian or Mediterranean diets (mostly vegetarian, but with plenty of fish and that nectar of the Gods, olive oil) are also very healthy. I would never recommend a grain-poor, protein-heavy diet.

What I like about the Iowa and New Hampshire results is that they showed the pollsters and pundits and talking (screaming) heads to be full of hot air and interior motives. It is refreshing to see them so completely flabbergasted that their own overblown opinions and predictions were, surprise, wrong.

America has a ridiculously long campaign season, made longer this year by the public's desire to see the Bush Administration flushed down the toilet where it belongs. The election is still 10 long months away and much can happen, so IMHO, we should ignore the media gasbags and vote for the man or woman who best represents our interests.

Edwards 2008!

I don't doubt your observations at all. In recent years the Chinese have been eating way more meat than they used to. This is coinciding with their increased diabetes and cardiac disease rates. When you factor in their increasing purchase of automobiles, what you see is a country heading in the wrong direction both nutritionally and environmentally.

Varkenjaab, I know we're really going off topic now, but you have no idea how much I envy you. I have been trying without succes for years to sample some stinky tofu, but I cannot find it anywhere.

So tell me, please. How is it? Is it worth my flying to China (or maybe Vancouver) to get some? Thanks.

Maureen Dowd, a.k.a. The Idiot Princess, is the perferct female counterpart to Chris Matthews. They are both far less clever than they think, and their stunted immaturity renders them fit, maybe, for only a junior high school gossip page.

I am glad that the Internet offers a bracing alternative to these overpaid twits.

EDWARDS 2008!

P.S. Maureen Dowd could not endure 2 minutes of the 15 years of hate that Hillary Clinton has endured; she would break down into a sobbing little girl. That, I would love to see.

The woman graduated from Yale, became a successful lawyer, endured an adulterous husband who couldn't keep his fly zipped, has endured 15 years of Republican and talking gasbags thuggery (including Tweety), and went on to become first a U.S. Senator and now a Presidential front-runner. Compared to her, Tweety is just an empty suit.

Never underestimate your foe. Lesson #1 for the clueless and outmatched.

EDWARDS 2008!