I am not paying *anything* to watch something on a 2" by 2" screen.

As for NBC, I can see "Heroes" for free over the internet. All I have to do is put up with a brief ad for a blue car.

are actually hurt from these toys? It seems like every time some deeply stupid or undersupervised kid eats a toy or gets impaled on it, yet another product is yanked off the shelves. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that babies swallow everything they can get their little hands on. You also don't have to be a rocket scientist to teach kids what is food and what isn't. This is beyond the lead in paint issue. This is an issue of parents not sussing out the appropriateness of a toy and not supervising (or arranging for supervision) of their kids.

Back to the lead paint thing - we need to support EU and US made companies by buying their stuff and take the time to boycott Chinese made products until they get their fecal matter grouped.

Why should these early adopters get a rebate? No other early adopters get rebates.

The guy's behavior sounds really juvenile and clueless. If he's under 25, its immaturity. If he's over 25 and under 30, he needs course correction. If he's over 30, find someone else.

WTF is it with women pumping breast milk on business trips? Its apalling on many levels that women are travelling for business while the kid (or kids, thanks Clomid) is/are still on breast milk. In European countries, women get decent maternity leave to take care of the little guys. Here, women get some small, token amount of time off. Also, why can't their employers work around this and let them work at the home office and not travel for a while?

But then, there are the careerists, who think they are balancing career and family, but are actually screwing the kids for a buck.

When my brother was 2 1/2, he bit me so hard, it drew blood. Apparently, it was a "phase". Next time he did that, I popped him in the chops. No more biting.

Go to the zoo and watch the chimps. They scream, bite, pull each others' hair, and no one dies. Its amazing.

It also makes me glad I'm not a parent.

I'm a liberal. I'm a bunny hugging, tree worshipping freak of a liberal.

However, I am also a grownup, a homeowner and an armchair scientist.

Shit breaks. Sometimes it breaks catastrophically. Sometimes you miss a detail. Sometimes you don't. A 1924 era pipe exploded and killed someone and freaked out midtown Manhattan. I feel for them. I take off my virtual hat to mourn the poor victim. I also know, as a former Manhattanite, that shit breaks.

It has nothing to do with conservatives or liberals. It has to do with the fact that NYC is a huge, complex city with a lot of details and one can get overlooked. The so called e.coli conservatives cleaned up NYC, got the public toilets working and did whatever magic conservatives do to get crime to drop.

So quit whining and taking potshots. Guiliani and Bloomberg have done a fine job of repairing the crap from Dinkins, Beame, and Koch.

I would not want them in charge of the country, because the country is about people and about foreigners. But I have found, as a tree worshipping and bunny hugging freak, that somehow those conservatives do pretty well on local stuff like crime, potholes, and public toilets.

Its good we have two parties. I wish we had more. Then more problems could get solved by the groups who focus on those problems.

I read a funny anecdote about Tom Jones a while ago. He was in a Welsh club and gave a great performance. Women threw their knickers and keys onstage and he got a roaring ovation. After the show, he ran into an older Welsh couple who had seen the show. Jones asked the husband, "How do you feel when your wife throws her knickers on the stage like that?" The man grinned and said, "Friend, you pump the tires and I ride the bicycle."

Stepmom can use all of this pent up sexual energy to give her old man a rousing good time.

Good on her for wanting to do the right thing. I agree maybe a therapist for her would help her sort out her feelings. I think the lad will eventually find a girl his own age and all will be well.

I'm at the same weight as in high school. I eat things out of plastic containers. Yet, my peers grow ever wideways. I've noticed that they still obligingly clean their plates, just like their depression-era parents insisted they do. I also see them picking up seconds. I see people in restaurants, dinner parties, picnics and buffets.

My overweight peers think I am uncharitable and claim it is genetics, big bones, slow metabolism, or Big Agriculture and that I am a Bad Person for pointing out the food-fat connection. I've been lectured to by folks to not bring up the subject in conversation, as if I were some small child who shouts "pee pee" in church.

I did do an experiment where I stopped feeding my pets corn products and they did lose weight. I pointed that out to my friends who insisted that corn on the cob, Doritos, tortilla chips and so on were not "bad" corn and that the "bad" corn was somehow squirreled away in products that those poor, dear, low income people were being force fed by Big Agriculture.

But, go ahead. Give them another talking point. I hate plastics because they pollute. If you can tell other people to do so by telling them they'll lose weight, that's fine. They'll tell you that somehow, magically, Trader Joe's prepared meals in plastic are OK, because its, you know "organic".