... as boring as golf itself. Who cares? Yawn.

We all know the hair's not real, right?

When we're obsessed with our weight, they can sell us exercise equipment, fitness club memberships, weight-loss products, and all kinds of stuff like hair color and antiperspirant to make us think we're boosting our self-esteem. And when the struggle against extra poundage falls apart and we give up, they can sell us "comfort" junk food, foundation garments, diabetes supplies, etc.

And the obsession keeps us distracted from the world's more pressing problems, because heaven forbid we work towards fixing those when we're too busy shopping for things that promise to transform us physically or feel better about ourselves. The purpose of any TV trend is to create an audience for the sponsors, and fostering body-obsession maintains a market for a huge array of consumer products.

I try not to read Paglia but I let the gay genes teaser draw me in. I wish I hadn't. The facile psychobabble she tosses off is insulting to anyone whose bodies went through a gay puberty long before their minds could recognize it. She should consider that gay people may have leapt on biological evidence because it felt innately valid to them. There is a vast range of personalities within every sexual preference; her reduction of homosexuality to the result of simplistic social conditions is ridiculous. There are real, non-oblivious thinkers out there who could write for Salon for reasons other than trying to shock with witless contrarianism. This is bilge.

Quite the opposite. I'm saying that his statement effectively comparing golf to family are as offensive as the "nascar dad/soccer mom" terminology.

Male DHS Secretary who doesn't have time for golf, female DHS secretary who doesn't have time for a husband and kids.

is what I said when I drank the one can of Bud I've had in my life.

rkilarski: Points taken. But my current employer (an MS Gold Partner, in the tech sector) does not use custom builds and has excellent technical support that is mostly helpless in the face of these difficulties. (I have worked for companies in the past that have used custom builds, and as a result had far more trouble.) I didn't configure my system - professionals did. As a workplace user I strive to keep my own system as vanilla as possible to avoid problems - my year-old PC has no dubious add-ons or third-party peripherals except speakers.

So, I hear you and may even admit to a small knee-jerk aspect to my rant based on years and years of frustration and deadline strife caused by system problems. But the cover-our-ass arrogance of the User Experience Improvement program, which tries to put a we're-all-in-this-together face on pricey kludge, is undeniable. It's like they're so (justifiably) terrified of open-source alternatives that they're almost pretending to be just that.

I'm a veteran office worker who has suffered mightily through every version of Windows. Word crashes on me at least once weekly, and I still bristle every time I see the words "You chose to end the nonresponsive program..." You chose - it's not our fault - you can't blame us for lost work and lost productivity, but please do us a favor and submit an Error Report.

Gates' comment that software is magical because users can help improve it is an outrage - when we pay for a product (and our organizations pay for its byzantine licensing), we are also signing on to help fix its flaws?

My workplace version of Outlook no longer shows statutory holidays on its calendar. There's a patch for that, but I get an unfathomable error message when I try to install it. Internet Explorer suddenly decided one day that it can't run Java properly, so I must use Firefox. Office keeps lapsing into a French dictionary, so from time to time my documents show dozens of spelling mistakes because the words are in English. And this is XP.

You can only barf out an increasingly bloated user-hostile OS for so long before people realize it doesn't have to be that bad. Alternative operating systems are slowly making people discover that an OS can be reliable and usable, and not a shaky, overstuffed mess that gets worse with every version. I can only hope Microsoft's monopolistic cluelessness will be its undoing.

It'll be a huge sensation if this glittering bazillion-heiress runs for VP! Plus she's got the biracial thing going on and is already toting the ultimate show-stopping fashion accessory: a new designer-clad baby! Little Harlow will be an adorably photogenic 9 month-old when the campaign really starts to heat up. The media won't dare not to cover her every gurgle and cute toothless grin, and Mom's every outfit and handbag!

It'll be Camelot all over again!

Hilarious and insightful. I admire Price's pragmatic, Type A approach to solitude and relaxation, and her incredible courage to participate out of sheer curiosity in an activity she finds as repellant as I do.

Jaw-droppingly bad. Did Cary do it on purpose, inciting readers to fill the sense gap?

If so, I hope the letter writer is reading the letters. Jim Douglas and others are right: forget the money and quietly engage the community and its resources to protect yourselves.

"If it's just another moment, then make it just another moment -- make that beautiful."

It was beautiful. My eyes got wet when the credits came up. All we know is, the family was together. At that instant they had all come together.

What better show to have a shock ending? It was completely within the vibe of the series. Chase and crew respected the audience's intelligence.

At the same time, I like to think it was me who was whacked. "Stupid f*ck! Seven years he's been parked in front of this shit! And the DVDs! He paid retail for most of 'em!"