A friend of mine is general manager of a car dealership, and he reports that car sales fell off a cliff at his dealership immediately after the CARS program ended. I think we're still in for some hard times here.

... in terms of evolutionary psychology is one you can safely ignore. Say it with me, people: evolutionary psychology is not science - it's an attempt to backfit our current cultural prejudices to Cro-Magnon/Neandertal society in a way that sounds science-y. Unless we can figure out how to do time travel back to the Pleistocene so we can interview some actual cave people, it's utterly untestable. We don't know ANYTHING about the psychology of prehistoric humankind.

I seriously wish I could drive a stake through the heart of this pseudo-science, but given that I can't... I'll at least recommend that you take any explanation of any phenomenon in terms of ev. psych. with a boulder of salt.

(If even then; it's by no means clear that we could, or should, respond to a nuclear first strike with tit-for-tat mass murder rather than morally discriminating conventional war against the attacker. A conventional superpower like the U.S. should consider unilaterally renouncing the use of mass-casualty nuclear weapons not only in first strikes but also in retaliation.)

You're kidding here, right? This is logically the same thing as unilateral nuclear disarmament. If you're not going to use them either as first strike weapons or in retaliation, you've foreclosed use of them altogether, and might as well just dismantle them all. The threat of mutually assured destruction being gone, you'd then be vulnerable to whatever threats any of the remaining nuclear powers wanted to make.

Why should a terrorist go to the trouble of trying to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the U.S., when it is easier to spread mass panic with guns, backpack explosives, suicide bomber belts or truck bombs?

Yes, smuggling a loose nuke into the US and setting it off would be very hard. Can you think of any other terrorist acts that are a lot harder than spreading mass panic with guns, explosives, etc? Here's a hint: it involves a massive conspiracy to learn to fly planes, hijack them, and fly them into large buildings. The point here is that one of the things terrorism is trying to accomplish is to make a really big statement. Guns, conventional explosives etc... scary, yes, but also passe. Nothing would say "I'm the baddest terrorist ever" like setting off a nuke in your enemy's backyard. Also, you've correctly pointed out that the reason terrorists haven't done the nuke thing is that it's too hard, and your response is to make it a little less hard (by concentrating on other threats instead)?

Interesting article, but I don't think you've really thought this through.

As a man, I'm somewhat on the outside looking in on this question, but is this really true:

Instead, we'll have to keep defining it in opposition to those other terms: "Ms." is the married woman who has kept her name, or the single 20-something who wants to be taken seriously.

Not the whole answer to the question, but that's not true at least in the work environment (at least not at businesses where I work or have worked with). All men are "Mr.", all women are "Ms.". No one even asks how they prefer to be addressed - Ms. is assumed.

I guess I would have assumed that having the choice of title would be a good thing, but as is frequently the case, more choices are not necessarily better.

I'm a veteran myself, and normally I recommend the service to those interested in it, as I think it's a great way to explore a career option that most people never experience. But I'm not sure it's right for you. There's nothing wrong with joining the service to find yourself - but I don't think it should be the only reason. I think you'd be better served to work more directly on the problems you're experiencing, and then, when your head is clear, joining up still sounds like a good idea... do it then. Otherwise, you could be setting yourself up for a pretty miserable four years. Remember that you can't just quit.

[regarding increase in hours worked by existing employees] ...but not much help on the employment front.

How is this not helping "on the employment front"? Surely some people will move from the category of "working, but not getting enough hours" to "working and getting all the hours I want"... which in turn helps the U6 number. I don't understand this comment.

And are men really so dense that they need a PhD to remind them to bring their umbrella when it's raining?

Holy crap, no kidding. If I were so stupid as to go out in the winter with wet hair and no coat, then I probably ought to be removed from the gene pool.

This Times article is a perfect example of how feminism is good for men too - in a more equal world, it wouldn't be presumed that men are so stupid they need their wives to remind them to keep breathing. Thanks for pointing this out.

... I still think Johnston needs to crawl back under the rock he slithered out from. Trig Palin is a disabled baby, for God's sake. Stop dragging him into your feud with his mother.

Of course, the elder Palin isn't helping herself any by engaging with this. The proper answer to Johnston's statements would be "I'm not going to dignify that with a response"... and that only if asked. Continuing to fire back at him via press release only encourages him.

Not TCF's blog post, which seemed to be a fairly good analysis of the Vanity Fair article. I'm talking about the Vanity Fair article itself. When you get to the point where your conclusion is "making a baby laugh" == "torturing the baby"... well, let's just say that you may be overthinking it a little.