Everyone should read Jill Lepore's wonderful article from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/19/090119fa_fact_lepore

By pitting women who breast feed against those who bottle feed, we are not discussing how wrong it is that so many women get virtually no guaranteed time off work to care for their newborns. Having one additional month (4 instead of 3, say) can do wonders to facilitate breastfeeding.

Seriously, you don't have to be a "total mother" advocate to breast feed, and one of the mistakes that breast feeding advocates make is to sometimes make it seem as if you do. I have worked full-time since 1988 and have managed to breastfeed three children, one exclusively for a whole year and then for another year after that. It's not easy, but it is rewarding if you can do it. I also used formula when I needed to, without guilt.

Having said all that, the problem with stating an equivalency between bottle and breast is that bottle is the path of least resistance. In a world where parents routinely seek advantages for their children that are, in the scheme of things, very small, the willingness to fight against breastfeeding stands out in high relief.

The real problem is the lack of support for mothers of newborns. It's no fairer to blame the lactivists for that than it is to blame bottle feeding advocates.

That's what I read into this story. The stockpiling of pills more or less sums up the author's current state of expectations.

1. I definitely would follow up on the suggestions about hormonal testing, because the fact that your son's transformation from peaceful teenager to howling teenager was relatively sudden and accompanied by some other strange changes (eating voraciously) suggests that it could well be metabolic or hormonal. I don't know and I'm not a doctor, but following every lead is the right thing to do. Challenge the doctors to be expansive in their thinking. So many make up their minds right away.

2. I think D. Robert makes good points though in a rather unempathetic way. Your son does seem to be aware -- he said that this was his way of dealing with being in a cage. Well, okay, that's a place to start and it's probably a lot more insight than many people bring to the table when they commit what appear to be otherwise random acts of violence.

3. To all those who criticize Ms. Bauer for intellectualizing what is happening in her life through writing, or for maintaining her equilibrium by doing normal life things like going to a party while her son is in the process of being hospitalized: she's already given about 1000 times more than most parents give to their children. Eventually, distance is the only thing that stands between someone dealing with a seemingly out of control loved one and insanity or suicide. Give her a break.

The judge I clerked for made lawyers quake in their boots. I once saw him tell a lawyer to sit down and stop blathering like an idiot. We were always amazed. He was a very nice person but to say that he would not suffer fools gladly was a definite understatement. People laughed about his courtroom demeanor -- they would say that you had to be on the top of your game when you were in his courtroom, and they meant it as a compliment.

My son lives in his crocs, and unlike my feet, his feet are still growing so we are on his third pair. I like them for outdoors, they are good for gardening and any other activity where you might get your feet wet or muddy or you are standing for a long period of time. But I can't see buying more than one pair. As an investment, you might say they are the Krispy Kreme Donuts of the apparel industry. There's just so many you can tolerate before enough is enough.

But FINA could do a kind of round robin solution: everyone gets issued the same suits from leading manufacturers and then FINA announces at the beginning of the competition which race is going to feature which kind of suit but everyone has to wear the same suit swimming against each other.

Withough equalization of gear, however, at least in this instance, it seems like you are just looking at competition bewteen suit manufacturers not the athletes themselves. I thought the same thing when Michael Phelps had the technological edge. It gives every win and every record a great big asterisk.