So, Eric Theodore Cartman, please draw on your extensive knowledge of anthropology and enlighten us: what is the irrefutable rite of passage for the male of the human species? I do hope that at some point it involves no longer identifying with an obnoxious character on a puerile animated series that jumped the shark a long time ago.

I suppose it really does take the advent of a small, dependent human being to force many people to grow up. If this is indeed the case, it's a relief to me that they finally have done so, but still a wee bit alarming that such drastic measures were necessary.

I am, however, more concerned about the countless cases in which reproducing did not bring about maturation, as evidenced by all the reports of neglect and abuse that reach child-protective-services agencies in a given year. I seem to recall several particularly horrible instances in which children roasted alive in cars, froze to death, or starved while their parents got wasted/had sex/partied/played video games. And don't forget the drunken breastfeeding case mentioned on Broadsheet some time ago. I don't think mature parents breastfeed while in a drunken stupor, but perhaps you can correct me on that point.

It's a credit to the writer that when I read the NYTimes article and saw its images (admittedly from a non-disabled point of view) I didn't see the disabilities; what jumped out at me was the radiant little girls doing what many little girls like to do. It made my day, truly. But it shouldn't be seen as a sappy human interest story: it should demonstrate to dancing schools everywhere that it can be done, and that there are no excuses for not doing so.

Every time I hear about the sleazy, vomit-inducing machinations of the diamond cartel (and particularly the misery and suffering it generates) I am happy that the engagement ring I've been wearing lo these past eighteen years belonged to my husband's great-grandmother.

If you're single, want diamond jewelry, and would like to piss off the deBeers corporation, buy your cocktail ring at an estate sale.

...the only relevance here seemed to be that they were all women. This belonged in the Fix, and even then, the notion that movie stars usually have some sort of cause celebre isn't anything new.

Perhaps the poster who said that single people will die alone, without children, doesn't understand that having children is no guarantee that they will take care of you in your old age. (Childless married people hear this all the time.)

I knew a number of single and/or childless people who lived into their eighties and nineties, in some cases long outliving their partners, spouses, and family members, and they did not die alone--far from it. They died surrounded by longtime friends from ages twenty-five to eighty. They lived amazing lives that I would kill to have (one was present at the Yalta conference in 1945). And I'm tearing up remembering some of them now, dammit.

If you're the sort of person who thinks that all you need for company in your old age are your children and grandchildren, you are pretty sad, man.

If you had a history of severe bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or Huntingdon's chorea in your family, and you had the opportunity to screen embryos for genes indicating that likelihood, I think doing so would be very reasonable. These are illnesses that either can show up early and wreak enormous havoc on a person's life, or have a high probability of causing a devastating decline in the prime of life. There are probably others like them.

To me, that's not eugenics. That's preventing your future children from a lifetime of suffering, either from a debilitating condition or, as in the case of Huntingdon's, from the all-pervasive sense of a sword hanging over their heads. And that has nothing to do with keeping one's hereditary line "uncontaminated."

However, breast cancer--any kind of cancer with a hereditary risk, in fact--is another story altogether. Even those with hereditary risk can evade it. And those without it in their family can become sick.

You could even give your offspring a false sense of security. At some point they might find out that they were screened before birth for cancer genes, and as a result come to believe that they were somehow "resistant" to cancer, as a result not doing the things that would prevent it or enable them to get it treated early. (I can just see it now: "I don't need a mammogram! My mother made sure I didn't have genes for breast cancer.")

I don't think screening for hereditary disorders and risks is entirely wrong, but a woman would need to ask herself: how likely, really, is a child with these genes to die or suffer severely from these illnesses? How much less likely, honestly, is it that they might get them anyways?

And it's important to remember that we're not talking about lives at this point, but about potential.

He's the one who found it, dontchaknow. And already, they've got him pegged as an ex-con.