Highway accident scientists have done study after study after study desperately searching for a statistical correlation between marijuana intoxication and highway accidents, but they haven't been able to find one.

Yes marijuana slightly reduces tracking ability, bit on the other hand, drivers on pot (with the exclusion of other substances) seem less likely to engage in risky behaviors like speeding, tailgating and road rage that make even completely sober people a life-threatening presence on the road.

So the mild impairment from pot seems to be canceled out by the reduction in risky behavior, so that the statistical risk index for a person high on pot remains roughly equal to the risk index of a person high on nothing at all.

People who have taken legal drugs like Vicodin and alcohol, on the other hand, show a very clearly and drastically increased risk of doing exactly what Richie did.

There's no scientific doubt whatsoever that people taking Vicodin or alcohol should stay the hell off the road.

AAAhhhh if only this country cared about science. This is a magical thinking country -- all of our failing wars prove that.

A novel only moves forward when a conflict exists between two parties or forces that may never be resolved.

Dialectical tension is the basis of all good captivating fiction, including the fiction of civilization.

That's why we need (at least) two genders, as much as we wring our hands over the behavior of the other one.

I urge feminists to read the novel "The Night Watch" by Sergei Lukyanenko, and then watch the DVD of the film version of the novel.

The differences between the novel and the manner in which the novel was realized on film ought to scare the bejeebies out of most feminists here.

It's quite relevant to this article and the topic of how abortion is being viewed in general by post-Communist cultures.

You always have interesting things to say about marijuana, but if you are suggesting in your last paragraph that marijuana could save the country, I can't think of any thinking that could be more magical than that.

I made no such suggestion. Maybe that idea came from within you?

I'm not sure anything can save this country. Certainly I would never claim that an herbal anti-inflammatory could do the trick.

On the other hand, at least in this situation your hobbyhorse lecture is so tangentially, so remotely tangentially, related to the issue it purportedly responds to, you really do come off sounding a little bit unhealthily obsessed. And that's no way to change the world.

Dude, listen to yourself.

This lecture of yours came about because you got something out of my post that YOU put there, not me.

My lecture about the current science regarding pot and driving is not in any way tangential to the story about Nicole Richie driving "on pot and Vicodin."

Is your real fear that my pressing the issue of science and pot is going to harm the Democrats' chance of getting the White House back?

I'm asking you point blank -- is that what you're really afraid of?

That's where this "change the world" stuff is coming from, am I right?

Here's a question for you: do you believe in advertising the truth merely because it's true, or does the truth always have to serve some overall political agenda in order for it to matter at all?

Of course, many doctors and patients were and are interested in HRT for more tangible reasons: Taking hormones can help mitigate the frequently hellish effects of menopause, as well as help protect against heart disease and bone loss.

I can make myself have hot flashes by sitting on my behind and eating carbs for a week. As soon as my pants get tight around my waist, the hot flashes come back.

Exercise works on heart disease and bone loss too.

When I was in middle school, I noticed that my Cold War era world history textbook told us about how America single-handedly beat the Nazis and saved all of Europe, and then skipped right to the Iron Curtain and the evils of Communism.

Out of all the kids and all the teachers in the school, I was the only one who got mad at the Eastern Front being edited out of WWII history.

And I kept on about it until the teacher wrote a letter to the textbook company on my behalf.

So that's who I am. Deal with it!

The war on pot is an extremely challenging situation for me because manipulation through misinformation has been the cornerstone of American marijuana policy since the days of William Randolph Hearst.

It really gets to me. I can't stand seeing it happen.

And it tore me up very bitterly that this was the tactic the Clinton administration chose in their version of this war. The thing they lied about the most was the science on driving and pot.

To me that was the same as the Cold War textbook authors trying to prevent Communism by writing the Soviet Union out of WWII.

Everyone has one thing that really gets to them. Leaving the Soviet Union out of WWII just because Communism is evil is the kind of thing that really gets to me.

They're white men who combined strippers with enormous quantities of alcohol and large numbers of horny jocks.

Any college student who pays attention knows that drunken sex-laced partying can result in both real rapes and false rape accusations.

So they're not just any white men -- they're drunken idiot white men who didn't take the trouble to provide adequate security for their drunken stripper party.