The Uighurs never really haven't gotten the media attention given, say, to the Tibetan Buddhists. The Tibetans have a charismatic leader who has drawn celebrities toward him. The han Chinese religion oddly is never mentioned--it's a mix of Animism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. There is a lack of consideration of the diversity of religion all around. I used to hear critiques of the Catholics in Northern ireland which neglected that the protestants in Northern ireland were theologically just as conservative (if not more so) and that they were politically more conservative than rank-and-file Catholics and that both the IRA and Protestant paramilitaries were heavily tied to organized crime.

Not everything will grow the first time and there are many variables--soil, sunshine, and water among them. I am always surprised when people rediscover gardens that are more than ornamental. My parents came of age in the depression and bought a house at the onset of WWII. Our largely post-WWII Cleveland suburb filled out with white ethnic families. Needlessly to say, I grew-up with composting, berry bushes, fruit trees and a predictable abundance of tomatoes and beans. No one could replicate my mother's skill with raspberries, whereas she never had much luck with peaches. Raccoons took out our neighbors corn and we could never predict if we'd see currants or rhubarb. There were always plums, tomatoes and other treats to share and trade. When I lived in Atlanta, almost no one had gardens that were anything other than ornamental (and surprisingly few of those), just one aspect of a place that's mostly for show and short on substance. Although I am condo-bound without a garden, I wouldn't dream of going through a summer without fresh produce and am happy to find it in abundance at farmer's markets in the city and pick your own places around DC.

The Californians current and past who post here sound so detached from what is happening. Here and elsewhere, I've seen people call for a bailout or talk about illegals who supposedly cost the state a fortune. And then, there are the newbies who say "it's not my fault". Given that the federal government didn't bailout the ailing rust belt of the 80s (I lived there) or New York City, I can't imagine why we should make an exception for California. The greedheads who whine about illegals often enjoy cheap labor and don't cut their own grass. Many took the benefits of California (tax-subsidized) and then moved to Utah. The people who want a bailout, though, seem unwilling to organize and try to change the situation. Things can only get better if you the worst excesses (the implicit giveaway to commercial real estate, for example) were used to stimulate a movement as popular as the one responsible for the original Prop 13. The whining reminds me of the handwringing over Prop 8 last year. California is not as instinctively progressive as its boosters have kept telling us it was. Instead of whining and boostering, they need to solve their problems, Look at the difference between Iowa and California on gay marriage--the Iowans played to win, but did it in their own low key way. Californians seem too disengaged and whiny to do something that simple.

South carolina is a one party state and there are probably plenty of GOPers who could take Sanford's place. The Pubbies have allowed too much in the way of hijinx to go unpunished at theis point. Sacrificing someone like him--total hypocrite, bizarre circumstances, etc. would set the right tone without really changing anything locally or otherwise.

You've lost a lot of us with the private schools. I sometimes wish I'd gone to one. They help give a leg up to the best graduate schools. maybe I could have gotten into a PhD program with a better pedigree, maybe not. What I learned after undergrad was that I was as well prepared as my elite-educated contemporaries for most things. And my second-tier department PhD actually was far better than the education I saw people get at my "Top 5" school postdoc. Even before higher education tuition increases were outstripping inflation, people were saddling themselves with enormous amounts of debt. I worked my way through, with help from a fairly modest social security survivors benefit. I worked my way through my MA, with a few assistantships on top of my paying job and magaed to leave my PhD program w/o too much debt--about $15K. I found ways to pay down the debt by taking on side jobs early in my career and watched as people with far more debt had to limit their occupational choices.

The moral is that a decent education got me what I wanted and I didn't have to attend Yale or Penn. I would have liked the academic hothouse of one of the more elite schools, but I'm not so sure I would have fully liked the sequestered aspect of those places. I had grad school classmates who were cluesless about what one needed to do get by. If the author had attended a state school and had worked and done other things to limit the debt, I might have more sympathy. My side jobs, esp. in grad school but also later in undergrad provided me with an education I nevr got in the classroom, so in that sesnse, I had a hothouse exprience that a more privileged education would never have afforded.

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, esp. when it's a rare, but repeated behavior like bankruptcy. Before they could repackage away their loans, banks and other financial institution used to recognize this. It's relevance for the article and Andrews' woes is obvious. If he doesn't realize this, he's even more clueless than he appears in the book segment that was published in the Times.