Get off the Apology Circuit now, Alec! The only apology worth beans is the one you may or may not wish to make to your daughter-and only your daughter. You owe the rest of us nothing. Turning your penitence into media fodder would just be another unfortunate expression of your currently frayed grip on parenthood.

In the British sci-fi TV series Red Dwarf, the android Kryten was aghast when, briefly turned human, he got a look at what was in his shorts.

"That's the best God could to? The last-chicken-in-the-shop look?"

Then this horrible realization:

"You mean to tell me Perry Como sang "Memories of Me" with one of these in his pants?"

(That's from memory. Quotes aren't exact.)

Perhaps those who worked themselves up into a lather over this particular photo of a Virginia Tech victim are simply aghast at the thought that victims of violence possess genitals.

…that, as a Republican of twenty-seven years standing, I'm disinclined to be rounded up and incarcerated for that single fact. I'd quite prefer to be left free to continue to vote against the current crop of willful, truth-twisting bastards that dare to call themselves members - much less leaders - of my beloved GOP.

Muslim women a) having premarital sex and b) having their hymens "repaired" in order to disguise that fact strikes me as going well outside the bounds of practicing traditional Islam. Doing a) is transgression enough, but b) is deliberate deception, and not something a true believer in the faith can countenance in herself or others.

I don't happen to agree with much (if not most) of what Islam, Christianity and Judaism prescribe and proscribe concerning morality, and don't in any way condemn or criticise these women for doing what they've done. The initial "crime" simply does not warrant the punishment they fear, and may well receive. But they have still compromised their faith, and will have to deal with that to whatever extent it burdens them.

Strictly aside, the recent uproar by men who feel violated by having been circumcised in infancy just slays me. Talk about a non-issue, a straw man set up by and for hysterics to throw rocks at. As for female circumcision, that's a real horror that should and must be thoroughly abolished, full stop, no debate.

I'm sorry that, as a non-watcher of Idol, I missed Barry Gibb's performance. As the central talent and driving force in the phenonenally successful and long-running Bee Gees, it figures that he was able to show how it was supposed to be done. He's written or co-written more certifiable standards that even Lennon and/or McCartney, and in performance, when he unleashes that falsetto, you understand why disco has never really died.

Oh yes! And for the best in catchy weirdness, try the Robin-less follow-up "Cucumber Castle," a virtual Barry solo effort. There wouldn't be so much hummable variety on a Bee Gees album until "Mr. Natural," the artistic (if commercially unsuccessful) precursor to "Main Course."

By all accounts, no one who uses a computer or has ever gone online has not violated some law or copyright or patent by now. And while the old wheeze that "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse" continues to bulward the almost daily threats patent/copyright trolls have been making to all and sundry, it really doesn't seem that anyone's got their act together on any of this. SCO, the RIAA, Microsoft, Apple, et al, have been flinging lawsuits like confetti these past several years trying to reign in monsters essentially of their own making, while blaming the citizenry for dealing with those monsters in whatever way seems best to them, or not even seeing them as monsters at all.

The RIAA is defending what is clearly their turf, and I won't criticize them for that. But they're not making their case to a vast public that has for quite some time understood itself to have free reign to copy music from radio, records, tapes and CDS for personal use. This understanding has not been addressed by the RIAA in any common-sensical way, and yet it lies at the heart of the problem they see with peer-to-peer downloading.

I used to be interested in celebrity pictorials in Playboy, but most celebrities don't know how to pose their way out of a paper bag. The spreads are about as erotic as bottled water, and few of them look good enough naked to even approach the aesthetic appeal of the Playmates.

There is also DC Comics' Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, which does Heroes one better - several years before Heroes - by giving us older, iconic super-heroes - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, et al - dealing with the aftermath of an atomic catastrophe that poisons the American midwest. The catastrophe is caused by a deeply misguided attack by another group of "heroes" on a villain who's been driven to abject desperation and blindly defends himself, accidentally splitting open the containment suit one of his attackers, a character named Captain Atom, who proceeds to fission with inevitable results.

The subsequent focus is on Superman, who is pressured by comrades and his own moral viewpoint to do something about the nearly lawless activities of a younger generation of "heroes" who have come along since the catastrophe and do not hold to the high-minded ideals of their elders. Superman's quest for a solution leads to tragedy on a monumental scale, not because of some superhuman and/or extraterrestial threat but because he fails to realize until almost too late that the ordinary men and women of Earth have grown unendurably weary of the whole thing and are not, after all, powerless.