There are well over six billion human beings on our planet.

There are no grounds whatsoever to even imagine that the human race will go extinct on the basis of reproductive choice.

What will destroy us is the eventual collapse of our environment brought on by the demands of the burgeoning human population that reproductive choice, again, has no realistic capacity to check. Even if certain religious and political forces weren't engaging in a bitter struggle to suppress and/or eradicate reproductive choice, the very size of the current population is a force all it's own, one that is to all intents and purposes beyond human control.

The struggle over reproductive choice may be worth engaging in on principle, but the outcome, if one can even bring oneself to think there could ever be one, will have little to no practical value. Without a radical realignment of our very natures we, as a species, are set on a collision course with…well, I'll let anyone who reads this fill in the rest.

Since the majority of marriages and steady relationships on television are portrayed as failed, failing, or imminently to start on the road to same, it would be my guess that most television writers are pretty miserable on that front. They can't seem to find comedy, drama, romance, or any satisfying mixture of these in relationships that aren't troubled or outright non-functional. I suppose that so long as the focus is on cops, lawyers, doctors and, especially lately, politicians, this doesn't stray too far from reality. But it does tend to lower the contrast-and thus the interest-when such a vital aspect of our entertainment trends too much in one direction. It becomes no longer a vital point but just another pin to knock down.

It's parents who name their children one thing or another in order to make a "statement" - either to their family, their neighbors or, in the case of celebrities, to the media - that really annoy me. Sure, maybe they actually like the names but it still boils down to posturing, because they know it will get a reaction out of whichever audience they're addressing. (I'm sure grandparents are the main targets of lots of these jabs.)

Remember way back when Grace Slick named her daughter by Paul Kantner god (lowercase g)? It may well have been just a joke, but the media of the day covered it like flies on a fresh dog dump, and the Bible Belters were about ready to rekindle the fires they'd used to burn Beatles records some years before. Is it any wonder some celebrities continue the practice to this day, and with more than a suspicion of PR advice behind it?

I haven't seen RH3, but I did enjoy the first two installments and will probably get around to this one eventually. One thing Heather mentions concerning RH3 is the lack of chemistry between Tucker and Chan, and I have to agree that they have never seemed to register with each other in any typically buddy-movie way.

Yet I find that to be part of the films' appeal. It's Tucker and Chan's unabashed clash of personality and culture, and that they find only the barest hints of common ground at the best of times, that propels the nonsense they find themselves embroiled in. Have they, and the filmmakers, discovered the virtues of anti-chemistry? That these are not good movies, and yet deliver a pretty good time, strongly suggests they have.

I once worked in a large hospital, and was terribly amused by the frequent pages for "Dr. Bonebrake." Imagine my disappointment when I found it was just one of many public address codes used there for various "sensitive" matters.

Since "Women's" Gymnastics in the Olympics has been dominated by 12-to-14-year-olds for the past several decades, I don't see what the fuss is about. If the IOC says these kewpies are women, why should the fashion industry quibble?

While it would be a shame to have to wait a while yet to see Daniel Craig back in action as 007, I don't find myself in any particular distress over delays in the arrival of the next Terminator installment or the pre-Lord of the Rings adventures of Bilbo Baggins. We could all use the breather, frankly.

So…does this mean that the Men In Black have lost their most reliable source of information on the movement and activities of visiting extraterrestrials?

We in the West have, in recent years, seen plenty of reason to be cautious about insults, plain or obscure, to Islam. We know, beyond question, that there is a large reactionary element in the Muslim world, and that some factions of this will go to horrific extremes to make their displeasure known.

Will these Opus strips been seen by one or more of these factions as justification for an extreme reaction? Those of us in the West seem, at present, very ill-equipped to evaluate such things with any confidence. Is Breathed deliberately yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or making valid points that even an extremist will take for what they are?

When I and my soon-to-be (and very much still) wife moved to our town twenty years ago, we had two twin theatres within walking distance. Both are gone now (one's even been turned into, of all things, the local Social Security office), and the nearest theatre requires a short car trip. This is hardly a tragedy, but it, along with our recent purchase of a 42-inch plasma TV, has pretty much taken us out of the theatre-going crowd.

Unless a GMBR could address the issue of the state of the roads here, improvements of which have not begun to keep pace with the calamitous increase in traffic over the past two decades, it wouldn't begin to entice us back to the multiplex.