True Blood is based on a series of books by Charlaine Harris. The author has said that she wasn't trying to turn vampires into a metaphor for gay people, or anything like that - she was just writing a story and exploring the characters. Perhaps that's something that Alan Ball has emphasized in the TV series, but it's not a big issue in the books.

I have sympathy for the author's situation. But I feel some frustration too. As others have pointed out, she lives in a nice neighborhood, has a decent job, luxuries. But because she's a mother, she qualifies for help. I found out that help isn't universal - in the last few months I lost my job (I have a "practical" science degree, but that's no guarantee), then found out I had cancer and I'm currently too sick to work. But because I'm not a mommy, I don't qualify. As Heather said in her article, the soup kitchen where she went only served the elderly, kids and parents. Sick and hungry but not a mother? Too bad for you. I've found that's the case at many places - I've been told "we have to prioritize and mothers go first". Even if the mothers are eating brie. It's not that I think the author shouldn't have had her kids, but don't non-parents also have value? So yes, I'm a wee bit resentful.

I grew up in Virginia. My relatives come from West Virginia and North Carolina. I went to school in Georgia, and then moved to the New York suburbs for my first job. People from the north are always skeptical of this, but I encountered more overt, ugly racism in NY than I'd ever seen in Richmond, Atlanta or Chapel Hill.

With our "winner take all" voting system, the Democrats might never regain the South, at least not in my lifetime. People in the South are definitely more conservative when it comes to religion, and that may be a stumbling block for the Democrats that they just can't overcome, at least not far enough to carry 51% of the vote in most Southern states. But I think it's a mistake to look at the South and see a monolith of racist poor white people. That's a vast oversimplification.

If we had a voting system where every vote counted equally, no matter what state you lived in, then I think you'd see a very different picture. You'd see parts of the South that were solidly blue, and parts of the North that were solidly red. But because of the "winner take all" system, the Democrats have ignored states they can't win - and left liberals in those states feeling like there's no point in being politically active. When I lived in Georgia, I often wondered why I even bothered to vote.

Most of these things sound a bit silly to me, or would be very difficult to implement. However, I was recently in the hospital, and I got a variety of reactions when I listed a friend as the person I wanted as my first contact person. (The person that the hospital is allowed to talk to, under HIPAA rules.) I had to go through all these papers with half a dozen different nurses, administrators, etc. Some of them had no problem with my designating a friend for that role. But others made a big fuss - "It has to be a FAMILY member. You have to put down what RELATIONSHIP you have with this person and friend doesn't count. Don't you have a FAMILY member you can list instead?" My only family is a distant aunt who lives hundreds of miles away. Wouldn't it be better to designate a friend who is nearby? In the end, I put down the aunt as well as the friend, just to get through it and stop the arguments, and in the end, neither one of them was able to be there so it didn't matter anyway.

But there should be an option to list a friend as the designated person on your hospital forms. Why should a distant relative you only talk to once a year be given priority over a friend you see all the time?

It has been surprisingly difficult to get any information about the diving finals, other than the scores. I was watching the diving final last night when my cable box decided to reset itself. I missed the last round, including Wilkinson's last dive as well as the dives from the leaders. I figured it would be shown during NBC's 2 am replay, but no, they skipped it in favor of more beach volleyball. So I went online looking for video, pictures, anything - I haven't been able to find it.

I've been watching the Olympic TV coverage daily since the games began, and I've only heard one or two mentions of Bolt's "chest pounding". The commentators commented on it at the time of the race, and I might have heard Costas talk about it once after that, but since then - nothing. When Bolt was running in the relay, the comments from the booth were glowing - talking about how Bolt was the greatest runner of his generation, and how he deserved to be mentioned next to Carl Lewis and other legendary runners. Not one word about this "scandal". (I may have missed some mention of it while I was fast forwarding through commercials, but it definitely wasn't a major issue when Bolt ran in other events.)

If you go by the actual Olympic coverage, it was a minor incident, quickly blown over. But the blogs and news articles (like Salon) have puffed it up into a "scandal".