Unfortunately, pain is a part of human life and you should always take fewer painkillers than you "deserve" - if for no other reason that you want some place to "go" if there's a sudden increase.

I have to say that pain is part of growing old (and there's only one alternative to that) and part of growing old is learning to work through a certain amount of pain.

Science has actually shown that "toughing it out" does actually reduce the pain you feel.

I had bad asthma a few years ago and used an inhaler a lot in the winter. I started to cut it way down and made deals with myself: "I'll get to the end of the next block before I take a puff. Hey, that wasn't so bad, I'll try another block. OK, I'll go into this store and buy something and if I'm still having trouble."

The result is that I did not become dependent on the inhaler and in fact use it dozens of times a year now, rather than hundreds and hundreds.

Let me also suggest systematic breathing control to you as a cheap way to control pain. People have been studying this for thousands of years and there is actual technology there. The web resources don't seem very good, but I found one, it's in my signature.

There are two pages of philosophy first before you get to the actual mechanism - I left the philosophy in because I thought you'd enjou it - and the instructions are quite technical and should be carefully followed, but it does actually work. I'm no theist or believer in mythologies, but the physiology of it seeems also sound.

Best wishes!

Well done!

"If anything, the incident created sympathy for Bush (myself included, yes), who is on his way out the door and doesn’t deserve it [...]"

Let me get this straight. President Bush lied and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of Americans. He destroyed the Constitution, he was clearly warned about 9/11 and did nothing, he was clearly warned about Enron and did nothing, he was clearly warned about Katrina and did nothing.

And yet throwing shoes at President Bush was so much more punishment than Bush deserved that you're now sympathetic to him?

Words fail me. But I really, really want an explanation of this. I really, really don't need to read crap like this on a Monday morning and I pay good money for your site.

Aren't you the guy now "sympathetic" to President Bush because of the "undeserved" shoe throwing? For some reason I can no longer see that article on this site, but as of the last time I saw it, we'd never gotten an explanation or apology.

Exactly why should we take anything you say seriously?

I'm not sure if you read his article? If you remember, this was the one where Schaller claimed that he was now "sympathetic" to President Bush because of the "undeserved" shoe throwing.

There were a lot of angry letters - including mine - and he never responded.

Let me explain it to you in words that even a morally bankrupt person could understand.

You see, because President Bush knowingly lied to the American people in order to cause the Iraq war, we believe he has the moral responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by that war. There are also the death camps, the lack of reaction to warnings of 9/11, Enron, and Katrina, but let's stay focused for now.

Now, the writer has indicated that the shoe throwing was "undeserved". This means that the writer considers having shoes thrown at you is an excessive punishment for what are effectively hundreds of thousands of murders.

Above and beyond that, the writer indicated that he now felt "sympathetic" to the President because of this. I am interested in reading things by writers who are sympathetic to the President, if only out of curiosity as to how such a person could even string three words together; I'm not particularly interested in reading a so-called progressive reporter who's such a moral lightweight that he feels that having a pair of shoes whistling past an ear suddenly turns an evil despot into a sympathetic individual.

Feel free to contact me if there's anything about this explanation that's the least bit unclear to you.

...an icy BM.

Thank you, I'm here all week.

...because far too many young people here sing badly off-key and just aren't aware of it. I think it's because there aren't too many music classes in schools these days.

Hearing people singing off-key is like food with far too much salt in it - no matter how good the rest of it is, you cannot take pleasure in it.

That said, some of the live band karaoke is good. There used to be one of the Lower East Side of Manhattan where most of the singers were clearly performers in their own right.