I like Suze Orman. I saw her on PBS where she extolled the virtues of the Roth IRA. She also explained how simple it was to convert a Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. I opened one for myself and my husband.

It was a very good financial move.

The "editor's picks" option doesn't work for me. There aren't enough picks. It would be nice if it was more like Amazon where submissions are rated by readers.

You could have three labels "interesting", "not interesting" and "offensive".

Then you can see how many people voted for which label.

There then should be sorting options so the more interesting would come to the top.

I think people would work harder on their letters if they new they were being rated.

If you are being asked for a lot of money don't give.

You can just keep forgetting to bring it in.

If the office manager keeps asking for it let her know that you can't afford it. Let her know privately. Say you would prefer that you all go in on a cake or something much more affordable.

You might also let her know that you think the owner might be embarassed to accept such a costly gift from his/her employees.

Let the office manager get stuck with your share of the the cost. Chances are other employees will keep forgetting. Anyways she will learn a valuable lesson.

Glenn,

I've not read through all the letters so maybe hundreds of people have already said this. Email's can be totally spoofed including the headers. You need to confirm "out of band" to see if an email is authentic.

Glenn,

Since email is so easy to spoof I think you should give credence to Col. Steven Boylan's denial that he sent the letter. The denial is a response from a email from you therefore it is more than likely authentic.

Glenn emails to Boylan:

Well isn't it of great concern to you that someone is able to send out emails using your military email address? Do you plan to look into that?

It may be impossible to determine who sent this out. Usually it is untraceable. There just might not be much he can do about it.

PS:

My credentials: I worked in IT a long time. I am not an expert on email but my spouse and people I work with are and they have frequently emphasized how easy it is to spoof email and there is infrastructure within our organization to prevent this.

I am not talking about what is likely - only about what is possible.

Starting with the last hop:

Anyone with access to this machine:

rich.salon.com [206.80.4.124]

could have written the email and spoofed the other three addresses in the header.

The second to the last hop:

02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil [214.13.200.111]

Anyone who had access to this machine could have written the header and spoofed the other two addresses in the header.

The third to the last hop:

INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil [10.70.20.11]

Anyone who had access to this machine could have spoofed the first address in the header.

The first address:

INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil [10.70.20.16]

Anyone with access to this machine could have written the letter. The header could not have been spoofed.

And it is possible that INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil and INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil are public machines and thus it would be hard to pin down who sent the email or it could be that the addresses are dynamic and can't be associated without a lot of work to a specific machine.

All the prudes think the cultural norm in the United States is to coverup. It sounds to me from the letters that we are divided on this.

Does someone have access to a survey to which tells how people actually behave?

I've been married since 1984. I kept my maiden name. It is who I am. Even though I was married it represented my wish to stand on my own feet. In all that time only one person ever asked me why I did it.

My son has my last name as a middle name. If I had another child I probably would have given her or him my last name. It has never been a hassle - having a son with a different last name from mine. I don't think about it. Neither does any one else.

My mother told me that she wishes she would have kept her own last name.

My sister on the other hand changed her name to her husbands last name. She wanted to. No big deal.

Too bad poor blacks or even poor whites aren't writing to the letter's section.

Thanks for the article. I agree - don't listen to the meanies. When I was young I used to be obsessed by my breasts and their absolute flatness. My best friend was short and had large breasts. I was envious of her. She would tell me that she was envious of me. I never believed her until she got breast reduction surgery.

That was when I realized she was serious.

My flatness - I like it now. But it took many years to come to terms with it. I was embarrassed to take my clothes off in front of a man. But after being with many who thought I was just fine, I stopped thinking about it any more.