Thanks for a bit of common sense. I was especially interested in the evidence that there are very few frivolous suits filed. The truth is, most people would rather not go to law if there is any way to avoid doing so. I know I have thought about suing several times in my life (never over medical treatment, though), and always decided against it, even when I thought I had a good case. Court is a hassle, it takes forever, and you run a strong risk of not getting what you want.

So far from the picture of a bunch of frothing patients filing frivolous suits over infected hangnails, the actual story, and the one that is most believable, too, if you take a look at human nature, is that most people will file a malpractice suit only when the provocation is extreme.

You do not "avert" someone's gaze. You AVOID their gaze. You avert your EYES from their gaze. "Avert" means to turn away from something.

When I lived in Santa Fe, I came up with an idea for making money. Fresh hot donut delivery directly to the home early in the mornings, maybe with the paper. Should be irresistable to certain types. I figured it would differentially affect conservatives, since they tend to be lazier and fatter, pushing them yet closer to their heart attacks, and thus eventually restoring sanity to the body politic.

I can't believe all the dour, sour, gloomy prognosticators who so readily declare how your home-schooling will turn out disastrously. Go for it. Your kids sound awake and interested, looking forward to education. I love learning things, but I hated school. I remember how eagerly I looked forward to my first day of school. Then I went and found out it was not about learning, but about tedium, control, punishments, rigidity, and stupidity. Nothing is as valuable as a mind eager for learning. When your kids do go to regular school, they will blow through it. Calculus is ten times as easy when you don't dread it, but look at it as neat stuff you can learn if you want to.

As for socialization: Your kids obviously have pretty full lives. They go to museums. They play with other kids. Being trooped in and out of classrooms on a set schedule is not socialization. It is regimentation.

Yes, the God-grovelers dominate home-schooling, but take a look around. They dominate regular education too. Or if they do not exactly dominate it, they have crippled it so that teachers cannot simply teach, but must walk a tightrope of what it is permissible to say, must act as if thinking for yourself were somehow a dangerous, unpatriotic act.

I wish I had been raised like your children. Good for you.

Hooray for the British for doing the right thing! Maybe they will move enough evidence into the open to make our twisted secrecy policy pointless.

Thank you for another informative piece.

This is a small matter, but "cover-up" is hyphenated only when it is a noun. As a verb, it is written "cover up."

Agree with Dawkins whole-heartedly that evolution is real. Have no respect for creationist thinking. I too find it useless to argue with people like Wendy Wright, whose opinions are based on reputed authority, not evidence.

Where I differ with Dawkins is his conclusion that one must necessarily be atheist if one is reasonable. It seems quite reasonable to me to admit all the evidence of science and yet to notice that there seems to be something extra and inexplicable about existence. There seems to me to be a contention between those who feel that only what can be observed by scientists is real--that we are setting forth the "rules" by which reality must operate--and those who assume the "rules" are descriptive--that the model science creates, however well we fine-tune it, cannot possibly be the whole truth. As I have put it, double stars are not doing calculus when they orbit each other. We do the calculus to model what they do. They just DO what they do.

If Dawkins didn't want to be seen as strident, perhaps he could have called his book something other than The God DELUSION. That seems to me rather a deliberate provocation.

Dawkins has created one of the more effective metaphors in scientific thought, the metaphor of the meme. It is, however, a metaphor, not experimentally demonstrated science. Dawkins is a splendid thinker, but not infallible.

There was a story in Discover magazine to the effect that someone had invented a "God" helmet, supposed to electronically stimulate the "part of the brain" responsible for visions of the holy (though it only worked on about forty percent of the subjects). He tried the helmet and it did nothing for him, so his conclusion was that God does not exist.

I would have thought it equally logical to conclude that maybe the helmet doesn't work.

Seriously doubt it is or ever will be possible either to demonstrate the existence of the holy scientifically or to disprove its existence. For me, science is the most trustworthy way to examine the nature of the universe we live in. Whether there is pattern behind what is manifested is beyond my scope. I have opinions, but do not feel the universe must conform to those opinions.

I am quite certain however that this juvenile species, humankind, has not advanced so far that we understand all the whys and wherefores. None of our opinion-mongering really matters. If this awesome universe is not holy, it will, as they say, do until something holy comes along.