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.

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.

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.

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.

I read a few of the letters. Quite agree that most aging frat boys do not turn out as lovable as these guys. Most of them are just as clueless and offensive as they age.

But this IS tv-land she's talking about, not real life. So long as one keeps it very clear that television does not do reality, one is okay. And really, after all these years, how can it be a surprise to anyone that tv doesn't do reality?

Good ending on the necessity for courage and humor as the unavoidable indignities of aging pile up. What else can you do? Nothing. As Leonard Cohen puts it, in "The Tower of Song," "I ache in the places I used to play."

Actually, that line and others have saved me from tv. Makes it completely unnecessary.

Came to the same conclusion after watching a few porn pieces. I hadn't had sex for a long time, so was horny, but after a few times even being horny wasn't enough. It dawned on me: These guys don't know how to fuck. One clue is the word they use for the act: pounding. That's what they do, pound.

Very boring, if you like reality.

He's just further blackening the name of papistry. Anyone who has ever read even a cursory history of the evils committed by the popes and the Vatican in the supposed name of Jesus, including murder and the covert amassing of huge fortunes, knows better than to believe a word the pope says or to think he has any connection whatsoever with god or anything holy.

Almost makes one wish their theology were true, just to laugh as the smoke begins curling up from the fancy hat of the world's biggest liar.

How many know what part of the chicken is called the pope's nose? How many realize that name results from what comes out of the pope's mouth, which is just under his nose?

The question I pose to physicists and other thinkers: Which is the essential fact, the lightning bolt or the electron?

One reason people get away with such total hypocrisy is that our culture is saturated with military worship. A friend, a liberal friend, recently sent me a series of photos--no doubt most of you have seen them--supposedly representing more eloquently than words could certain conditions like friendship, grief,curiosity, humor, kindness--and nearly half the images featured either a man in uniform or a military reference (like the shot of the prostrate woman on her soldier husband's grave). I admire courage in whatever form we find it, but I find it revealing and disturbing that most people can no longer imagine the better human qualities unless you stick a uniform in the picture.

A related gripe: Have you ever noticed that the all the local papers refer to all the people in uniform as "heroes"? You don't have to risk your life, or save others. All you have to do is enlist. How convenient! How easy!