"It's hard for us Americans to understand honor when our morality is basically to get away with everything you possibly can and take as much advantage of others as possible. "

First, can I just say to whoever it was that wrote the above quote, SHUT THE HELL UP. American society is not based on greed alone. I know far to many wonderful people in this country to give any creedence to you stupid generalization. Oh, sure. Other societies believe in honor, but not America? Why? What makes you say that? You think that because we are a rich country, we can't possibly have honor? Have you ever met an American soldier? Have you ever watched an American woman care for her aging parents, trying to balance her life and needs with the needs and dignity of her family? Have you ever seen Americans give their time to offer free English lessons to refugees? I see this every day, and if it's not honor, I really don't know what is. You sound like a Muslim fundamentalist.

Speaking of Muslim fundamentalists, this "honor"-based conversation makes me recall a story on NPR recently about a young girl who was kidnapped by a insurgent militia. When she was released, the POSSIBILITY that she might have been raped by the kidnappers was so potentially damaging to the clan's honor, that the family (her father and brother) decided that she needed to be killed. Since neither of them could stomach doing the deed themselves, they had an uncle gun her down upon her return to the family home. The man was quoted as saying "I'm sure when she returned, she was expecting hugs and kisses. Instead, she found bullets."

Oh, and what of that now-famous young woman in Pakistan who was raped, by a council of elders, as punishment for something that her brother supposedly did?

THAT is what you get in an honor-based society, an issue that was just barely touched upon during this "interview", or as I like to call it, this ass-kissing. The fact that women, children, and other "weaker" individuals are completely left out of every decision in honor-based societies is what has led us down the road to what we now consider a more just and equiatble way of life. This concept, the idea of women as property to be traded or destroyed according to arcane ideas of "honor" and "shame" is what makes these societies such terrible places to begin with.

And since the professor really seemed to boil his entire argument of "an eye for an eye" down to the brilliance of making a list with appropriate monetary compensation for lost body parts, even as he had mentioned that insuarnce companies do the same, well, I don't see what the point of the book really is. Yay, Safeco?

As he obviousy stated quite the opposite a number of times. My issue is with the notion he proposes: the life is more valuable in an honor-based society than in ours. Whether or not this is true, I can't say at this point, but my point is that women are not considered to be full human beings capable of making decisions in those societies - they are considered property. We can go ahead and say, yeah, oh, that's so great that the Vikings had to control their loser brothers or crazy siblings wihtout government interference - but don't forget that the control often resulted in trading people (women and slaves) as a type of monetray compensation, or in the killing of the mentally disabled. That the professor wants us to look upon a society such as that and say "What amazing self-governance!" is what bugs me. Great, yeah, limited government.

Since women were considered less than fully human (and still are today, in many Muslim societies), I don't see how anyone could claim that life had more value in the talion days. As is the case today, SOME lives were worth more than others. The only difference is that now, the law protects (or in theory, should protect) those who have traditionally have not been in charge.

Are we supposed to be consumed by the irony that terrorism can occur under Iraqi control? I can't quite firgure out the significance of these adjacent articels - at least, not enough significance to warrant their posting here.

I've actually never read anything by Cintra Wilson except that weird coverage of some political event or hearing at which she did not belong. I keep associating her with that weird picture where she (or someone else) is posing in a very Celine-Dion-album-art type of way, covered in gold.

http://homepage.mac.com/merussell/iblog/B835531044/C1592678312/E311786152/

Check it out, though! I didn't realize she was such a purist, she and her friends with their whacky pictures and fantastic eyebrows. I'm nearly overcome with admiration.

But seriously, I LIKE Jennifer Aniston. I think she's underappreciated (hello? weakest character on Friends was, and forever will be, Courtney Cox, who attened the Horatio Sanz School of Acting, and cracks up in the middle of nearly every scene). I'm one of those people who WILL buy the People magazine to see how Jen is coping, what Angelina wants to tell her, etc. I doubt those magazine sources are any more reliable or "in" than Nancy, but at least People has the good sense not to out the source and show how flimsy the entire story really is to begin with.

What's with the Inshallah at the end there? No offense or anything, just wondering.

Wasn't this talked about earlier on in Broadsheet? I could have sworn that vaginal lifts and other surgeries were covered a few months ago.