For someone who is allegedly so intelligent, I'm surprised that you don't yet grasp the idea that humor and sarcasm don't go over very well over the Internets. I'm not saying don't kid around, but i think it's really lame to fault people for not catching your supremely witty banter within your oeuvre.

Here, I'll make it easy for you: Plus, I guess nothing I wrote on the topic was deemed worthy by the great intellectual Steven Augustine to reply to. Why, he's heard of Italo Calvino, let's all bow down to him. I used to be like you -- when I was 17. Dropping names, judging people on what i thought they knew and didn't know, gaged by what names they dropped. But guess what?! If you're just dropping names and you don't really know what you're talking about, it's boring, worthless and pathetic. I'd much rather have an intelligent and in-depth discussion with someone about perhaps the most overplayed piece of music ever, the European Union's Anthem, then talk with someone who actually has heard of Vivaldi's operas, but knows nothing about them except that they are obscure.

Natural Lee, thanks for staying on topic. Your letter adds a lot to the discussion of women faking orgasms.

Unfortunately, my < sarcasm > < / sarcasm > tags have disappeared from my previous letter. Thanks, letters processor.

don't you have anything better to do than insult strangers on the internet?

Anyhoo, in my infinite unsharpness, i have to go back to my burger-flipping station. They only let us use our macbooks 15 minutes out of every hour at this Wendy's.

Actually, her "citizenship through adverse possession" posting might just be the dumbest thing I ever read on Salon.

Adverse possession is just ownership by estoppel. Are you anti-estoppel? *eye roll*

I think you'll find with more research that single-sex education leads to better, not worse, math and science education for females.

-- open mind

And a very important question, supposing this is true, why? I really don't know.

LeCastor

Surely you can see this letter is nothing more than attention grabbing? Someone so rich and so beautiful has access to therapists whom most of us here will never be able to afford and yet this beautiful rich girl, who likes admitting how much she's bathed in adoration by her peers, decides instead to email an e-zine advice columnist (who more often than not gives piss poor advice and abunch of babble) where her letter, and the answer, can be read publicly by millions of people. That doesn't say to me that this person is interested in solving their problem, they just want people to feel for them, in which case I have no pity for her. I have little pity for the rich to begin with when I hear them bitch considering they have access to resources I'll never have to help them, this crap just makes it less likely that I'll pity her.

"Woe is me, I'm rich, beautiful, and I have a wonderful boyfriend, but I'm still sad." Ever thought it might be due to the fact that the majority of your life revolves around hollow bullshit which doesn't matter? Maybe it's just me but I tend to be happier when I gear my life towards something meaningful instead of towards people showering me with affection. Want affection, get a dog.

-- Daniel Williams

Why does that matter? Maybe she reads Salon.com -- after all, rich people have access to the internet too, and she thinks Cary gives good advice. And she'll get the advice of all the readers too. For free. Anonymously. What's not to like?

You seem to be fixated on "things she has that i will never have." For someone who says he's a Buddhist, you're obsessed with her material possessions, and for someone who wants to come off as of modest means, you have expensive tastes (water sports, winter sports). I'm not rich, not even close, but there's always going to be someone worse off than you who can say that you shouldn't complain, so why pick on this heiress? There are probably people who are much richer than she is, and she could say that they shouldn't complain because they have even more money. To someone from Darfur, you shouldn't complain because you're very well off.

By the way, I picked out Bryn Mawr and Wellesley because the poster did, and, however much outreach to the poor those schools do compared to others of their kind, elite liberal arts schools are still largely for the upper crust or those willing to incur a lot of debt. What they do for the poor is laudable, but that charity doesn't erase their inherent financial elitism.

-- SSA

By "financial elitism" do you mean that they are expensive? Because, having worked within the bowels of my alma mater, i can tell you, the high prices are there because that's how much it costs to run a college. Most colleges inherently subsidize everyone who goes there, by ways of chargin each student about 2/3 of what each student actually costs per year. At my alma mater, the yearly tuition was about 25000, but the costs pre student were in excess of 45000 some years, and they're always going up. universities are non-profit institutions, they don't pay professors all that much. Where to cut costs? In some of the staffing, for sure. You could make do with one or two fewer people in alumni relations, registrar's, study abroad office. Another place to cut costs? Get non-unionized cafeteria and custodial staff. But then you're being anti-union. Or you could hire crappier faculty.