I read about a couple of studies that showed that overweight people and underweight people have the same number of excess deaths, but overweight people die of heart attacks, cancer and strokes, while underweight people die of suicide and murder (just being too irritating to live?). That said, my son carries 2 (yes, 2) per cent body fat, and has only been ill (once the the flu, once with a cold) twice in fourteen years. He's rarely cold and only sleeps eight hours a night. Very active. He is, in fact, the healthiest person I've ever met. So, I can't explain it, but maybe there's something to it other than misery.

is that there's more going on here than the author has been able to report. My fourteen year old son simply has to be trained over and over to do things that I would have thought everyone would know how to do by his age. He is articulate, personable, and easy to get along with, but he has ADD and simply forgets from one moment to the next to, for example, eat breakfast or take a shower. He talks intelligently about things but he acts cluelessly about getting thngs done. THis has been going on for years, some ups and some downs. I can easily see how when masculinity sets in, his impulsive nature and short-term thinking could set him up for serious problems. And he is my birth child. Sometimes I'm amazed that he's gotten as far as he has, sometimes I'm amazed that there are so many things he hasn't figured out. Everyone has a theory about why some mothers' children don't succeed, but the fact is that there are so many factors (some of them brain chemistry) that you can't isolate any one factor. I agree with the readers who recognize that ST is doing and has done her best, that her intentions are honorable, and that she is truly perplexed by her situation.

I'm funny all the time. Way funnier than Hitchens. In fact, last spring, when I thought that my driver for the Hay festival (in England) was going to have to pick up Hitchens and take him with us form London to Hay, I said, "Oh, my God, that's like taking on a load of nuclear waste." Everyone in the car laughed. But in the end, Hitchens was too hung over to get up, and had another car pick him up that afternoon. Talk about relieved. We laughed for the next three hours.

I object to the Cheneys reproducing at all! Cheney-spawn will certainly screw up the future for our own children. In fact, the ONLY good thing about the Bush twins is that they are not presently reproducing, and may never do so.

Boxer told the truth. So what? What the right wing cannot stand is that the truth is against them, as Stephen Colbert said last year. Reality has a liberal bias. Condi has made choices and those choices have had results and consequences. She knows it and Boxer knows it. The rightwing noise machine is stopping pretty low on this one, and that just shows that they have nothing better to offer. No feelings of any person on the right deserve any consideration at all, imo.

This same subject came up the other day on the Guardian Comment is Free page and this is what I wrote:As someone who reads posts and comments on several websites, I've noticed that they all have different "cultures". Comments on the New York Times select columnists' site are almost always thoughtful and polite; comments at Salon are almost always rude, and frequently use the article in question as a reason to lambaste Salon itself. Huffpost tends to be accepting but raucous, CIF tends to be contentious. As usual, each affinity group develops its own personality. But what is the goal? The goal of CIF seems to be that certain "permanent members" will show up and argue with one another over the same old bones. If that is not what CIF wants, then I agree with the idea that every comment should have no identifying tag whatsoever. CIF's apparent goal does bore me and makes me less and less inclined to come back, since I am not in the in crowd. At the same time, I appreciate the differing cultures of each website, and sometimes I am even in the mood to read the comments on Salon. The authors of the articles set out knowingly to become public persons. That has its benefits and difficulties. The commenters did not, but their ideas are valuable just the same, so why shut them up? Blogging is vibrant but it isn't nice. I like it that way.

I would add that its hard to figure out what the commenters on Salon are after, other than ranting and abuse. Certainly not any kind of productive discourse (except maybe when they give good advice in responses to Cary's column). Women writers come in for a lot of screaming. I like Deborah Dickerson, for example, because she is honest, but I always know to expect a very disheartening and rude set of responses to her stories. But this is the new world. High school all over again.

I met Joe Wilson and in the course of our chats, he alluded to a long time friendship with Al Gore. My opinion is that there is a revenge factor at work with regard to this, too. Cheney and Bush hate anyone associated with Clinton and Gore, and I'm sure they felt a lot of gratuitous pleasure in supposedly doing in a Gore ally. At the same time, I was impressed by Wilson's sense of self-confidence. If I were a schmuck and a jerk like Cheney and a empty bully like Bush, I would not have taken on Joe Wilson. My bet is that Cheney will pay in the end.