to a place where there are more than a few people who work at the NY Times. Only one is a bylined reporter, the others work at various other positions. All of them are worried about their jobs, holding their collective breath.

Nepotism never really works well, does it? The Times' top brass has had its head up its ass for a long time and it is no surprise their rep is in the toilet. From plagiarism, to Judith Miller's lapdog stenography for the Cheney administration, to Thomas Friedman's conversion to neocon idealism when it benefits Israel and then his about-face when it is no longer popular, to Maureen Dowd's snippy, mean-girl columns that sound as if they are phoned in from the girls' high school locker room in "Carrie," the Times has shown it's a bloody mess.

They need the journalistic equivalent of Casey Stengel to go in there and yell: Is there anybody here who knows how to play this game?

Sounds like the show is based on his Mr G segments in Summer Heights High.

Years ago I went on the old Nutrisystem diet and they had a beef taco that was made from freeze dried ingredients. There was a flat taco, a cup full of dried chemical-laden stuff that rehydrated into what resembled diced "beef" in a spicy sauce. You topped the rehydrated beef stuff while hot with some included cheese strips which melted into the mixture. (I had one about a year ago -- the recipe has been changed and the cheese is no longer included).

I was wondering if Taco Bell uses barrels of dried chemicals which they rehydrate? Might explain their low prices.

>> Is there something wrong with her that we don't know about?

She has a thyroid problem. My sister had the same thing and she was quite changed by it. My sister's thyroid problem went from hyper to hypo after her thyroid was "killed" by medication. But her thyroid came back online again. She has resisted surgery. It is difficult to manage. I can tell when my sister is hypo just by how her face looks.

I saw the clip on the Daily Show and he said "Mustard only, no ketchup" but I didn't hear him mention any brand name.

It might turn you into a celebrity who gets to go all over the country appearing on TV shows and staying in cool hotels that other people pay for!!! Ugh!!

You would have to meet famous people, like the ones on the Today Show, or Good Morning America or Oprah or whatever in the smaller markets.

And if you have teen sex you might get one of these babies like I have -- isn't he beautiful? He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and I would never call him a mistake. I love him so much! You totally don't want a gorgeous baby of your own to love, like I have!!!!

You will have to make appearances with your beautiful baby and be chaperoned by your dad, whose attention you've been trying to get for most of your pre-teen and teen life!!! What could be like, awfuller?

OMG! Don't do it!

1.) The students in Queens who have the flu are all recovering. None are getting worse. So much for the cytokine storm.

2.) Millions of Americans refuse to get a vaccine every autumn which could prevent their deaths, since 35,000 Americans die every year from influenza.

3.) Mexico City has a population of 20 million. It's overcrowded and overwhelmed. It's a mega-city located in a drained lake basin. The geographic and meterological conditions of such a large city in a basin have resulted in the highest air pollution rate in Latin America. US businesses have relocated there after NAFTA so they could pollute at will. Pollute the air, the water, the ground.

4.) The residents of the area where the disease first surfaced have complained about water and ground pollution from pig farms for years. The government of Mexico has done nothing about the pollution. Knowing Mexico, I doubt that it is a middle class neighborhood which is being polluted by pig farm runoff, but a fairly poor neighborhood with little access to decent health care.

5.) There is no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid in Mexico. No health safety net for the elderly and the poor.

6.) Stress contributes to illness.

7.) We have no idea who the Mexican dead are. How many infants? How many elderly people? How many adolescents and young adults? How many people who have pre-existent conditions, like asthma or bronchitis from air pollution, or other chronic illnesses and/or disabilities? Were they receiving treatment? How far along in their disease did they receive treatment? Do they have access to clean water? To anti-inflammatories to reduce fever? Did they have family members who could adequately care for them, or did their family members have to go to work every day, leaving them without food and water and medication administration? Unless we know the demographic statistics of the dead, we can draw no conclusions regarding whether the disease course in the US will mirror the disease course in Mexico.

I didn't point out I was correcting something in my previous letter, not in the article.

My apologies.

Being a member of the SEC was considered a stepping-stone job. Look where it got Mary Schapiro.

Sorry, Mary Schapiro was another one-eyed guardian who was the president of NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) Regulation, not the SEC. It is now called the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). But hey, it was a regulatory agency where she failed, and her most memorable act was to nominate Mark Madoff to board of the National Adjudicatory Council, the national committee that reviews initial decisions rendered in FINRA .

Way to go, regulators.