I hate blurbs! If a back cover has blurbs rather than something about the plot, I'll open the front cover and look for a summary there. If it's more goddamn blurbs (pages of them sometimes) and nothing about the plot, it goes back on the shelf. I want to know what to expect in the book itself, not what someone else thought of it.

This is especially important with sci-fi/fantasy books where a quote-studded cover on a thick book means either a) it's a famous author or b) the plot is so horrible that the publisher festooned the cover and front with blurbs to avoid having to summarize the cliche-heavy plot.

This also smells a little like "I'll only do it if he'll do it, too" which is absolutely poisonous to any relationship.

It's a perfectly reasonable way to approach a relationship. Think of it in terms of the Prisoner's Dilemma. If one spouse always "stays silent" (i.e. does far more than the other spouse) and the other spouse usually "betrays" (i.e. doesn't do their fair share), then the first spouse is not acting in his/her own best interests (i.e. is a sap).

Our society trains women to put others first, to meet the needs of their husband and children before taking care of themselves. There's some vague idea that one day someone will notice all they've done. Appreciation never happens, of course, because why appreciate someone who seems perfectly content to allow others to walk all over her? A woman must respect herself enough to demand fairness in a relationship or she'll get treated like garbage (and heartily deserve it).

looking at the prisoner's dilemma it's about optimizing your personal benefit... within a marriage, the couple should communicate and delegate responsibility based on what's optimal for the family unit as a whole, not for any one individual.

Pirates' Game time! The captain, quartermaster, first mate, crewmember, and cabin boy have to split 100 gold coins. The most senior pirate gets to propose the way the gold is to be shared. All of the pirates will then vote. If it's a tie, the one making the proposal gets the deciding vote. If the proposal doesn't carry, the one who made it is fed to the crocodiles and the game resumes with the remaining pirates.

So, 5 pirates, 100 gold, obviously the answer is...

Captain 98

Quartermaster 0

First mate 1

Crewmember 0

Cabin Boy 1

The traditional way to solve this is to start by looking at what would happen if the game got down to just the crewmember and the cabin boy. The crewmember would get 100 gold coins and the cabin boy would get nothing.

Is that optimal for the group as a whole? Yes: the majority of the members of the group are happy, and there's plenty of gold aboard the ship. Would you want to be the quartermaster or the crewmember? No, of course not. Should it have turned out differently? No, if every member of the group used best strategy, it could not have turned out differently.

rather than being imposed on one member of the relationship by the other

I don't see roles being explicitly imposed on one member of a relationship by the other. The roles are imposed by the rest of society, which places the husband's needs higher in the hierarchy than the wife's needs. Also, many women believe that everything related to the house and children is their responsibility. They give their husband the deciding vote on how much he wants to "help". Also, think of the Volunteer's Dilemma here (electricity is out, the whole neighborhood will benefit if one person calls, but it costs a lot to place that call, who gets stuck calling?).

roles are assigned through compromise after lengthy and thoughtful discussion

In practice, this means that she gets to do 30% of the chores right off the top. The remaining 70% will then be divided through exhausting discussion. He will feel virtuous and her family and friends will tell her to feel lucky.

Height and weight are certainly issues, but why has nobody mentioned cartilage and bone? A child has 50% more bones than an adult. There are several areas of the body (such as the wrists) where some of the cartilage hardens into bone around puberty. There are also some bones that are separate in children but fuse together by adulthood. The changes to her skeleton would make a gymnast less flexible as she ages.

Btw, Mr. Jones, how can you call gymnastics boring when baseball and golf still exist?

The vintage couples are cute. They're kind of like furries who spend most of their time in costume, or sci-fi fans who spend every day in trekkie costumes. Rare, interesting, and harmless.

I want a bakelite phone.

I've always knew Edwards and his wife were arrogant. Imagine if he'd won the primaries and this scandal came out now, a few weeks before the convention. The two of them selfishly decided that the chance of living in the White House was worth the risk of another four years of Republican rule.

I'm glad I never donated money to his campaign. How ripped off must his contributors be feeling right now? Your dollars paid for that kid's diapers.

"She had been hired to produce Web documentaries for the Edwards campaign, at a cost of $114,000, even though she had no filmmaking experience."

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5546813&page=1

Try Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Those were the two magical realism authors my professors inflicted-- assigned-- most often. I can't stand the stuff, but at least it's mostly short stories. Read Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". I'm told it's very good.

*smacks head against wall at the thought of ever having to read that damn angel story again*