All right, SdlH, I loved it when you said: It is rooted in biology. But it is statistical. Take the statement "men are taller than women". It is only true in a statistical sense.

I'm one of those women that is taller than the average U.S. male; I'm also smarter spatially and technologically than most U.S. males, and my spatial skills are better than my verbal skills, unlike most women. I break a lot of statistical trends and like people who know statistical truth ≠ individual truth.

However, I do take a little exception to: The best way for women to keep their careers on the front burner is for them to marry men who are happy to put their careers on the back burner.

I'm the primary breadwinner in my household. I've been in two marriages (the second one is strong) and in neither one have we ever been able to have one person earn enough to cover the bills for both. It's particularly difficult with insurance and medical costs as high as they are. The only people I know who manage a one-paycheck, two-person household successfully are making over six figures. The rest of us are scrambling to make ends meet. Today I turned down a visit to a friend after work because we can't afford to fill my gas tank again before I get paid, 11 days from now.

Rambler made an excellent point with: In a male-female relationship, it will often make sense to back the man's job because he will make more money. Why will he make more money? Because a woman will often be seen as less dedicated to her job and more dedicated to the family. Why is she less dedicated to her job and more to the family? Maybe because she is likely to make less.

In the male-dominated IT/science world, it's very hard for a woman to earn as much as her male counterpart. After reading an earlier letter I went to salary.com, and *someone* is earning enough that my current pay is "entry level" for my job title and work in this zip code; this despite a decade of experience and numerous workplace accolades. (Yes, I'm taking benefits/the lack thereof into account).

I've actually been asked, seriously, "what's a pretty girl like you doing studying physics?" The questioner followed with a detailed explanation of why an attractive woman shouldn't need to pursue something as challenging and clearly unsuitable to the "female" mind, including the argument that she would be taking up a man's job if she ever got hired. In a world where an intelligent male PhD is so ignorant as to hold such views, the idea that there's a wage gap is not so far-fetched.

Thanks!

You can't really ban an IP address. What about a large business with multiple people using the same network? What about dynamic, changing IP addresses?

Also, if you ban anonymous, then you make it impossible for people to describe some things without risking their job, or to discuss personal issues freely; and of course some have concern over the government not caring for some of our comments.

I like to post under my name 99% of the time, but if I'm sharing a personal issue that concerns someone else, then I'm sharing their secret as well as mine if I post under my name. Say I had a coworker friend with AIDS (I don't) who hadn't told her boss; I would want to be anonymous because I wouldn't want her boss to fire her. Or say I wanted to share useful legal information I learned during a lawsuit, but the information was sealed as part of the ruling. I would like the option to speak hypothetically and generically, hiding it under anonymous to keep people's personal details from being revealed.

Also, things aren't formatting correcly anymore. Unless it's been fixed in the past 10 minutes, these will not appear as they do in the preview page to me.

This was marked as italics.

• This is an unordered bullet.

If Salon needs a web guru, I can be tempted from my contract job ;-)

This is excellent! As a former Premium subscriber who's too broke to renew, this policy has given me access to my old letters history. And as someone recently attacked by anonymous letter writers, I appreciate the pause this may give other letter writers of that ilk.

Thank you, Salon :-)

Jack Bauer never has enough time, but he has time for Calorie Mate. There's a cute comic on the web site, too, where Jack's enemies, eating pizza and soda, spill soda all over their computer keyboard.

We don't need any more 'maid' or 'mother' or 'battleax' imagery from Jack White or anyone else. We'd like accurate images about what nurses really do.

Hello?! The nurse imagery is the metaphor.

It's fascinating how decriptions and names change across the board as spin takes hold. In the early '90s I vividly remember following news about the Superconducting Supercollider (I was a physics major at the time, and had a friend who worked there). News anchors and experts referred to the "SSC" or "supercollider" or "particle accelerator." Then, as Congress began looking for a budget scapegoat, suddenly phrasing changed and I began hearing not only politicians but theoretically neutral reporters referring to the SSC as the "giant atom smasher." I didn't hear this stop until after it was shut down, when it was acceptable to discuss the "particle accelerator" again, expressing sadness at 14 miles of tunnel, at least one life, and 2 billion dollars lost.

People might mourn the opportunity to have a prestigious, knowledge-expanding supercollider, but no one wanted to protect a bizarre "giant atom smasher." And scientific progress in the United States took a giant, smashing blow.

I hate seeing the effect of spin on progress, whether in the environment or science or health care or any important issue. Thanks for pointing it out in the alternative fuel debate!