I've always felt that personal attacks against the author of an article are off limit and usually irrelevent, but I feel like I have to make an exception here. Kamiya seems like a guy harboring a lot of resentment because he was left out of the supposedly manly American car-culture over the last few decades, and those insecurities are manifesting themselves in the little tirade we see today.

Where did this car culture come from? One source: economics. Not so long ago, it was a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to fix your own car than to take it to the shop or buy a new one. My small hometown didn't have a movie theater but we had four auto parts stores. Naturally the next step beyond fixing a car is to tweak it so that it performs better. It was a male thing because fixing mechanical things had traditionally been a man's job.

American cars were easier to work on than European cars. This was one advantage of being huge, although I literally had to climb on top of the engine to fix the timing in my '69 GTO, which was a pain. Because they were easier to work on, it was easier to sell and to buy used American cars. Also, thick Detroit steel held up a lot better than the tin foil the imports used.

The big fact that Kamiya ignores is that this "phallic" car-culture started dying years ago when American cars became too complicated to work on -- when plugging the car into a computer for a diagnosis replaced analyzing the smells and sounds coming out of it. The hot rod culture got replaced by the SUV culture, which emphasized armor over driving skill to keep yourself safe. And the soccer moms co-opted it all anyway.

My GTO got 6 mpg (11 mpg highway) and I couldn't afford to drive it twenty years ago, and I wouldn't dream about driving it today (if I still had it). It was way fun, but those days were over a long time ago. Now I want something small and zippy and stylish, and if Fiat can deliver something like that, I'll give it a test drive.

But if they ever come out with an electric car with 450 ft-lbs of torque and 0-60 in 4.5, I'll buy it sight unseen.

My wish is that when Jerry Falwell arrived at the pearly gates, he was greeted by a chorus of angels led by Freddie Mercury. That would've been great in soooo many ways.

"The woman's husband was married to a man who worked in Ensign's Senate office." Clearly he started with either "The woman was married to a man who worked in Ensign's Senate office" or "The woman's husband worked in Ensign's Senate office", but he went back to change the wording and forgot to make the rest of the sentence agree.

I know you Koppelman-bashers try to nitpick everything he does, but calling this out only reflects badly upon you.

I think a lot of people are making this mistake. Obviously, an obese person (BMI > 30) would be plus-size, but that doesn't mean that a woman who has to wear plus-size clothes is obese.

A BMI up to 25 is still considered having a healthy weight, and there is a wide variety of body shapes that can result in a BMI of 25 and a necessity to wear sizes 12 or higher. So you can wear plus-sized clothes and still be a healthy weight. All this crap about obesity being the problem is a distraction.

Also, as a guy who knows how to use a sewing machine (and is secure enough in his masculinity to say that), there isn't much difference in the amount of fabric used for a size 12 or 14 versus, say, a size 6. That economic excuse is bogus. It could be that the (slightly) larger pieces of fabric needed for larger sizes creates a good deal more waste fabric, because raw fabric comes in a fixed width, and if you can't cut pieces side-by-side on the fabric then you end up with lots of scraps that are (slightly) too small to be used. But they can solve this by using wider bolts of fabric, or by cutting out large sizes and small sizes simultaneously.

Don't forget that it was late in her pregnancy when she announced she was having a baby. This gave her plenty of time to do genetic and other tests to determine if the baby was viable, and if it wasn't it gave her time to terminate the pregnancy without anyone knowing. She did have genetic tests done, after all. Why would a woman who celebrates life wait so long before announcing a joyous pregnancy?

Sure her child had Down's syndrome, and to her credit Palin carried through with the pregnancy. However, the cynical part of me thinks that Palin wanted to use a Down's syndrome baby as a political prop for the pro-lifer vote. I feel kind of bad about thinking that way.

Damn! What's the statute of limitations on drinking games, because I don't think my liver can handle this anymore.

"Nixon could be a bit of a racist." That's a joke, people. Of course Nixon's a racist -- we've known that for decades.

I swear, some people can't understand a joke unless it's followed by a smiley emoticon...

but I'm pretty sure current GPS technology won't work underwater. Considering that just standing under a porch can throw off the coordinates, I'm sure that thousands of feet of water would be crippling.