I have been the proud owner of a Honda Insight since 2002, and have faithfully kept mileage records every time I fill the gas tank. My mileage is much better than Rebecca Clarren's claim of 40 mpg average. My Insight's average is 65 mpg, with a highway mileage of 75 mpg. It cost $15,000 and can fit two snowboards in the back. Too bad Honda stopped making them. Also, if you add a roof trunk to your car (as Clarren mentions for the Versa) you can expect a significant drop in your gas mileage.

Get your facts straight Rebecca, Kimberly-Clark is not "increasingly using up to 100 percent recycled fiber", not even close. Don't buy Kleenex if you want to save old-growth forests. http://www.kleercut.net/en/

To Persia, Shazzer4400 and all others using hand sanitizers; these products are inferior to simple soap and water and are not as effective as you may think. http://biology.about.com/library/weekly/aa022400a.htm

Some vets are way more overpriced than others. Often your best bet is to call around and find a vet who offers discounts on certain days and times. Of course, this doesn't always work out when there is an emergency. I spent nearly $2000 to save my cat after an encounter with a car. It happened on a weekend when many vets are closed, so I had to bring him to an emergency vet where the costs are automatically higher. Still, I will say it was worth it, though I don't know what I'd have done if I didn't have a credit card. I have had a number of overpriced vet bills as I've moved around, I paid all them but then found a new vet. Before I moved out of state, I had a wonderful vet with reasonable prices. She had a collection box in her waiting room to pay for treatments for those who couldn't afford it.

Monsanto does not care about the development of superbugs; this just means they can sell more of their next-generation transgenic crops. If small farms fail as a result, they could care less. Family farmers whose fields were contaminated by Monsanto's GM crops have been sued by Monsanto, as well as small dairies that labeled their products as rBGH-free. Some more of their "accomplishments" include development of "terminator technology" (sterile plants that cannot produce seeds, so that farmers must buy more each year), the commercialization of rBGH hormone use in milk, and the creation of at least 93 Superfund sites. For a better idea of how deep Monsanto's corruption runs, look them up on the Pesticide Action Network of North America

(http://www.panna.org/resources/caia/corpProfilesMonsanto)

and the Organic Consumers Association (http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm).

No shouting matches here, just cold truth.

I rent, and I move pretty often, yet I have successfully grown many vegetable gardens. Last year I had approximately a 4'x4' space and grew 3 pepper plants, 2 basil plants, an eggplant, and 6 tomato plants. I didn't need to buy any of these vegetables until winter, and I don't put in hours of work. I'm lazy about weeding (once the plants get large they shade out most weeds), I don't spray anything and I don't fertilize much. Most of the work is watering, which can be done with a cheap hose end irrigation system and timer, or befriend your neighbors and ask them for help when you're out of town. Free vegetables are a great thank-you gift. As for chickens, I have raised them before for years, they are easy and not stinky as a previous poster claimed. Chicken waste makes great fertilizer, by the way. They do best if they have a small space at least to range and eat insects (free, organic pest control) for part of the day. Roosters are unnecessary for egg production, you only need them if you want baby chickens. Reading books about gardening and poultry are a good way to learn more about these activities, and can save one a lot of frustration. I think it would be great for more Americans to grow their own food, no matter what kind. It's amazing how much it can teach you.

Acupuncture, massage therapy, homeopathic medicine, and antispasmodic herbs all can provide relief from torticollis (as well as other chronic pain disorders). Yoga, Tai Chi, and Pilates are all good therapeutic exercises for recovery.

I wonder if it is open game to question her judgement as a mother at this point. Is she going to continue to have children at an age where the odds of a down syndrome pregnancy is 1:50 compared to ~1:1000 for younger mothers.

There are other ways to prevent birth besides aborting your child. We can all agree that we should strive to prevent unwanted pregnancies. This was the point.

Apparently Sarah Palin managed to impress upon her daughter the importance of being a baby factory, even if she did fail to give her adequate sex education. This is making McCain's VP pick appear to be closer to Lynne Spears than Hillary Clinton.

Heather Havrilesky obviously hasn't read the wonderful Sookie Stackhouse mystery series that 'True Blood' is based on. The books do a great job of pointing out the small-mindedness of bigotry of all kinds; the prejudice against vampires can be seen as a metaphor for all kinds of societal biases. Gay rights would be the most recent example, but there are many others. Hopefully the HBO series will stay as true to the books as possible.