Thanks Ronsard for your comments. I have to add that it takes a certain amount of obsessive-compulsive nature to eat properly. We have taught ourselves to look at fast or semi-prepared food as having a big POISON label. The first 20-30 minutes of walking in minus 10 wind chill requires having an almost overwhelming compulsion to suffer. But then you body warms up and it becomes rewarding.

There is an interesting thing happening in the food world. The evidence for the deleterious nature of omega-6 fatty acids is getting quite strong. Omega-6 fatty acids are being implicated in heart disease, cancer and arthritis. Now this are one of the products that is most heavily subsidized by the federal government. It is also among the largest selling products of the Big 3 Ag companies. The Canadians are trying to genetically modify Canola oil to replace the omega-6 with omega-9 (oleic acid, olive oil). Omega-3 and omega-9 appear to have only health benefits. Since corn and soybeans are the major source of omega-6 there is bound to be a huge propaganda war in the offing. It is hard to avoid omega-6 in both the supermarket and restaurants, but it can be done. MacDonalds is up against it, they are afraid to replace the hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed, and corn oil that they fry in with healthy fully saturated tropical oils. The Ag companies are developing specially formulated omega-6 oils for frying, but I suspect that the last thing that Mac wants is to get into another nutrional hole by using a product that might in the near future be condemned for its poisonous nature. It will be interesting. Of course, like tobacco, we can always ship our poisons overseas to the developing world.

I'm 72, one of the people that supposedly got "conservative" as I got older. I watch o'Reilly for fun, not edification. Mostly he's a total asshole. But he reflects a great fear that is beginning to set in that the feet of our conservative leaders have more clay in them than the liberal Democrats. After all those who have found Christ (as if anyone can) must be good people. I'm sorry that Wheaton's father got so excited, but it's pretty fearful when you are discovering that your leaders are merely mortal. Our founding fathers knew that politics is a corrupt business, and tried to set up a system where its deleterious effects are at least somewhat ameleorated. If we can send young men and women to die for our "values" in Iraq, I don't see the problem in executing a scumbag like Tookie Williams, and if Arnold did it to recover his conservative base, well that's politics. Years ago I read a book called "Punishing Criminals". The authors thesis was that no man could be punished for committing a crime unless he volunteered for the punishment. The act of committing the crime entails the volunteering. Tookie volunteered for the death penalty when he committed murder. Just because the death penalty is applied unevenly is no reason to not apply it. Like all political activities it can and should be improved.

A symmetrical attractive face indicates a low parasite load and freedom from genetic disorders. Fat stored on breasts and buttocks, along with a high hip to waist ratio, indicates fertility. There are no outward physical manifestations of intelligence. Men who choose women with those attractive attributes have a better chance of having healthy offspring. Our male brains are designed (by natural selection) to look for those attributes in females. Intelligence and good looks are weakly correlated in women: smart dads and hot-looking mothers equals smart good-looking daughters. Men who choose unattractive (low fertility) women will have fewer offspring. My wife is a hottie with a masters from Harvard, The best of all worlds, but I would not have wasted my time if she didn't have tits and ass.

You are right Mary Jane. The fact is that people tend to marry people of similar attractiveness and intelligence. But really hot but dumb women can frequently breed with smart attractive men. The other way around doesn't happen very often. On the other hand through most of human history another method for men to spread their genes was through war. Through much of history three days of rape and pillage was permitted the foot soldiers. During WW2 vast numbers of Russian women had babies with German fathers, and toward the end vast numbers of German women were impregnated by Russian soldiers. As catastophic as that was for the women involved it did a really good job of gene mixing. Genghis Khan and his sons reportedly had thousands of children. In the past one of the rewards of success for men was the ability to father really large numbers of children. Saudi princes reportedly have an average of 40 children, which results in requiring huge increases in oil revenue. So in some ways our present quandary of sexual selection is at odds with our genetic historical predispositions. If Maureen Dowd had been a German woman in Berlin in 1945 she might easily have become a mother, without all this intellectualizing. I hope that our civilization lasts long enough for our less stressful methods of procreation to continue.