Ah... how would you know? What's on those memory cards? How do you know what's on the memory cards correlates to the votes people actually made?

Those of us who are paranoid about the electronic voting machines are not at all worried about what precinct workers do. What we are concerned about is what's going on inside those machines. It takes only one bad apple to corrupt (hijack) the tallies collected by thousands of grannies and to do so without their knowing it. Without a papertrail, there is no way to ever be confident that what goes in is what comes out.

Living in a foreign culture with a "been there, done that" attitude impatiently waiting to be somewhere else. This is 23 YO hubris in unabashed plumage. Time to cowboy up, son (maybe I'm being sexist here but it's my experience that females this whiny AND stupid enough to give public voice to their petty complaints are few and far between).

The occasional posters claiming similiar experiences as being among the "hardest thing in my life" should recognize how incredibly cushy their lives have been and how patheticly lacking they are in wisdom and experience. Ten weeks of student teaching is a crisis? Yikes!!!!!!!!!

that is the question. The amateur psychobabble is, well, amateurish. And arrogant. Whether or not Gibson is a nut is immaterial to the product.

If you wanted to send an ominous message to your opponents ("We can reach out and touch you whereever you are..."), Litvinenko's murder is an outstanding move. That it yells "Putin" or "FSB" in so obvious a way could be quite intentional. If I'm sitting in Moscow responsible for this act, what do I care if the western media is distracted for a few weeks from its normal focus on the trivial? What will Britain do if their investigation points to high places in Russia? Nothing. This too will pass. When it does, I can consider my message well and loudly delivered.

Speaking as someone who has been where BF is at (back when I was an immature, clueless young man), BF is an immature, clueless young man. He'll probably outgrow his immaturity but, unfortunately, that's years down the road right now. For the foreseeable future, he'll keep picking at this emotional wound. I really feel sorry for the guy because what he's going through is very real and very painful. But it's a hell of his own making.

For the LW, I would tell you that there's nothing "sacred" going on with BF; that's just guy BS trying to articulate reasons for irrational thoughts and behavior. He only has one course of action that's consistent with his stated beliefs and actions: leave the relationship. But that entails voluntarily giving up sexual relations with the LW. An immature guy isn't going to make such a mature choice. LW might try making that choice for him by cutting him off sexually. There's a lot of perspective to be gained when sex is taken out of the picture. At the very least, it'll precipitate some serious, heart-to-heart conversations. It might help and probably can't hurt.

However it turns out, I hope the LW doesn't take ownership of this "problem". It's entirely the BF's problem.

Step parenting has to be one of the most thankless jobs on the face of the earth. Just based on the responses to the LW, the best you can hope for is to be politely tolerated by the step kid (probably after they're grown and you're a grandparent). The worst -- you don't even want to contemplate.

Someone else wrote that the problem is the biological father and mother. Amen to that. Reflecting on my own misspent youth, I remember occasions where I figured out I could get away with pretty much anything no matter how outrageous. Guess what... I pushed until I found out how outrageous I could behave and still survive.

Kids thrive growing up with boundaries that make them feel safe. Divorced parents compensate for their own feelings of guilt by loosening those boundaries.

The big losers are the kids and the step parents. The kids end up losing more of the secure and safe environment they once knew. And the step parents are stuck watching a slow motion car wreck. They can decide to say nothing. Or they can say something in the hope of helping. Saying anything always has a price: the kid will object (sometimes violently) or the biological parent in the household will balk or the biological parent outside the house will raise holy hell. This is truly a no win situation for the step parent. Eventually, you learn to shutup and walk away.

I wouldn't recommend being a step parent to my worst enemy.

I don't think so. I have yet to find a computer, cell phone, PDA or MP3 player that doesn't sometimes crash. Other than a phone crash while calling 911, I don't see the big deal. Even the 911 bit isn't a big deal (911 calls via cell phone already aren't worth much more than spit).

Farhad whiffed the buggy, crash complaint.

The anti-war movement of 40 years ago was fueled by the draft. So were college enrollments by males. Our society today has two problems thanks to no draft in time of conflict. One problem is the lack of motivation needed to fuel a noisy anti-war movement. The other problem is declining male enrollment in higher education.

Bring back the draft (including females) and things will sort out in shorter order. But keep in mind that it took the anti-war movement almost 10 years to help in bringing an end to the Vietnam War. And they did their thing while the middle classes sat on their asses.

Sorry but there's really nothing new under the sun.