From The Republic (Book 1):

"I will tell you, Socrates," he said, "what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is: 'I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life.'

"Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known.

"How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, 'How does love find you in your old age, Sophocles? Are you still the man you were?' 'Peace,' he replied; I have been only too happy to escape from the clutches of love; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.'"

I'd like to see that in a Viagra ad.

You write:

But for fear of harming the children -- whom parents hope will not want to one day have such fun -- adults are usually encouraged to keep such things behind closed doors.

The parenthetical phrase should be: "who parents hope will not want to one day have such fun."

How you can tell: rephrase this as a straightforward sentence. "Parents hope they [not *them] will not want to one day have such fun." They -> who; them -> whom.

Sorry to be a prig, but I'm going to keep pointing this out until Salon writers get it right!

If the massive 3-to-1 Obama edge in the early returns from Lake County (Gary, Indiana, the state's second largest city) holds up for the rest of the county -- so far, as of midnight, only 158 of 559 precincts have reported -- Obama will narrowly pull ahead of Clinton in the Indiana totals. My little spreadsheet predicts statewide totals of 620,000 for Clinton vs. 645,000 for Obama. Maybe it will be a tie-breaker, after all. Hard to imagine even Clinton continuing after a loss in Indiana. (But then, of course, there will be all the mail-in votes to count.)

So far, Obama's massive lead in Gary, Ind. has shrunk from 75%-25% to around 60%-40%. If trends hold for the last few precincts in Indiana, the final tally will be a virtual tie, around 625,000 for Clinton to 624,000 for Obama. Clinton might squeak through with a win, but it's hardly the decisive victory her campaign was counting on. Meanwhile, Obama's big lead in North Carolina give him a nice majority in total "popular vote" tallies for all primaries, even counting Florida and Michigan for Clinton. The contest looks over to me.

Maybe it's time to stop slicing and dicing the electorate into pure racial/ethnic/class/gender segments. That is the Republican way, and look at where it's getting them: the GOP is increasingly the party of upper-middle class white men, and little more. The permanent minority party.

The Republican Party looks every day more out of touch with the real America; the Democratic Party reflects America as we really are. Men, women, black, white, Latino, Asian, all classes and educational levels: we're all in this together. Let's keep it that way. Who's purposes does it serve to segment out the Democratic electorate by race, gender, education? Not ours, that's for sure. Together, we can make the country work again.

Anti-Obama arguments based on racial politics (just like anti-Clinton attacks based on misogyny) are the Republican way. Democrats should, and must, rise above the Republican race-based politics and tactics of the past. Bury them. Forget them. United, we'll win.

It would be a lot easier to build a border fence around Tom Tancredo.

Of all the hyperventilating anti-immigrationists who are going apoplectic about Mexicans in the US, how many have been to Mexico lately?

If you think Mexican immigrants are having an impact on US culture, let me assure you that it is NOTHING in comparison with the wholesale invasion of US culture in Mexico. Twenty years ago, almost all Mexicans shopped at small, locally owned stores, or bought food at farmer-operated stalls in local farmer markets, or grew their own food on their own land. Today, Mexico is crisscrossed with gigantic US-style highways (many of them toll roads owned by foreign corporations) and the landscape, both physical and mental, is completely altered by a proliferation of US-style (and generally US-owned) big box stores. People shop at WalMart, Home Depot, Sam's Club -- and the little 'tienditas' (local stores) that were the meeting places and watering holes for local life for generations are falling by the wayside. This is just the tip of a giant iceberg of social and cultural change in Mexico.

I'm not saying that Mexico is 'becoming the United States' -- far from it. Societies and cultures are far more resilient than that. But there is a long-term, inevitable process of mutual assimilation going on between the US and Mexico which is rounding off the rough edges of difference between the two, and it is happening ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER -- and, in my opinion, far more dramatically on the Mexican side.

"The reality is that there's no U.S. airline that has a sustainable business model if $117-a-barrel oil prices endure." That was $8 per gallon ago...

Read: "That was $8 per barrel ago..."