I don't know if these women are joking or not, you've got to think they are given how silly it all is and the fact that women do participate in the running of the bulls.

The point that is getting lost here is that the Running of the Bulls and a bull fight are two different events. Same bulls, different activities. And not that I'll defend either (although I had a damn good time at that festival the time I went - I did not attend a bullfight) the bulls are not hurt for or during the running. They did seem a bit bewildered, though.

My husband's parents came to him when he was about 23 or 24 and single (but dating me non-seriously) and said (I paraphrase) "it doesn't look like you'll ever get married, here's the money we would have given you, put a down payment on a condo". Needless to say, when we got married a couple of years later they still gave us a substantial cash gift (they could afford it) and we got to upgrade the condo to a house! It worked out great for us, but no, I don't think we had a "right" to it and we never asked for it.

I like Elizabeth Edwards a lot, she shows a lot of grace in a tough political climate and I like her politics. However, I am a little skeptical that she isn't being used by her husband's campaign to say the things John wants to say but can't for political reasons. He doesn't support gay marriage but all of a sudden his wife does and is giving speeches at a gay pride parade? I don't think this just happened coincidentally and I don't think she's acting without the blessings of the campaign.

They used to use Barbara Bush this way when George H.W. was having trouble - she'd give an interview where she'd "casually" mention she was pro-choice just to soften his image. Everyone would go ga-ga over how warm and wonderful Barbara was, giving George a little wiggle room.

I don't think Elizabeth is lying about her views, nor do I think that the phone call to Coulter was all planned, but neither do I believe that she's acting without the very planned blessings of the John Edwards campaign.

I don't know if eating your placenta will work, but anytime I hear that the justification for something is that "animals do it", I am wary.

If it's selfishness that's keeping people from having children, maybe it's a good thing. There's too many parents who have kids because - why? - accidents, societal & familial pressure, thought it was they were supppose to? They later find out it's a lot of hard work and they decide they aren't that into it. That's when (at best) you end up with kids running screaming through the movie theater while their parents don't bother to intervene or (at the worst) abandoning or neglecting their children.

I have great respect for those who make an informed choice about parenting, whichever way they decide. If you know you're not ready to give up a big part of your life to take care of another person, I see that as a good kind of selfish. I don't have great respect for people who post on-line about how "all modern parents are evil & lazy and there isn't a well-behaved child to be found in the entire nation" or that "the childless are self-involved and child-haters". (Although, some posts at Salon on this topic do make a lot of childless people sound very bitter.)

But when we're done batting these women around like mice who've become too exhausted and weak to hold our feline attention any longer, they will be left with nothing but bad chemical dependencies and a yawning, insatiable need to recapture our imagination, since we've taught them that it's our interest that gives them value.

I take no pleasure in LL addictions or arrests - she's too pathetic and I do feel sorry for her. I hope she recovers but frankly, I'm not losing sleep over any of it. And I'm not taking responsibility for the fact that she used the media and the public to advance her "celebrity". The fact that she was too young and too stupid to realize that it was all a fraud that was going to blow up in her face is not something I feel any guilt for. I didn't worship her before (but boy, wasn't she cute back in the Parent Trap days?): I didn't put her on that pedestal and I won't take the blame for knocking her off. She, and her addiction, did it all herself.

This has to be up to the woman involved, not her doctor BUT, that said, I once knew a 23 year old woman who went and asked her doctor for a tubal. She had just broken up with someone and was in a very bitter place and not, in my view, entirely emotionally stable. The doctor refused and she was pissed (although she gave up after asking the one doctor). I don't know what went through the doctor's mind, but I think he/she acted responsibly. Doctors shouldn't refuse men or women sterilization based on their age, but if a doctor feels that elective, non-reversible surgery is being done without proper forethought or by an individual who is not able to make a long-term decision, it's certainly his or her right to refuse to do it.

I lost touch with that woman (not too sorry about that) and I just googled her to see if she now has kids. Couldn't find her (I guess she changed her name when she got married) but I bet you anything she does.