I concur with those who would like to see a return to a serif font for the text. Sans-serif is just not as friendly or as scannable as a decent serif font. Sans-serif is great for short, clean blurbs of text, like the summaries to the left there, but not great for larger bodies of text.

Also, coming back to the "ignore this user" option, maybe you could at least cap the number of times someone can post in each letters column. Most people rarely need to write more than once or twice on a given article, maybe three times if they have to answer other posters. But there are the verbally incontinent who post dozens of times on a single thread, and who also seem to think this is a message board between them and other users. Capping the letter limit would restrict both profligate posting and internecine flamewars between users.

All they do is squirt gunk on you.

Seriously, why are you wasting any amount of brain power on her ejaculations? She's not. She just lets her neurons misfire and whatever results exits her mouth, resulting in publicity and a paycheck.

If bigots out there are finding her amusing, well, that's because they're bigots. If anyone is basing real-life decisions on her schtick, they've got bigger problems ahead than we do.

Really, just stop giving her press. You're not countering her, because there's no substance to counter. You're only sustaining her with attention, which is all she is ultimately about.

I'm another Metro crawler and I frequently stop not only for the classical musicians, but the jazz saxophonists and CD-backed shamisen player. I listen for no more than 30 seconds, toss in money and go because I too have a job to get to, as much as I'd like to stay and luxuriate in the music.

There may have been problems with the assumptions in the original Post article, but there are problems with this counter-article as well. No the least of them is the trotting out of the old chestnut that classical fans are dying out. This is a hoary and predictable augery that seems to be as inevitably invoked as other timeworn journalistic pronouncements of doom that make the rounds every year ("the novel as literature is dead", "the art film is on the way out", et cetera).

The original article is a record of a bad experiment, on par with setting up a table and handing out free cans of Spam and then concluding that Spam is America's #1 food because the cans went in 15 minutes. That being the case, this rebuttal is just as flawed, projecting the author's own biases onto the intentions of the first author. Remember, when you tell someone what they are thinking, you are in fact revealing your own thought processes.

She's not an intellectual, not a feminist, and not a scientist, yet Salon lets her play all three without any editorial control.

How little respect do you have for us?

The victim culture of the far right can be astounding, until you realise what lies beneath it. Many of them are paranoids of the clinical sort and no amount of placation will shake them from the surity that the world is against them. Scattered among them and frequently overlapping them are the quislings, the people who have betrayed themselves and their communties to secure personal advantage. Their greatest fear seems to be that they are being ignored, which means that they sold out for no reason since being assimilated is supposed to bring power and attention.

The egocentrism they display is almost Ptolemaic in its totality, polarising their view until everything must be related back through themselves first. Of course, this is a convenient adjunct to a career which requires endless self-promotion and attention seeking, but it quickly becomes tedious. That it is counterducive to an effective dialog is a given, since they are never talking about the issue, only about themselves.

I applaud the efforts by the liberal side to continue to remain fair and mature in these matters. But sometimes you can't waste the time and energy on these people and you simply have to respond like a firm parent and say "This isn't about you right now."

...there's hornet nests in everyone's backyard. And another inside the clubhouse.

Mission accomplished!

I would love to see an in-depth article on Salon about how troop increases are largely meaningless, since many of the troops over there are ensconced in FOBs and rarely go out for action anyway. The only story I've seen on the "Fobbits" is one on the Buffalo site The Beast (http://www.buffalobeast.com/113/Power%20Surge.htm). If there is truth to this, it could do with Salon's senior coverage and far-ranging voice to add it to the national discussion.

There is "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham (of "Midwich Cuckoos" and "Day Of The Triffids" fame), which posits an all-female future built along insect society lines. Meanwhile Naomi Mitchison's "Solution Three" is a future world of separatist homosexuality and clonal childbearing.

Neither book is particularly optimistic or paradisical, but the idea of an all-female world need not be troubling either. Numerous species live fine with only female members. I doubt it will come to pass for our own kind, but the male vehemence against the notion is telling. Us guys need to remember that we won't cease to exist in some conceptual genocide. Future males would still be born, they'd just be born female instead. They'll still be the same person, only a different gender. Of course, I suspect that's the part that really terrifies some males...