We expect everything to be cheap and plentiful. The idea that we are the world's breadbasket, that one can drive across states like Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, and still we are importing GRAINS FER CHRISSAKES from China boggles the mind.

I'm sorry, I wouldn't trust the Chinese manufacturing practices any further than I could throw them. Yet we are inextricably tied to them in every aspect of our lives. Just try buying anything from a toothbrush to a computer without the Made in China label on the side. Our own manufacturing capacity is a shadow of its former self, all for the almighty dollar.

I don't have a problem with the meat byproducts--all the oddball stuff we don't want to eat. I'd rather feed them to cats and dogs (cooked to remove bacteria and whatnot) than throw them away, and as this article indicates, it doesn't cause problems.

The real problem is a country that is so fixated on price that we've lost track of quality. Does a houseful of cheap plastic crap and a bag of dog food that cost two dollars less really make us happy?

Is universal free contraception and free access to safe abortion. All over the world. If only the republicans and the puritanistic americans could get thier heads out of their collective behinds on this one.

If women, men, and couples the world over could reliably control their own fertility, they would.

Abstinence is horsepucky, and we all know it. The urge to reproduce is as fundamental as the urge to breathe, and anyone who denies it has never spent much time in a public high school, a college, an office, a bar, a church, or really anywhere that human beings congregate. People like to have sex. It's fun, it feels great, and unfortunately it has all kinds of strings attached. However, those attached strings have NEVER reliably stopped it from happening in the whole history of humankind. NEVER. If you think otherwise, you're not being honest with yourself.

If Bill Clinton or anyone else is seriously concerned about world poverty, this is what they need to do. Too bad so many religions get their sticky little fingers involved in the issue... so many religions (like the Catholics) run by old men who have never had to change a diaper, let alone give birth to more children than they can feed.

Most pharmacies are part of insurance networks, at least they are where I live. If this were me, and I'd received a note like this, I'd kick and scream all the way up the food chain at my health care insurance.

If I were a corporate bean-counter with Blue Cross or Cigna or Aetna or whoever, and discovered that one of my in-network pharmacies was refusing to serve my clients on religious grounds, I'd drop them from my network faster than you can say "breach of contract."

Just a thought.

I had the misfortune to live with a theater major for most of my freshman year in college. What I learned is that my roommate and most of her theater friends approached life with the same level of drama as this woman. So focused on themselves, on wringing the most drama out of of every scrap of life, from the weather to their weird clothes to each other. Life was full of superlatives for them.

I still remember my roommate coming home on an October night after a late rehearsal. She announced to me, as if I were a packed auditorium of adoring fans, "I think it's going to FREEZE tonight!"

Um, yeah. It does that in the winter. I think I'll keep reading chemistry, thanks.

So my advice, LW, is to try to grow up. See the world through your boyfriend's eyes, and try to understand what he's telling you. You can't MAKE him say something he does not want to say. And if he does, where's the meaning it if you coerced him into it? Maybe he's afraid of commitment. Maybe he doesn't want to marry you. Maybe he just likes being around you, enjoys the sex, and doesn't want to think about the future.

Maybe it's not all about you.