the "western dating system" consists of (a)college, (b)friends of friends and (c) bars.

Well, to put it mildly, if that's her understanding of how to meet guys, it's little wonder she hasn't been successful. As any even marginally qualified therapist could have told her, people don't meet their long-term mate in bars and there just aren't that many friends of friends. Where people meet each other is in shared activities/interests. So what you do is volunteer for something you believe in or attend church. If you're an Obama fan, volunteer your time and lo and behold, there will be guys there who are pro-Obama who aren't married. Your shared interest in politics is a made-to-order ice-breaker. Or volunteer at the food bank, art museum, etc. Church is also a tried and true place to meet your mate if you happen to be religious. And she can't complain that she doesn't have the time. If she has time to date strangers, she has the time to volunteer.

We've known this for decades. Jain's failure to consult obvious resources and come to obvious conclusions says little about the "western dating system" and a lot about her proclivities regarding men.

I've been saying this for some time. Pro-war pundits and Bush admin officials try to make the case for war, but they 100% fail to argue that it's worth it. They say "these are our goals in Iraq...", but they never add "and they're worth $150B/year, plus lost American lives, plus lost Iraqi lives, plus lost prestige, etc." They don't because to make THAT case would be embarrassing and highlight the costs which they want us to forget. The U.S. is set to run a deficit of $480B this fiscal year. That's something people care about.

about women's gymnastics is that the girls are not only young, but biologically younger than their chronological years. This is accomplished by "the diet." The diet is a low-no fat regime which keeps young women as old as 18 or 19 looking like pixies.

I once received physical therapy from a woman during which we fell to talking. She mentioned that she had been a gymnast in high school and college. I expressed surprise based on the fact that she was about 5'6" and maybe 140-145 lbs. It seems she had broken both her wrists on a vault in college and had to quit gymanstics which meant going off "the diet." She grew 8 inches in one year and had her first period at the age of 19. "The diet" meant she had been effectively starving herself for at least 6 years with predictable hormonal issues as a result. I asked her if her delayed physical maturation had been accompanied by delayed emotional/psychological maturation and she said it definitely had been.

The gymnastics and ballet businesses both require young women to go on highly unnatural diets to maintain the smallest possible bodies. That has effects most people don't realize. The Bela Karolis of the world never mention that to parents, I'd guess.

this is a great idea. To make it work, the organization has to show as soon as possible that it can be effective. Doing that will help with the flow of donations because the organization will have a concrete accomplishment it can point to in fundraising materials. Therefore, it should narrowly target one specific issue or incumbent and put all its resources into defeating the incumbent, promoting or opposing the issue so as to have the maximum possible impact.

Don't take a widespread, shotgun approach. That'll dissipate your strength and momentum faster than anything.

if Havrilesky wants to earn $50k/year she should save about $1M. She can put that half and half into triple-A rated Municipal bonds and annuities, be pretty safe with the corpus of her estate and not pay much in taxes. Also she and her husband will get Social Security on top of the $50k she makes on her savings. If she wants to count that as part of the $50k, she only needs to save about $700k. It's not really very hard to do given that she's already started.

The question I have is why she didn't question that online calculator. $3M is plainly way out of line.

if she has $3M at any time, that's going to get her a LOT more than $50k/year. She could stick it in tax-free municipal bonds and make $120K/year. Annuities pay 6.1% which would pay her over $180K. So I don't know where that online calculator was coming from.

More anti-male sexism. We see so little of that. It's so refreshing.

Oh, but I forgot. I just don't have a sense of humor. And who better to tell me than the many feminists who read Salon.com who, if the sexes in this strip were reversed, would doubtless be rolling in the aisles.

has realized this for some time, calling Reps and Dems a political duopoly, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Of course people screamed bloody murder at that while doggedly ignoring Dems' enabling of Bush policies.

A multi-party parliamentary system would serve this country better than what we have now.

So why does the fact that you weren't alive during the sixties mean to you that you know nothing about the sixties? I wasn't alive during the thirties, but I know about the Great Depression, the New Deal, expansion of constitutional government power, etc. I can only guess at what you mean by "that hippie shit," but it helped establish civil rights for African-Americans, women's rights, environmentalism, stop the Viet Nam war and remove a criminal president from office. That may be your definition of failure, but I for one would like more of it.

There are a lot of books out there. Try reading some of them.