I can't believe how rude Grubert was to post an anecdote about his grandparents that doesn't conform with your worldview. He must be wrong about his experience, is all I can figure!

Will you be a good daddy?

But related, I guess to the annoying hordes of anonymice-why doesn't Salon have radio button up next to 'read all letter' and 'read only editors choice' that says 'read only signed' or 'read excluding anonymous'. I would click it every time.

I don't really understand why you are so angry. He has had two wives. The first one, who is dead is his first wife. The second one, alive, is his second wife. I didn't read it as a slur. People sometimes have serial mates, for various reasons. Should it have read, his first wife, and after she died, his second wife? What difference would that have made?

And calling his first and second wives, his first and second wives, keeps someone from being a serious journalist?

Some people care about strange stuff, and rather vehemently, at that.

Mama always said, stupid is as stupid does. 'nuff said.

I did recently see a report, though, that women's desks have far more bacteria than men's, including possibly dangerous bacteria. There was no reason given why this would be so, but I think it's because we take our purses into the bathroom with us (and necessarily touch more than ourselves).

Your points about median vs. average as measures of central tendency are correct, at least when you have relatively few data points. However, when you have many data points (like 88 million) it is much harder for the outliers to pull up the average, and I'll bet the median and the mean are very close.

Don't people put on a jacket and/or tie when a restaurant requires it? Geez. He can put on a cap for an hour. If it doesn't mean anything to him, great. He can follow social rules and not pee on the street, he can wear a cap where it's required.

What a stupid "principle" (if there is one) to stand on.

When I was five, I was attacked by a German Shepherd. I was skipping home from kindergarten with my papers with smiley faces in my hand. The dog ran from its yard across the street to bite.

At the time I was terrified, screaming, and my mother so angry! (this was about a block from home) I weighed about 40 pounds at the time.

However-however. The dog probably weighed close to 90 lbs. If it had decided to kill me, I would have been dead before anyone could have done anything. What it did was bite me on the butt, tearing my dress and bruising me (but not breaking the skin).

The dog was usually kept in the back yard and neighborhood kids (not me or my siblings, my mom was scared of dogs and we couldn't go over there) would tease it, waving papers and things into the yard, then jumping back screaming. I think, now that I am an adult and have had dogs, that that dog came over to nip the "puppy" and teach it not to do that. But I think they put it to sleep over the incident.

That, I think, is the difference between a German Shepherd and a pit bull. The shepherd wanted to teach, and in truth was quite protective of children. If the dog had been a pit bull, I would have been dead.