I was very thin as a child, so think that well-meaning (and plump) relatives worried about my health. Naturally lean and with a good metabolism rate, I could eat as much as I wanted of whatever I wanted and not gain weight. Though I was a picky eater, one thing I wasn't picky about was snack food.

As a young adult, I heard somewhere that one's fat cells develop in childhood and shrink or grow thereafter—but do not increase in number. So when my metabolism started to slow down and I began gaining weight, I took comfort in knowing that at least I wouldn't start sprouting brand-new fat cells. So needless to say, I was moderately distressed this morning when I ran across this article from last summer.

Though widely believed, it is not true that a person's quota of fat cells is fixed forever sometime in childhood. Adults do not create new fat cells as readily as children do, but it happens. If a person keeps overeating, the existing fat cells grow and grow, looking as if they are about to pop, but there is a size limit. When they reach that limit they do not divide, but instead send out a signal to nearby immature cells to start dividing to produce more fat cells.

Bummer, eh? But all is not lost, I thought, because my body shape is a "pear" (most fat in the lower abdomen and hips) which is supposedly less correlated to heart disease than an "apple" (more fat in the mid and upper torso). Unfortunately that isn't quite true either.

Women tend to be pears, but they also redistribute fat and thicken in the middle after menopause.

[ . . . ]

Even a little too much abdominal fat – an outsize gut on an otherwise skinny person – can increase the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Being at the lower end of the age range during which menopause can start, this doesn't make me happy. I guess I need to get back to Weight Watchers and the corporate gym.

The case of Barbara Howe, the ALS patient from whom the hospital is trying to remove ventilation, has not been settled since I last wrote about it last week. In fact, it is just about to come to a head. Massachusetts General Hospital is still vowing to remove Ms. Howe's ventilator tomorrow, over the objection of her daughter.

Carol Carvitt has hired a lawyer to file a petition to prevent MGH from taking her mother off life support. The Boston Herald article refers to the hospital effort as a "rare bid to overrule a patient's health care proxy." The very same reason why such a move is rare is also the reason why the hospital should not be allowed to succeed in their effort.

If indeed MGH turns of this woman ventilator against the explicit directions of her health care proxy, it will be legally the same as if they had done so against the explicit directions of the patient herself. That is what a health care proxy means in Massachusetts. It is not up to a doctor or a hospital committee to decide that she is suffering too much or that, as a prior judge distinguished, what she would want might somehow not be what is best for her. If MGH succeeds, then upon what grounds will you or I be able to make decision about our own health care in conflict with what our treaters think is best for us?

In an interview aired in part on WBZ radio this morning, Ms. Carvitt said that the impending removal of her mother's life support felt like "a murder, an execution." She has repeatedly claimed that her mother, while physically debilitated, is still alert. The facts of ALS bear out her assertion. And if you doubt the mental capacity or alertness of someone with advance ALS, consider the case of world-famous physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, who first developed symptoms of ALS in 1962, has been unable to move and talk for several years, but is still functioning as one of the most brilliant minds of modern times. So yes, to knowingly and deliberately kill someone who is alert is like execution, but the condemned hasn't done anything wrong.

Having never been married, I do not claim to understand how difficult it can be to keep a marriage together through thick and thin. So I am loathe to pass judgment on those whose marriages ultimately fail. Who am I to say that someone didn't try hard enough? Many couple who eventually divorce have indeed made every reasonable effort and more to honor their vows for life. But sometimes, I would imagine, their best intentions are simply not enough to overcome the insurmountable obstacles to staying married. When two people who have been so strongly committed to one another for such a long period of time feel they must split, it is indeed a tragedy. I am speaking, of course, about Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt.

The Den Mother has been unpardonably silent on this all-important topic. It isn't that I don't think it is important—on the contrary, what could be more important? And perhaps that is why this blog has yet to address the issue, the most critical faced by the nation since Liz Taylor's seventh divorce.

I admit that I am a latecomer to OBJD (Obsessive Brad and Jennifer Disorder), but that's only because I have failed to understand the gravity of the situation. After all, when they married in July 2000, they were instantly declared The Couple of the Century by bigger heads than mine. And who was I to argue? While the rest of us would have to stay married for, say, 60 years and get to the point where we were changing each others diapers in order for it to be considered True Love, they need only to be famous and have a hideously ostentatious wedding. And isn't that what love really is—the celebrity wedding? Clearly, it gave Brad and Jennifer's union greater significance than anyone else's because, well, because they were two of the Beautiful People. And they have suffered something immeasurably worse than what we Average and even Ugly People face in our relationships, to wit: the romance is over.

So the hue and cry from all corners when their breakup was announced was understandable. It was eminently more of a tragedy than the breakup of, for example, a middle class couple who got married in the local church and had their wedding reception at the Elks Club, scrimped and saved to buy a house, had three kids, suffered through an episode or two of infidelity and maybe a serious illness, and attended marriage counseling for ten years before reluctantly acknowledging that they just couldn't make it work.

Seriously, if you want to look to Hollywood for the quintessential match made in heaven, you need to start by looking for people with gray hair. Try Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, or Camille and Bill Cosby. You know, couples who have stuck it out for longer than the average Survivor series. I realize such nuptial success stories are rare in show business, but that's exactly the point. These are actors whose job it is to live fantasy lives that begin and end in a half hour episode (minus commercials) or a two-hour feature film. Which is to say, they are generally not people the rest of us should look to as role models for anything, much less marriage. So we should hardly be surprised, never mind actually upset, when they fail at the most basic institutions of human existence that the rest of the country engages in on a regular basis without fanfare or cover shoots for Us magazine.

It's too bad about Brad and Jennifer, it really is. But I seriously doubt they ever really had any intention of being married for life, and I'm sure they'll get over it quickly enough and each move on to other people. It's easy to do. Just ask Liz Taylor.

They're back. The people who brought you the original Not One Damn Dime/Not One Red Cent boycott in January to protest the inauguration of George W. Bush to a second term are trying it again. Why? Because not spending any money on inauguration day (but spending it the day before or the day after instead) was so successful the first time around. I know this to be true because the organizers told me so in an e-mail this past weekend.

Dear Friend,

Not One Damn Dime Day came. Not One Damn Dime Day went. With your participation - and that of millions of other Americans - it was a huge success.

Millions of Americans enthusiastically joined in the effort. Studies from the survey posted at NotOneDamnDime.com indicate the original email reached more than 40 million inboxes, and that radio, television, newspaper and magazine coverage generated an additional 30 million exposures for Not One Damn Dime Day.

While it's impossible to measure the effect of the boycott itself, Not One Damn Dime Day helped Washington and the corporate media begin to understand that a grassroots movement full of every day people can send a powerful message to our elected leaders.

I wonder just how "powerful" the message they sent to our elected leaders was, considering that "it's impossible to measure the effect of the boycott." But as I pointed out in my post about the first boycott attempt, even if it were possible to measure its effectiveness, the message wouldn't have been sent to anybody in elected office, unless she or he also happened to be a business owner. It is the business owners (small, large, and everything in between) who are the targets of this misguided attempt to punish someone, anyone, for the majority of voters' choice of President Bush to serve the next four years.

But let's look forward, not backward, shall we? The next big boycott event is scheduled for April 15—Tax Day— Except this one really isn't a boycott at all; it's just an e-mail campaign.

On Not One Damn Dime Tax Day, email the people who represent you in Washington. Tell them to stop playing fast and loose with the economy. Sit down at the computer and speak up. Take part in a virtual march on Washington by e-mailing both of your Senators, as well as your Representative.

Tell them you're mad as hell about their fiscal insanity. Tell them cutting taxes and going deeper into debt than this nation has ever gone is no way to run America. Tell them "Not One Damn Dime more in national debt."

Yeah, that'll have them shaking in their boots. I guess that great idea not to spend any money didn't send a "powerful" enough message back in January, so these people are really going to get the politicians' attention by doing something that people all across this country do every day for hundreds of different reasons. That makes perfect sense.

I don't live in the Jim Crow south. But you'd never know it from this story about a cross burning a mere 70 miles from me.

No, Holy Family Parish is not a black inner-city church. It's a suburban Roman Catholic church. The KKK hates Catholics too.

The "seller" claims it's just a joke, but not everyone is laughing. An Ohio State University student has put the university's president up for auction on eBay. He says it's a joke, but a university spokesperson is not amused.

"I'm not trying to stand up and be the voice of the people. This is just a little gag between my friend and I. It just got big," said Rosman, who uses the identification "thatsmrbuckeye" on eBay.

The auction can be viewed online here, until eBay decided to yank it.

Meanwhile, another would-be internet entrepreneur (who will probably never be mistaken for a university student) is running an even more unconventional auction—but she is serious. "Strictleeebusiness" is auctioning off naming rights for her as yet unborn baby.

I am pregnant and due early september [sic].

The winner of this auction will have the rights to:

Name my babys' [sic] first name, as long as it is not obscene or profane in any way.

My baby and I will appear in any TV, print, recorded, commercial, or public venues, for a period of up to five years, as long as the subject matter is suitable to me.

I am willing to negotiate.

With six days left, no one has yet place the minimum $1 million opening bid. Of course, if that's too pricey for you, these people are also selling naming rights to their children for considerably less. And thanks to this enterprising but not necessarily greedy couple, the poorer among us can also get in on the action.

American society in the 21st century is no stranger to the controversies surrounding end-of-life issues and when medical intervention, capable as never before of prolonging life, goes too far. It is now presumed that each of us is as likely as not to one day find ourselves incapable of making decisions about our own care, at risk of being kept alive artificially for indefinite periods of time. A generation ago, in an effort to address this problem, so-called "living wills" came into vogue to give voice to people who knew they would not want to linger against their wishes on life support after all hope for recovery was lost. The problem with living wills is that over-simplify a complex problem—what constitutes "recovery," "hope," or even "life support?"—and essentially require prescience, impossible foreknowledge of every conceivable future medical situation.

As an alternative to living wills, Massachusetts was among several states that enacted laws allowing people to designate health care proxies—agents who are legally authorized to act on their behalf in making decisions about medical care in case the patients cannot. The law was designed to give individuals who could not foresee all possible scenarios to entrust the decision to designated others who know them, whom they trust to make decisions in their best interest as close as possible to what they themselves might decide if able.

Now it seems that a group of know-it-alls at the Massachusetts General Hospital are set to ignore the legally designated health care proxy of an elderly patient with the debilitating neuromuscular disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Despite the patient's proxy (her daughter) and the ruling of a family court judge, Britain Nicholson, the hospital's chief medical officer, intends to remove the patient from her ventilator next Wednesday.

What is particularly troubling about this case is not only the deliberate disregard for a legal wish about life and death—the decision of the health care proxy is considered equal to that of the patient if she were able to communicate it—but also that the nature of this patient's condition is such that removal of her ventilator would cause her to suffocate to death with full awareness of what is happening to her, but no power to object. While ALS can and does eventually render the patient completely helpless physically, without the ability for voluntary movement or even automatic life processes like breathing, its particular cruelty is that it leaves the mind utterly intact and fully functioning. ALS patients are not comatose, or brain dead, or retarded, or unaware of their surroundings. They are as conscious and mentally functional as you who are reading these words right now. Imagine if someone were to come to you right now and try to suffocate you, leaving you unable to object because of an impenetrable communication barrier. That is what Dr. Nicholson intends to do.

He and the hospital's end-of-life committee have decided that they will ignore not only the legal proxy's directive, which raises questions about whether they will also in the future see fit to ignore the directives of communicative and mentally competent patients.

Dr. Nicholson and the hospital administration can be contacted by mail or by telephone by those who wish to make their opinions known.

Britain W. Nicholson, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Massachusetts General Hospital
Bulfinch Medical Group
55 Fruit Street, FND 3
Boston, MA 02114-2696
Phone: 617-724-6630

Peter L. Slavin, MD, MBA
President, Massachusetts General Hospital
55 Fruit Street
Boston, MA 02114-2622
Phone: 617-726-2000

Yesterday, two old friends wandered back into my life—one directly, the other indirectly—and two newer friends cemented their place in it.

Waiting for me upon my arrival at the office yesterday morning was an e-mail from a former Vice President at the company where I work. He was recently transferred to another office out of state, and while on a flight the previous evening, he happened to meet a flight attendant whose late husband worked here a couple years ago. She asked him to pass along greetings to a couple of us who had worked with her husband.

Bruce was a newly-retired FBI special agent supervisor when he began his second career as an insurance fraud investigator. At the same time, I was starting a new job as a claims analyst, and even though we had different positions, we initially trained together. I will never forget the day we started training because it was one day before the September 11 terrorist attacks. A little more than a year later, Bruce was diagnosed with cancer and left work on disability. During his illness, we developed a cherished friendship that lasted until his death in early 2004. I had no contact with his family until I received word of her greetings in my e-mail.

The mid-day lunch hour was occupied, in part, by efforts to coordinate a relatively last-minute trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame to buy tickets to this year's Hall of Fame Game (the hapless Detroit Tigers vs. the World Champion Boston Red Sox, thank you very much). As a result of an embarrassing lapse of judgment, I faced the prospect of making the long trek alone, until I thought to call Cyn. She is one of my "sistahs," a group of die-hard Sox fans who met via an online message board and developed a wonderful friendship.

Being every bit as willing as I to take a road trip for anything related to baseball, Cyn agreed to accompany me on my mission. Pam is also thinking of tagging along; if we can find a way to all converge upon the train station at the appointed hour, we will be one of our more spontaneous get-togethers. The beauty of this particular group of women is that while we are very different from one another in many ways, what we have in common is what stands out.

Later in the day, I left work and headed to the local high school to work on the television crew for the special session of Town Meeting. I arrived for my shift just as the meeting was adjourning, earlier than anticipated. But as luck would have it, I happened to run into another former co-worker from my years as a town employee.

André became the town's information systems manager not long before I ended up leaving my town job to re-enter the private sector. A French-Canadian computer guy who likes jazz and world music, he instantly intrigued me and we became workplace friends. He lent me some moral support when I lost my first (and only) bid for elective office. It was also he who turned me on to the late great jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius and recommended that I check out the Montréal Jazz Festival. My last project before leaving the town's employ was producing coverage of a government MIS symposium he coordinated, upon completion of which we celebrated with a few drinks while watching Sydney Olympic coverage at a local watering hole. Then we lost touch, until running into each other and catching up at the high school auditorium last night. I had forgotten how he likes to kiss on both cheeks, the only person I know who does.

As I get older, I find that it is in life's day to day occurrences, rather than the major events, that I most realize and appreciate the value of friends. Whether they are people I talk to often or those I only occasionally see (or even those who are no longer with us) I treasure each one of them and appreciate the unexpected appearances they make in my life.

It was a long time coming, but Paul Shanley will finally pay for what he did to at least one boy many years ago.

Shanley, 74, once known for a being a hip "street priest" who reached out to troubled children and homosexuals, was convicted last week of two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child.

He will eligible for parole after eight years. He was also sentenced to 10 years' probation.

The total sentence is 12-15 years, which isn't nearly long enough, even considering Shanley's advanced age (74). But at least he's getting some sort of punishment, which is more than can be said for Cardinal Bernard Law, the honcho who abetted the abuse and cleared the way for more.

The clergy abuse scandal in Boston began in early 2002 when Cardinal Bernard Law acknowledged he shuffled [pedophile priest John] Geoghan from parish to parish despite evidence the priest had molested children.

The scandal intensified later in 2002 when the church released Shanley's 800-page personnel file. [ . . . ]

He resigned from parish work in 1989 and moved to California. At the time, Law, who resigned as archbishop in December 2002 at the height of the scandal, praised his "impressive record." Boston church officials recommended him for a job in the Diocese of San Bernardino as a priest in "good standing."

The successful convictions of sexually abusive priests and former priests may be good for the small number of victims who get some sort of closure on a hellish period of their lives. But those few legal victories will otherwise be meaningless tokens without punishment for those who knowingly allowed the abuse out of some arrogant sense of clerical superiority that has no place in Christ's church. It is not just the criminal priests but also their criminal superiors, Law at the head of the list, who belong in prison for a good long time.

There couldn't be a better time than Valentine's Day to delve once again into the hot button issue of same-sex marriage. So it was with some interest that I read this column from last Saturday's Washington Post (free registration required). In a nutshell, columnist Colbert King compares the current gay marriage debate with the hullabaloo over interracial marriage that embroiled this country for centuries and is still an issue with many people.

The Georgia Supreme Court in 1869 based its interracial marriage ban on natural law, observing that "the God of nature made it otherwise, and no human law can produce it, and no human tribunal can enforce it."

Hear the 1871 Indiana Supreme Court quoting an 1867 Pennsylvania decision: Racial separation is enacted not because of "prejudice, nor caste, nor injustice of any kind, but simply to suffer men to follow the law of races established by the Creator himself, and not to compel them to intermix contrary to their instincts."

The North Carolina Supreme Court in 1869 upheld the state's anti-race mixing law, stating that "the policy of prohibiting the intermarriage of the two races is so well established, and the wishes of both races so well known."

[ . . . ]

Now fast-forward past today to 100 years from now. How will future generations view our present-day fight against allowing monogamous couples with life commitments to each other to marry? What will they think of our rush to enact state laws prohibiting same-sex life partners from joining the same institution shared by different-sex couples? How will they regard our assertion that there is a public interest in promoting discrimination in the marriage statute?

I have a small amount of personal experience with anti-miscegenation sentiment. My late grandmother once described how her father explained why different races should not intermarry by pointing out that bluebirds don't mate with blackbirds. But there is a good reason why bluebirds and blackbirds don't mate: they can't. They are different species. Humans of different races are the same species and are full capable of mating and reproducing naturally.

Therein lies the problem with Mr. King's comparison between interracial and same-sex marriage. There are many who contend a "natural law" justification for prohibiting marriage between two men or two women because such couples are never capable of reproducing. If a primary purpose of marriage is for procreation, then marriage must necessarily be limited to a man and a woman, whatever race they may be. And they must be a fertile man and woman.

But for one who believes that the defining hallmark of marriage is commitment of a couple to each other for life (whether or not they have children) then the prohibition of same-sex marriage indeed becomes no different from the historical uproar against interracial marriage.

How many of the people buying flowers, candy, and cards today know that Valentine's Day is named for a Catholic saint? Very few, I would guess.

The Roman Catholic church recognizes three saints named Valentine, all martyrs. One of them died on February 14, 269. As it happened, Roman pagans had long observed February 14 in honor of Juno, the goddess of marriage. The date was also the eve of the festival of Lupercalia, observed in part by the tradition of pairing young people via a lottery conducted on the 14th.

It was a common practice in the early Christian church to use pagan festivals as opportunities to introduce Christian teachings in an effort to convert pagans. The most famous examples of this are the adoption of December 25, the time of the winter solstice, to observe the birth of Jesus, which more likely happened in the spring. It appears that the coincidental linking of the martyrdom of Valentine with the pagan festival of love and mating was a ready-made opportunity to introduce the Romans to the church.

Whether this theory of the origins of Valentine's Day is accurate or not is, of course, conjecture. But the traditional day of romance may have been codified in Europe during the Middle Ages, when February 14 was recognized as the beginning of mating season for birds. And so the legend of Saint Valentine as the lovers' saint grew.

Like so many holidays with religious roots, Valentine's Day in contemporary American culture has become a big money-maker for confectioners, florists, and greeting card manufacturers. Now you know that the history is a bit more interesting.

Recently I ran across this web site that addresses the debate over whether the earth and all life thereon were created as described in the Bible, or whether the earth (and indeed the universe) were formed over billions of years and the life thereon evolved. Interestingly enough, it isn't a creation-or-evolution proposition; there are many more varied schools of thought.

There isn't just creationism; there's new earth creationism (earth and its inhabitants were created, lock, stock, and barrel, less than 10,000 years ago), old earth creationism (earth and its inhabitants were created billions of years ago, hence the presence of a fossil record and extinct species), and a host of other beliefs about creation from religious traditions other than the Judeo-Christian one. Likewise, there isn't just evolution; there is naturalistic evolution (the universe came from natural rather than supernatural origins) and theistic evolution (the universe came about through natural processes created by a supernatural being). And then there is a sort of compromise, the more recent theory of intelligent design (the universe formed naturally, but parts of creation couldn't have come about by purely natural means).

As for my own belief, it was certainly shaped by my upbringing. My father, a scientist by education, studied physics under Franciscan friars at a Catholic university. As a child, I sat in awe as he tried to explain to me an infinite universe that, at infinity, would come back to meet itself. I also attended 12 years of Catholic school under the direction of the Sisters of Notre Dame, one of the more intellectual religious orders. Science was taught without controversy, but there was never any doubt who had made all that we studied. Perhaps because of those dual influences, it never occurred to me that the universe couldn't very well have developed in a way theorized by scientists–or that such a belief was somehow a denial of the power of the omnipotent creator God.

As an adult, I have thought and re-thought this question. And I have gone to the Bible for guidance. Here's what I have found:

Genesis 1:1-2:3 lays out a six-day timeline for creation

• Day 1 – God made light (day/night).
• Day 2 – God made the heaven and earth.
• Day 3 – God made the land, sea, and plants
• Day 4 – God made the sun, moon, and stars.
• Day 5 – God made fish and birds.
• Day 6 – God made land animals, then humans (male and female).
• Day 7 – God rested.

Which seems pretty clear. But then Genesis 2:4-24 lays out creation in a different order.

• God made earth, the heavens, and plant seeds.
• God made the rain.
• God made a man out of the ground and breathed life into him.
• God made the garden of Eden and put the man there.
• God made the plants grow.
• God made rivers from Eden and made all the plants.
• God decided to make a mate for the man.
• God made all the animals but found they were not suitable mates.
• God made a woman out of the man's rib.

Now if I am to believe the literal creation story in Genesis, which story do I believe? Did God create man first, then animals, then woman, or did God create the animals first and then male and female humans? Did God create male and female in the divine image or did God create woman from the rib of man? It can't be both. Which account—which part of the Bible—do I reject?

It seems that a faithful Christian or Jew (Genesis is both the first book of the Old Testament and the first book of the Torah) would find truth in both accounts. God set out the creation accounts as a way of explaining that which is at best difficult to understand.

It also seems that a humble human being wouldn't presume to be capable of understanding the wondrous works of almighty God. Creationism is simple; God created everything and then didn't change it. I can wrap my mind around that. But evolution in combination with religious faith accepts the complexity of God and acknowledges that indeed, God is still creating via the very processes scientists are studying. That is awesome.

So what about the contention that the fact that many who believe in evolution are atheists means such a theory is incompatible with faith in God? It might seem so from the definition of naturalistic evolution:

The origin of the universe occurred about 14 billion years ago. The earth coalesced about 4.5 billion years ago. Life subsequently began, probably as bacteria deep in rocks, and has been evolving ever since. The process of evolution has been driven by purely natural forces, without input from a God or a Goddess or multiple deities. Many people have associated this belief system with strong Atheism. Certainly, some scientists who support naturalistic evolution do not believe in a supreme being or beings. But others believe both in evolution and in one or more Gods and/or Goddesses who do not intrude on the outcome of natural forces. Some of the latter are Deists who believe that God created the universe, started it in motion, left the universe, and allowed natural processes to originate life and drive evolution.

My belief, it turns out, puts me squarely in a slightly different camp, that of theistic evolution:

Evolution happened just as supporters of naturalistic evolution believe, but it was a tool created, used, and/or controlled by God.

Could God have created everything in six 24-hour days? I believe so, if God is in fact all-powerful. Could God have created everything over a period of billions of years, still be creating, and continue creating? I believe so, if God is in fact all-powerful. It seems much more magnificent that God would create a universe so complex in its development that not only does creation continue to happen but also that we can only struggle to understand how it all happened.

No, I'm not talking about the informant who fed information about President Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal to Washington Post reporters. I'm talking about the movie for which said informant was named. It seems that the (in)famous pornographic film from the early 1970s will soon make a comeback in theaters near you.

Is this a good thing? Probably not. The world is more accustomed to the kind of soft-core porn that is now commonplace on cable television. But even by today's cable standards, Deep Throat was pretty graphic. I know because, yes, I saw it.

Flashback to 1983. I was a first-year university student on a male-dominated campus. Every spring, during student government election week, campus was jumping with special events and activities: fraternity parties, air band contests, barbecues on the quad, concerts, and the most notorious of the week's traditions, The Movies. While you could have taken your mother to any of the other activities (including possibly the fraternity festivities), you didn't even tell your mother about The Movies, lest she die of a heart attack and leave you to live out the rest of your days in abject guilt.

The Movies were, obviously, adult films, offered as a double-feature. Now as a female, and a feminist-in-the-making at that, I wouldn't have considered going to The Movies, but my boyfriend thought it would be fun, so I thought, what the hell? And off we went to see Deep Throat and a considerably less famous film called The Cheerleaders.

Having been created as fantasy entertainment for men, the plots were typically ridiculous, just barely substantial enough to justify 75 minutes of women doing things that most men will never see, much less experience, in real life. I don't even recall the plot of The Cheerleaders; all I remember is some scene where two naked cheerleaders are riding an exercise bicycle with only one seat. Deep Throat was more, um, memorable.

The story there was about a sex-crazed woman and her young adult daughter who couldn't figure out why she just didn't get as much delight from sex as Mom did. (She knew how much fun Mom had because she came home one day to find Mom and the grocery delivery boy going at it on the kitchen table.) No, I'm not making this up. The answer to this deep dark mystery is that apparently the daughter's clitoris is in her throat instead of where it ought to be, so she only has orgasms when she performs oral sex on men. And there's the proof that the story was concocted by men.

Interestingly, the actress who played the daughter would go on to become an anti-pornography crusader. After struggling financially early in her post-porn life, Linda Lovelace married, had children, divorced, and eventually died in a car accident. The books she wrote about what she maintained was her coerced participation in the adult entertainment industry (not everyone necessarily believes that), Ordeal and Out of Bondage, are available from Amazon.com.

Congratulations to the New England Patriots, Super Bowl champions for the third time in four years, and game MVP Deion Branch, who tied a Super Bowl record with 11 catches.

There are those who believe our Earth is a macroorganism—a living, breathing entity. If so, this is how it grows.

My sense of awe for the changing planet was stoked by what I learned in an introductory geology course in college. What most sticks with me is the understanding that what we perceive to be major geological or climatological events are not even bumps in the road. Thinking in physiological terms, it's like how the human body routinely sheds dead skin cells and makes new ones. It is supposed to happen, unnoticed, and the loss of those dead cells isn't a catastrophe.

So when I see a volcanic eruption, I realize it is nothing more or less than the earth rebuilding itself. What makes it (and other natural events like earthquakes, tsunamis, blizzards, and heat waves) significant to us is that we plan our existence more or less ignoring the probability that these normal events will effect us. People in La Conchita, California, lose their homes (and in some cases their lives) to mudslides because those homes were built on the side of a hill that was geologically unstable in heavy rains and probably shouldn't have been developed in the first place. Meanwhile, in the charming coastal town of Chatham, Massachusetts, what was once prime ocean-front real estate is now being destroyed every few years by the natural erosion of the shoreline. Farmers who cultivate the land in an alluvial flood plain will periodically suffer destruction of their crops when the river spills over its banks. When it happens, any of it, we consider it a tragedy.

There is something to the conservationist proposition, long predated by indigenous peoples who lived in harmony with land and sea, that we are fools to try to work against the earth's natural processes. If we insist on doing so, we ought at least to admit that we place ourselves in peril in so doing, that we are playing the odds of having to deal with something that we know with certain will come—the only question being when. We can no more expect the Earth not to change than we can expect ourselves to stop breathing.

Incidentally, not only are geological events like volcanic eruptions interesting, but they can also be quite beautiful.

Not to turn this blog into "All Iraq All the Time," but there is so much news lately that simply boggles the mind that it's hard to ignore. This morning, I am scratching my head over this.

In its first statement since the balloting, the Association of Muslim Scholars said the vote lacked legitimacy because of low Sunni participation—blamed variously on the clerics' own boycott call and on fear of insurgent reprisals against those who voted. The association months ago urged Sunnis to shun the polls because of the presence of U.S. and other foreign troops, and insurgents threatened to kill anyone who voted.

Let me get this straight. The so-called "insurgents" are Sunnis, the Sunnis threaten to kill those who vote, Sunni clerics urge Sunnis not to vote... and then Sunnis complain that Sunnis didn't vote? This sounds suspiciously like Democratic efforts to enroll new voters en masse in Ohio (resulting in more people being registered than there were eligible potential voters), after which they complained about massive voter registration fraud. Has the John Kerry campaign loaned out its strategist to the Sunnis?

But seriously, folks, this just smacks of sour grapes. I'm sure the terrorists believed the election would be all but shut down by their threats, but when it turned out to be a resounding success, they were left scrambling for Plan B. Oops.

The Associated Press yesterday was all over a story about claims by Iraqi terrorists that they were holding an American service member hostage and would behead him unless the U.S. released Iraqi prisoners.

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what appeared to be an American soldier in desert fatigues seated with his hands tied behind his back.

A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and he is seated in front of a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."

The story was widely circulated throughout the day yesterday and picked up by several news web sites, despite the insistence of military spokespersons that no troops had been reported missing.

Today, we learn that the hostage, a picture of whom was included on the terrorist web site, is really a doll.

Liam Cusack, the marketing coordinator for Dragon Models USA, said the figure pictured on the Web site is believed to be "Special Ops Cody," a military action figure the company manufactured in late 2003.

[ . . . ]

[A]fter reading a report on a news Web site about a U.S. soldier allegedly being captured, "I looked at it and said, 'It does look like one of our action figures.'"

It isn't as if the news organizations who ran this story weren't provided with reasons to be skeptical. It's just that they evidently ignored the red flags, numerous though they were.

The photograph immediately raised questions.

CNN military analyst James Marks, a retired Army general, questioned its authenticity.

He told CNN in a phone interview that the flak jacket in the picture had a kind of trim along the edges that he'd never seen before, and that the open-legged pants, as opposed to gathered hems, struck him as odd.

He also questioned what appeared to be camouflage paint on the face.

"We have not used camo paint with conventional forces serving in Iraq," Marks said.

Careful analysis of the situation leads us to the following conclusions:

1. Those so-called "insurgents" over in Iraq really are getting desperate, and
2. The mainstream news media are equally desperate to find bad news to report about Iraq. Had they been motivated by interest in reporting legitimate news, they would have gone through some very basic attempts to authenticate the photograph put forth as proof of the reported abduction.

And they wonder why their credibility is at an all-time low. Are they biased? Possibly. Gullible? Clearly.

A memorial plaque (free registration required) was unveiled at a park in Houston today, two years after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and her crew of seven. Anniversary observances were also held at a NASA facility in New Orleans and at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, among other locations.

The shuttle program has been grounded since the accident, in which the spacecraft broke up upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. After intensive investigations and modifications to procedures and equipment, NASA reports that plans to resume shuttle flight are on target for as early as May or June of this year. Yet even as the space agency prepares to move forward, their funding—which is tied directly to the safety of the crews involved—may be threatened.

Columbia's loss, like that of Challenger in 1986, hits home for those who have worked in the space program, even if they didn't know any of the fallen astronauts. I found myself deeply (and surprisingly) saddened by both events, even though my own NASA ties are at most indirect. My father, as an engineer for a NASA contractor in the 1960s, worked on the modifications of the Titan missile used in the Gemini program. When I went to college, the university president was George Low, a wonderfully personable and friendly man who had run the Apollo moon landing program, and whose astronaut son would later fly aboard three different shuttle vehicles, including Columbia. Many of my classmates went to work for NASA after graduation.

American high school students have limited knowledge of, and even less appreciation for, the basic rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, according to a recent nationwide survey.

The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly.

Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

This being America, these kids are free to believe whatever they want. But one wonders if they have ever received even the most rudimentary education about the history and reasoning behind our Constitution, never mind having actually read the full text. Or if they are even vaguely aware of the many countries where in the past century such basic rights have been routinely and brutally suppressed. Or if the parents of these teens have any more of an understanding or appreciation for our constitutionally protected rights than their indifferent children.

The following came to me by e-mail twice recently, first by Chris and then this morning by Sharon. A couple of the items sure do hit me right between the eyes. I like to think I don't really care what other people think, and in many ways I don't, but to be honest I could do better in that regard.

1. God won't ask what kind of car you drove.
He'll ask how many people you drove who didn't have transportation.

2. God won't ask the square footage of your house.
He'll ask how many people you welcomed into your home.

3. God won't ask about the clothes you had in your closet.
He'll ask how many you helped to clothe.

4. God won't ask what your highest salary was.
He'll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it.

5. God won't ask what your job title was.
He'll ask if you performed your job to the best of our ability.

6. God won't ask how many friends you had.
He'll ask how many people to whom you were a friend.

7. God won't ask in what neighborhood you lived.
He'll ask how you treated your neighbors.

8. God won't ask about the color of your skin.
He'll ask about the content of your character.

9. God won't ask why it took you so long to seek salvation.
He'll lovingly take you to your mansion in heaven, and not to the gates of hell.

10. God won't have to ask how many people you forwarded this to.
He already knows whether or not you will share this information with your friends.

Anyone who isn't inspired by this has a heart of stone. How many of us spoiled American voters would not only return to the polls mere minutes after a suicide bomber blew up himself and four others, but also offer to perform security duty to ensure it didn't happen again?

Though performing this duty meant standing amid flecks of the flesh of the last officer who had the job, there were volunteers. In stepping forward to do the first round of pat-downs themselves, local residents explained that they could raise the alert if another suspicious stranger approached.

The Iraqi people may be terrified—wouldn't you be?"but they are no longer terrorized. That irks the hell out of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who evidently has gone whining to his co-thugs. It is apparent that Zarqawi now realizes what the Iraqi people realize—that a free Iraq, not America, is terrorism's bigger enemy.

[The] numbers [of foreign terrorist fighters] continue to be small, compared to the large nature of the expected battle... Many Iraqis would honor you as a guest and give you refuge, for you are a Muslim brother; however, they will not allow you to make their homes a base for operations or a safe house... There is no doubt that our field of movement is shrinking and the grip around the throat of the Mujahidin has begun to tighten. With the spread of the army and police, our future is becoming frightening... [I]f we fight [the Americans], that will be difficult because there will be a schism between us and the people of the region. How can we kill their cousins and sons and under what pretext, after the Americans start withdrawing? The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority. This is the democracy, we will have no pretext... Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. By god, this is suffocation!

Read the whole thing. It'll have you doing a happy dance.