No, it is not appropriate when mud-slinging is done within the same party. I figured that would easy to infer from my statement. No, Obama is not a humble person. I would not say “everyone” if I meant “everyone except Obama”. I say she has no compassion for teen mothers for several reasons. The first reason is that she has cut funding in the state of Alaska that was supposed to help teen mothers. The second reason is that she is against women having a choice. This really indicates that she has no compasion for any woman who finds herself pregnant, not just teens. The third reason is that she is against sex education, which leads to a greater number of teen mothers. The fact that her daughter is a teen mother makes it even sadder. Not every teen mother has parents who make six figures waiting to support them. I’ve watched many of her interviews, though hearing her talk drove me nuts what with the winking and the forced “folksy” style and the drivel. (“I read all of them!!”) In any case, it doesn’t matter whether she has gay friends or not. The fact that she doesn’t support same sex couples having the same benefits as opposite sex couples, despite the fact that marriage is a legal union, indicates she has no compassion for the hardships that gay couples face.

No, I don’t believe the media cares what we think. They simply want to sell stories. If women are more interested in stories about fashion than stories about science, that’s what they’ll put out. The bottom line matters too much for them to be political about it. I do not understand what you mean by main street women. Are you refering to the average woman? If so, I would disagree that “not many” focus on their clothing. Given the conversations I have with people in the various coffee shops where I work, it seems to be the hot topic among women right after whatever is current and big. Are there plenty of women who aren’t focused on this? Sure. But our voices seem to be drowned out by the interest in clothing, make-up, hairstyles and diets.

Saying that he “pals around with terrorists” is simply the political way of saying “he is a terrorist”. Anyone with a DUI can be denied access to Canada, so I’m not really impressed. Nor was Ayers one of Obama’s pals, they merely served for three years on the same board. By that standard, I pal around with terrorists because I TAed a lab where one of the students was building pipe bombs to blow up campus. It’s especially surprising she brought this up considering Palin’s own connection to a domestic terrorist group. (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/) I don’t read blogs other than science blogs, and yet I’ve come to the same opinion regarding Palin. She’s not a humble person, just like everyone else who runs for a national office. She’s demonstrated a clear lack of compassion for gay people, teen mothers, and just about anyone who finds themselves accidentally pregnant. Both of these would be forgivable traits in a politician, but her ignorance and celebration of that same ignorance certainly is not. McCain might have said some things, but he’s not an ignorant idiot. Personally, I’ve lost all respect for the man, despite having started the election cycle with the idea that he was a pretty good candidate, because of how false he is. But he’s a great politician and quite smart, which makes him suitable to be an advsior. Personally I didn’t find the Obama campaign against Clinton any worse than the Clinton campaign against Obama. Unfortunately, we the people have allowed mud-slinging to be a major part of what needs to be done to be elected to office.

I think that women are scrutinized with regards to their appearance more than men are. I think that part of it is our fault. Women spend far too much time worrying about fashion. For instance, look at the subject headings in this website. One of them is fashion! There isn’t a “Science” headin, or a “Technology” heading. If you look at magazines that cater to women, the vast majority of their content deals with clothes and appearance. If we want people to believe that we are more than our appearance, shouldn’t we spend a little less time on things like fashion? At the very least, it would be nice if women wouldn’t critique each other’s fashion choices. In real life, most of the mean comments I’ve heard about the way a woman dresses are from other women! The media is just trying to give us what it thinks we want. .

I don’t think SNL went too far. Ann Coulter is a vile human being with opinions that line up well enough with the skit that it’s a good spoof.

The only people that hate are Obama fanatics? What a strange opinion. Many people hate. Some of those people are “Obamamanics”, others are not. And I sincerely doubt that anyone believe Obama can fly … he’s not from Krypton. As for Bush, he certainly has destroyed much of this country. Perhaps remembering what things were like eight years ago is difficult for you, but as a refresher our economy was doing well, we weren’t hated by the world, we had a budget surplus, we weren’t engaged in useless “wars” and our president wasn’t giving trillions of dollars to his friends. All this makes me hope that Obama does turn out to be an amazing president, because that is what we need to pull ourselves out of the tailspin that eight years of Bush and Co. have put us in. Since you are against the government controlling our lives, I can only image that you feel same-sex marriage should be legal and that abortions should continue to be legal. After all, to say otherwise would be to feel that the government should control what sort of consenting adult spouse is appropriate and that the government should control whether a woman has children or not. In any case, I’ve gotten sidetracked. You say you don’t care about China. Fine. So why bother to post on a story about China? I’m certain there are other threads going on where you can bash “liberals” and actually be topical. Not to mention that your statement about how all the women were posting hatred towards the Chinese women seemed to imply that you did care. Of course, you were in error so maybe it was a delusion.

Jim, you aren’t making any sense. Speaking as someone who is essentially the same age as Knox, I find it annoying that you paint my entire generation as murderers based on her actions. Should I say that the men of your generation has no morals because Ted Bundy killed over 30 women? (Of if you are older, he is indicative that it is your fault for raising a generation without morals) Your assertion that the women of the blog had something to do with murders is more than a little bizzare. Even if we assume that the problem was that Knox was raised poorly, which I have not seen any indication of, I don’t think that her parents are posting here. I’d be surprised if anyone here even knew her family. As for abortion, it’s a completely seperate topic and to bring it up in this context is strange. We might as well ask who is to blame for our failed economy if we’re asking irrelevant questions.

Jim, you aren’t making any sense. It appears that the vast majority of people here feel sympathy for the women of China. Given that Obama is pro-choice, I don’t believe that he wants greater govermental control of women’s reproduction. I have my suspicions from reading a small number of your posts that you do favor governmental control in those areas where you believe the government will do what you want, and hypocritical you are against it when it would act in a manner you don’t want.

You simply disagree with the change in morality. Gay men and women are voting citizens too and deserve the same respect that any other citizen has. As for teaching god, there is no concensus about the existance and nature of god even if you query people of the same religion. Thus, it is an inappropriate topic for school. What we’re seeing now has little to do with morals and everything to do with technology. We can not return to the morals of the past because those lifestyles are no longer possible. When I was in middle school, we didn’t send nude pictures of ourselves on cell phones. We didn’t have cell phones…. Or facebook….. Many didn’t even have the internet. Instead of lamenting the changes, our society needs to adapt to them so that we can create a moral framework that works. Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with homosexuality. You may disagree, but gay and bisexual citizens should have as many rights as any other citizen.

The laws about child porn were put in place to protect children and prevent them from being exploited. Prosecuting a child for child pornography because that child exploited himself or herself just doesn’t seem to gain us anything, especially if this causes the child to be a registered sex offender for the rest of their life. Society changes. Technology changes. The founding fathers were smart enough to realize that they couldn’t envision everything that was going to happen so they set up the law so that it could be changed. Personally I see no reason to legally prosecute a child for having pictures taken consentually by a peer the same age. That being said, whenever this is discovered by adults, punishment should ensue. I just don’t think destroying someone’s life is appropriate or at all beneficial to society.

I imagine the problem is that the kids know far more about the technology than their parents. I know that was always the case for me and my parents. Of course, when I was in middle school there were only chat rooms to worry about…..

My husband got lasik shortly before we started dating. He can read signs that I can’t even see! (And that’s with my contact lenses in…) His life is so much easier than mine with regards to keeping track of glasses, contact lenses, getting updated prescriptions and all that jazz. I definitely plan on getting this done when I graduate and we can afford it!

The difference between prositution and waitressing is merely one of position? I earn my money sitting on my butt, does that mean I’m halfway between a waitress and a prostitute? Interesting….. One should always be open to speculatoin on what is and isn’t moral. To remain static is to be dead between your ears. In this society, we’ve placed some boundries with the idea that we should maximize individual liberty. Essentially this means that your rights end where my nose begins. While we have many other arbitrary and archane laws that involve social nicety, they are slowly being pushed to the wayside as we realize people should have the right to live the life that they want. As for whether a person believes in God or the Bible, well that still doesn’t give definitive morals. After all, it depends on which god you believe in! Even among people who claim to be Christian, there is a lot of disagreement about the morality contained within the Bible. As far as I can tell, there is no sect of Christianity that doesn’t pick and choose in some fashion. In fact, if morality were absolute, there wouldn’t have been any schisms within the church. Certainly every person needs to decide what he or she believes, but I think it is important to acknowledge that none of us have the answers….

I don’t completely agree that it is necessary for both people to contribute financially to a relationship, assuming that the definition of financial contribution is contributing money from a job. While I do feel that it is extremely important for women to be able to suport themselves, I think that when a person is in a relationship decisions should be made based on what is best for both people. This is especially important if a couple has children. It’s tempting for women of my generation to say, “I am woman, hear me roar!”, but we have to learn that life is partly about compromise. We can’t all be marthon running CEOs with perfect children who volunteer at soup kitchens and write novels in our spare time. That being said, I think that the evaluation of what is best for both people should be done in a fair manner and should be genderblind. If someone is going to stay at home with the kids, I see no reason it shouldn’t be the father! (I also see no reason someone has to stay home with the kids, but I’m approaching this from the idea that daycare is expensive) My husband and I have been together for seven years (married for four). When we started dating, I supported him because I had a cushy engineering job and he was an IT guy during the dot-com bust. I must say, I loved having a house-husband, though we weren’t married or engaged yet, because I never had to worry about chores. The apartment was always clean, the bills were always paid, the groceries were bought and dinner was on the table when I got home! Eventually he got a job and we had to split the chores again. After a while, I decided that I was done with the soul destroying work that I had been doing and went back to school to get my phd in nuclear physics. (I’m ~2 years away from finishing) My stipend is laughable, so essentially I’m being supported by my husband. Yes, it irritates the independent women in me, but in a few years I’ll be able to do what I want and I must admit it would be much harder to get through grad school alone. The deal we struck is that once I’m a tenured professor, my husband can retire and go back to keeping house for me. We’ll see whether that’s best for our relationship in the 10-15 years it will take to get there! In short, I think that many women do things with their lives to prove a point. We don’t have to stay home! We don’t have to be nurses or secretaries! We can be college professors and doctors! But we only get one life. A person should do what makes her happy, even if that’s staying home and raising the kids. We should be who we are, not try to be who we think we should be!

I’ve looked up most of the people I dated online, being from the facebook generation. (Well, maybe that’s a slightly generous assessment of my age!) The search satisfied my curiosity, but little else. Apparently everyone I’ve ever dated seriously enough to be able to find is married. I suppose it shouldn’t be a huge surprise given that I’ve been married for about four years. It kind of shatters the ego stroking illusion that they’re all pining for me, though. However, I did learn that the boy I had a huge crush on my freshmen year of highschool is dating a man. (Oddly enough, the boy I had a crush on my sophmore year turned out to be gay too….) It’s funny, because I had this tremendous crush and did all the stupid girl things, like memorize his schedule so I would just happen to be walking down the right hallway. But someone else asked me out, and I decided that it was stupid for me to continue mooning over someone who wouldn’t date me so I said yes. Later on, I learned through the grape vine that my crush had been planning on asking me out. Over the years I wondered what would have happened had I not been a silly little 13 year old. Now I have an answer. Probably nothing. I’m actually not sure how I feel about that.