Chatological Humor (Updated 5.11.07)

aka Tuesdays With Moron

Daily Updates: 5.9.07 | 5.10.07 | 5.11.07

Gene Weingarten's humor column, Below the Beltway, appears every Sunday in The Washington Post magazine. It is syndicated nationally by the Washington Post Writers Group.

At one time or another, Below the Beltway has managed to offend persons of both sexes as well as individuals belonging to every religious, ethnic, regional, political and socioeconomic group. If you know of a group we have missed, please write in and the situation will be promptly rectified. "Rectified" is a funny word.

On Tuesdays at noon, Gene is online to take your questions and abuse. He will chat about anything. Although this chat is updated regularly throughout the week, it is not and never will be a "blog," even though many persons keep making that mistake. One reason for the confusion is the Underpants Paradox: Blogs, like underpants, contain "threads," whereas this chat contains no "threads" but, like underpants, does sometimes get funky and inexcusable.

This Week's Poll: Women Only| Men Only

Important, secret note to readers: The management of The Washington Post apparently does not know this chat exists, or it would have been shut down long ago. Please do not tell them. Thank you.

Weingarten is also the author of "The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death" and co-author of "I'm with Stupid," with feminist scholar Gina Barreca.

New to Chatological Humor? Read the FAQ.

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Gene Weingarten: Good afternoon.

Today I begin with a mini-quiz that I will answer at the end of the intro.

1. Two able-bodied adults in their 50s must clear a small grassy area, so as to create a new garden. Their job is to remove the grass and the layer of topsoil containing the grass roots. The plot is ten feet by ten feet. They each have a pitchfork. Working pretty steadily, how long will it take them, together, to clear this 10 by 10 area? The job entails pulling up the grass, loading it into a wheelbarrow, and carting the grass-sod clods about 100 feet away to be dumped in a suitable area.

a- One hour or less

b- Two to three hours

c- Four to five hours

d- More than five hours

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A report from the world of the gender divide. For a certain period of time to be revealed later, the rib and I were engaged in the clearing of a 10-by-10 area. Each clod that we pulled from the earth had to be flung into a waiting wheelbarrow. Because I can throw things further and with more accuracy, for much of the time, the rib was closer to the wheelbarrow than I, and for part of that time she was in a direct line between me and the barrow.

Now, pulling up sod is a boring job. It entails digging from several angles, then bending to pick up the clod, then straightening up again and flinging the clod into the barrow. Borrrring. So to spice things up a little, I hit on a plan. Rather than stepping away to have a clear shot at the barrow, I decided to fling those clods over my wife's head at the moment she bent down. See, this way, not only the accuracy of the throw, but the TIMING of the throw became a challenge. In fact, it was a rather exhilarating challenge, since the penalty for failure would be intense.

It went well. No errors. In fact, though I think she suspected what I was doing, the rib will be learning of this from this chat.

Now, here is the thing. I contend that every guy understands COMPLETELY why I did this, and might well have done it himself. No woman understands.

On the same issue, this weekend, at Frager's Hardware in Washington D.C., I saw a product for sale that I believe every man and no woman would want. I forget the name of it, but It is a plastic object shaped to look like a small tennis racquet. The handle takes two C batteries. It is basically an electrified flyswatter. You whap at the bugs in flight, and it electrocutes them!

I asked a clerk if they sell well, and he said, pretty well, yeah.

"Ever sell one to a woman?"

He scrunched up his face, thinking.

He is probably still thinking.

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Answer to the quiz:

It took two people six-plus hours to clear that plot. It is an amazing thing, how slow that process. You're not getting many square inches of grass with each pass. One hundred square feet is vastly larger than it looks when you are essentially attacking it with toenail clippers.

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On the aptonym front, thanks to an anonymous poster who pointed out this sweet one:

"Mr Ahmad met the UK's consul-general to Jerusalem, Richard Makepeace, in Ramallah to discuss the efforts being made to secure Mr Johnston's release.

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Today's Poll resulted from a rawther arch question from a gentleman from Seattle; one poster, below, addresses him directly. I know this was a difficult subject matter to address. It appears very few people opted out of the poll, but, alas, it was not the ZERO that the poll seems to indicate. Apparently, this poll software does not work where there is only a single choice. A few people have written in to report that they tried and failed to opt out.

I am going to be more personally reticent in analyzing this poll. For complex reasons, I am not going to say how I feel on this issue. I'll explain if anyone wants an explanation.

Sunday was a great comics day. The CPOW is Wednesday's Brevity. First runner up, Sunday's Zits, for a fabulously done sight gag. Honorables: Sunday's Get Fuzzy and Agnes, and Friday's' Speed Bump.

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Ohio: First off, I'll be interested to see how this chat goes. Hard topic to be funny about.

These are very difficult questions, but thing that I have been struggling with. My husband and I are thinking of starting to have kids in the next few years and I've often found myself wondering what I'd do if we found out there was a problem.

But the other question I've been asking myself, and some of my friends have said they're wondering the same thing, is why do I want to have kids? I can only come up with selfish reasons and wonder if it's fair to bring a child into a world like this, just because it's something that I want. So I'm just wondering: is there an unselfish reason to have children?

Gene Weingarten: A larger question might be whether there is an unselfish reason to do almost anything. You can argue that a so-called unselfish humanitarian philanthropist is actually doing what makes him the happiest and stokes his ego, or allows him to deal with the guilt of his wealth.

Giving up your life so another can live might be the closest I can think of. Someone like Max Kolbe, the polish friar who volunteered to be killed by the Nazis instead of a stranger -- never knowing even if word of this incredible act would survive the ovens. Not a selfish man.

However, back to your point. I think the impulse to have children is complicated. It is part Darwinian and hard-wired, and not our fault, like the impulse to have sex. It is part pure narcissism. It is part fear: I, for example, was quite aware when having children that I didn't want to die alone and unloved. But there is something you can hang onto: If you think you would be really good parents, well -- a child with really good parents is a child who has a pretty good chance of being happy and fulfilled. You can make that happen.

There is another reason, more religious and spiritual and philosophical than strictly logical. The alternative to life is no life. If you live you have a chance to achieve, be happy, be remembered. Why not give someone that gift? That's the thought: Life is a gift. It fails a little, maybe, when we look around us. But Earth has never been a particularly hospitable place, you know?

Gene Weingarten: As far as unselfish reason to do anything -- this doesn't really apply to Max Kolbe, but I have asked myself whether I would intercede to save the life of my wife or children if in doing so I was placing my own life in peril. The answer is definitely yes. But then I asked myself why I would do so, and was not hugely proud of the answer. I would do so because I know myself pretty well, and my life after failing to act in those circumstance would be unlivable. Haunted by my cowardice, I would either kill myself outright after a few days, or drink and drug myself to death in despair.

So, selfish after all.

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I want to start a moveme, NT: I believe that I have the male counterpart to women's request that the toilet seat be put down. (With which I have no problem and faithfully comply.)

After you drive our cars, please push the driver seat back. I will never understand how or why otherwise seemingly normal sized women insist on moving the seat so close. But as a fairly typical guy with ample size and limited grace, I just don't need to start my day imitating a sardine.

Thank you

Gene Weingarten: Good. I'm not one of those guys who likes to drive like you're sitting in Barcalounger, with your head back and your feet up on an ottoman. I drive pretty close to the dashboard, with my knees bent. But even so, when I get in a car my wife has been driving I can barely wedge myself in. I have no idea how she fits, even at her size.

I used to tell her that this was dangerous -- the car companies warn that airbag deployment can injure a short person (she's five three) sitting close in. Fortunately, this seems to be wrong because just a couple of weeks ago, she was in a rear-ender in which her airbags deployed. Some front-end damage but no people damage.

Have you ever seen a car after the airbags deployed? It's really pathetic. The bags hang there, limp and impotent and spent, flimsy and thin things that kind of resemble used condoms. It's odd -- difficult even to imagine how that can work to protect you when inflated. Clearly, they do.

This had been an accident of inattention and absentmindedness; the rib's first accident ever, and clearly her fault. After she and the guys in the car she'd rear-ended exchanged license info, an ambulance pulled up and asked the rib if she was okay, and if there was anything they could do.

"Well, I'm an a--hole," she said. "Do you have any cure for that in there?"

Tough, funny chick, my rib.

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Washington, D.C.: I am a woman who answered that I would judge someone if they aborted a fetus frivolously. I admit it. I cannot believe that this is not a popular answer. I don't think people are being honest when they say they wouldn't judge. We judge people all of the time. Look at the traffic chat. We judge tourists for not walking on the left! Yet, people don't think they would judge someone as being less if a woman/family aborted a fetus because it was a girl and not a boy, or because someone would rather go to the carribean in the summer.

I think that the fact that the examples you gave above were (to me) non frivolous, skewed the results.

Gene Weingarten:"Because it is unplanned and unwanted" might well be defined as frivolous, by many people.

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Northern Virginia: In analyzing last week's quiz, you indicated that referring to oneself as an attorney rather than a lawyer indicated an undesirable trait.

I use both words interchangeablly (and perhaps "attorney" more recently since I was told that my four-year-old was telling his preschool teachers that his mommy was a liar [fill in anti-lawyer joke here]). Have people been rolling their eyes at me all this time? Why is attorney so bad; is it like using Esq. after your own name?

Gene Weingarten: I've never heard my wife use the word "attorney" to describe herself, except where she has to give her precise title, which is "trial attorney." She also tells me that the only time she sees anyone use "Esq." after their names is when they are baby lawyers right out of law school, and filled with themselves.

There seems to be one case where "attorney" flows naturally -- if you are indicating that you are an attorney FOR someone or some thing, with that construction. I am the attorney for Joe Smith, though you are Joe Smith's lawyer. In almost all cases, lawyer has to be the default. Why? Because the legal system is too full of crap already. Lawyer is two syllables, not three, and it is a more common word. When you are in a legal system, which needlessly complicates terminology out of simple elitism, you gotta go with the down to earth word.

Don't get me started about unnecessary jargon in the medical world. I had a whole chapter on it in my Hypochondria book. Do you know what an ecchymosis is? A black and blue mark. How about sternutation? Sternutation sounds pretty grave and important, right? It is "sneezing."

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For Seattle, Wash.: Dear Seattle, who inspired this week's poll with the following:

"Yep. Death to the unworthy. We want kids, but only if they promise to be smart and handsome and not too inconvenient."

My four-year-old daughter is traffic-stoppingly beautiful. I have had more parents than I could count ask me whether she models. They are so fixated on her good looks that they forget to notice that she doesn't speak. If they notice her plodding gait at all, they assume she is tired, not that she is moving with the trepidation of one who only learned to walk a few months before, whose sense of balance and space are untrustworthy and may never improve.

She is whip-smart, too. Test results show that her nonverbal intelligence is at the upper limits of normal. Verbal intelligence is untestable right now, and certain tests cannot be conducted at all because even after more than a year of occupational therapy her fingers are too weak to properly hold a pencil. If goaded, she will grasp it in her balled fist like an infant, make a few jagged lines on her paper, and then drop it out of frustration and fatigue.

Your facile remark minimizes the very real pain and anguish endured not only by the parents of these children, but the children themselves. Repeated hospital vigils at the side of your gravely ill child are not "inconvenient." They are waking nightmares.

Forget about the pain of watching your child struggle fruitlessly to pull herself up to stand while her friends are kicking soccer balls across the yard. Maybe you would consider that merely "inconvenient." Instead, imagine a childhood spent not in sandboxes and sprinklers but in the waiting rooms of specialists, who in compassion's name have devised "treatments" that more closely resemble torture-which you must perform. Sure, I can rationalize force-feeding my six-month-old baby with an enteral pump and a tube I nightly shoved through her nose into her stomach -- she would have starved to death otherwise. But don't tell me that a part of me didn't die every time I exercised force on my terrified infant. I did it nearly every day for almost a year, and neither of us will ever be the same. The new tortures -- the scary, painful tests and the medications with loathsome side effects -- are not an improvement.

My marriage has undergone severe emotional and financial strain. We have maxed out our lifetime health insurance benefits for rehabilitative care and do not qualify for state or federal programs. Forget about luxuries like vacations -- we cannot save for retirement or put away money for college. I gave up promising career to be my daughter's full-time caregiver because her frequent hospital stays made it nearly impossible to continue working. My other daughter is stressed out and starved for attention. And we all live in a constant state of anxiety about the kind of life my daughter can expect to live. I'm not talking about whether she will go to college, marry, and live independently. I'm talking about whether she is capable of attending public kindergarten.

My daughter is worthy of all the riches the universe chooses to bestow upon her. I love her with my life, and her affection and accomplishments bring me immeasurable joy. But I would not judge for even an instant a parent who is unwilling to endure what I have.

By the way, Seattle-my daughter is considered only mildly disabled by most. Take what I wrote and multiply it by a factor of 100 to understand what life is like for those parenting children with moderate or severe disabilities.

Gene Weingarten: I am so glad you wrote in. There is nothing I can add. This is a stunning, stunning post from a gifted writer.

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Gene Weingarten: And there is also this, for which I am also grateful.

The scenario you describe in question number three is exactly what happened to me -- an amnio revealed that my first born had Down Syndrome. Fortunately, although my husband is pro-choice, he is someone who would not choose to have aborted his own child, and more importantly is a supportive, understanding, and loving man.

I should preface this all with the fact that these issues have affected me so much I am not sure I can get all of my emotions and thoughts down, let alone in a coherent manner. But the truth is, every time I hear about someone aborting a child with a birth defect I feel a knife

in my gut thinking how there are so many people out there who would never have given my adorable three year old boy a chance. His condition has certainly made my life much more complicated -- more doctor appointments, more hospital stays, open heart surgery at 3 months, various therapies up the wazoo. But in so many ways he is like

any other toddler. He loves balls and trucks and sesame street. He loves juice and ice cream, and when I say "no," he immediately tries to manipulate his father into saying yes (sadly, my husband has in fact been outwitted by him on occasion). He alternately adores and and torments his baby brother. He gets mad when his will is thwarted. He loves music, particularly opera and Weird Al Yankovic. Most of all, he loves people. Just a smile from him has melted the most hardened hearts -- not just those of parents and grandparents, but also grumpy old men, sullen teenagers, and aggressively child-free hipsters. He

will enter pre-school in the fall, and eventually get mainstreamed into public schools. We expect him to graduate high school and live at least a semi-independent life, and if we are lucky he may even go to

college -- something more and more people with Down Syndrome are doing.

That's why I am so bothered when I hear people say that such fetuses should be aborted -- because of the "quality of life" issue. My son's quality of life is frankly better than that of most children in this world. And I wonder if people who think otherwise, or who go so far as

to think that no child with Down Syndrome should be born, has ever spent any meaningful time with someone with a disability, particularly someone who has had the benefit of Early Intervention programs. I think it is easier to hold such an opinion when you don't actually have

a face, a name, a personality to put on the disorder.

Don't get me wrong, I am very sympathetic to women who learn their fetuses are not perfect; learning the results of the amnio was devastating. But where do we draw the line? It seems easy to justify an abortion when faced with a diagnosis of Tay Sachs, but what about the person, reported in the NYT a few years ago, who aborted two

fetuses because they had 6 fingers on each hand. Or the couple, discussed in a book by a Boston Globe reporter (Choosing Naia), who aborted a fetus because it apparently had the wrong eye color?

Finally, this issue, and the results I expect from the poll, make me feel incredibly lonely. Only 1 in 10 women faced with a diagnosis of DS go through with the pregnancy. In my area, even fewer. Every doctor other than my obstetrician, upon learning of my "choice," had an

expression of barely concealed shock, if not outright contempt, on her face. I even met a woman who made the opposite decision, and expected me to validate her choice. I kept my opinion to myself, because it would have been rude and pointless to do otherwise, but did she really

expect me to say she made the right decision? Even though I am pro-life, I have no illusions about our country. More

and more people are pro-choice in at least some circumstances, and with more and better pre-natal tests, genetic advances, and an increasing

sense of entitlement to have perfect children, fewer and fewer will make the choice I did (which was not really a choice at all, but the only, right, path for me. And I fear that future generations will look upon my son as an aberration, a mistake, someone who should not be

here. So how will they treat him?

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Sod Toss: I'm a woman, and I totally understand. I'd probably have done it myself, although not as well, and probably the same time as my husband resulting in the potential for a sod-fight, which would definitely have slowed the work down, but made it more fun!

Gene Weingarten: A sod fight would not be that much fun. These things are heavy.

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Electric flyswatter: You are wrong. I am a woman, and have owned two of those (and have broken both, I need to buy a new one for ths summer). My sister and mother both own them and love them (as a matter of fact, the first one was a gift from me to my sister). My mother, in fact, wanted to go outside on her deck and swat at the insects flying around there, until I told her that that would be like hunting, and she was not allowed to do that. I LOVE those things.

Gene Weingarten: Hmm. This is the second such post. Can I have erred? Do women have blood lust?

Wait. Do bugs have blood?

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Tokyo, Japan: I'm a man who would have done the same thing (clods). But will your wife not be angry, when she reads this, that you did it at all? Mine would, I'm sure. The fact that I never missed would be considered irrelevant. "If you respected me, you wouldn't do something stupid like that" is the comment I'd expect.

Gene Weingarten: Nah. She puts up with much worse than that.

Had I missed, it would not have been good. This woman is not a doormat.

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4 versus 2: I'm fascinated by the disparity in the poll results in one area: men favor killing the peg-leg baby by 4 percent vs. 2 percent for women.

Is this because men harbor a desire to see the kid grow up to be a pro athlete, but women just want to be able to catch the little guy as he's running around?

Gene Weingarten: Maybe. But I wouldn't call that a statistically significant distinction.

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Rockville, Md.: This is mostly for Liz. Since this chat is updated every day, I think that it should be listed on the live online schedule every day. That would make it much easier to find. Otherwise, I forget to look at the updates (and that makes me sad).

Gene Weingarten: I'll take that to the higher ups. In the meantime, I suggest you bookmark Gene's chat archive page.

Gene Weingarten: Noted.

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Second Amendment: Okay, before I start, I have to say I think our lack of gun control is idiocy. NO one needs a handgun.

BUT... I really disagree on the motives for the 2nd amendment. I'll probably be exposing both my ignorance and my ancestral Scottish background, but here goes. Our framers came from European countries where commoners (particularly the Scots) were forbidden to have weapons. This served two purposes: one, to keep the peasantry from getting uppity and overthrowing their rulers, and two, to keep said peasantry from taking game from land owned by the nobility. The framers probably had vivid knowledge of Europeans who had to watch their children starve in a rough winter while deer frolicked a few miles away. They also knew that if the populace had been armed, they might not have tolerated half the crap foisted upon them by the nobility.

I always figured that the 2nd Amendment was a sort of unofficial check on the power of the Federal government: that if it grew too oppressive or corrupt, the pissed-off population could rise up and throw the bums out at rifle-point.

You know, let's say you had a chief executive unrestrained by a toady Congress, and the chief executive decided that the Constitution didn't apply to him and started issuing declarations that were clearly unconstitutional, and maybe the Supreme Court was such a bunch of pantywaists that they spent their time bootlicking instead of chucking unconstitutional acts. Let's say the feds start detaining people indefinitely, without charging them with crimes. Maybe they start invading people's privacy without good cause, maybe by taping conversations without a judge's order. Maybe they start doing all sorts of things that are stunningly reminiscent of totalitarian tactics. If this continued and intensified, and started being aimed at political opponents (which would be oh so easy), and if people didn't effing WAKE UP and protest the erosion of the rule of law, then...

Well, you see where I am going. I don't really believe any country is immune from acquiring a dictator. Even the USA could end up with a totalitarian regime, in which case I'll go order my own damn rocket launcher.

I think the framers wanted to protect our ability to protect ourselves from the government, if necessary. They were cynical idealists, and I'm grateful for them.

Gene Weingarten: I think you are absolutely correct about the original intent. But times have changed; we have a constitutional democracy, long entrenched, with checks and balances and an enormous army capable of vaporizing entire states.

In other words:

1. Armed insurrection against a standing goverment and army is essentially impossible; and,

2. Armed insurrection against a standing government and army is unnecessary. We have a system in place so that bad leaders don't stick around. More than four years without the will of the people behind them.

Yes, I can imagine a circumstance in the future where some corrupt party might subvert the electoral process itself (e-voting scares the crap out of me) but if that should happen, we still have a supreme court, a free press and whatnot to set things right. AND, even if it does happen, a populace armed with popguns isn't going to accomplish much.

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Outsid,ER: From what I can tell, even though I'm a yuppie female, I'm outside your demographic-- I'm an evangelical Christian (though I hate that this term has become synonymous with intolerant jerks, and so don't usually identify myself with those words). I'm prolife, but had trouble selecting an answer to the final question in your poll. My viewpoint doesn't put me in the camp of intolerants like Falwell. I don't think the answer is to stand on the roadside with pictures of disfigured babies or to spew hate toward those who have abortions. I do think it's killing a baby, but don't think it's right to despise those who abort. Please leave room for people like me, whose religious views lead us to our position but who don't club people with Bibles when they disagree. Some of -us- think Falwell, et al, have a lot of it wrong.

And welcome back-- I was very pleasantly surprised when your chat resurfaced. (I live far from DC now (culturally and geographically), and the WP is my link to home...). My Tuesdays are funny again.

Gene Weingarten: Can someone explain this -- if you truly feel it is killing babies, how can you NOT judge people fiercely for doing it?

Isn't that like, in 1850, really believing that slavery was a horrifying injustice, a disgusting debasement of human life -- but not feel at all negative toward a slaveowner?

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Washington, D.C.: Here's the full story on that letter to the newspaper about earlier daylight-saving time contributing to warmer weather.

Gene Weingarten: As I, and we all, suspected.

This is delightful.

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New York, N.Y.: My wife and I have differences of opinion concerning the morality of abortion. I've given up attempting to discuss this issue with her. It seems like I can never frame the discussion properly. She declares it to be killing a child, and her health-professional status prevents me from offering any arguments to the contrary. (She claims evidence I offer is "not right" no matter the source, and since I haven't gone to med school, I don't know what I'm talking about.) Not that I am trying to change her mind on the issue, but I think she's missing the logic of the opposite argument and my point of view. Any suggestions on how to generate a discussion?

By the way, my answer to question 3 was choice a. I love my wife and respect her right to choose. We would find a way to make things work.

Gene Weingarten: Wow. You guys are a disaster waiting to happen.

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Used in a Bet, MD: Props to Liz for her Chaucer knowledge last week. I have a similar story with a slight twist on it.

We had an English teacher in 10th grade -- I'll call him Mr. L. -- who sort of casually challenged us to memorize what we could of the Prologue in the best Middle English we could muster. Being a general smart-aleck overachiever and the class's self-appointed poet, I proceeded to memorize at least 12 of the lines... (that's all I can remember now at least). The next day in class, I could recite more lines than anyone else.

When the bell rang and we left class, Mr. L. caught sight of my 9th grade teacher, Mr. H., and said to me, "Hey, do those lines again."

I did.

Then Mr. L. said, "Pay up."

I looked at him in confusion. Mr. H. produced a $20 bill and handed it to Mr. L. He glared at me and groused, "You had a ringer."

Mr. L. explained, "He bet me that you couldn't get students to memorize poetry anymore." Then he pocketed the $20 and walked away, having banked on my snotty know-it-all-ness and not even given me a cut.

I stopped by for lunch there the other day (I'm still friends with many of my teachers and briefly taught there as well). 13 years later, Mr. L. still greets me with "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote."

washingtonpost.com: Today is kind of a "Wan that Aprill" kind of day, despite being May, what with all the "tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne."

Gene Weingarten: This reminds me of a story I believe is true, but I forget the provenance. I think it is true.

Many years ago, at a college track meet, the athletes were lining up for a 100-meter dash. There were five black runners and one white one.

In the stands, a black man and a white man, strangers to each other, were side by side. The black man asked the white man who he thought would win, and the white man nodded toward the white runner.

"Yeah, how come?" the black man said.

"Because that's my son," said the white man. "He has won every sprint he's been in since the 8th grade. He has the best single time for the 100 in the state." So the black guy disappears.

Five minutes later, the white guy wins by three feet. And a few minutes after that, the black man returns and gives the white man $50.

"What's that for?"

He nodded toward an unhappy looking group of black men in the stands.

"I just won $200 from those guys over there by betting on the white guy."

The white runner was Chris Collinsworth, who went on to a hall of fame career as a wide receiver.

I THINK is is true.

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Dunn Loring, Va.: Isn't it wonderful how people can surprise you sometimes?

I was raised in a strict Fundie household. The Bible was (and is) the bedrock on which my parents, born-again converts, built their adult lives. My folks are the most sincere and committed Christians I have ever known, and I respect them for that -- though I have most definitely moved on and would consider myself an agnostic at best.

My father, as luck would have it, is also a born scientist. He is fascinated by the world around him. He would have been a much happier man had his father not insisted he attend a Liberal Arts college and instead allowed him to study engineering (true story: Dad did nothing but party through his college years, was asked to leave several small Midwestern colleges, and never graduated, squandering his father's money. Years later, as a reborn man, he paid his father back every penny). He is particularly moved by the Deep Space pictures from the Hubble Telescope. If you haven't seen these pictures, they are astounding -- deep black just chock-a-block with little stars... only when you look closely, you see those aren't stars but entire galaxies, more than you could possibly count.

For some reason, Dad and I were discussing the Universe and the untold numbers of planets that must be out there. I asked him what he thought of the idea of extra-terrestrial life -- and of course, given his total reliance on the Bible and his general social conservatism, I expected him to flatly discount the idea. Instead he said, "you know, God tells us we are special. He wrote the Bible for us. But he never told us that he didn't have creatures he loved on other planets; I would not be at all surprised to find out some day that he has an infinite number of special planets, and that he has given his Word to each of them, and that he loves them all infinitely."

Wow. I just love my Dad.

Gene Weingarten: And I'm sure for good reason.

But really, isn't this just a version of the "because God wants it that way" explanation for everything that might suggest no deity at all?

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Medford, Mass.: Gene,

So, seeing as today's top news story is that six men were arrested for plotting to ambush Fort Dix, is it safe to assume that there is little reason to fear terrorists, since this is perhaps the stupidest idea ever?

If the best idea that sleeper cell terrorists can come up with is to attack a military base full of soldiers... with guns... with training, what is there to worry about? This is funny... right?

washingtonpost.com: You said "Dix."

Gene Weingarten: You said am"bush".

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Mostly Liber, AL: I've tried to write this question several times, even submitted it a few weeks ago. I just can't seem to get my point across without sounding like a dweeb and maybe that should tell me something -- but I'm not listening.

Anyway, I am concerned that the reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings has swept you along with the Ban Guns knee jerkers. You handle the chat with such aplomb that I had assumed that you were quite reasonable.

The Second Amendment cannot (OK, really should not) be eliminated. "Well regulated militia" is the National Guard. It is the case (for a really long time now) that the National Guard is a federally run deal, but there are adjuncts (my word) called the State Defense Forces (both Maryland and Virginia have one). You take away the dentists and file clerks and HVAC techs that make up the guard and we now only have the professional soldiers/sailers/airmen. We love 'em all, but with no Guard, we are one arrogant prick too many away from a military dictatorship.

Could you stop the Armed Forces, Gene? Maybe the Guard can't, either, but they have tanks and warplanes and folks trained to use 'em and would be a lot better equipped than you or me.

I'm not a hunter and I don't own guns. I volunteer with the Boy Scouts and they do teach the boys to shoot .22 caliber rifles and shotguns. In my experience they do a terrific job of promoting gun safety (and the Izaak Walton league folks who help are even better about promoting gun safety). I see no harm in this. I see no harm in BB shooting (which they do even in Cub Scouts) or paintball. Are any weapons acceptable, Gene. How about the slingshot I had as a kid? A friend of mine owns a handgun from the Revolutionary War. He's had it in his family for generations. It hasn't been used in that whole time (they even think it's probably loaded). What happens to that, Gene?

If guns had not been available, maybe Cho and others would have made explosives like McVeigh. Maye they would have used some other mechanism. The point is that Cho was the problem here, NOT GUNS. It is grossly improper to conclude that guns and his easy access to them were the cause of this tragedy. There were many other steps that failed, most of them long before he got a gun. But none of these steps that failed, nor any of the people involved in those steps are responsible. Only Cho.

It is remarkably easy to blame. Based on the crazy news coverage, with every source trying to figure out who to blame, I would say that the blame game is our national pastime. It really needs to stop.

Don't take away our Bill of Rights, Gene. You wouldn't have a job without it.

washingtonpost.com: Hi there. I'm just a silly girl who doesn't know what "hitting for the cycle" means, but I do know that the American military has never turned its guns on its own populace and that there is a big difference between arming the National Guard and giving any shmo with a driver's license the right to own handguns and semi-automatic weapons.

Gene Weingarten: Well, there was Kent State and Jackson State, both of which I believed featured actions of our famous militia, the National Guard. But Chatwoman is spot on in her point.

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The poll: So, is your big secret that you find the lives of unborn children of no value? That since they can't think yet, we shouldn't worry about killing them? Or that we should work hard to prevent all disability by aborting any disablied fetus?

Or does your value of life extend even past birth. Do you believe infanticide is ok up to a certain age?

Please, tell us your answers to the poll, though I think we can kind of guess them based on how you wrote the questions (abort for any reason and leave the woman, essentially)

Gene Weingarten: I don't see why you feel that way. I tried to make these questions very straight. Why do you conclude as you do?

No, my "big secret" is that, for reasons I can't control, my feelings tend to be the default positions for discussion purposes. And in this case, I don't want to do that.

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Fly swatter: I am a female engineer, and would LOVE one of those. And I would use it on my husband if he mistimed throwing a clod of dirt over my head.

Gene Weingarten: It's not really appropriate as human punishment. It's plastic, and would just shatter. Not hurt that much, either.

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Rockville, Md.: Gene, I feel lamentably shallow given today's topic, but you are the only person I can trust in this matter.

I had a really fantastic curry last night for dinner, but I only ate half of it. I put the other half in a styrofoam container and drove home. Horribly, I forgot to bring the curry into my apartment, so it stayed in the car all night.

When I examined it this morning, I found that it had solidified into a coconutty mass of fat. I brought the container to work with me and put it in the refrigerator in anticipation of this chat and your answer. Given the fact that curry and salt were originally used to preserve meat, and also that the solid fat mass of the curry likely kept out some contaminants, can I eat this curry for lunch? I promise to microwave the heck out of it first.

I am a young, petite female if it makes a difference.

And it really was a very good curry.

Gene Weingarten: Yes, you can, though "good curry" is an oxymoron.

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Bangkok Thaila, ND: I've been a long-time fan of Dave Barry, (I first read him when his column was syndicated here in the Bangkok Post Sunday Magazine!) and then more recently of your column and articles at the Post. I've heard that you were the one that "found" Dave Barry and brought him to the Miami Herald. I was wondering what influence you think your editing had on his writing style. Do you think he would be a different writer today (or less well known) if another paper/editor had picked him up. Has he had an influence on your writing?

Gene Weingarten: He has influenced my writing enormously. I had very little influence on his writing. The way I served Dave was to place my body between his and the management of the Miami Herald. When he was new and considered VERY rude, I basically threatened to quit if they screwed with him. I also took some of the heat and didn't pass it on.

But Dave did not need my help, creatively. I needed his.

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Identification as an Attor, NeY: Related: I knew a guy in college; he graduated, went to law school, and moved to DC. He got a job working for a construction firm managing things like contract disputes, worker's comp, and so forth.

When someone asked what he did, he would say "I'm in construction".

Only in DC, no?

Gene Weingarten: Exactly! A good answer! Dave Barry has told people he is a typist.

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Arlington, Va.: So, why didn't you just use a shovel instead of pitchfork on your grassy area?

Gene Weingarten: The pitchfork worked better. Dug in better. We tried both.

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Alexandria, Va: Wow, is that Tom the Butcher? Eric does a pretty good drawing of you so I assume that's what Tom looks like. He's hot kinda. I imagined him much more burley and hoary-haired. Like Veruca Salt's dad in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Can Eric draw him again but without the chicken suit?

washingtonpost.com: Snickersville? That's a Laugh, ( Post Magazine, May 6)

Gene Weingarten: Is there any woman within the reach of this phosphorus who knows Tom the Butcher and would care to anonymously comment on his degree of hott?

I would, but nothing I said would be believed.

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Judging: I consider abortion to be killing, and I judge people who have killed their children.

I just don't do it publicly, because what's the point? Either they don't see what they did as wrong, in which case my pointing out my views isn't going to change anything, or they're already beating themselves up about it, in which case my piling on isn't going to help.

Gene Weingarten: Right. I just can't see not judging, if you feel that way.

I have similar confusion about people who say they believe strongly in God, but claim religion is not that important a part of their lives?

Hunh? Impossible. They're lying about one or the other.

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Theological Research: Best evidence there is a God:

When Jerry Falwell claimed that recent natural disasters were a reaction to the increase in supporting gays within this country, the next hurricane hit Lynchburg, Va. where Rev. Falwell's college is.

Also, someone tracked hurricanes in 2001 and discovered the eye of every hurricane that hit Florida that year went only through counties carried by Bush.

Gene Weingarten: Hahahaha. I bet that last thing is not true, but I love it.

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It is your firstborn: I think you showed considerable insight, which I hope for your sake is not born of personal experience, in assigning the choice to a couple's firstborn. Someone once said that motherhood (and by extension parenthood) is like a foreign country, you can read all the books you like beforehand but you can't really know what it's like until you get there. Making the terminate/don't terminate decision before you know what it means to be a parent at all is making a considerably less informed decision than you will make if it's your second.

When we were expecting our first, my husband had what I would call romantic ideas about what it would mean to be blessed with a special-needs child. I had a very difficult pregnancy with a lot of unknowns, but no prenatally diagnosable problems, and I think he was a lot more sanguine than I was about what it would mean if the baby was damaged by the complications. By the time we were expecting our second, those roles were reversed. He was blown away by the demands of parenting a small child and it would have destroyed our marriage and family if we had faced the prospect of a child whose needs were even more overwhelming and, worse, lifelong. I was, by then, mnore taken with the idea that the fetus was -our- baby rather than an abstraction.

We are very, very, lucky. Both of our children are healthy and "normal". But I would never be so presumptuous as to judge another parent for making different choices than we did. You cannot look into someone else's soul and know the implications of someone else's making the choice you think you would/should/could have made -- even assuming you are right about yourself.

Gene Weingarten: Yeah.

I have two observations about the poll results so far:

1. I am surprised by the number of people who actually believe that parents have an obligation to abort a severely impaired child. It's interesting. I expected almost no answers there.

2. I seldom say this, but I don't believe the fact that all these men say that if their wives chose to have a severely impaired first child over their extreme objection, they'd stick around. I made this "first child" deliberately, so there is no issue of remaining around for the other kids.

One poster compared this situation to one parent deciding to mortgage the house and borrow heavily on some pipedream plan. That's not a decision one person should make without the approval of the other.

I'm just surprised. I'm not sure these guys are being realistic. If I were in that position, and IF I were very strongly opposed to the birth, I think I would leave in anger. However much I loved the woman.

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Time in a bottle: Our children are a message sent to a future we will not see.

Gene Weingarten: And love is the answer. And today is just yesterday's tomorrow. Sha na na na na na live for today.

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Washington, D.C.: Like the attorney in construction, I knew a guy who taught history at the University of Maryland. Whenever someone asked him what he did for a living, he would say, "I work for the state." And then no one wanted him to go into details!

Gene Weingarten: Haha.

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God vs religion: You're wrong on that one, Gene. God is God, but religion is a human institution with all the foibles, sin, and corruption that humans drag around with them. You can believe fervently in God without attending a religious service. You can become fed up with the religious institutions and choose to have a one-on-one relationship with the Divine.

Gene Weingarten: These people were saying not that they didn't care much about organized religion... they didn't care much about religion. I am quoting a poll.

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Bug Blood: Gene, regarding your earlier question: No, bugs don't have "blood" in the mammalian sense. They have hemolymph.

Gene Weingarten: Thank you.

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"Good curry" is an oxymoron: You're an idiot.

washingtonpost.com: Thank you. Remember, this is a man who admits to loving plain hot dogs.

Gene Weingarten: I know what I believe and my voice on this important subject cannot be stilled.

Actually, I should be specific: I like asian curries, which yours may have been.

It is Indian curry that tastes like human corpses.

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Gene Weingarten: Human corpses in dirty-sock sauce, sprayed with B.O.

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Selfish parents: Is there an unselfish reason to have kids? Maybe not. But let me tell you the second you have that baby (or if you're the biological mom, the second you get pregnant) you never have another un-thoughout selfish moment. Will I go skydiving, probably not because I have the kid. Will I buy the sports car, probably not because I have the kid. Will I stay out late drinking with my friends, got to get home to the kid. Will I have a piece of pie or those carrots, probably should have the carrots while I'm carrying the kid.

So I figure it all works out in the end. You have them to be selfish and then in wonderful, painful, sleep-deprived ways they make you never be selfish again.

Gene Weingarten: This is a good point.

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Effing, Michigan: Hi Gene,

One of my favorite movies is the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski".

My wife hates it. She can't stand the multiple F-bombs (there are more than 250). The massive amount of swearing -- which borders on the absurd -- is a hallmark of "male" humor, she says.

Is she right? Because of its eff bombing, is "The Big Lebowski" a movie with greater appeal to men? Do you think women are more inclined to be insulted by vulgar language?

washingtonpost.com: Your wife is an effing dolt, man. Me, I've already ordered these.

Gene Weingarten: It's a great movie.

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washingtonpost.com: And Gene knows dirty socks.

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Long Time Lurker-First Time Poster: Gene,

I was motivated to write regarding The Rib. You might not be able to (or choose not to) answer this question. Which is OK, since you don't get to be anonymous like we do. I am wondering how she got through the Justice Dept. screening process with respect to political affiliation. You are definately not a "Loyal Bushie" and I've never percieved, from these chats and your columns, that you have a Carville-Matalin type marriage. I can't see how she didn't get fired, just by virtue of being married to you, no sarcasm intended.

Gene Weingarten: No, this is not a Carville-Matalin marriage.

She was first hired in the 1990s, before the current administration was in power. Her job is not political -- she is civil service, and therefore serves at the pleasure of only The People.

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Detroit, Mich.: Gene, Thanks for throwing this topic out there. I think even with the range of choices you gave on the quiz, there would be probably a hundred different reasons to choose certain answers in certain situations. I do have a slight problem with the last question. As you list the choices ranging from abortion is OK, to abortion is murder, you also assume that someone who thinks abortion is not right would naturally look down upon (or as you put it, judge negatively) someone who chose to have an abortion. Even as I cannot agree with abortion based on how I define life, I would never presume to judge someone who made that choice (even though I have ran across more than a few people who use abortion as their primary method of birth control which thrills me to no end). It is a difficult decision to make, as I have seen over and over, and it is a decision that many women and families must live with and think about for the rest of their lives.

While I am a relatively young doctor, I have been in the medical field long enough to know that prenatal diagnosis are not necessarily a slam dunk. I have seen children with horrible prenatal diagnosis and poor prognosis come out completely normal. Likewise, I have seen many parents (though less as medical technology advances) have to deal with surprise a surprise in the first few days of life. I have been trained to protect and encourage life, no matter where it falls in the gestational scale, but have also had to take care of patients (children) with multiple medical problems and no hope for a self-sustaining life. However, in most of these cases, I have talked to parent after parent who would not give up anything for their child. Would their lives be easier if their child had never been born, of course, but then again, I believe that if we as a race learn to make decisions about life based on our own convenience, we will have crossed a dangerous line. Thanks as always for providing a great mixture of funniness and depth.

Gene Weingarten: I am convinced that the entire debate on this issue comes down to something really visceral, and logically unexplainable: Do we, deep down, believe that terminating a birth is killing a child? If we do, then all sorts of answers follow perfectly. If we do not, then an entire set of answers follow perfectly.

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More like Google: Q-tip is a trademarked name. But I have never, ever heard anyone refer to a cotton swab.

Xerox is another, which is close, but people do say copy.

Gene Weingarten: True, but Q-Tip isn't anywhere near as ubiquitous as Google.

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Bleatsville: So, how short-sighted is the Star-Tribune's decision to drop Lilek's column?

Gene Weingarten: Short-sighted? Think Mr. Magoo.

If you are too young to remember Mr. Magoo, It is as short-sighted as a particularly myopic burrowing rodent.

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Washington, D.C.: Regarding the question (on the 5/3 update) from the poster who wants to break up with his girlfriend because she isn't smart enough...

A few years ago, I had two friends who started dating. He eventually ended it because, well, he was too smart for her. He told her so, too, in pretty blunt terms: "you're not smart enough for me, so I have to end this." (Just to clear up any doubt, they both told me the same thing.) Her response? "Can we still fool around?" So, I don't know. I guess it depends on how not-smart she is. But it might work out ok.

Gene Weingarten: I should have questioned that poster about how long he and she had been dating. Because I think I would have sensed an intellectual disparity about midway through date one and certainly by the end of date two. If he was hanging around longer for the sex, he was complicit in his problem. That's kind of dishonest.

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Washington, D.C.:"You're nobody til somebody loves you".

This sums up my feelings about eating meat, and also about abortion. If someone loves that cow, cares for it, feeds it, brushes it, buys it medical care, then it's not food.

If someone loves the fetus, whether it's perfect, or has a genetic anomaly or physical deformity, it's worthy. It's a baby, soon to become a child.

However, it's in no one's mandate to say that a person MUST love a fetus, just because it happens to be in her body, or the product of his sperm. Parenting involves too much sacrifice to force it on anyone, even parenting a "healthy" child.

There are faults to be found in my reasoning, but I feel pretty strongly about it. Being pregnant, believe me, I've thought lots about it. For my part, I did the earlier testing (at 13 weeks), but I declined the 20-week tests. By that point, I was too attached to my baby to consider abortion, no matter what the outcome of the test.

Gene Weingarten: I think that a pro-life advocate would tell you that HE loves your fetus, even if you don't. And that God loves you both.

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Human corpses in dirty-sock sauce, sprayed with B.O. : Better than eating raw fish, you idiot.

Seriously, Gene, you are RIGHT so much of the time. But in your position on Indian food you are WRONG WRONG WRONG. I feel so sorry for you.

Gene Weingarten: I have heard from you Indian-food zealots before. Words cannot hurt me.

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Monster Isla,ND: While the comments from the mothers of disabled children were heart-wrenching, am I some kind of a monster because I think they could have aborted the first fetus, then tried again to have a kid without disabilities?

Am I a monster for occasionally thinking it may be a good thing to try and minimize the genetic abnormalities in our gene pool?

Seriously. My logical mind thinks these things, and my emotional mind can't muster up enough passion to override them. Does that make me some kind of monster?

Gene Weingarten: I think it sucks that you feel compelled to ask this question. Frankly.

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"I just can't see not judging, if you feel that way.": How's this: you think eating meat is inhumane, and bad for the planet, and just plain disgusting, and so you choose not to eat meat. But you still have dinner with meat-eaters, and figure they have to deal with their own feelings (or obliviousness) in their own way.

Liz, are you with me on this one?

washingtonpost.com: I'm the minority. I have no power.

Gene Weingarten: It's not the same. You don't think it is MURDER.

Or if you did, you probably shouldn't be eating with the murderers.

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We know you better: You would leave your wife and severely disabled baby? You talk a good game, but really Gene, after all this time reading you, no you wouldn't.

Gene Weingarten: I didn't say I would.

I said that if I were absolutely strongly opposed to this birth, I would. I would feel I could never ever be a good father or overcome my outrage at my wife. That marriage would never ever survive.

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Monkey County: If Indian curry (even vegetarian?) tastes like human corpses, then sign me up for the next Donner Party. Yummy. Pass me some love-handle paneer on basmati rice.

Oddly, this reminds me of a pizza habit in our house. A lot of places, like Papa Johns, like to deliver a garlic-butter sauce with their pizza. I happen to love this sauce. My husband will actually leave the house if I open the container. He thinks it smells like rotting corpse and he loses his appetite. He's a police officer, so I think he knows what he is talking about there. I disagree, but acknowledge my experience in this area is far less. The one time I observed an autopsy, which is the closest I have been to dead humans outside of funerals, I just thought it (the not very old corpse) smelled like organ meat, and the chemical smell from the room was most powerful. I did swear off ribs for a while after that though. When the medical examiner was talking about how each organ is weighed and a sample taken, I happened to look back and the now-emptied-of-organs corpse. I could see his ribs and spine, and I was suddenly reminded of pork ribs. It took a few years before I could eat them again without thinking of cannibalism.

Gene Weingarten: I love tha sauce, too.

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Washington, D.C.: What do you mean by this?

Gene Weingarten: I think it sucks that you feel compelled to ask this question. Frankly.

Gene Weingarten: I mean that our society has filled us with guilt over something that should not induce guilt. This is a reasonable position to take. I may or may not agree with it, but it is a reasonable position to take.

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re: For Seattle Poster: Gene, I entered late... This was so moving. I have tears at my desk. Thanks for sharing.

Gene Weingarten: Brought tears to my eyes, too.

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Ford's Theatre: Last night I picked up "I'm With Stupid" and was reading the acknowledgments (because I'm a book editor and thus always read the acknowledgments) when I noticed that you described Tom the Butcher as "a sockdologizing old poop." This caught my eye, as I'm familiar with that word--coming from the funniest line in a very popular 19th century play. The line is, as I'm sure you know, "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal--you sockdologizing old man-trap." The play is "Our American Cousin" and the laugh generated by that line is what covered up the sound of John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln.

So, did you hear that line once and decide that "sockdologizing" is a really funny word that should be resurrected?

Gene Weingarten: Yes.

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Washington, D.C.: Did you happen to read the piece on the Nationals by "style" writer linton weeks? How can the post publish this as even remotely newsworthy? Its poorly writen and is a cut and paste job of national and gasp baltimore writers bad mouthing the team. We fans know the teram will be bad as it grows up. Not every team can just buy the best players even as part time pitchers. This piece was below the post and i wonder what boswell would have to say. I am not a writer so please dont just insult my grammer and move on.

washingtonpost.com: Baseball Most Foul: The Nats Reinvent Bad, ( Post, May 8)

Gene Weingarten: I won't insult your grammar, or spelling, but I will just move on.

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Full Circle: Hi Gene -- I thought your poll was very thought-provoking, in a very uncomfortable way. Prior to my marriage, I would have probably put, "terminate an unwanted pregnancy." Then I got married and then pregnant with our first baby. He was and is beautiful. However, within the first year, we knew something was wrong. Long story short, he has Asperger's Syndrome (a type of autism), has severe ADHD and bipolar disorder. Would I change anything? Not for the world. He is a wonderful boy. Nevertheless, it has been extraordinarily challenging for us as a family and as a couple (therapy has been a god-send).

In addition to our son, we discovered I had secondary infertility. We adopted two wonderful children from Guatemala. Both my daughter and my son were born to two fabulous but very poor women. Because Guatemala does not allow abortion except in the case of danger to a woman's health, both my children were "unwanted" (my daughter born to her biological mother when she was just 18 and my youngest son when his biological mother was separated from her husband, her parents did not know and would not have approved of her pregnancy).

I know that our story is a little unusual in that we seem to have touched upon several aspects of your poll. Looking back on everything, I would not have changed a thing... my oldest is a wonderful child, albeit a challenge every day. My daughter and my youngest son make my world go round.

Fifteen years can make the world of difference, but I really have come full circle with regards to this topic.

Gene Weingarten: I am sure many people with similar experiences feel as you do. I've heard from several.

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Lansing, Mich.: I respect that you can't see any reason for marriage sans children, but I've got to disagree with you for very practical reasons.

When you love someone, you'll do anything in your power to take care of that person and keep him or her from harm. One manifestation of this is the desire to ensure that your other half stays as healthy as his/her personal habits and modern medicine permit.

Of course, staying as healthy as modern medicine permits can be kind of expensive these days, and when one's other half is self employed, one's other half doesn't receive employer-paid health insurance.

That's not so bad, I suppose, if one's other half is generally pretty healthy anyway. And mine generally is.

But let's look at it from another angle for a moment.

I've got a chronic health condition. It's under control, but it requires some pricey prescription meds to keep it there. Fortunately, I don't have to get expensive individual health-care coverage, because I'm employed.

Oh, wait.

That's right - I lost my job a couple of months ago.

So now we're paying $12K a year for COBRA coverage, and we'll pay a good chunk more than that if I don't get a job with benefits soon and we have to pay for individual coverage. (One of the plans I checked into covers prescriptions with a 50% copayment that's capped at $100. That's not unreasonable, but I'd be looking at $500 or $600 a month in copayments ON TOP OF the $500+ a month for the coverage.)

And while it's true that things are looking good for my re-employment soon, we'll almost certainly have to move.

So there you go. It's an especially icky situation because my handsome other half doesn't have benefits. And it's a situation that I imagine any number of unmarried couples who can't share benefits - including most gay couples - could easily find themselves in (unless we get around to fixing our health care system soon, which I'm not thinking is one of George the Dumber's top priorities).

Why would you put yourself under that kind of stress if you didn't have to?

Gene Weingarten: I am not against marriage sans kids, I just see no reason for it, practically. You are in a committed, monogamous, loving, going-steady relationship that can be terminated by either party at will without affecting anyone else horribly. But if there IS a reason for it -- medical insurance, for example -- of course get married.

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Busted, ME: Gene: "I got cured one day maybe 10 years ago when I turned around to look at the rear of a woman who I had passed in the hallway, just at the moment she was turning around, too. Got caught. Got the contempt. Took it to heart."

Maybe she was turning to catch a glimpse of you?! Then she got upset that she got busted, but was quick enough to realize that she also busted you, so she let you have it.

Surely, women have some of the same primal reflexes that we men have... err... umm... right?

Gene Weingarten: No woman is going to go out of her way to check out my butt.

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Chantilly, Va. - Are my husband and I selfish for not having kids?: We love children we have just chosen not to have our own. I don't know when we came to this realization but it is something that evolved as we moved into our early thirties. We are extremely comfortable with our decision however cannot get past the vilification we feel from other couples and their extended "Its the best thing in the world" rants every time we see them. Why cant people in life just respect the fact that like minded, intelligent individuals can and will choose differently from them time to time?

Given the views of most of your chatters I can imagine this is viewed as an extremely selfish choice.

Gene Weingarten: Carolyn Hax, I am told, says that not having children is among the most selfless decisions a couple can make.

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Falls Church, Va.: Now that you're Mr. Yardwork, you should really consider sending some questions to Adrian Higgins' gardening chat. I can't understand half of what he says, but I pretend that he's writing about dermatology so that everything he writes sounds filthy.

For instance, I wouldn't want to be around someone who had "potted clematis." And I feel bad for the woman who wrote in to say "Since I already have black-eyed susans in that area I don't want coneflowers."

washingtonpost.com: Adrian rocks.

Gene Weingarten: This reminds me of the joke about the milkweed, honeysuckle, and pussywillow.

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Washington, D.C.: This chat has been very interesting, enlightening, and thought provoking. I think I need to have a conversation with my future husband.

Gene Weingarten: Yes, you do. You know, if this chat forces a few such conversations, it'll be worth the several posts I have received from people yelling at me for allowing a downer hour.

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Need a second opinion: Okay here's what happened: I get into my top-floor elevator alone after work. As soon as the door starts to close I am overwhelmed by a horrible odor. Either bad b.o. or someone has recently, um, released gas. Now I'm pretty much stuck following through on the ride but my first thought is, oh I hope no one gets on because they're going to think I caused this smell! Then I think well if someone does get on I can make a little joke about how horrible the elevator smells so they won't think it was me. Well just as this brilliant plan comes together the elevator doors open and two Japanese women are saying goodbye to each other in Japanese. So my joke plan has flown out the window because I don't know if my new companion speaks English so we ride down the rest of the way in silence with me just knowing she thinks I've released this horrible gas in an elevator! Now here's where your opinion comes in. I told the story to my husband and right away he said no, no one would think a pretty, nicely dressed woman would have created that smell and everyone would assume a man had done it before I got on the elevator. Do you agree or is my husband just being really nice?

Gene Weingarten: Your husband is being nice.

Here is the key fact: You were alone on the elevator when they walked in. A woman ALONE is liable to do anything. A woman in company would of course never do such a thing.

Hey can anyone find that video, about three years old, on this subject? It involves a woman being picked up for a date and brought to her boyfriend's car?

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Oh wise Ge, NE: Should my husband & I try to have a third kid? We have the boy, we have the girl, both wonderful, happy, healthy children. Our home, cars and budget fit a family of four very nicely. Not to mention the world seems "built" for families with two kids.

But I can't stop thinking about having one more. I have enjoyed adding to our family so much and hate to think we are "done". My husband feels the same as I do but is also concerned about the money/space issues.

On another level, and in light of today's poll topic, having another child makes me feel greedy. I get pregnant easily and have had routine, uneventful pregnancies resulting in healthly children. Should I just be greatful for what I have and not push my luck?

Do you and the rib ever wish you had more children?

Gene Weingarten: We always planned on two, and never regretted not having a third. We'd be great grandparents, though.

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Aborti, ON: I took the poll...but I'm not sure I want to read the chat this week.

If there was ever a topic that was guaranteed to leave just about everybody on a downer and with a bad taste in their mouth, this is it.

Maybe I'll be surprised. Maybe it will be a thoughtful, intelligent conversation on a touchstone cultural issue of the kind that our elected leaders seem incapable of having.

Although I personally don't countenance abortion except in extreme circumstances (I chose the severe-retardation-and-deformity-with-pain cutoff), I am pro-choice for two reasons. First, I recognize that this is an extremely wrenching personal moral choice, and I don't have the right to impose my own choices on other people without being in their circumstances. That's between the couple, their doctor and their god (if any).

Second, and perhaps more importantly, I think that the abortion issue is used as a proxy by the religious right in its broader war on women's equality. As the father of two young daughters, I will fight tooth and nail to make sure their opportunities, dreams, and achievements will not be limited by religious nutcases.

Gene Weingarten: That last point: I could not agree more.

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Grammar Pa, IN: Email received early this morning from Tiffany & Co. Subject line: "On It's Way for Mother's Day."

Tiffany's. What is the world coming to?? Like awful non-words that get used so often they are added to the dictionary ("irregardless", "impact" as a verb), I'm terrified that improper usage such as this will be deemed proper. Gene and PtheP, is this a sign of the apocalypse?

Gene Weingarten: WOW. Two hyphenation error's in one line!

Actually, why isn't it Mothers' Day?

Pat?

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A Fog: So, I've got an propery law final this evening. I'm not totally confidnet about it. Could you give me a bit of encouragement?

washingtonpost.com: Is it an essay test?

Gene Weingarten: Hahahahahahaha.

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Snoring peacefully: You broached this subject in your updates for last week ... in that how can one snore and not be aware. One can't hear oneself snore but can hear the baby breathe funny two rooms away.

The answer lies in the burgeoning field examining selective sensory perception; often couched as dissociating top-down attentional control from selective perception and action. Great article on this topic at UC Davis' Center for Mind and Brain authored by Hopfinger, et al. Another seminal article is "Some mechanisms of diffuse and selective sensory perception", but unfortunately it's in Romanian.

The math types have glommed onto this for the benefit of artificial intelligence applications -- filtering out extraneous signals/input. Great papers on things such as: Applying a Top-Down Selective Attention (TDSA) model to the recognition tasks of two-pattern images, superimposed handwritten characters, and noise-corrupted speeches.

Bottom line: You DO hear, but you don't care ... you have "learned" that it's not "alarming" to you.

By the way, the good folks in the advertising business are ALL over this stuff -- looking for ways to punch holes through your natural and acquired defenses!

Gene Weingarten: Interesting. But it doesn't explain the even weirder phenomenon of thinking you are awake -- feeling totally awake -- and yet getting punched in the ribs by a spouse and informed you are loudly snoring. Several people have written in to say that they, too, experience this, but cannot explain it.

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Royal Potty Shame: Spotted at Dilbert Blog

"Actually, my math teacher last year, who worked in Britain for a good while on their space technology, met the Queen once at his rocket science job. (I don't remember any details about where he worked.) He didn't get to see her face-to-face, but apparently the Queen needed to use the lou/bathroom and there was a lot of commotion over it. They moved people out of their cubicles and away from the bathroom area in a special manner. Two of her servants were clearing the area - one was inside the bathroom with a walnut. The other one stood outside and waited for the first guy to drop the walnut, to see if he could hear the splash. The servant outside the bathroom would move far away enough until he couldn't hear the splash. Then they used that as a radius for how far everyone had to be away from the bathroom and let the Queen do her business."

Gene Weingarten: Yes. This is the perfect intersection of potty shame and celebrity.

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New Engla, ND: Regarding your discussion of male lesbians from last week's chat: I'm pretty sure I fall under that category. However, my motives might be suspect. I think I focus on her because I get a huge ego boost afterwards. If I do it for me and not for her, does that make me a selfish partner? Are there gradations among male lesbians?

Gene Weingarten: This is EXACTLY why male lesbians exist, all of us.

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Re: Lesbian trapped in a man's body, in the updates: Heavens, Gene, you're getting the ladies all hot and bothered.

So, I know you're a happily married man and all, but, you know, if anything ever DID happen to the Rib... just speaking hypothetically, here, of course... come up and see me sometime.

We'd all be grateful if there were more lesbians trapped in men's bodies, if you get my drift.

Gene Weingarten: I do, I do.

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Anonymous: Farcical Debasement of Terms:

What's the opposite of a farcical debasement? No one can say, "Let's Roll." It would be extremely tacky. There must be other phrases out there which have acquired nobility.

Gene Weingarten: Well, you know, "I'm rolling" is a drugster term meaning "I'm high on ecstasy," so there's an instant disconnect there.

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In the fast la, ne: Driving 95 to Baltimore to catch the game on Friday night we were behind a car with the bumper sticker proclaiming "I'm only speeding because I really have to poop" with a cartoon image of poop. I found it amusing not only b/c of the poop reference, but also since we were in stop and go traffic.

I don't typically enjoy bumperstickers, but I loved this one.

Gene Weingarten: I was in traffic court once when someone gave this as his "plead guilty with explanation" explanation.

If that were my explanation, I would just have pled guilty. "Plead guilty with explanation" is not a real legal thing, anyway, and I doubt it ever earns you anything tangible, in terms of your penalty. It is to encourage more guilty pleas. Well, sure, I pled guilty, but dadgum it, I had an EXPLANATION..."

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B-More: It was mentioned last week that Pierre Vigilance is the Health Officer in Baltimore County. Previously he worked in the Baltimore City Health Department, where there was a Bernard Cure who ran the Needle Exchange program. And, a Francine Childs running the School Health program.

Gene Weingarten: Thankew.

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Gallery Place: I am a woman with a very strong libido, a creative and kinky imagination, and I have NEVER - I mean, NEVER - turned around to watch someone "hot" walk away.

Does every man I work with at least picture me naked and/or the act of "sleeping" with me, even if he doesn't actively "want to?"

Tell me, Gene.

Gene Weingarten: Um, heh. Er.

It depends wha tyou look like.

Sorry.

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Words cannot hurt you?: What if I told you to think about Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"? Those words will hurt all day. You'll wish you loved curry.

Mwahahahahaha.

Gene Weingarten: Aaauuuuuugh.

I HATE that song. Especially the voice he adopts to sing it.

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Poll: Gene,

It would be interesting to see the distribution of answers according to age. (It might not be what you'd expect.) I am 50, and nearly every woman that I know in my age group will admit (generally under duress) that she has had an abortion. I think that it is less common in younger women. While my views have become more moderate (fewer bright lines on this issue) over the years, my experience, and that of my peer group, strongly colored my answers to your poll.

Gene Weingarten: Nearly every woman? Duress? You are applying electrodes?

Nearly every woman is surely an exaggeration, but, yes, this country has vastly changed its thinking about abortion. When I was 20, I knew girls-women who basically used abortion as birth control.

I think it has generally accompanied a turn toward religion.

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Re: Automatic: My father is a bit of an a-hole, but he has (or had) a pretty good sense of humor. He was a salesman and spent a lot of time on the road. He also drank a lot of coffee and spent a lot of time in public restrooms. When air dryers became popular among restroom providers (certainly not with users) they had written instructions ("1. wave hands under spout to start airflow; 2. rub hands together" or whatever). My father printed stickers that he would add to the instructions on the machines he encountered: 3. Wipe hands on pants.

Gene Weingarten: Hahahaha.

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Fun topic: I thought this was a humor chat.

Gene Weingarten: You thought wrong.

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Fairfax, V.: I'm never around for your chats, but I wanted to share this. Usually these discussions devolve into a question of whether or not people have the right to insist that their offspring be free of serious defect. Implicit in this is the expectation that prenatal testing is a way to ensure this.

But here's the thing Gene. When my wife was in her first trimester she exhibited an unusually high level of alpha proteins. On the advice of her doctor she underwent an amniocentesis. I spent the next two weeks in hell because I didn't know how we would respond to bad news. It was a decision we dearly wanted to avoid. But this turned out to be a moot point. When the results finally came back my wife called me at work, crying with joy, to report that we were going to have a genetically perfect baby girl.

So imagine our surprise when my daughter was born with a laundry list of serious physical, intellectual, and emotional complications that still affect her a dozen years later. She will never have anything like a normal life, and her care has put an enormous strain on our family.

Yet, these problems have never been associated with a known genetic abnormality.

My point is that creating a person is risky. You can undergo all the tests in the world. You can do everything right. Yet things can still go terribly, terribly wrong.

Anyone who isn't willing to accept this possibility has no business breeding.

Gene Weingarten: I don't think anyone would disagree with you. The question at hand is whether there is anything wrong with availing oneself of all prenatal testing science has to offer, and making difficult decisions based on those tests.

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Indianapolis, Ind.: Nothing funny to say. This is an unbelievably funny, sustained two weeks of strips gently lampooning Halberstam.

Gene Weingarten: This is brilliant.

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Detroit, Mich.: I know you've addressed this before, but my search of old transcripts came up empty, and Sietsema won't answer my questions.

What do you think of Bistro Bis? My wife and I will be in Washington next week and are looking for good French food.

Is it possible to update your archive to include old chats after mid-2004?

Gene Weingarten: There are two good French restaurants on Cap Hill, and Bis is one of them. Slightly less pricey, and very good, is Montmartre, on 7th Street. There is also a fine Belgian place -- Cafe Belga -- on 8th Street.

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Blind date commercial: Here it is.

Gene Weingarten: Excellent! We'll end with this.

Thank you all, and apologies, to those who think it due, for a largely sedate chat. I liked it.

I'll be updating as usual, through the week. Expect many updates. There are many unanswered questions.

Next week.

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UPDATED 5.9.07

Gene Weingarten: Several people asked me to explain in greater detail why I would not give my feelings about abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities. Some accused me of being coy. Some accused me of being a coward in that I feared that if I said what I felt, I would lose readers -- or lose their respect.

I didn't mean to be coy, and I don't think I was being a coward. I often take positions that I know will anger more people than it will please.

Because of the nature and structure of the chat, my opinion tends to have disproportionate weight. Whether people agree with me or disagree with me, my position becomes the center of the debate. In this case I didn't want it to be, because my position on these matters is one that has the potential to hurt people who have done nothing wrong. I was perfectly willing to have a discussion of that position but only if it was raised and debated by others on an even playing field -- meaning a playing field that was not tipped by the bigfoot, opinionated chat host.

Anyway, it all got out there. I feel as thought it was a fair discussion in which many different views were aired without bias and with minimum rancor. I am proud of how the discussion went and I think it would have played out differently, and less fairly, if I had chosen otherwise.

If you have to know what I think, email me privately, promise me that the conversation will be private between you and me, and I will tell you.

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Gene Weingarten: Thanks to the poster who submitted this explanation for why I might not be fond of Indian curry.

I do think this supports my contention quite nicely, actually. I agree that if your goal was to camouflage this substance in food, Indian curry is probably your best choice.

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Winterville, N.C.: Gene, please take a look at this page from The Telegraph in London.

Is it just me or is Bush flashing the Hook'em Horns sign? That grin on his face says he's up to something. I'm a mom. I know that look.

Gene Weingarten: Why, I believe you're right. And I believe it was deliberate. And if no one else has noticed it before now, I'll bet this posting goes rapidly viral, wordlwide.

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bemusement, hm: Gene:

re: 'male lesbian'

Just an FYI, Gene, but they make a little blue pill so that you can enjoy other activities.

I'm just sayin'

Gene Weingarten: Okay, let me make this clear. I DO NOT NEED THE BLUE PILL. I WAS EXPRESSING A PREFERENCE, A PRACTICE I FAVOR, NOT A NECESSITY. AND NO I AM NOT SENSITIVE ABOUT THIS.

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Not Seattle: Seattle said, "Yep. Death to the unworthy. We want kids, but only if they promise to be smart and handsome and not too inconvenient."

I love your chat though I have never written in before, but there is something about the nimrod who wrote that comment that makes me want to throttle someone. Him, I'm guessing.

My beautiful daughter, light of my life, bringer of great joy, and the reason I get out of bed every morning, is disabled both mentally and physically. I spent the first three years of her life in hospitals hoping she wouldn't die. I told surgeons to remove half her brain to slow down the number of seizures she had every day. I have held her down for more medieval torture medical procedures than I can stomach admitting to. She will never be able to support herself and there are few resources in this community (and indeed, in this country) to help her. Or me.

I lost my marriage, my promising career as a teacher, and my youth. Being her mother has been devastating financially and emotionally, not to mention physically (you'd be worn out and exhausted, too). I am her full-time caregiver; I am also a single mother so I have support the two of us. Since her birth I have not been able to hold down regular employment (because of her needs). I freelance, which can be terrifying in its own right, and I have no pension, no 401(k), and a large student loan debt for a career I can never pursue.

If I had known 10 years ago that my life now would look like a nuclear bomb had gone off in it, could you really have blamed me for making a different choice?

Seattle can kiss my ass.

Gene Weingarten: Wow. Well the previous poster who addressed this issue in response to Seattle lacked some of your anger, but none of your passion. Both of you make what, to me, is an overwhelmingly powerful point. Thank you for writing.

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Cloverly, Md.: This had to be intentional, right?

Gene Weingarten: It had to be. And it is very funny.

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Central Virginia: Hey, Gene! Have I turned into a stalker? Met a guy at a convention -- really nice, really smart, really liked him, blah blah blah, got home and looked him up on Google. I mean, I REALLY looked him up on Google. Looked up his name, cross-referenced his phone number, found his office on GoogleMap, looked up his company on Morningstar, found a Website where he'd solicited funds for a Worthy Cause, looked up the Worthy Cause. Am I a stalker? Do I need to start a 12-step program or something? I swear, I'm trying to come up with a good opening phrase for e-mailing the guy.

Help!

Gene Weingarten: I suspect that, you being a woman and all, you know the only important answer: However you approach him, it should include none of the information you have so gleaned.

I know and really like some women who are stalkers at heart. They're just not stalkers for real. They WANT to be stalkers, but know not to be.

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North Chili, N.Y.: Gene,

A recent Newsweek poll pegged Bush's approval numbers at 28 percent.

Twenty-five percent of Americans believe The Surge is working.

According to a seperate AP poll, 25 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in 2007.

And according to the National Institute of Mental Health 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

Gene Weingarten: Thank you for sharing. This is excellent.

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Tempe, Ariz.: Wow, I was the first woman to take the poll!

I just wanted to point out that, while it was a very interesting poll, Question 3 is a false choice for me, and probably many women: I would never, ever marry someone without having extensive discussions about the circumstances under which we would or would not end a pregnancy. I know that being actually presented with the situation might change our opinions slightly, but if I "strongly opposed" abortion I would never be married to someone who "strongly favored" it in the first place, or (in my case) vice versa.

Also, I just want to say that while you were gone, I moved from D.C. to Arizona (on Pacific time this time of year), and it's really weird to read your chat at 9 a.m.

Gene Weingarten: Yeah, I should have addressed this. It is a terrible idea to get married or even enter into any sort of sexual relationship without having had this discussion in great big, fat, unromantic detail.

Of course, people have been known to change their minds, especially female people with something new in their wombs.

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UPDATED 5.10.07

Aptonym: In the Sunday May 6 New York Times magazine article "Ten Women and Men Discuss What Sex Is Like When You're Old Enough To Know Better," we have the quote...

"The concept of only sleeping with one person is sometimes difficult to think about. Attractions happen."

...attributed to 59-year-old furniture maker Peter Handler.

Also, bonus points to the TIMES for putting this article on page 69 of the magazine.

Gene Weingarten: Nice.

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Fairfax, Va.: My early take on the poll: Those of you who do not have to care for a profoundly retarded adult sibling have no standing to oppose abortion on principle as murder. A profoundly retarded adult is an inter-generation responsibility, passed on from the parents to the children.

My sibling was born profundly retarded (cognitive ability of a toddler) from Down's Syndrome because my parents were good Catholics who used Vatican Roulette for birth control. My parents are long gone. I'm her legal guardian. Now, like ALL people with Down's Syndrome, she is going through Alzheimer's. That's right: EVERY PERSON WITH DOWN'S SYNDROME EVENTUALLY DIES FROM ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. You haven't lived until you try to deal with long term nursing care for a profundly retarded person with Alzheimer's.

Do I love my sister? Yes. Will I do my best to ensure she has good care until the end? Of course. But I tell you this: EVERY woman in my extended family in my generation had amniocentesis performed during every pregnancy, and if the results had been positive for Down's, they would have aborted without hesitation.

One Down's Syndrome person in two generations is enough burden for a family. Those of you who think that my siblings and their spouses are potential murderers are welcome to conribute to the support of my sister. Put your money where your mouth is. I figure that $40K a year is a good start.

Gene Weingarten: Oh, man.

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Much sillier than the poll: So, what with the poll topic, I feel this is almost inappropriate, but I have to ask: Why do I read the Date Lab? I read it every week without fail, and every week I wonder at myself. It seems so... pointless.

Gene Weingarten: You read it because it is good.

Date Lab is a terrific feature, because of how honest these people are being, even when it makes them or (more often) their dates look terrible. We have all had first-time experiences, and these bring back all of the angst and humor therein.

I read Datelab, too. I don't care much for that party thing. But DateLab is a hoot. Just beautifully executed.

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Father's rights issue: Ever since I took a college philosophy class based on hypotheticals in which the mother and father (such as they are, with a fetus) disagreed about abortion, I actually have never once slept with a man without having a conversation about how things would be if I got pregnant -- i.e., he has a vote and a voice, but I'm the tiebreaker, ultimately. If he's not on board, we're done. If he claims to be on board just to get laid, well, I've made my record, he can't claim to be surprised later.

It's not a fun conversation sometimes, but then it also cut down some on my natural sluttiness. So there is that.

Gene Weingarten: Honey, if you are the tiebreaker in a two-person vote, he does not have a vote.

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Charlotte, N.C.: As someone conversant in both relationships and dogs, would you explain something to me? How does someone fall in love with someone who so dislikes his dog that marriage is contingent on getting rid of the dog? Our breed rescue group just got a call from someone with whom we placed a wonderful dog several years ago. YEARS AGO. He's getting married and moving to Hilton Head. Fiancee doesn't like dog, so he wants us to rehome him. I assume the fiancee has been to his house, yes? Interacted with the dog? Did he miss the "ew, get that away from me?" If you were single, how long would you date someone who didn't like Murphy?

Gene Weingarten: Well, depends. There are people who are quite uncomfortable around dogs. But I would not jettison Murphy for a woman. Murphy was here first, and I love her, too.

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Poll question 3: I'm one of the 10 percent who would leave her, and I think many of the 90 percent aren't thinking about it hard enough. Your wife has chosen for you a life of significant sorrow and hardship, over your objections. If you didn't know it was coming, then fine, that's life, you deal with it. But this can be avoided, and I think many men would resent their wife deeply for making such a decision. I would leave partly because I didn't want the hardship, but more because she made the decision against my wishes. Major life decisions must be agreed on by both parties. (If I knew going into the marriage that she was unalterably opposed to any and all abortions, that would be a little different, but I think my decision would still be the same.)

Gene Weingarten: Yeah. I think the guys answering this question were either being deceptive or unrealistic. I also think I inadvertently biased the question for the guys by including "love and compassion" in the first choice for the answer.

You sum up perfectly the situation. It can reasonably be seen as an unreasonable stance by the woman. I think the women answering this poll question did a lot better than the men: The majority said they'd have the baby, but understand it if the guy left.

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Chantilly, Va.: "If I were in that position, and IF I were very strongly opposed to the birth, I think I would leave in anger. However much I loved the woman. "

Gene, I feel the same way; however, I cannot fathom an answer on one issue: Isn't leaving a woman with child on her own the 'wrong thing to do?' Isn't this child also the father's responsibility as well? How could a man honestly defend himself against those who would label him as a deadbeat dad?

Gene Weingarten: And yes, I think despite the circumstances, you would be compelled to pay child support. Which you can look at as either a grave injustice, or just deserts for deserting.

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Somewhere in the Old Dominion: I had the opportunity to basically sleep with a 23-year-old guy. I'm 47, soon to be 48, not particularly stunning but not hit with the ugly stick either. I said no because it seemed to ridiculous (and this was done through match and I hadn't even met him). He seemed sweet and caring (operative word: seemed) but it just seemed to silly for me.

(I also think that I was afraid, not just of the safety factor but that I was being played as a pathetic woman who would sleep with a horny guy. By my attractiveness, I had an e-mail from another guy who is my age and I sent him a photo and never heard anything more from him. The other guy is also an example of something I've seen on match: men who obviously have a bit of a gut, not a large one, but term themselves as either athletic or average.)

Now, I tried to imagine a 47, going on 48 guy saying no to a cute 23-year-old woman and I just couldn't. I don't think a guy would see this as ridiculous.

I thought of you and I wondered if this would make a good poll. (Another question would be would women who are 20 pounds overweight honestly say that on a dating service vs. men with a pot belly claiming to be athletic. Just a thought.)

Gene Weingarten: Whew. You raise a LOT of issues.

The first one is sleeping with someone you barely know. I don't recommend this as a general rule. Red flag. Add to that the substantial age disparity, and the red flags start multiplying until you can't see the bed through the red.

Other issues: double standards. Yep, and they're partially self-imposed. I think more people are likely to draw negative inferences where the woman is at the long end of the 25-year age disparity, than if the man is. And I suspect more women than men are going to be doing the negative inferencing. I think it is unfair.

Third issue: IS there anything wrong with a May--September romance, in the abstract, in either direction? I think it would take a pretty judgmental person to say yes. Humans are complicated beings, you know?

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UPDATED 5.11.07

This is fantastic. Want one??

Gene Weingarten: So do we think this is a joke? Because metaphorically, it's pretty fabulous.

It's the ultimate PMS nightmare.

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Airbags: Gene, this touches on the car seat/airbag issue. I'm a five foot tall female. My Honda Civic has an airbag, which died about two years ago. The DMV won't pass my car for inspection until I get it fixed (at a cost of about $1,000), despite the fact that I don't WANT an airbag. All the recommendations say don't use one if you can't sit with your chest 10 inches from the steering wheel, which I can't do (the bag will hit me in the face from about 7 inches if deployed). They even make aibag on/off switches for folks who want to deactivate their airbags. The DMV will let me install one of these switches, but only if I also replace the airbag- essentially, I have to make it functional in order to turn it off.

I think that this is stupid. What do you think?

By the way, I met Murphy and the Rib this weekend. Both are lovely.

Gene Weingarten: I think it's ridiculous.

Er, not the loveliness of my wife and dog. That's not at all ridiculous.

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Anonymous: Why is it so hard for you to think of women as individuals rather than the "great unknown"? Maybe I'd want to buy a bug zapper, maybe my sister wouldn't. Maybe she could understand the fun of tossing sod over her spouse's head and I couldn't. How about making those kinds of observations about Chinese people, or African Americans instead?

I suppose anyone who calls his spouse by the dismissive and belittling term "rib" (as in "females are lesser parts of the male") would think it reasonable to make assumptions about the mindset of an entire group of humans.

Gene Weingarten: Oh, please visit my wife and inform my wife that "the rib" is a dismissive and belittling term. She seems to think it is affectionate, and needs to hear the truth from you. Thanks.

I would advise you to bring personal protection.

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Medilingust: On the first day of medical school, they told us that over the course of our training we would learn 30,000 new words -- essentially becoming fluent in a new language. I spend a good chunk of my days translating what other people are saying to and from health jargon (My attending: "The kid has rhinorrhea and pharyngitis." Me: "The kid has a runny nose and sore throat").

That said, I don't think medical jargon is different from jargon in any other endeavor except in degree. Just about every group comes up with its own language for its "in" people. Newbies probably take a bit to understand who Chatwoman or the Rib are.

Anyway, I just object to singling out medicine and the law for using jargon when ANY group of people who get together tend to develop their own in-group jargon.

Gene Weingarten: It is worse in medicine than anywhere else, because it is a DELIBERATE attempt to confuse. (Law is a close second.)

Case in point: "Epistaxis."

(Nosebleed.)

Gene Weingarten: THIS JUST IN --

Molly Weingarten: You are an idiot. A "deliberate" attempt to confuse? Most medical words sound long and scary when you first hear them, but they have a valid and useful existence. They are a way to say exactly what you mean in as few words as possible. I could ask you for the patient's age, breed, sex, and reproduction status (intact or not) or i could just ask you to tell me the "signalment." Also, just because there is a "real" word for something and a "common lingo" term for something does not make the correct term any less valid. When talking to an owner, I would ask if the dog has a "nosebleed." When recording something in a medical chart to be read by my colleagues, I would use the correct big girl term "epistaxis." To be perfectly honest, it more clearly tells me what is going on. I wouldn't say that a bleeding cut on the nose constitutes epistaxis. But an owner might see blood on the nose and assume it is a "nosebleed." Just like an owner might come in 'cause the dog has a runny or snotty nose. While I might use those words when talking to the owner, to my colleagues I would classify the discharge as serous, mucoid, mucopurulent, hemorrhagic, etc. beause just by adding that descriptive term, the list of differential diagnoses changes drastically. By the way, "differential diagnoses" is our deliberately confusing way to say "list of possible underlying causes that could be responsible for the varied signs I am being presented with."

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Washington, D.C.: All of you who are so concerned with abortion being "killing a child" - what about all those OTHER children who die because other people have the right to (selfishly or not) refuse to allow them to use their organs or other body parts?

Why is it OK to refuse a four-year-old a blood donation that could save her life, when it costs me ten minutes and a pinprick, but not OK to refuse nine months of full-body service, with labor and birth and the risks inherent in pregnancy and labor and all that? (Note that I would not refuse the four-year-old - I donate blood and platelets regularly - and have never had an abortion.)

You might say, "Because you caused the child's situation by carelessly having sex." But if I injure a child through, say, careless driving, I do not then become legally required to donate any body parts that child needs to recover, do I?

Gene Weingarten: In this country, you must declare youself an organ donor; otherwise, the presumption is that you did not wish it. In some other countries, it works the other way. Unless you specifically opted out, you are presumed to be an organ donor.

I like that better. Who gives a crap about what happens to one's organs after one dies? The presumptive position should be that they go to whoever needs em.

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People's Army, Va.: Gene, you are an idiot.

A nation of peasants with pop guns is what Iraq is right now and they are doing just fine holding off the most powerful fighting force on the planet, thwarting the will of our government to change their system of government.

An armed insurrection of significant size (not 30 cultists in a compound) in this, much, much larger country could keep our armed forces busy for years, or decades, especially given our diversity, which would make "rebels" hard to detect in the population.

This country was born of guerrilla warfare. The Framer's knew this and even 200 years later, it remains the ultimate check.

Gene Weingarten: Okay, a reasonable point.

I still maintain that the yours is a paranoiac view of the future.

Why isn't England afeared of tyranny? France? Italy? Why are most modern democracy happy to be non-gunhappy?

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Maryland: Hi,

How do you ask a guy tactfully whether he is married or not without sounding your interested in the guy??? Thanks.

Gene Weingarten: You have a male friend ask for you. It is impossible for a woman to do this on her own.

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Silver Spring, Md.: I get really annoyed when people say there's evidence that suggests there's no deity. You can no more disprove the existance of God than you can prove it. At best, you can prove that God does not work in a certain manner. You can prove that the species involved rather than bursting in their totality from Eden, but this is not proof that there is no deity. The idea that a human mind can rationalize and understand the actions of supreme being is pretty arrogant, especially when we're struggling to explain our own actions much of the time. After all, do we expect animals with less developed mental capabilities to understand all the actions of humans?

Gene Weingarten: Well, here's where we differ: I would argue the burden of proof is on the deity-believer. I would argue that there is no reason to believe in the supernatural, since nothing we know of is explained by the supernatural. And since the march of science has been a steady, relentless dismantling of presumptions of magic.

This is kind of obvious.

So, I would argue that it's not good enough to say, hey, just because the bible seems to say the world is 6,000 years old, and we now KNOW it is billions of years old, and creatures didn't just appear, as the bible says, but evolved from tiny organisms, God could have made that ALL happen.

Yes, sure. Sure, could have. But it is up to you to prove to me why that explanation makes more sense than assuming a continuation of science as we know it -- that in time ALL mysteries will be solved, and there will be no magical explanation for any of it.

This isn't rocket science. Your position is defensive. If tomorrow scientists produced DNA in a jar by replicating conditions on earth 2 billion years ago, and showed how that could have happened by pure chance using the elements around, you'd STILL say, "yeah, but who put the elements there in the first place.

Okay, fine. Big guy, white beard.

Hey, who put HIM there in the first place?

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