How to cheat on the SAT test

Want an extra edge in the SAT test? More and more students are demanding extra time by claiming some dubious disability. There are psychologists, such as this one, who will give a mail-order diagnosis of some sort of learning disability. The the College Board folks have to give you extra time, or they'd be discriminating against the handicapped. As many as 10% of the test-takers take advantage of these procedures.

ABC News reports:

March 30, 2006 ? - When Ali Hellberg, 19, was in prep school, she said several of her classmates obtained notes from psychologists diagnosing them with learning disabilities, even though they didn't have any learning problems.

They faked learning disabilities to get extra time to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, in the hopes of getting a higher score, she said.

"I had a friend who is a good math student but is no math brain, and she got extended time and got a perfect score on her math SAT," Hellberg said.

That friend now attends an Ivy League school. ...

Approximately 300,000 students will take the three-hour-and-forty-five-minute SAT this Saturday; about 30,000 taking the test this year will be given special accommodations, including extra time.

3 claim boob doc D-formed them

NY Post reports:

Three angry women claim an Upper East Side plastic-surgeon-to-the-stars turned them into freaks by stuffing massive, Pamela Anderson-sized breast implants into their chests when they wanted only modest boob jobs. ...

"I wanted to leave with a 34B - but the day after my surgery, I was huge," said Felice Rosenbaum, of Manhattan, who claims her B-cup breasts were inflated to a whopping double-D.

"I was horrified," she said. "I went into my closet and I couldn't button anything.

They did manage to button their shirts in order to pose for a newspaper picture.

Basic Instinct advice

Sharon Stone is not embarrassed to give sex advice to teenagers. She ought to be.

The day we won the Cold War

Richard Reeves wrote:

At the end of 1987, Reagan's seventh year in office, Gorbachev came to Washington. There was a state dinner on Dec. 8, which ended with Gorbachev and his wife standing and belting out the lively "Moscow Nights" as Van Cliburn played the piano. Two days later, the best of the conservative columnists, Reagan's best friend in the press, George Will, wrote, "Dec. 8, 1987, will be remembered as the day the Cold War was lost."

In fact, it was the day we won the Cold War.

Attacks on Barry Bonds

The attacks on Barry Bonds continue. Mike Lupica wrote:

Barry Bonds is Bud Selig's Pete Rose. Selig has to go after Bonds, officially make him a suspect in the eyes of his sport, before another season begins, the way the late A.Bartlett Giamatti went after Rose, who denied and denied and denied his gambling the way Bonds has denied his use of steroids.

Now Selig has made Bonds an official suspect, and the media circus continues. Lupica continues:

Here is Bonds on May 21, 2001, ... On the same day, the same newspaper asked him about the possibility of breaking Henry Aaron's record of 755 career home runs someday.

"Hell, no," Bonds said in the Chronicle. "I promise you from the bottom of my heart I won't be in the game that long."

You believe nothing he says now.

Why is it hard to believe that 5 years ago, Bonds didn't think that he would be in the game long enough to break Aaron's record? In that 5 years, Bonds has played far better than anyone expected, and yet it is still doubtful that he will break the record. Some people think that he will retire at the end of the year, and he is unlikely to break the record this year.

The comparison to Pete Rose is also instructive. Rose and Bonds are two of the greatest players in baseball history. Both were savagely attacked by sportswriters for unproven allegations. I think that both players should be celebrated.

Low-context cultures

I talked to someone who took a grad psychology course in communicating with strangers. Apparently the textbooks say that America and Europe are low-context cultures, where people mean what they say and say what they mean. Other parts of the world are high-context cultures, where people try to communicate things that may be contrary to the plain meaning of their words.

We have a word for when someone says one thing and means another. It is called "irony". But it occurs so rarely in American speech that most people think that the word "irony" means something else.

Americans and Europeans also have different modes of communication. Americans deal in facts, and emphasize empirical realities to justify what they say. Europeans have their minds made up about various ideas, and ignore any facts that might get in the way.

Part of the difference is explained by American individualism.

This communication theory is supposed to explain why American have difficulty understanding the speech and behavior of foreigners -- we don't have the context to make sense of it. I am not sure whether the theory predicts that foreigners can understand Americans or not. I would think that it would be much easier to understand a low-context statement because the words have their plain meaning. But apparently many people in other countries have a lot of trouble with facts and plain language statements, and they just automatically translate everything that they hear into relativized meanings which are subject to their own personal prejudices.

Don't burn the food

Freakonomics blog says:

In a sample of 13 African countries between 1999 and 2004, 52% of women surveyed say they think that wife beating is justified if she neglects the children; around 45% think it's justified if she goes out without telling the husband or argues with him; 36% if she refuses sex, and 30% if she burns the food.

And this is what the women think.

American women should count their blessings.

Recanted child abuse testimony

Nashville news:

Sentenced six years ago to 55 years in prison for rape and sexual abuse, Ben Kiper's conviction rested solely on the testimony of his accuser, his 10-year-old stepdaughter.

There was no physical evidence, no medical exam and no testimony from any corroborating witnesses at his trial in 2000 in Butler Circuit Court.

So when the girl, now 16, recanted her allegations last October -- swearing under oath that her stepmother forced her to falsely accuse Kiper during a custody dispute -- you might have expected the 35-year-old inmate to go free, or at least win a new trial.

"It is simply intolerable if a state allows an innocent person to remain incarcerated on the basis of lies," one of his attorneys wrote a month later.

But five months after the recantation, Kiper remains at the Green River Correctional Complex in Central City. And he may well stay there, because courts have traditionally viewed such testimony with great suspicion. Some have said no form of evidence is more unreliable.

The thinking is that witnesses can be too easily coerced into changing their testimony. Plus, when witnesses change their story, it inherently calls their credibility into question.

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News is on a big campaign to pass Jessica's Law to mandate very long prison sentences in cases like this. He argues that anyone who disagrees must not care about children. He should have a guest on his program to tell the stories of men serving long sentences based on the flimsiest evidence.

Fuzzy thinking in dope-heads

The journal Neurology reports:

Neuropsychological deficits in long-term frequent cannabis users

The authors examined neuropsychological functioning in 20 long-term (LT), 20 shorter term (ST) heavy frequent cannabis users, and 24 controls after abstinence for ?24 hours prior to testing. LT users performed significantly worse on verbal memory and psychomotor speed. LT and ST users had a higher proportion of deficits on verbal fluency, verbal memory, attention, and psychomotor speed. Specific cognitive domains appear to deteriorate with increasing years of heavy frequent cannabis use.

The sample is small, but this just confirms that marijuana stays in the system for over 24 hours.

Using 911 tapes

Did you know that you can call 911, make a criminal accusation against someone, and send the man to jail? He can be prosecuted based on those 911 tapes without you ever having to testify at his trial.

The 6th Amendment to the US Constitution says that a criminal defendant has a right to confront the witnesses against him at trial, and the US Supreme Court is currently considering letting defendants Davis and Hammon exercise that right.

A couple of lawyers in the domestic violence industry argue:

Domestic violence accounts for up to 34 percent of all reported violent crimes, but it is notoriously difficult to prosecute, ... In the 1980's and 1990's, the refusal of victims to cooperate in the prosecution of their batterers may have resulted in the dismissal of as many as 70 percent of all domestic violence cases.

In recent years, however, prosecutors, police officers and advocates for domestic violence victims have developed techniques, together known as "evidence-based prosecution," that focus on the use of reliable evidence, like 911 tapes, to build cases that do not depend on the cooperation of the victim.

In other words, the US Constitution's ban on the use of hearsay evidence
is limiting the ability of feminist do-gooders to bust up marriages.
Sometimes a couple has a fight and then reconciles, but prosecutors
want to jail the husband anyway.

To convict Davis, the court had to justify the use of 911 tapes:

The Washington Supreme Court first determined that the purpose of an emergency 911 call "is generally not to 'bear witness'" but rather to obtain "help to be rescued from peril." ... The court rejected the ar gument that McCottry reasonably knew that her call would later be used to prosecute petitioner, finding "no evidence that McCottry had such knowledge or that it influenced her decision to call 911."

I think that most people know that 911 tapes can be used on court. If not, you'd better learn now.

Decline of patriarchy and birthrates

Phillip Longman writes:

Patriarchy does not simply mean that men rule. Indeed, it is a particular value system that not only requires men to marry but to marry a woman of proper station. It competes with many other male visions of the good life, and for that reason alone is prone to come in cycles. Yet before it degenerates, it is a cultural regime that serves to keep birthrates high among the affluent, while also maximizing parents' investments in their children. No advanced civilization has yet learned how to endure without it.

Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system -- which involves far more than simple male domination -- maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn't were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but it is set to make a comeback.

More here.

Another article describes women who have given up dating, and just look for sperm donors. Some of these women have dated 100s of men looking for Mr. Right, but decided that none of them were good enough to marry. My hunch is that most of them are feminists with bad attitudes.

Paternity registries

NY Times:

Under Florida law, and that of other states, an unmarried father has no right to withhold consent for adoption unless he has registered with the state putative father registry before an adoption petition is filed. ...

Although one in every three American babies has unwed parents, birth fathers' rights remain an unsettled area, ...

While women have the right to get an abortion, or to have and raise a child, without informing the father, courts have increasingly found that when birth mothers choose adoption, fathers who have shown a desire for involvement have rights, too.

But to claim those rights most states require a father to put his name on a registry. While about 30 states now have registries, they vary widely.

I never heard about those registries, the article explains that they are ineffective.

Choice For Men

Cathy Young writes about the Roe v Wade for men lawsuit:

I do think that the case illustrates rather strongly the unfairness to men of the current legal regime. With legal abortion, a woman who gets pregnant can get out of this situation with minimal consequences (unless you believe that an abortion is a profound trauma, which it does not seem to be for most women). For a man in his mid-20s to be ordered to pay $500 a month for the next 18 years -- and presumably more if his income increases -- is no trivial burden. It means a radically altered lifestyle, including seriously reduced opportunities to have a real family if he wants one.

She makes a number of sensible points. There are also some contrary comments. We need a public debate on this issue.

Anorexia is not a choice

Medical news:

Researchers studying anorexia in twins conclude that more than half a person's risk for developing the sometimes fatal eating disorder is determined by genes.

Most experts already believe there is a strong genetic component to the disorder, which mostly affects girls and women. The new study "hammers home the fact that these are biologically based disorders," said Cynthia Bulik, lead author of the study, who is a psychiatrist at the School of Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill.

"We need to stop viewing them as a choice. ... The patients feel guilty, the providers tell them things like they should just eat, parents are blamed, the insurance companies won't fund treatment because they think it's a choice. It's held us back."

If that is true, then I guess that I can quit trying to teach good eating habits to my daughter, and go back to making snide remarks about fat kids.

Bonds deserves to break Aaron's record

The MSM attacks on Barry Bonds are unrelenting. Among the silly suggestions, some sportswriters are arguing that Bonds should retire before breaking Hank Aaron's home run record. They always praise Aaron for breaking Babe Ruth's record in the face of criticism.

Aaron never got 1% of the media criticism that Bonds has received. The press hates Bonds, and has always hated him. I hope Bonds breaks Aaron's record.

Bonds has been a much better baseball player than Aaron was. Barry Bonds won seven MVP awards and finished second in the voting twice; Hank Aaron only narrowly won one MVP.

George writes:

Bonds has admitted to getting the "cream" and the "clear"
from Balco. He got his records by cheating. Are you condoning that?

There was a criminal investigation of Balco. If Bonds committed some crime, then he can be charged and prosecuted. If he violated some MLB rule, then MLB can suspend him or apply whatever other punishment is applicable. None of that has happened.

While Bonds is suspected of using steroids, so are a lot of other hitters and pitchers. Somehow Bonds has done better than all those other suspected hitters. Maybe his records are all the more impressive if he got his home runs off of pitchers who were using steroids. If Bonds tests positive, then he should just get the same penalties as other players who test positive. Otherwise, he is innocent until proven guilty, and should get credit for what he has accomplished.

Genetic imprinting

Harvard evolutionary biologist David Haig has a theory about genomic imprinting:

Dr. Haig also made some predictions about the sorts of maternal defenses that have evolved. One of the most intriguing strategies he proposed was for mothers to shut down some of the genes in their own children.

This strategy takes advantage of the fact that most of the genes we carry come in pairs. We inherit one copy from our mother and one from our father. In most cases, these pairs of genes behave identically. But in the past 15 years, scientists have identified more than 70 pairs of genes in which the copy from one parent never makes a protein. In some cases, a parent's gene is silenced only in one organ.

Scientists do not fully understand this process, known as genomic imprinting. ...

In many mammal species, females tend to stay in the groups where they are born and males leave. As a result, females tend to share more genes with other members of their group than males. A conflict may emerge between maternal and paternal genes over how the members of the group should act. Maternal genes may favor behavior that benefits the group. Paternal genes may favor behavior that benefits the individual. ...

Dr. Haig has enjoyed watching his theory mature and inspire other scientists. But he has also had to cope with a fair amount of hate mail. It comes from across the political spectrum, from abortion opponents to feminists who accuse him of trying to force patriarchy into biology.

"People seem to think, 'He must have a political agenda,'" Dr. Haig said. "But I'm not talking at all about conscious behaviors. I'm just interested in these mechanisms and why they evolved."

Funny how feminists can hate the idea that a father's genes might influence his children.

IQ in different academic fields

Someone has compiled a ranking of the IQ of grad students in different departments at elite universities, based on GRE scores. Here is Motl's version:

• 130.0 Physics


• 129.0 Mathematics


• 128.5 Computer Science


• 128.0 Economics


• 127.5 Chemical engineering


• 127.0 Material science


• 126.0 Electrical engineering


• 125.5 Mechanical engineering


• 125.0 Philosophy


• 124.0 Chemistry


• 123.0 Earth sciences


• 122.0 Industrial engineering


• 122.0 Civil engineering


• 121.5 Biology


• 120.1 English/literature


• 120.0 Religion/theology


• 119.8 Political science


• 119.7 History


• 118.0 Art history


• 117.7 Anthropology/archeology


• 116.5 Architecture


• 116.0 Business


• 115.0 Sociology


• 114.0 Psychology


• 114.0 Medicine


• 112.0 Communication


• 109.0 Education


• 106.0 Public administration

The precise numbers shouldn't be taken too seriously, but they do indicate the relative intelligence of people going into different fields.

Slobodan Milosevic dies

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died mysteriously in prison, and people are saying that he killed 200k people in the last great evil slaughter of the 20th century.

I don't know whether he was guilty or not. But I do know that Pres. Clinton was unable to convince either Congress or the UN to goto war against him, and went to war anyway.

After NATO captured Milosevic, it put him on a show trial to justify the NATO invasion. After a four-year trial, the three judges were still unable to make a decision. If NATO really had convincing proof of his guilt, then it should have only taken a couple of weeks to present in court.

Fearmonger alert

NY Times reports:

Some leading climate scientists warn that we might be as few as 20 years away from a "tipping point," after which it will be too late to reverse catastrophic change.

There is a sign of hope. In 20 years, we shouldn't have to listen to these kooks anymore.

List of 20 Islamic inventions

UK paper:

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them.

It is an impressive list. The last invention was 300 years ago.

David Brooks not conservative

David Brooks cites some dubious observations from Annette Lareau like this:

Working-class child-rearing is different, Lareau writes. In these homes, there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children's world. Parents think that the cares of adulthood will come soon enough and that children should be left alone to organize their own playtime. When a girl asks her mother to help her build a dollhouse out of boxes, the mother says no, "casually and without guilt," because playtime is deemed to be inconsequential ? a child's sphere, not an adult's. ...

To help the worse-off parents, we should raise the earned-income tax credit to lessen their economic stress.

It is debatable whether moms should be helping their daughters build dollhouses, but some govt handouts are not likely to change the moms' attitudes towards dollhouses. This is just leftist fuzzy thinking that ill-defined social problems can somehow be solved by throwing govt money at them.

Fringe hate groups

A reader complains that if I am going to blame all Mohammedans for the actions of a radical few, then Christians should be blamed for not disavowing the Westboro Baptist Church.

The site appears to be some sort of joke. I couldn't make much sense of it. Whatever they are, I don't think that anyone will confuse them for mainstream Christians.

Arab-American on the Clash of Civilizations

Wafa Sultan Al-Jazeera TV:

It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete. ...

The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels. ...

We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

This blog says that a jew planted a bomb once.

Update: Now she is getting death threats from Mohammedans for telling the truth.

Teacher monopoly

John Stossel says that the teachers unions are mad at him for saying things like this:

American fourth graders do well on international tests, but by high school, Americans have fallen behind kids in most other countries.

The constant refrain that "public schools need more money" is nonsense. Many countries that spend significantly less on education do better than we do. School spending in America (adjusted for inflation) has more than tripled over the past 30 years, but national test scores are flat. The average per-pupil cost today is an astonishing $10,000 per student -- $200,000 per classroom! Think about how many teachers you could hire, and how much better you could do with that amount of money.

The teachers unions always want more money, but money does not address the problems. Less money would be better.

The feminist-judicial machine

Stephen Baskerville writes:

Phyllis Schlafly stands almost alone today among eminent public figures in warning against the feminist-judicial machine. She is calling for a re-evaluation of "no-fault" divorce, for the role and rights of fathers to be respected equally with those of mothers, and for shared parenting laws to discourage the use of children as weapons. "It's time to stop spending any more taxpayers' money to promote family dissolution and fatherless children."

Study Warns Women About Spring Break

AP Medical news:

CHICAGO - The American Medical Association is warning girls not to go wild during spring break. All but confirming what goes on in those "Girls Gone Wild" videos, 83 percent of college women and graduates surveyed by the AMA said spring break involves heavier-than-usual drinking, and 74 percent said the break results in increased sexual activity. ...

"I think a lot of students wouldn't really pay that much attention to it," Fitzgerald said. "They would just be like, `Duh, that's why we do it.'"

About 30 percent of women surveyed said spring break trips with sun and alcohol are an essential part of college life.

I think that the AMA should stick to medicine.

Barry Bonds is innocent

The Frisco sportswriters are trashing Barry Bonds again, with gossip and hearsay from an ex-girlfriend and others. For some reason, the local sportswriters have always hated Barry Bonds, and they have been saying similar things for many years.

Bonds may very well have told the truth to the grand jury. If there were really good evidence that he lied, then he could be prosecuted. He has never tested positive or found guilty of anything, AFAIK, and he should get the benefit of the doubt.

I also think that Lance Armstrong has been unfairly maligned in the press, over unfounded drug accusations.

Phil Angelides

Phil Angelides is running for California governor, and is advertising that he will "double the number of high school counselors so kids are prepared for college."

The teachers union endorses him, saying that he has a vision for school funding that is not limited by resources.

No, I won't be voting for him. We need a governor who can stick to a budget, not brag about spending money we don't have on school counselors we don't need.

Feminist ideals make wives morose

Meghan O'Rourke writes in Slate:

...the most interesting data may be that the women who strongly identify as progressive -- the 15 percent who agree most with feminist ideals -- have a harder time being happy than their peers, according to an analysis that has been provided exclusively to Slate. Feminist ideals, not domestic duties, seem to be what make wives morose. Progressive married women -- who should be enjoying some or all of the fruits that Freidan lobbied for -- are less happy, it would appear, than women who live as if Friedan never existed. ...

Across the board, progressive women are less likely to feel content, whether they are working or at home, and no matter how much they are making. ...

The study's authors, W. Bradford Wilcox and Steven Nock, speculate that fault-finding on the part of wives makes it hard for men to do the emotional work that stabilizes marriages. Meanwhile, traditionalist women -- a significant portion of whom are Christian -- expect less emotional work from their husbands, Wilcox and Nock speculate, which makes it easier for them to shake off frustrations, and less likely to nag.

O'Rourke's theories are dubious, but this really shouldn't be too hard to understand. Feminists are often unhappy about human nature, and frustrated that they cannot change it.

Unpopular movies win

Oscar news:

One only has to look at the box office reciepts for 2005. Brokeback Mountain is 26th, Crash is 49th, Munich is 63rd, Good Night and Good Luck is 90th, Capote is 97th. Capote provided the Best Actor, Syriana, which was 58th, provided the best supporting actor, Constant Gardener, which was 79th, provided the best supporting actress. Only the best actress award, of the major awards, came from a movie that was moderately well recieved by the public, Walk the Line, which was 16th.

Crash was a mediocre movie. I have not seen the others, and I do not plan to. The highest grossing movie of the year did not win any awards.

Book about pair of penguins

Chicago Tribune reports:

Savannah, Missouri -- A children's book about two male penguins that raise a baby penguin has been moved to the non-fiction section of two library branches after two parents complained it had homosexual undertones.

The illustrated book, "And Tango Makes Three," is based on a true story of two male penguins, named Roy and Silo, who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City's Central Park Zoo in the late 1990s.

Penguins exhibit instinctual pair-bonding, but that is a lot different from what is commonly called human homosexuality. There were no available females when Roy bonded with Silo. Roy later mated with a female.

The feminist anti-kid crusade

Carey Roberts writes:

Call it one of those simple yet profound truths: only a father can help a boy become a man. And only a daddie can teach a girl about healthy male-female relationships.

Both dads and moms are unique and special. Maybe that's why dads love to mix it up with rough-and-tumble play. Perhaps it's why fathers teach kids a thing or two about risk-taking. And no doubt it has something to do with that tough love thing. ...

Not only is joint custody firmly rooted in the notion of gender equality, it's also ideal for kids. As Dr. Joan Kelly, former president of the Academy of Family Mediators concluded, shared parenting "is a desirable outcome which clearly is in the best interests of children and families." By 1991, over 40 states had shared parenting laws in place.

But the M.O.M.s -- Mothers Opposed to Men -- were not going to remain silent.

No Two Alike: Human Nature

William Saletan writes:

Judith Rich Harris calls "No Two Alike" a "scientific detective story." The mystery is why people -- even identical twins who grow up in the same home with the same genes -- end up with different personalities. ...

Eight years ago, Harris's book "The Nurture Assumption" set academic psychology on fire by attacking the notion that parenting styles shape children. ...

Harris shreds popular theories of personality formation. Does home environment -- parenting style, marital harmony, the use or rejection of day care -- shape a child's personality, making her more agreeable, less aggressive or more extroverted? Nope. Research shows that twins don't turn out more alike if they're raised together than if they're raised apart. Nor do adoptive siblings. And when you compare apples to apples -- making sure that each parent-child unit in a study is as genetically related as any other -- being raised in one home rather than another, on average, makes no difference.

This is one of those subjects where people cling to their beliefs, regardless of the evidence.

Smart people in science

Philip Greenspun writes:

Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs in the sciences. Yet Summers, an economist, left one out: Adjusted for IQ and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States.

Most people go to work primarily in order to earn a paycheck. Workers prefer a higher salary to a lower salary. Jobs in science pay far less than jobs in the professions and business held by women of similar ability. A lot of men are irrational, romantic, stubborn, and unwilling to admit that they've made a big mistake. With Occam's Razor, we should not need to bring in the FBI to solve the mystery of why there are more men than women who have chosen to stick with the choice that they made at age 18 to be a scientist or mathematician.

Shared parenting fan

A father writes:

With regard to the shuttling kids argument ... anyone who has ever dealt the the 5-8pm visitation, realizes that THIS setup causes a great deal of shuttling. Not to mention, it gives the over all feel of the evening a "visitation" feel, rather than a "home" feel.

It is so amazing to me that we even need to discuss Shared Parenting. It should be a given!

If you want to follow a custody case, just to see how alive and well discrimination is in our family courts, visit my site www.5050parents.com.

He's right.

Fan mail

Gabe writes:

Dude, I have no idea who you are, but I can't believe how much I agree with, like, every single post on your blog!

Truly amazing.

I feel like I need to pay my bill now or something.

Props to you. Spectacular blog.

Hmmm. I thought that I was writing a provocative blog. No one could agree with me that much.

Veteran benefits

Sally Satel writes:

According to a report from its inspector general, the Department of Veterans Affairs is now paying compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder to nearly twice as many veterans as it did just six years ago, at an annual cost of $4.3 billion. What's more surprising is that the flood of recent applicants does not, for the most part, consist of young soldiers just returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather they are Vietnam veterans in their 50's and 60's who claim to be psychologically crippled now by their service of decades ago.

There are a lot of myths about Vietnam vets. Very few of them are psychologically crippled, if any.