The spectacular lie...

...that millions of Americans die every year from second-hand smoke.

Wouldn't it be nice if Americans had a high-pressure anti- campaign like the one against smoking! Think how many people we could pressure out of smoking marijuana, or snorting coke, or whatever the current pop fad drug is. Or alcohol; why is there no high-pressure campaign against boozing? or drunk driving?

What if we had a high-pressure campaign FOR good behaviors? Like, getting married before the baby is born. Keeping your promises. Dealing honestly with others.

What if every kid in every elementary school had been programmed to turn on bullies and pressure them against their bullying? What if every child pressured every other child to behave in class, instead of how they treat them now, which is to support them and applaud them for disrupting the lesson?

What if we could high-pressure teachers into learning how to teach? Into dumping the garbage they had learnt in Teacher's College and using their good sense to see teaching not through Piaget and Dewey's eyes but through Marva Collins's eyes?

Liberals are children

"Liberals are children; they don't want to control themselves or regulate their own behavior."

This is what I have observed. This is one reason I left the left wing. And one reason I don't argue with them any more.

They argue like children. They start on the assumption that any attack against their opponent will defeat his position and win the argument for them. That's why you hear all the name-calling, but you'll also hear any line they like that is meant to gut their opponent's right to speak with them. "You work for big oil," "your mother wears army shoes" and "you're a racist" are the first attacks to come out. "Your premises are faulty because..." is rarely if ever heard.

"If you want to be vice president, you don't wink into the camera."

Isn't it ironic that the party who loathe Sarah Palin for her putative "stupidity" don't have the slightest problem with Al Gore, one of the biggest fools ever to hit the political scene?

Shaving in the car

Prager tells us he shaves in the car, because it's so convenient.

Isn't this a rather bad distraction? Maybe he only shaves on the freeway but I don't think that makes it okay. I assume he's smart enough not to look in the rear view mirror to see what's going on. Nonetheless, it's a distraction. The brain focuses on the neck, even while the eyes are supposedly focused on the road. But the eyes are not fully doing their job.

Prager needs to see that study that tracked people's eye movements while driving while distracted. He doesn't understand that the eye movements need to roam across the visual screen, picking up children who are playing beside the street, catching the occasional car approaching the intersection from the side, watching for that green light to go yellow before we get to that intersection, watching for that car just ahead and to the left which might be beginning to change lanes, and so on. The brain that is occupied with any activity in the car, such as smoking and shaving, is less alert to these other things.

Take the two minutes to shave before you leave the house, Prager.

Thank you.

Electric shaver

Prager: "At 13,000 rotations... Electric razors ... I often shave on the air

I find it hard to believe that a man who gets dresssed in a suit and puts on a tie for his radio show actually stoops to shaving in the studio, even if the mic is off. That is the height of being casual. Or maybe that's why I imagine you more often in a nice cardigan sweater than in a suit jacket.

The best of the best in relationships

Much as a man wants to be admired, she does indeed need something to admire.

But yes, as Prager stumbled upon, he has to present something admirable to her

He works to be admirable, works to give her the best man he can give her.

"This is the best of all possible situations; he works to be admirable, and she admires."

Some of us should be so lucky.

For the record, I have always striven to appreciate my guys. In all my relationships, I have given so much they held my gifts in contempt. I asked nothing in return. This does not mean I thought I deserved nothing in return, but it means that I demanded nothing, and so I got nothing but contempt and ill treatment. Why do people act that way?

What a man wants first and foremost from his relationship is to be held in high esteem.

I do believe this is as true as the law of gravity.

My marriage seemed to go bad when he started turning his back on me every night when I tried to come on to him. I was stroking and petting and admiring him both verbally as well as physically, and he'd roll away from me and turn his back on me. No, he was not inviting me to rub his back; as a matter of fact, he had said he actively "unwanted" any back rubs.

So I gave up. "I give up," I remember saying to myself. "I'm hurt by all these rejections; if he wants sex, he can come to me."

He only remembers that I didn't come on to him.

Go figure.