TwitterX, The Ugly Bird

Happy Day Two of What Is Shaping Up to Be the Scariest New Year Year Since 1942. I cite this inspired comic by Scott Stantis, a guy whose work I do not usually admire.

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In the last few months there has been a robust debate over whether Elon Musk has dragged TwitterX to the right, facedown by the ankles, as Twitterers drag their fingernails fruitlessly seeking traction, leaving little parallel lines in the dirt. I have some evidence that may interest you. It’s personal, possibly based on an odd status I have on TwitterX.

A few months ago Twitter ceased to recognize my ordinary account, not because they thought I had done anything “wrong,” but because of some snafu involving deleted cookies. It was a minor matter which I could not resolve despite weeks of effort, because Musk had essentially fired the entire customer service staff. So my @geneweingarten account remains online but unaccessable by me, and will stay so. However, I do have a feeble identity of sorts on Twitter because I had once joined a loose consortium of journalist with a single Twitter ID. When I call up X these days, I get a feed for that address, essentially what MuskX chooses to show me unbidden, for free. I am assuming it is a feed sent out, unasked for, to millions of people. It represents, I believe, a sample the current, droning Background Noise of TwitterX.

Here is, verbatim, a summary of the top of the feed — whatever it is — on New Year’s Eve. I am not omitting any liberal / moderate tweets.

1. Birthday wishes to Donald Trump Jr. (“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KID — SO PROUD OF YOU!” including replies by hundreds of people echoing their congratulations, several of whom have Twitter IDs containing the expressions “Trump won,” or “Died Suddenly,” which is a subject line for tweets that curate every death of a young person, suggesting without proof that the cause was the Covid vaccine.

2. A long video of Donald Trump speaking at his inaugural, with cutaways to still photos showing Joe Biden looking confused, Nancy Pelosi looking evil and Chuck Schumer wearing a kente cloth in support of George Floyd protests. The overarching message is that Democrats destroyed the country, stole it from the good people, and that Trump is coming to kick ass and take names.

3. A photo of Bill Clinton posing with a pretty twenty-ish woman in a ski cap. The poster demands to know who the girl is (QAnon claims the photo was taken on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. It wasn’t. Snopes has checked it out. No mystery and no scandal.)

4. An antivaxx Covid poster saying “NO ONE. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF US REGRETS NOT TAKING IT,” followed by a drawing of a hypodermic syringe, and the appended note: “Can’t say the same for those that DID take the jab.”

5. Two genuine New Years greetings from Joe Biden, on his POTUS account! Yay! He proudly notes “One year of cranes going up and shovels hitting the ground in American communities.” The first reply is from a reader who has reproduced a sign labeled “Joe Biden’s Control Panel,” and it shows two toggle switches. The first reads “Dictator Mode” and is switched to the on position. The second switch is labeled “Constitution,” and it is switched to the off position. The very next reply is from a Biden parody account, saying Biden’s New Year’s resolution is: “I will only shit myself three times a day.”

6. A video of five women labeled: “Resurfaced footage shows secretaries of states (who all happen to look the exact same) conspiring together about future elections. Middle-aged, liberal white women are the biggest threat to democracy in America.” (They look nothing alike, except for being white human females.) To this tweet, Scott Adams, Dilbert’s fulminating right-wing cartoonist, replies: “I think we found the problem, lol.” As the video makes clear, the women were “conspiring” only in the sense they were promising to fight efforts by state governments to disenfranchise vulnerable voters.

7. An ad by the right-wing Epoch Times for “The Real Story of January 6,” a movie contending it was a day in which the Deep State staged a riot to cover up a stolen election. “Everyone needs to see” the film, The Epoch Times says. “The Information Can SAVE America.”

8. A caricature of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that makes her look like a bucktoothed donkey, with this label: “AOC had Twitter remove this photo. Keep it alive. She hates it.” One of the first replies is a reproduction of the cartoon, and AOC’s head is stuck onto a body of a horsefly. The caption reads that she is in favor of giving away “shit for free.”

9. “BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton say they will leave the United States if Donald Trump becomes President in 2024. What's your reaction?” (Neither woman has said anything of the sort.)

10. A woman is talking, saying The United States under Biden has become a country she no longer recognizes: “Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the U.S. must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gangbangers who jump the southern fence are welcome. Five billion dollars for border security is too expensive, but one point five trillion for free healthcare is not.” Criminals are caught and released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it’s a violation of their rights….”

11. A Wanted poster featuring Trump’s famous glower portrait. Headline: “WANTED: To save America.”

12. “Pfizer clinical trials proved long before the Covid vaccine campaign rollout that the Pfizer shots were extremely dangerous and deadly. That’s why they tried to hide the data from you for 75 years. These people lie without conscience, and when we win, they will be held accountable.” (Uh, 75 years of Covid?)

13. A reader whose Twitter ID has four American flags posts a photo showing Democrat Adam Schiff sitting next to Jeffrey Epstein on a couch, with a dildo on a table beside them. The reader says: “Schiff must HATE this photo.” (Snopes investigated. It is a clumsy photoshop job.)

14 .Video of a man testifying at a public hearing on Covid: “I’m going to read off the staff of who is in charge of the CDC. The director of the CDC was Rochelle Walensky, dual citizenship with Israel. She’s a Jew. Deputy director of the CDC, Anne Schuchat, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew. CDC chief of Staff, Sherri Berger, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew. CDC chief medical officer, Mitchell Wolf, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew. CDC director of the Washington office, Jeff Reczek, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew. Covid Czar Jeff Zientz, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew. Covid senior advisor Andy Slavitt, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew. Assistant to Health Secretary of Human Resources for our country, Rachel Levine, transgender, dual citizenship with Israel, Jew ….” The person who posted it commented: “And that’s just the beginning.” When the moderators ask him to stop, someone in the audience yells that he’s done nothing wrong — pointing out that noting someone is Jewish is not a slur.

And so forth.

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Now, today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll.

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Please answer this one only if you are a current user of TwitterX:

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You probably saw that Tommy Smothers, the older of the Smothers Brothers, died last week. For people of my generation, the Smothers Brothers were a vital element in our political radicalization. Their fuck-the-censors, fuck-the-advertisers, fuck-the-powers-that-be attitude got them cancelled, but also helped shaped the interior monologues of so many of us lefties, including me. Tommy’s comedic role was to be an insecure buffoon, so what was lost was his versatility. He was a great mimic and a great physical comic, and I think it never became so evident as the day he parodied Johnny Carson in front of Johnny Carson. Carson was taken aback by the performance — genuinely shocked, I think. It seemed to both delight and bother him.

Here it is.

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Okay, we have arrived at the vaunted real-time Questions and Observations part of The Gene Pool. This week many of the Q’s and O’s are in response to my calls this Weekend for personal examples of your paying a “Stupid Tax,” a tax on your ignorance/laziness/carelessness — and also on the presence or absence of innate differences between men and women, which was the poll. I was a little surprised by the results of that poll, and kind of delighted — considering our world of political correctness. Eighty-five percent of you conceded such differences exist.

Send questions / observations here, in real time, to this elegant orange button:

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Q: Stupid Tax?  I pay it constantly, at least bimonthly, I estimate, and always the same way.  The last was early last week. There was a woman -- nicely dressed, with a baby, who assured me she was not a perennial panhandler, that she had never had to do this before, and was embarrassed as all heck to be in this position.  She spoke well.  Her hadbag had been stolen, she said, and she had no money, no credit cars, no bank card, no phone, and just needed train fare to get back to her home in New Jersey, (I live in Maryland) where her husband could pick her up.  I asked her what she needed, and she said, very winningly precise, $32.25, and then said "It's actually $32.60, but (fishing from her pocket) I have a quarter and a dime."   I gave her $35, told her to buy the baby an ice cream, and she asked for an address to send a repayment.  I told her not to worry about it.  She gave me a little demure hug. 

I felt real good.   

You know where this is going.   Two days later, next neighborhood over.  Same woman, same kid, same sob story.  

Did I break in and warn the sucker-to-be?   No, and I can't tell you why not.  It's not in me.  

And yes, I am the perennial sucker. 

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A: I have an antidote to your anecdote.  A sweet, uplifting one.   Two days ago, I picked up an ancient copy of an old Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine – it was from November 1961 – and read a delightful short story by someone named Robert Cenedella.  It was beautifully written.  

My summary:  A newbie art dealer is driving to a house way out in the country, in answer to a newspaper ad from someone who had a painting by Balzarini he wanted to sell for $75.  The dealer disrespected Balzarini’s work – his art was well crafted but the subject matter was banal, seascapes and landscapes that appealed to people with money but unsophisticated tastes.  Still, the dealer felt he could flip the painting quickly and make a profit of several hundred dollars.  He is worried that other dealers and gallery owners might beat him to the punch, so he left very early. 

When he arrived at the house, a teenage boy answered the door.  When he explained why he was there, the boy looked upset.  “Oh, well, the Balzarini,” he said.  He seemed about to say something else, but held his tongue. He seemed uncomfortable. 

From the back room came an old man’s voice.   Let the man in.

The boy escorted the dealer to a back room in which sat an old man who, the man realized, was blind. 

This is my grandpa, the boy said.   The old man waved the boy out of the room, so they could transact  business. The boy walked to the door, opened it, and then closed it again, remaining in the room.   He turned to the dealer, and put a finger to his lips: Shhh.  The boy stayed stock still . 

The old man continued. He’s a fine lad, he said.   I used to take care of him, and now – he pointed to his eyes – he takes care of me.  The last years have been hard for me.  I totally ran out of money last month.  Do you know what that boy did?  He said not to worry about it, and left the house for three days, and came back with $200!   Gave it to me!.  He told me he worked for it in New York City, “but for all I know he might have stolen it. I only know that what he did, he did for love of me. Do you want to see the Balzarini?” 

The dealer, whose name was Wakefield, said yes.   And the old man escorted him into the next room, with with the kid tiptoeing behind.  On the wall it was a black frame, with glass but no art behind the glass.  The kid puts his finger to his  mouth again 

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” the old man said. 

Wakefield hesitated just a second.

 

 “Yes, beautiful,” he said..  He said he couldn’t pay $75, but would pay $50.  The old man accepted the deal.  The boy was nearly crying in gratitude.  

And Wakefield walked away, feeling about as good as any moment in his life. 

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The story isn’t over.  Here is the final paragraph:  

“When Miles Wakefield had gone with the empty frame, and boy and his grandfather returned to the room where the frame had hung.  The boy went to a chest, opened a wide drawer, took from it another empty frame, and hung it where the first had been.  Then the old man and the boy sat and waited for the next art dealer to arrive.”  

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 (Yes, I misled you when I implied this was an uplifting story.  I needed you ripe for the punch.) 

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And there’s one more thing.  I decided to try to find Robert Cenedella.  If he was still alive, I wanted to talk to him.  And I found a Robert Cenedella in New York City.  He is a famous artist in Soho. (That seemed in keeping with the subject of the story.) Robert, the artist, is 83.   But he didn’t write the story.  His father did.

It turns out his father was a famous writer in NYC in the 1940s.  Mostly wrote scripts for radio.  Helen Hayes only used his scripts.  Then, in 1952 or 1953 he was called before the House Un-american Activities Committee and was asked if he was now, or had ever been, a Communist. He refused to answer the question on principle (he wasn’t ever a Communist, his son says) and was blacklisted.  The family crawled into poverty.  Afterwards the elder Robert Cenedella could not get a steady gig.  It turns out Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine was one of the few publications that would pay for his work. 

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Listen, folks.  I have said this all my adult life: There is a great story in everything and everyone. 

Mr. Cenedella had known of this particular story, but never found a copy.  I will mail him mine.

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Good.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this right now, on an email: Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “TwitterX, The Ugly Bird…”) for the full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

You can also comment below, if you wish.

Q: My mother did the books.  My father cleaned the house.  My mother fixed stuff around the house.   My mother was the disciplinarian.  My father couldn’t do it.  My mother was good at math.  My father didn’t understand fractions. My father dressed well.  My mother  wore clothes so robotically they seemed like uniforms. My father hugged.  My mother didn’t.   I definitely saw differences in the sexes, but I think they got it … wrong. 

A: This reminds me of the ancient joke: “If your nose runs, and your feet smell, you’re built upside down.”

Q:  The woman you wrote about on the weekend and who flushed $2,000 down the toilet through unwise political donations… Rachel, right? 

A: Of course.  Who else?  She’s also the person who TWICE accidentally locked her keys in her car, with the lights on and the car running, and didn’t return for hours.  

Q: On the subject of excuses.  While in high school I called my older sister at her job. She has always been creative with the truth. I was informed she was not at work as his brother had cut off both his hands with a chain saw. Being her only brother, this alarmed me.

Then I began contemplating how I would have cut off the second hand with the chain saw.

A: You should ask your sister how you did it.  She’ll have an explanation, and stick by it.  .  

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Q: Any fool who discards food because it is “expired,” as in past the “best by” or “use by” dates which have been shown to be meaningless – that person pays a stupid tax. You throw perfectly good food, unused, away, just to buy the same thing with a newer, meaningless use by date, which you will undoubtedly keep in the pantry, unused, until the date passes you by.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Q: Kinda cynical!  I’m not sure they are meaningless – I’ll usually add a few weeks to the date before I chuck it, but I will keep the date in mind.  Two things that amuse me is when the sell-by date is years from now, and when the date given is absurdly precise, as though these foods are decaying radioactively, and there is a half-life predictable to the day, hour and minute.   I am right now holding a can of chunk chicken breast, Kirkland brand, that says “Best if used by 6/08/2026.”

Q: I have recently given up alcohol. I like drinking beer for its happy hour ambiance, so I searched out a substitute. Be careful! Why is there alcohol in Non-alcoholic beer? You have to search for 0.0 beer as there is 0.05 alcohol in non-alcoholic beer. Not very many choices and Amazon is 3x more expensive.

A: It is actually .5 percent in “nonalcoholic” beer.  But that is negligible, one-tenth of the alcohol that is in most beers.  You would have to drink (literally, mathematically) a gallon of it to get the gentle buzz of a single glass of Heineken.  According to Wikipedia, alcohol content that’s above 0.5% could be lurking in your favorite fruit juice: “For example, you could be getting as much as 0.86% alcohol by volume  in grape juice or 0.73% ABV in orange juice. Certain types of bread or rolls can have an even higher percentage.”

For several years, because of a liver disease, I had to cut out alcohol totall.  My gastroenterologist, Louis Yves Korman (I used to annoy him by using his middle name whenever I wrote about him)  told me that Clausthaler (0.5)  was fine.   It wasn’t fine, though.  It was horrible.  But not dangerous to someone with a suspect liver.

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Q: In the early Seventies, I was a fellow so naive, so callow, so silly that I belonged in a playpen. Instead, I found myself on a Metroliner to Manhattan for my first trip to New York . I had been dispatched to The Big Apple, by my firm, to temporarily shore up the lower staffing brigades of our New York office. 

I had been instructed to grab a cab at Penn Station and head uptown to the  glitzy Park Avenue address of our firm. I hopped off the train and managed to find my way to the throng in front of Madison Square Garden  where everyone was lusting for a cab. I had no idea what to do. I waved demurely at every cab , all already under hire, as the throng constantly refreshed itself with new train arrivals. I was hopeless.

Finally, a snappy fellow in a Yankees cap noticed my dilemma and offered to walk up 8th Avenue a bit and escort a cab back down to where I was standing.  For $5.

Desperate at this point, already late, I dug out a five dollar bill, not an insignificant amount in 1973, and handed it to the guy. The fucker immediately  turned into goddamn Usain Bolt and bolted his thieving ass down 34th Street. 

I walked to our office. I did not add the $5 to my expense account. From then on, whenever I’d go to New York, I’d  go native and turn into an elbow throwing, old-lady shoving, cab grabber. All thanks to my $5 tutorial.

A:  YOU PAID IN ADVANCE?? Good god. 

My friend Philip Brooker was once on the street in New York City when a guy approached him holding a $20 bill, and said, “I bet you 20 bucks I can tell you where you got them shoes.  Philip nodded okay, and the guy asked him to hold out HIS $20.  He did.  Philip is a Brit and got the shoes in Cambridge or something.  This was a good bet.  Then the guy said, “You got them on your feet,” plucked his bill from his hands, and split.” Stupid tax.  

Q: Liz Truss cost the UK £70bn in her 47 day omnishambles, which we are now paying for in a literal stupid tax.

A: That number has been universally debunked as exponentially too high, but I get your point.  

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Q: One year my wife was psyched to make the most of Black Friday.  She had scoped out the ads, the deals, and had figured out a driving path to let her hit each store optimally.  All went according to plan and she was driving home triumphantly when she blew through a red light camera and erased all her gains.

A:  Nice, simple, idiot tax.  I would have compounded it by not paying the fee until it had doubled.

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Q:  Men vs . women. I couldn't answer the poll as you included too many qualities. Some I agree that there is a difference but not all. I believe, in general, that while there are differences in emotional characteristics between the two, there are not in intellectual abilities.

A:  You could have answered the poll. It specified that those qualities were “and/or.”   If you found one of them true, that’s all you needed. 

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Q: Many years ago, I had an underpayment on my Maryland state income tax. I found this out when I received a form letter—seven months later—informing me of the underpayment. And of the accumulated interest, which far exceeded the underpayment itself. After I calmed down, I wrote the following letter to the Maryland state comptroller’s office. I will give them credit, however; they refunded the interest.

As required by law I am enclosing a check for the extortionate interest due of $20.74 on an alleged underpayment of $1.20--yes that's right, one dollar and twenty cents.  Was I trying to rip off the State of Maryland?  Was this appalling underpayment due to a mere math error??  No--it was due to what the federal government sanctions but is apparently illegal in the "Free" State--rounding down to the nearest dollar for amounts under 50 cents.

Is the State of Maryland so hard up for revenue that it is not satisfied with checking taxpayers' returns to the nearest dollar, but must squeeze literally every last penny it can out of our hide?  And not only this, it waits seven months to notify the miscreant so as to accrue the maximum possible interest?

Disgustedly yours,

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A:  A dollar twenty? Wow.  That’s narsty.–

Q: My stupid tax, which I end up paying repeatedly, because although I’m collecting Medicare, I still haven’t gotten old enough to learn.

Clothing on a sale rack that is marked “final sale, no returns.” I will choose an item, examine it thoroughly, fall in love with it, and decide that it will almost certainly fit because I do not feel like trying it on. Of course, I get it home, and find out that it was designed for someone taller, or thinner, or with smaller boobs. I now have a bag in my closet where those items go to rest before their trip to the thrift store.

A:  I knew a woman who was tiny: A size zero.  Clothing was not easy to find.  She once bumbled into a consignment store, and it had elegant stuff, almost unused, in her size, at quite modest prices, considering the quality. Ann Taylor, etc.  The manager advised her to come in  on the first of every month (or the last, I forget) and predicted there would always be an almost-new item or two that would fit.  She obeyed, and it had been good advice.   Eventually she learned that it was all from one consigner:  a very wealthy, very old, very elegant, very eccentric woman who would wear an outfit once or twice and then tire of it.   My lady friend filled her closet over time with this one person’s clothing.  Never met her.  The old lady doesn’t qualify for a stupid tax, she got a return on her investment, and didn’t need the money.

Q:   Regarding the stupid tax:

Was at a casino at Lake Tahoe (illegally since I was only 20).  They had this monstrous, complex, silver dollar slot machine.  This guy asked one of the coin girls (they roamed around exchanging bills for coins so people could play the slots) how it worked.  She showed him by putting in a silver dollar from her tray and "boom" won $200.  She said keep it and play.  We watched him then proceed to lose not only the $200 but about $500 of his own money.

They even had a section of low slot machines so old people in wheel chairs could gamble away their social security money (at least that's what it looked like to me).

A: I’ve told this story before.   Back in 1978, I was covering the new Michigan Lottery for the Detroit Free Press.  I went to the busiest lottery agent in Detroit – it was a liquor store, and was interviewing the people waiting in a long line for their tickets.  One guy was a plumber, had some money, and was betting $50 dollars of it.  He said he did it every week.   

This was early.  There was no powerball, and no zillion dollar payoffs, by my memory is that you COULD win around $200,000.   This guy leaned in close to me and confident he had a Plan.  Didn’t want others to hear of his genius. He never checked the winning numbers right away.  Didn’t want to know because if he won, he might be tempted to take the winnings.  Not for him.  $200,000 wasn’t enough to really change his life. He had worked it out that if he ever won a really big pot, the owner of the store wouldn’t tell him – he gave the owner his numbers every week – but that he bet it all on the same set of numbers for him the following week. 

STUUUUUPID tax.

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Q: “At what age, and under what circumstances, did you first discover your likely sexual orientation?" I'm into the second half of my 30s and only in the past few years have I begun to come to terms with the fact I'm probably asexual; maybe demisexual, but I've never gotten that far. I've experienced arousal from a young age and remember masturbation as early as middle school, but I have never seen a person and felt "Wow, I want to put my penis inside that." I've never really had a "crush" on anyone that I can remember; I may have said I did to try and fit in but I don't think I ever meant it. I graduated high school a virgin, and like to believe that puts me in the majority and would appreciate it if you did not disabuse me of that delusion. By the time I graduated college without ever even dating I began to suspect I was in a shrinking minority. The appeal of strip clubs is a mystery to me. I don't understand what makes certain actresses for example "sexy". Popular media is more and more depressing to me because I personally find so much of it completely unrelatable. It sucks. I should probably see a professional but you're cheaper.

A: I am! I am an incompetent therapist, but cheap. What I’m not hearing in your question is that you are unhappy. If you’re not, your doing great. I guess the question I would ask is whether you think you could love someone, if having sex was not an issue?

Q: My wife works with the king of the malapropisms. At one meeting, he warned against “letting the camel’s toe get under the tent.” When describing a situation that kept repeating itself day after day, he said, “It’s like Greyhound Day.” He always pledges to keep his colleagues “appraised.” And he confuses the phrases “the big C” and “the C word.” Once, when he was telling fellow executives about a female colleague’s cancer diagnosis, he simply said, “The C word.” My wife added, “And she has cancer, too.”

A:  That’s last one’s good.  More from Better Blooper, whose malapropisms are from last week:  

He's a blue neck worker. / I liked it better the way it wasn't. / I wouldn't touch that with a hot potato. / He works like a Trojan horse. / They live from hand to foot. /  I feel like Samson fighting Goliath. /  He's a big cheese in a little pond. /  It was so dark you couldn't see your face in front of you. / You’re the kink in the ointment. 

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Q: My answer to the poll question is: given all the caveats, probably -- I'm not an expert in any of the relevant fields of research -- but I'd like to start by hoping we can agree on this: whatever characteristic you choose to talk about -- upper body strength, emotional intelligence, Tetris skills, what have you -- you can always find a woman who is above the average for men and a man who is above the average for women. Whatever you learn about aggregates, you can never draw a certain conclusion about an individual. If we can agree on that premise, please read on.

Given that premise: in what circumstance is the world made a better place by choosing this as a topic of conversation? Please (whoever's back is already up) look at the question I'm asking. I'm not asking "Why should you have a right to talk about this?" Everyone has a right to talk about anything, fine. But we all have a choice in what we talk about and give our attention and energy to.

I only know of two reasons people like to talk about this. The first is because someone (like me or even more strident) tells them they shouldn't, and they hate that. This is a natural reaction, and if there was no unrelated consequence to thumbing ones nose at the shushers, fine, thumb away. But the other reason people talk about sex differences is because they want to take opportunities or rights away from groups of people -- usually women -- justifying either informal or formal discrimination against a particular group for a particular role.

Can anyone think of a third reason? And if not, isn't the consequence that people of good will should of their own accord -- not because someone shushed them -- want to avoid the topic?

A:  Well, the real reason I did it had nothing to do with men and women, really.  I wanted to gauge how much politically correct mannered thinking would intrude.  It is supposedly unacceptable to acknowledge ANY differences between groups of people.  Fortunately you all were not at all bashful about saying so. 

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Q: My answer to the poll question on men and women is: given all the caveats, probably -- I'm not an expert in any of the relevant fields of research -- but I'd like to start by hoping we can agree on this: whatever characteristic you choose to talk about -- upper body strength, emotional intelligence, Tetris skills, what have you -- you can always find a woman who is above the average for men and a man who is above the average for women. Whatever you learn about aggregates, you can never draw a certain conclusion about an individual. If we can agree on that premise, please read on.

Given that premise: in what circumstance is the world made a better place by choosing this as a topic of conversation? Please (whoever's back is already up) look at the question I'm asking. I'm not asking "Why should you have a right to talk about this?" Everyone has a right to talk about anything, fine. But we all have a choice in what we talk about and give our attention and energy to.

I only know of two reasons people like to talk about this. The first is because someone (like me or even more strident) tells them they shouldn't, and they hate that. This is a natural reaction, and if there was no unrelated consequence to thumbing ones nose at the shushers, fine, thumb away. But the other reason people talk about sex differences is because they want to take opportunities or rights away from groups of people -- usually women -- justifying either informal or formal discrimination against a particular group for a particular role.

Can anyone think of a third reason? And if not, isn't the consequence that people of good will should of their own accord -- not because someone shushed them -- want to avoid the topic?

A:  Well, the real reason I did it had nothing to do with men and women, really.  I wanted to gauge how much politically correct mannered thinking would intrude.  It is supposedly unacceptable to acknowledge ANY differences between groups of people.  Fortunately you all were not at all bashful about saying so. 

Q: In Sunday’s Barney & Clyde, you actually wrote …. “Alright”?????

A: I’ll have you know it is in the Oxford English Dictionary.

It is, but, sigh. It was an error. Our cartoonist, David Clark, is a brilliant man and an extraordinary cartoonist. But words don’t appeal to him. He sees them as annoying impediments he is required to deal with. So sometimes his spelling can be inventive. It is my job to catch these, and I missed this one.

BUT IS IS EVIDENTLY IN THE OED.

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Q: As a boy in kindergarten, I had a crush on a neighbor girl. I guess it was obvious as both sets of parents were aware of it. The girl didn't know any better. When I was 9 or 10, I found out about male anatomy when I saw in an art book Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. I liked looking at the picture and I liked what it did to my body. 

A: Speaking to your last point, as a young adult, in my dentist’s office, I was reading a magazine (it might have been the New Yorker!) that had a pretty gratuitous story about medieval torture methods.  I found it curiously …. Arousing.    Even 50 years later, I can’t explain why.   I’m not into pain, either giving or receiving.  Human sexuality can be quite confusing.

Q: A stupid tax once paid by me: I was at a fast food drive-through window, in my fairly nice not-new-but-new-to-me car. The lady is handing me my change, a single dollar, and I whiff the handoff and drop it. I reflexively pop the door open to grab it, putting a dime-size ding in my door where it hit the drive-through window. For a dollar.

A: Wow. you paid to fix a dime-size ding? My car looks like a raisinette. I never fix anything that doesn’t directly impact the operation or safety of the car. Of course, my car is 16 years old. Rachel’s is 22 years old.

I’m calling us down. PLEASE send in more questions and observations here. I will attend to them on Thursday.

Also, you can keep us going for $4.15 a month: