In this column I pose questions and raise issues. I don't always agree with the conclusion, implied or stated. The purpose is to put a slightly different spin on each item and to promote discussion.

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• The government is working on new Indian identification cards that will be based on blood quantum. What's next? "Degree of color" cards for blacks? Yellow stars for Jews?
• When battered women kill, society excuses their homicidal rage as a victim striking out to defend herself. But when a few bullied boys kill, society goes into a frenzy of fear over these young Frankenstein Monsters and schools pass measures to control them. Typical: when it's women, they're brave victims, when it's boys, let's blame the victims.
• Data is objective. It is information unvarnished by agenda. Truth made mundane. For this reason, it is a political hot potato. Data sets the record straight, and in a society where special interest groups have politicized just about everything, data is carefully controlled. So, government agencies assure that the right data is easily accessible while the wrong data is hard to find. Like the statistics about women and men, whites and blacks.
• The truth is often incorrect, but it's still true.
• I can relate to young African Americans who refer to themselves as "niggers." In my youth I referred to myself as a "siwash." Siwash is a corruption of the French Canadian sauvage for "savage." Once upon a time it was an equally potent racial slur used against Washington coastal Indians. The sentiment is, "I proudly wear the label in defiance of your scorn."
• I'm not sure which is more unattractive, an otherwise healthy woman with breast implants, or a skeletal anorexic.
• Triage is the process used in medical emergencies to prioritize the order in which patients are helped. The rule is, help those who are most likely to survive, first. Reason: giving priority to those who are least likely to survive increases the chances all the patients will die, including those who would have survived for sure had they received treatment first. It is a pragmatic and harsh rule, but it works. Unlike many of our social programs, which do just the opposite, giving priority assistance to those who are least willing to help themselves and most likely to waste the assistance they do receive, while ignoring and, in many cases, losing those who would have thrived with just a little help.
• How trustworthy are employers who withhold compensation information in job ads?
• Somewhere there is almost certainly a technical writer who got fired for pointing out that almost any computer application manual for the typical user can and should be reduced to two or three pages of concise, step-by-step instructions.
• It's an axiom of economics that the effects of fiscal and monetary policy today will be reflected in the economy 18 to 36 months later. So the economic woes of today trace their origins back to before Bush took office, when Clinton was pleading with Greenspan to lower interest rates. This time around, all indications are the economic downturn in the U.S. is due, not to Clinton's fiscal policy, but to the Fed's tight-fisted monetary policy and corporations sending the wealth-creating jobs overseas.
• If polygamy is a crime, then shouldn't polygamy cases include prosecution of the female participants as accessories to the crime?
• In Men Are Not Cost-Effective: Male Crime in America, pop feminist author June Stephenson suggested a special "testosterone tax" on men to cover the cost to society of prosecuting male crime at a disproportionately high rate. As black men are prosecuted at an even higher rate, would Ms. Stephenson also favor levying a special "black male tax"? Or is the bigotry inherent in such an idea too blatant even for her?
• It seems ironic that after saying, "I don't remember" so many times during his presidency, Ronald Reagan will spend his last days succumbing to a disease that renders him incapable of remembering almost everything. (For younger readers, look up "Iran Contra Affair," and "Shah of Iran.")
• Some well-known pop feminist lawyers spout some of the most outrageous lies on television, and then threaten to file slander suits against anybody who exposes them as liars.
• During the past 30 years, when questioned about the consequences of their actions, pop feminists typically responded, "it will never happen." But history has proven that it almost always does. Doubtless, some androphobe will accuse history of being a man.
• With rare exceptions, the only people who profit from opposing pop feminism are women.
• African American pundits like to blame the perpetuation of "gangsta rap" and hard-edged Hip Hop on white slave owners (read: white-controlled music companies). Such assertions find comfort neither in black corporate executives nor the rap music companies owned and controlled by blacks.
• Surveys provide objective data about subjective experience. They tell us about perceptions of reality, but nothing about reality.
• Women's liberation goes contrary to the whole "motherhood is sacred" thing. Without a belief in the sanctity of motherhood, unless replaced by some other compelling reason to generally hold women in high regard, men are left to respect women solely on the basis of shared humanity and individual merit. Which works fine for an equalitarian but provides only pain to the political aspirations of the mavens of misandry.
• "I'm afraid," a statement pop feminists use to excuse women of all responsibility, but when used by a man, serves only to brand him as a coward.
• Throughout history, women, like men, have simultaneously been both agents of change and keepers of the old ways. First (and, lest it needs to be said, this is a generalization), by demanding changes beneficial to them; second, by opposing changes detrimental to them. Such self-interest is natural and understandable; yet to portray women as victims, with the political power that brings, pop feminists have persuaded the world that women are the only agent of beneficial change, and men, the only agent of detrimental control. (Agents, chaos, control? Oh my!)
• Women who "play hard to get" to attract a man are frustrated when their dishonest ploy fails, but with increasing frequency men who respond to such tricks face rape or sexual harassment charges.
• The recent Harvard School of Public Health study on teen dating violence says that, because abused girls tend to be "embarrassed and fearful," a lot of abuse is never reported. Unlike abused boys, who are neither embarrassed nor fearful. Not! If boys were treated with the same sensitivity as girls, the pop feminists would be buried in reports of boys being abused.
• Banning medical procedures involving cloning will simply force development overseas where only the richest Americans will be able to enjoy its benefits.
• In the pop feminist paradigm, there are only three kinds of men: rapists, losers and lefties. Lefties are guys who embrace pop feminism because, as noted on one left wing website, "Chicks dig Lefties." Most lefties are either college students or recent college graduates, because colleges are just about the only place where left wing liberalism is taught. Which leaves most men with only two perceived options: to be a rapist or a loser. Not much of a choice, is it.
• American employers are so lacking a sense of civic responsibility that prospective employees who ask to delay interviews while they perform civic duties are dismissed without further consideration unless, as in the case of military and jury duty, prohibited by law.
• My first serious girlfriend had the same first name as her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother going back several generations. A matrilineal tradition. I hope that, should I ever get married and have children, my wife will agree to begin such a tradition in our family.
• Most women have no use for men who understand and appreciate An Affair to Remember.
• Women's Liberation - the kind I grew up with - wasn't about forcing girls and boys to conform to one view of what it means to be liberated, but to provide and safeguard the right of every individual to choose their own path and make their own choices.
• Honest employees with integrity can't be persuaded to do the wrong thing because it's right for their employer. Hence, corporations commonly discriminate against honest job applicants. There's no law against it.
• Recently I came across a slogan on a student web site at a liberal college. "Chicks dig Lefties." Men know this. Guys know that if they participate in left wing events and organizations, they will get laid. Which is almost as good as getting loved.
• When the family court system sends a man to jail for refusing to pay for his ex wife to keep his children away from him, taxpayers foot the bill for his room and board. Jail is expensive.
• Which is more likely to reduce the prevalence of abusive relationships: penalizing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior, or penalizing bad behavior and romanticizing bad behavior? The former, of course. So why has our pop feminist dominated society been doing the latter for the past 30 years? Studies indicate dating violence is on the rise. Maybe the time has come to stop letting the androphobes dictate their misandristic policies to us, and try rewarding good behavior again.