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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• One of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign ads, sponsored by Parents The Anti-Drug, features kids thanking their parents for invading their privacy. I'm sure people who were molested, raped, or otherwise abused by an invasive parent really appreciate that.
• Every woman who routinely looks to men to solve her problems makes feminism a lie.
• Few are offended by the stench of their own farts, just as smokers are not offended by the stink of tobacco smoke.
• Precautions to mitigate the common harmful effects of an act, device or condition are prudent. Conservatism is prudent by nature. Despite this, during the past several decades the conservative political agenda has come to oppose, for economic reasons, many prudent measures. Thus, in many ways the Conservative political agenda is anything but conservative.
• Twenty years ago, it was common for men to attribute their success to their wife. You don't see that much anymore.
• Some of the very finest people I've ever known are Moslem immigrants. One of the best American men I've ever met is from Egypt. Another, from Lebanon. Our country is made better by their virtue. Sadly, however, most Christians I know are, to this day, candidates for the Jerry Springer show. If bin Laden and his ilk have demonstrated the worst of Islam, rich as we are in the worst of Christianity, we only impoverish ourselves if we do less than welcome with open arms the best of Islam.
• Only fools denounce either our right or need to defend ourselves against terrorists. But, for all the anti-hate rhetoric, our society is coming dangerously close to the same kind of bigotry that led to the internment of good and patriotic Japanese Americans during World War II. Today we look back on that time with shame. Pray we do not make the same mistake again.
• Modern western society warehouses old people in a kind of comfortable purgatory where they wait for death. This may be the relatively humane thing to do, but what a waste of life.
• When the penalties for faults get too high, excuses and finger-pointing become as common as they are in our society.
• Smoking in the workplace is like farting in a car: everybody gets a whiff.
• Thirty years ago, most American adults smoked, and they mocked those of us who wanted to be free of their fumes. Today, most American adults do not smoke, and believe we have the right to not be forced to inhale tobacco smoke at work.
• FORCES International is preparing World Smokers Day, an event that would deny the rest of us the right to a tobacco smoke-free workplace. Evidently, these odiferous oafs think we won't see through the thick haze of their cloudy logic. There is no question smokers have rights: Under present law, they have the right to smoke and reek all they want. What tars the teeth of these rank ruffians is that they are now prohibited from foisting their filthy habit off onto the rest of us. They describe themselves as "pro-choice for the consumer," but in reality they are anti-choice, intent on taking away our right to not smoke.
• Mostly, men live in a gynocentric world. What new rage women hate is that women mostly live in a phallocentric world.
• Women's studies teaches that only women's pain and oppression matters.
• Progress doesn't happen but by making it happen.
• Recently, I overheard an American Indian grumble how whites don't give way to elders. Growing up in both cultures, what I know is that giving the first places to elders is traditional in most societies. Why isn't it part of modern American society? It only takes a few seconds in line at the grocery store check out stand to figure that one out: moving masses of consumers through the "assembly line" of retail consumption would quickly bog down if we took time to make way for elders. Mass consumption may fill our lives with stuff, but it leaves little time for respecting either our elders or one another. Is this the kind of culture we really want?
• They say that, win or lose, a man always loses a fight with a woman. But that's only true if the man cares.
• It is sickening but true that there is more statistical justification to amputate a baby girl's breasts at birth (to prevent breast cancer) than there is to circumcise a baby boy's foreskin at birth (to prevent whatever). Amputating a baby girl's breasts would be barbaric, and chopping off a baby boy's foreskin is barbaric. Don't do it.
• Dumb copy machines don't do stupid things. For that you need a "smart" copy machine.
• Few find reasonable views entertaining, which is why few TV and radio commentators express reasonable views.
• Many who are pro-big business grumble over the government prosecution of Microsoft. What they ignore is that the cases against Microsoft are to protect big business in general from one very predatory corporation.
• Most corporations break some laws. Like drivers who routinely break the speed limit, it's pervasive, but generally not excessive enough to warrant large scale prosecution and enforcement. Microsoft, is an exception. Like company-founder Bill Gates (who at one time had so many speeding tickets his lawyer was constantly in court fighting to prevent revocation of Gates' driver's license), Microsoft has broken so many laws so blatantly that the government essentially had two choices in the matter: prosecute, or watch the American economy shift from competition in the market place to competition in the courtroom.
• "Women's intuition" is a patriarchal myth.
• When they are afraid, most men raise their voices. Androphobes call this anger and condemn us for it.
• Interesting how, in mainstream society, grooming standards for heterosexual males conform to icons of homosexual masculinity.
• As the extremely bigoted views of men taught in Women's Studies classes continue to seep into the collective conscious of western culture, the only protection men will have is to force women to take the initiative. In other words, we have to express no interest, make no moves, never flirt, never ask them out, never give them any excuse to claim we sexually harassed or raped them.
• If it would be sexist for men to band together solely for the purpose of dominating women, then wouldn't it be sexist for women to do the same to men?
• The way many Americans view Islam is the way many American Indians view Christianity.
• Following the attack on America, when equalitarian and men's rights groups finally recovered to comment, it was to remark the bravery of the men who sacrificed their lives trying to save the victims, and to propose an equalitarian effort to educate women in the patriarchal nations. When the pop feminists spoke, however, it was to pout at how the attack had overshadowed their complaints, and to draw parallels between the brutally slain victims of the attacks and their own self-proclaimed victimhood.