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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• Eternity began a long time ago.
• The stock markets have become little more than government coddled crapshoots.
• Making excuses for the Microsoft monopoly is like excusing an abusive or sexually abusive parent because they are a good provider.
• African American comic Chris Rock quips, "Ain't no white man here willing to trade places with me...And I'm rich!" (Why Negro Humor is so Black, Will Haygood, The American Prospect, December 18, 2000) What he means is, no White person would be willing to be him. But what does this mean, really, when most people would probably not choose to be Bill Gates, whose health has never been good, either, because to be another person is to not be yourself!
• Will America's economic recovery survive the gluttony of the Telecom robber barons?
• Women have sex, men get sex. Until women change that, the double sexual standard will persist.
• One old adage holds that "there are no guarantees in life." It's true. But what about society? If there are no guarantees in society - no benefits to being a good citizen - then social disintegration, up to and including revolution, results. King George III found that one out the hard way.
• Brow beating can be as abusive as a beating, and leave scars that last longer.
• Why are men generally oblivious to what women wear? Could it be because they are more interested in the person than their clothes?
• The feminists' hate male campaign has been so successful that even today some women assume equalitarians are anti-female and opposed to women's rights. Ironically, the truth feminists hate is that equalitarians are both pro-male and pro-female and, unlike the feminists, support both women's and men's rights.
• If welfare gets what we pay for, then maybe we should stop paying for a safety net and start paying for programs to make folks productive and capable members of society.
• Feminists assert that the Pill, which gave women reproductive control, is a burden, while Viagra, which gives women prolonged use of their partner, is a patriarchal imposition.
• The major hurdle faced by families today is that there are and always have been more good grandparents than good parents.
• Feminists have hypersexualized everything to the point where everybody but homosexuals are afraid to touch anybody else beyond the most perfunctory handshake or back slap, unless it's to actually engage in sex.
• In the white supremacist paradigm, "mud races" are the source of problems and whites are the source of solutions. Much as, in the feminist paradigm, men cause problems and women cause solutions.
• Democrats who attack Bush for his support of marriage as one means to mitigate welfare should be mindful of the fact that the first president to entertain this idea since the Johnson Administration's Great Society policies began to destroy America's families, was Bill Clinton.
• The idea there is less office politics and nepotism in the private sector than in government bureaucracies is a myth without merit.
• Most Americans are loath to pay taxes sufficient to attract the best and brightest to public service, yet that's exactly what they demand.
• The official position of the U.S. government on the killing of civilians by the conflict in the Middle East is, it's a bad thing. This, from the government whose policies have led directly to the deaths of more than half a million children in Iraq.
• We are told we should be grateful to live in America, because the "American system" provides the opportunities that make us the richest nation in the world. For the most part, I agree: All things considered, it's a pretty good system. But if we ordinary citizens should be grateful, then shouldn't the same hold true for the corporations, so many of whom demonstrate their utter lack of appreciation by exporting jobs out of the American system?
• Microsoft made a lot of employees and investors millionaires by making software that is the lowest common denominator in the industry, and by destroying competitors (often by stealing their ideas and then exhausting them in long drawn out court battles) and putting who knows how many thousands of people out of work.
• While many of the ways men harm women are illegal, most of the ways women harm men are not only legal but lauded or laughed at in books, theater and the offices of hate mongering feminists.
• Have "humorless blacks" replaced "humorless feminists"?
• Obesity, as many smokers note, has surpassed smoking as a source of health problems. They're right. Obesity, as with smoking, also imposes costs on society by eating up public health care resources. Unlike smokers' rights advocates, however, overeaters don't demand the right to force the rest of us to share their vice every time they walk into the room.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2001 the rate at which men were absent from work was 3.6 days, compared to 4.8 days for women.
• In a world of racists, America is among the least racist.
• In the 13th century, China saw Gengis Khan much as we see Osama bin Laden today. But today the China of 1200 AD is seen by many as an oppressive empire, and Khan as a great leader. Is this how history will view bin Laden and America?
• African Americans - the other American majority.
• In the discussion about whether to teach abstinence to young folks, it's important to remember that in days of olde when girls got married between 14 and 17 to boys who were little older, and even early in the 20th century when young women typically married soon after high school to their "high school sweetheart," it was easier to remain celibate until marriage than it is today when not only are people living between 20 and 50 years longer, but are getting married much later in life, if at all.
• As one who has remained celibate most of his life, I know two things about abstinence with absolute certainty: (1) sex with someone you love is the best, and (2) celibacy sucks.