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.

---

• How do you herd cats? With bait.
• Does Wendy's promote our dependence on foreign oil? In my experience, they do: One evening a few weeks ago I decided to treat myself to one of their bacon burgers. But when I approached the window, the rotund clerk told me it is against policy for him to serve me because I was on foot. Only customers who are burning gas and contributing to our dependence on foreign oil will be served. Doesn't seem very patriotic. I suspect Dave would be ashamed.
• Do carbonated beverages contribute to obesity?
• In this free country, we are not free to joke about drugs, religion, women or other races. If we do, we will almost certainly lose our jobs. Wait, that's in the work place. We can still joke elsewhere. Sure, but work is where we spend much of our life and it affects everything we do. If we have no freedom at work, then we have no freedom at all.
• The DOJ settlement with Microsoft should require the monopolist to provide Macintosh computers to schools.
• Do people in a big gas-guzzling vehicles sport an American flag as their declaration of dependence on foreign oil, or because they think increasing our dependence on foreign oil is patriotic?
• Sean Young is a brilliant actor with a scintillating sense of humor who, according to E!, keeps sticking her foot in her mouth and offending people. As Young told Esquire in 1991, "It's my social ability that often falls short. I've had difficulty socially." Sounds like she's an Aspie.
• Some parents give their children a made-up name. Unlike names gotten from family, tradition or history, made-up names, unique though they may be, are nothing more than labels lacking any larger meaning.
• Corporate capitalists condescendingly suggest that if you disapprove of your present employer, rather than looking for a legal and, therefore, un-American remedy, you can and should simply go get another job. In a free enterprise economy, that would be reasonable. In our high tech corporate economy, however, where the details of our employment history often seep with ease through the porous foundation of employment law, the reality is that while we are always free to look for a job elsewhere, the corporate system often makes getting another job impossible.
• Feminists sneer at how most men want their children to be their genetic offspring. But turn the tables, and most women feel the same way.
• The female preference for dominant men suggests that as more women enter the workplace, corporations will become more rather than less hierarchical.
• When the heralds of corporate royalty proclaim that employers must export jobs because Americans won't do them, the truth they hide beneath layers of tightly knit rhetoric is that Americans won't do those jobs for the starvation wages poor people in other countries will accept.
• If, as feminists assert, women are opposed to hierarchy in principle, then why do most women prefer dominant men?
• Somebody told me there is always competition between mother and daughter, father and son. So parents who compete with their children should be forgiven. Sounds a lot like the "all the other kids are doing it" excuse to me.
• Bad as the corporate accounting scandals are, the bigger scandal still ignored by the mainstream is the corporate devaluation of the American worker.
• When she starred in Wild Orchid, Carrie Otis was sexy but scrawny. Recently, however, she appeared on Primetime and, at 155 lbs, she's hotter than ever. Before feminists took over with their have it all, baby attitude, a woman like her would have been considered beautiful. Today, however, she's too fat. This is liberation?
• A person who is thinking about several problems or issues at once is multitasking as much as a person who talks, reads and cooks at the same time.
• Next time a young feminist calls men sexist for wanting their children to actually be their children, ask how she would feel if she discovered her children were implants and not really her own. She'd probably call it rape. Same goes for men. No real difference.
• A lot of email I get is from guys who want to know where to meet women. Work is taboo, bars and going online are too risky and unromantic. The answer is, two types of places: First, if you can stomach it, get involved in some ultra liberal cause, like saving Bambi. Women love lefties. The other place is a Christian church. Sadly for non-Jehovan deists like me, but good for Christian guys (lukewarm or otherwise), is that a lot of very cool women go to church.
• The less you know, the more you know for certain.
• A man who won't settle for just any woman but has standards is sexist and too picky, while a woman who won't settle for just any man but has standards is confident and self-aware.
• Many of America's homeless are able-bodied women and men down on their luck. Given the right kind of help, they could get a job, get back on their feet and become productive members of society again. So what's stopping them? Probably the top 4 reasons are: (1) no mailing address, (2) no clean clothes, (3) they're dirty and stink, and, for those who have kids, (4) nobody to look after the kids for them. Programs to solve just these problems would help far more people than shelters do, and do it much more cost effectively.
• The west, and indeed much of America, wasn't won by romantic figures waging glorious battle against "savages," but hordes of squatters swarming in overwhelming numbers upon the land.
• From a public health policy perspective, it makes good sense to subsidize prescriptions of growth hormone for everybody over 40. From a corporate profit perspective, however, it would have a devastating impact on the medical and weight loss industries. Can capitalism find a compromise between profit and public interest?
• Corporate capitalism is not the same thing as free enterprise.