Oh, that sounds hard. But so many props for taking care of the cattie. (I've heard that humans who've faced starvation respond similarly to food.)

Yay! Another Royal Canin fan. The price looks steep but I've actually found that it's cheaper. My cat eats less, and I buy large bags (so cheaper for me, because I'm not going to get Meow Mix in bulk even though I'll buy ridiculously priced small bags at my local store when cat runs out of Canin).

Ah. I guess the sample of cats I've had access to have so resembled each other in this regard that I've forgotten about how much variety there is. One more question (if you don't mind) — I didn't know there was a wet-food-only movement. Why are cats not getting enough hydration? They're not drinking water?

HAHA. My mind works the same way, lankypanky.

See, that's what baffles me. I've always ALWAYS "free fed" dry food. I give my cat all-he-can-eat dry food (Royal Canin, if it makes a difference), but wet food (or cooked meats, fish, eggs, cheese, etc.) more sparingly. And I've done this with many cats over many years and never seen even the start of weight gain.

Thank you a million times, Ms. Beck, for the anti-declawing PSA. "I don't care how nice your stupid furniture is," indeed.

Russia's population problem? How is this going to contribute to it?

I don't know. Our foster care system is shitty, leading to a lot of children with trauma and neglect. And that's awful. But our system is still a hell of a lot better than the conditions some orphans overseas face. Why not adopt the child with the least chance of flourishing without being adopted? Why not adopt the…

Yeah, I was about to say just that. I haven't read the Gessen piece but I was stunned that Laura Beck made no mention of the scandals involving Russian kids adopted by American families. That said, this seems like a *clear* case of attempted retribution, a show of power, and not at all worry about the safety of…

I (embarrassingly) read some of her blog posts because I was so annoyed by this stupid article about a stupid woman with a stupid book. Anyway, she blogs about how her new 29 year old flame is teaching her about *real* masculinity, blah blah blah, yawn.

Yeah. Jez is weird. Anna Breslaw either didn't read the article to the end, or made the inexplicable decision to leave that out and the fact that her new guy is "a fellow bleeding heart and founder of the nonprofit organization The Benevolence Community."

Ah. Got it. Of course it is, relatively. This shit is tricky. The school I went to pays less than others that we (my cohort) all get in to (even other schools in the same town!), for the simple reason that they *can.* Very few people are willing to turn them down, and they exploit that.

So...we're in agreement? :)

Well, my experience is with major metropolitan areas. But isn't 30K below the median income in the US?

True, and even within particular universities there's a lot of variation depending on the field. I didn't know stipends went quite that low, but yeah, that's hard to live on in an urban area.

I have to disagree that the stipend isn't normally enough to live on. I think it both is (in fact) and is designed to be. The dept normally wants you to be as focused as possible, and that means, among other things, not worrying about future financial obligations (and definitely not working! I did work as a grad…

A top program (at least in my field) will pay all your tuition, health insurance, etc. and give you a living stipend. It's not much ($30,000/yr is typical, I think), which is why grad students are famously broke. You're required to TA and contribute in other ways to the dept, but that's part of your education, not…

Sure. I don't agree with your argument but I can see it. What I was addressing was your initial comment in which you made an analogy between extremely skinny models not being able to work for legal reasons, and fat models not being able to work because no one wants to hire them ("They might complain about restrictive…

I understand the anger, but "body policing" that's codified in law is a totally different matter than the same when it's a matter of taste or marketing strategy or even prejudice.

The "why" question is actually asked and investigated a ton re: rape, especially in areas with higher than average rates/levels of brutality. But I understand the sentiment, and I agree that a particularly horrific massacre (Sandy Hook) gets the "why" question more than a particularly horrific gang rape (the eleven…