So this is getting seriously stupid, all the campaign-season rhetoric about Iran.

First, President Obama, speaking Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, says:

"I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power. A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

"Iran's leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I've made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

Sounds clear and tough-guy enough, right?

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012

Well, apparently not to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, The Times reported from Snellville, Ga., reacted to Obama's speech this way:

"If Barack Obama is reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change," Romney told a crowd of more than a 1,000 people at a pancake breakfast that his campaign hosted in this Atlanta suburb.

When an 11-year-old boy asked the candidate how he would keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Romney said Obama had not imposed "crippling sanctions against Iran." "He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

"I will have those military options. I will take those crippling sanctions and put them into place," he said. "And I will speak out to the Iranian people of the peril of them becoming nuclear …. I'm not willing to allow your generation to have to worry about a threat from Iran or anyone else that nuclear material be used against Americans.”

Oh, and have some more pancakes, young fellow. I want you big and strong for when I send you off to war!

But seriously. Obama said all options were on the table -- and Romney still called him out. What is this, the second-grade playground?

C'mon, fellows, stop and think a minute. If you don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, does it make sense to keep bombarding it with threats of military action? I mean, I'm pretty sure they've got the picture by now. 

Do you really have to make a bunch of paranoid types more paranoid? Isn't this why Israel says it fears Iran -- because it has threatened to destroy Israel?

So how do all of these threats to attack Iran make it want the bomb less?

The bottom line: This is political gamesmanship at its worst. Romney and the GOP candidates court pro-Israel votes by taking an ultra-hard line on Iran. Which forces Obama to hew to a hard line as well.

But it's a very dangerous game. It could lead to war. It could get lots of people killed.

And yes, for me, it's personal too: I have two sons.One just turned 18, at which point you are -- yes, still -- required to sign up with the Selective Service System.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing pandering politicians cast about for votes by offering up the lives of other people's kids in the name of national security.

Take Romney's sons: Did he offer them up as cannon fodder? Check out this New York Times story in 2007, the last time he ran, when he was asked about whether they had served in the military:

Mr. Romney expressed appreciation for the country's "volunteer army" and said "that's the way we're going to keep it." He explained his sons had made different career choices in life and had not chosen to serve in the military, but he mentioned a niece whose husband, he said, had just been called up by the National Guard ….

But he wound up his response with this: "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

Yes, well, Mitt, the campaign trail is a rugged place, that's for sure, especially in a Winnebago.

But ask the fathers and mothers and husbands and wives of the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan about real war.

And then, just maybe, you -- and, frankly, Obama too -- might decide to take your finger off the trigger.

And quit playing politics with the lives of American kids.

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Move over, Egypt, Iraq and Syria 

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks Sunday at a pancake breakfast at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Ga., outside Atlanta. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

So what have the Syrians done wrong?

When rebels in Libya revolted against the regime of Moammar Kadafi last year, the West rushed in with air power when it appeared that the insurgents would be slaughtered by government forces.

And the airstrikes continued to the bloody end -- Kadafi's bloody death included.

But in Syria, antigovernment protesters have been fighting -- and dying -- for months trying to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad.

So where's the NATO air power?  I mean, what's a rebel group got to do for a few 500-pound bombs? Are the lives of Syrian rebels less important than those in Libya?

The cold, hard answer is yes. Syria's rebels aren’t going to get NATO's help.

Why? 

As we used to say in the Cold War days, it's realpolitik.

In truth, what happened in Libya is the exception in foreign affairs.  Just when you think a precedent has been set, there hasn't.

An example? Nuclear weapons.  North Korea -- all Western bluster aside -– is allowed to have the bomb. But the fact that Iran is trying to acquire one brings talk of World War III.

It's much the same with Libya and Syria. The West could afford to challenge Kadafi, who in the end had few outside friends.  But Syria, and Assad, have powerful outside allies, including, as we saw this week, Russia and China.  And, of course, Iran.

Overt Western action to promote regime change in Syria, then, risks a wider conflict.  The Libya action didn't pose as big a gamble.

For an excellent update on the situation in Syria, read Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter’s story this week.  As they point out, the situation in Syria is more like that in Saddam Hussein's Iraq than in Kadafi's Libya. And we know how Iraq turned out.

So is the world forced to stand by while Assad butchers his own people?

Of course not. There are diplomatic tools available. The Obama administration and others are using them.

But that's cold comfort for the people in Syria fighting -– and being killed daily by -- an oppressive regime.

Unfortunately, it's the only comfort they're likely to get.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Two Syrians evacuate an injured fellow opposition member in the northwestern city of Idlib this month. Credit: Associated Press

I guess now we can call it the "Iran rule."

You know: It's the rule that says the United States must go to war with a country or risk loosing another Hitler on the world.

In 2003, of course, it was the "Iraq rule." Remember how George W. Bush and other administration officials and conservatives justified the invasion of Iraq by comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler?

Although, to be fair, Bush was just following in the tracks of his father, who also invoked the Hitler comparison in deciding to oust Hussein from Kuwait in the 1990 Persian Gulf War.

If I didn't know better, I'd say too many U.S. policymakers have seen "The Boys From Brazil" and assumed it was a documentary.

Today's Hitler, though, is -- take your pick -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the mullahs who rule Iran. And they want Iran to be a nuclear power. And they must be stopped. And the U.S., of course, must do the stopping. And all options must be on the table, including military action.

Who says so?

Well, except for Ron Paul, every Republican running for president, for starters. Here's Mitt Romney:

"If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," Romney stated unequivocally. "And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

But this is a bipartisan stance, it appears. As The Times quoted Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Sunday:

"Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon?  No," Panetta said. "But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, 'Do not develop a nuclear weapon.' That's a red line for us."

"I think they need to know that ... if they take that step, that they're going to get stopped," Panetta said, adding that he was not taking any options off the table.

Gosh, fellows, maybe you could all take a break from the Xbox and Call of Duty for a bit?  You know, get out for some fresh air?

Because honestly, I think the American people are just a bit tired of playing Hitler whack-a-mole.

And this is starting to give me 2003 deja vu: Everyone knows the Iranians are building a bomb, just like everyone knew Saddam Hussein was pursuing a bomb.

Except he wasn't. 

And even if the Iranians are, what makes everyone so sure they'd use it?

Ah, you say, just check what Ahmadinejad has said.

OK. Check what Romney just said. Check what Panetta just said. Does that mean we're automatically going to war?

If we went to war every time someone said something bellicose, we'd be going to war a lot -- uh, I mean a lot more.

We didn't want the Soviet Union to get the bomb, but it did. We didn't want China to get the bomb, but it did. Ditto North Korea. And Pakistan.

Each time, some argued -- as some, especially Israel, argue now about Iran -- that it would be Armageddon if the bad guys got the bomb.

Well, the United States has lived for more than 60 years with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at it.

It's no picnic, but we're still here.

Plus, sanctions against Iran are starting to take their toll. They might work. At any rate, they don't cost nearly as much as a military action.

So why don't we give the war talk a rest. Hitler, after all, is dead.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: A U.S. sailor in a safety boat observes a boarding team from the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Kidd after Iranian fishermen were rescued from pirates in the Arabian Sea. Credit: U.S. Navy

Remember "the mother of all bombs"?

Well, there's a whole new mama in town.

The Air Force's Massive Ordnance Penetrator, developed by Boeing, is more than 20 feet long, weighs in at 30,000 pounds (by comparison, the "mother" GBU-43 MOAB is a trim 22,600 pounds) and is packed with 5,300 pounds of explosives.

The  Air Force ordered 20, at a total cost of $314 million, and started taking delivery in September.

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator (wonder if anyone calls it the MOP?) has one job: pulverize underground enemy hide-outs.

Hmmm, wonder which country we don't like that has stuff hidden in underground bunkers?

From Times staff writer W.J. Hennigan's story:

"The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a weapon system designed to accomplish a difficult, complicated mission of reaching and destroying our adversaries' weapons of mass destruction located in well-protected facilities," Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Experts took note of the fact that the military disclosed delivery of the new bunker-busting bomb less than a week after a United Nations agency warned that Iran was secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon. That country is known to have hidden nuclear complexes that are fortified with steel and concrete, and buried under mountains.

This week, Times columnist Doyle McManus wrote that both President Obama and his Republican rivals  have made similar statements on Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon:

Obama and all the likely Republican nominees for president have long said they consider a nuclear-capable Iran unacceptable. There's no wiggle room in that word; no president could back down from that warning without major damage to U.S. influence.

Obama has favored sanctions. The GOP's Mitt Romney has offered saber-rattling, writing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he said that "I won't let Iran get nukes."

Romney's prescription? Increase military aid to Israel and send more ships to the Persian Gulf to convince Iran that when the United States threatens to use force, it means it.

But as McManus points out:

If the Iranians called his bluff, a President Romney would all too quickly face that same stark choice: go to war, or back down.

Which is when, yes, the MOP might come in really handy.

But would we use it? Should we use it?

No one can say now, of course.  But certainly the option of a non-nuclear weapon with such destructive power seems a sensible precaution. 

Iran's leaders now know that their nuclear facilities are at risk. That, coupled with sanctions, might persuade them to abandon their efforts to build the bomb.

If not? Well, then the United States has one big saber it can rattle.

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--Paul Whitefield

Image: An artist's rendering of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb. Credit: Boeing Co.

There are many truisms in politics.  Here's mine:

It's never good to lose to the pizza guy.

As The Times' Paul West reported Saturday:

In a startling embarrassment for the Republican presidential front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was tripped up by businessman Herman Cain in a straw ballot of Florida Republican activists Saturday that Perry himself had touted as an important measure of the field.

Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather's Pizza, got 37% of the vote, while Perry received 15%.

(Oh, and does anyone still remember that little spitfire Michele Bachmann?  She didn't actually compete in the Florida straw poll, and she got 1%. Which, to be fair, is several more votes than the Domino's delivery guy got.)

Cain, of course, couldn't wait to trumpet the victory as a signal that his message is getting through. 

And what is his message? As The Times reported Monday:  

In his television appearances, Cain credited his message, particularly his idea to throw out the existing tax code. "I feel great," he said of his victory. "The message is more powerful than money."

Cain's economic policy is based on what he calls his 9-9-9 plan: 9% tax on corporate income; 9% personal tax rate; and a 9% federal sales tax. The plan causes a split among economists and politicians. It would eliminate deductions, and it would also hit the poor and middle class hardest since the sales tax would represent a larger chunk of their income than a rich person's.

Uh, yea.  Listen, not to rain on Cain's parade, but only in the "through the looking glass" world of today's Republican Party does a candidate believe that this message --  "Vote for me: I'll tax the poor and middle class the most!" -- is resonating with voters.

And Cain's still not getting much love from the pundits. The Times' Doyle McManus, for example, wrote an entire column Sunday on the Republican race and didn't mention him once.

No, most political observers saw in Cain's victory a backlash against Perry and his subpar performance at the GOP debate in Orlando, Fla., last week.

In case you missed it, one low point for Perry came in this exchange:

Governor Perry, if you were president and you got a call at 3 a.m. telling you that Pakistan had lost control of its nuclear weapons at the hands of the Taliban, what would be your first move?

GOV. PERRY: Well, obviously, before you ever get to that point, you have to build a relationship in that region. And that's one of the things that this administration has not done. Just yesterday we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with -- and that's the terrorist group directly associated with the Pakistani country -- so to have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States. For instance, when we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F-16s, we chose not to do that. We did the same thing with Taiwan. The point is our allies need to understand clearly that we are their friends; we will be standing by there with them. Today we don't have those allies in that region that can assist us if that situation that you talked about were to become a reality.

Reportedly, the CIA and the NSA are seeking to obtain the secret decoder ring that will tell them what Perry meant.

Doesn't matter, you say?  This election is about jobs and the economy, not foreign policy?

Well, remember, events have a way of shaping presidencies.  George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus, a world at peace and a pretty good economy.  Within months, 19 guys flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and suddenly, a knowledge of foreign affairs became pretty darn important.

For now, though, the GOP race is like a bad reality show.  In this week's episode, the pizza guy from nowhere gets to say, with a somewhat straight face, "Vote for me and I’m going to deliver."

Which, at the moment, is much better than, "Pakistan?  Where the heck is that?"

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to delegates before a straw poll in Orlando, Fla. Credit: John Raoux / Associated Press

We've all heard the question at least once: "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you too?" Well, in China, the answer is apparently a resounding "Yes!" -- at least when it comes to hoarding salt.

It seems that many Chinese -– at least those initially fearful of radiation threats from Japan's damaged nuclear reactors -– recently bought large quantities of salt, The Times reported Monday.

Chinese shoppers stripped store grocery shelves bare while the crisis unfolded at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Some were acting on the mistaken belief that iodized salt could protect them from the effects of radiation. Others feared that China's coastal sea-salt deposits would be contaminated by the crippled plant.

And then came the bridge-jumpers:

Still others said they were hoarding because they saw others snapping up salt.

As we say in theh United States, "Geronimo!"   

Yes, fools rush in. Of course, next comes something just as familiar:  Buyer's remorse.

Former hoarders are now lining up at some grocery stores to ask for their money back, especially from shopkeepers who were charging as much as 10 times normal prices for the seasoning, according to Chinese news reports.

"I regret it very much. I will never behave this silly anymore," a woman who was denied a refund told the West China City News in Nanjing. She reportedly had bought enough salt to last her four years.

Four years worth of salt? Bet you don't feel so bad now about buying that 44-pack of beef jerky at Costco last week, do you?

Sadly, refunds were a tough sell at some stores, such as Wal-Mart. 

"We can't refund food products," said a store employee at a Beijing Wal-Mart on Monday. She gave only her last name, Jin.

Others were more fortunate, though.

At a high-end Ole Supermarket in Hangzhou, a line formed for returns Saturday. About 100 bags of salt and a bottle of soy sauce were refunded. Some buyers apparently stocked up on soy sauce after stores ran out of salt.

OK, now this is just silly: You couldn't get salt so you settled for soy sauce? 

Still, I may try that out the next time I'm forced to do the marketing:

"Honey, they were all out of potatoes. But it's OK; I bought potato chips."

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: Chinese shoppers crowd a shop in an effort to buy salt in Lanzhou, northwest China's Gansu province. Credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images/March 17, 2011

You can stick a fork in it. The future of nuclear power in America, that is.

There's nothing quite like seeing the words "Japan battles to avert nuclear meltdown" on your TV screen or "Risk of meltdown increases at Japan nuclear reactor" in your newspaper to focus the mind, is there? 

For example, The Times on Monday ran this headline: "Japan's crisis may have already derailed 'nuclear renaissance.' " 

Ya think?

Nuclear power plants have one fatal flaw: To be totally safe, nothing must go wrong -– ever. And, from Three Mile Island, to Chernobyl, to Japan -– heck, to the Titanic -– something always goes wrong with the stuff we build.

From that one problem comes many. Not the least of which is, nuclear plants have to be built somewhere, and somewhere is always someone’s backyard. And in today’s United States, "not in my backyard" is the new "don’t tread on me."

But it's strange relationship, Americans and risk. For example, what if I said the lesson of the Sendai quake is that it shows we should build nuclear plants?

Lock up the loony guy, right?

Sure, OK. But first, answer this: How many people have died so far in Japan's nuclear crisis? That's right: None that we know of.

But how many people died last year from coal-produced energy? Hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions: the miners killed in accidents, or from lung disease; the people in surrounding areas who've died from diseases caused by the pollution spewed by the plants; and then there are those of us at risk from the global warming caused by the burning of a fossil fuel.

So why do we vilify nuclear power?

Perhaps for the same reason we demand so many safety measures in air travel, yet we willingly accept that thousands more of us will die each year in auto accidents than in air crashes.

Nonsense, you say: Nuclear power just isn't safe. We can't build new plants. Learn from Japan.

OK. Nuclear power isn't safe. So go shut down San Onofre right now. And Diablo Canyon. And all the other nuclear plants in the U.S.

Oh, we can't do that. We need that electricity. Our rates would go through the roof. We'd have rolling blackouts, or worse.

And then there's our military. Remember, we have nuclear power plants on board our aircraft carriers and submarines. We've put dangerous propulsion systems on ships that, if a war breaks out, the enemy will try to blow up and sink. And yet we built and launched the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush -– nuclear powered, of course -– in 2009. Where was the furor then?

So, new nuclear power is dangerous, but the nuclear power we already have is, uh, OK then?

As for lessons of the Japan crisis, one of them is this: An aging plant built with 1960s technology has -– so far -– endured the worst possible natural disaster and, though badly damaged, has survived.

Imagine how much better we could build such a plant today. After all, when the 1906 great quake destroyed San Francisco, everyone didn’t leave the Bay Area. We took the lessons from it, and from other quakes, and we built smarter and better.

Nuclear power may not be the future. Personally, I prefer solar, wind and other such sources.

But the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico didn't stop us from drilling for oil. And the disaster in Japan shouldn't stop us from a reasonable discussion of nuclear power.

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--Paul Whitefield

Photo: The San Onofre nuclear power plant in northern San Diego County, south of San Clemente. Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

Should California teachers be evaluated based on their students' performance on test scores? That's the subject of dueling pro vs. con commentaries on today's Op-Ed page. On the pro side is state Board of Education President Ted Mitchell, who says California must change a law forbidding such evaluations if it is to qualify for millions of dollars in federal funds, and that the system would help school districts reward exceptional teaching and weed out instructors who can't make the grade. On the con side is former LAUSD teacher Walt Gardner, who points out that teachers in low-performing schools are often dealing with kids from very poor families who are dealing with pressures that make learning a serious challenge, and expecting teachers to overcome such obstacles on their own is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, physicist Frank von Hippel aims to debunk claims from the nuclear-power industry that reprocessing nuclear waste is a solution to our problems with storing the highly radioactive materials. Not only is it extremely expensive, it fails to reduce the stream of long-lived nuclear waste and provides access to weapons material that could fall into dangerous hands.

Today's editorial page notes the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Bros. by pointing out that the $700-billion federal bailout that followed helped prop up the nation's financial system, and without it the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape than it is. Nonetheless, now that the economy is on the rebound, "it's time for the administration and the Federal Reserve to lay out a strategy for pulling the government out of the financial industry."

The Times also weighs in on prospective furloughs or layoffs for city employees, who in tough financial times may be sacrificed in order to keep alive Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's ambition to keep hiring more police officers. Though that seems unfair, it's the right thing to do for Los Angeles.

And we give a boost to a package of state bills aimed at fighting animal cruelty, including a ban on puppy mills, a crackdown on dogfighting (thanks Michael Vick!), and a measure mocked by the governor to forbid docking (cutting off) the tails of cattle.

Photo by Seth Perlman / AP

Iran's show trial last weekend of at least 100 reformist politicians, journalists and foot soldiers is part of an ugly trend that will not only weaken the position of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it could derail talks with the United States concerning Iran's nuclear ambitions, according to today's lead editorial.

The Times also weighs in on a proposal for the city of Los Angeles to approve a $30-million loan to renovate the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood so it can accommodate performances by acrobatic troupe Cirque du Soleil. The city's projections that a 10-year run of the popular attraction would generate 858 jobs seems more based on federal loan requirements than reality; the city should reject the loan.

And Times editorial writer Karin Klein relates her own experience with the "cash for clunkers" law, which has stirred up a feeding frenzy at local car dealerships: "At Hyundai, we watched a family leap into an Accent for a test drive after two other cars were snatched out from under them. We never did find a salesman."

Speaking of which, columnist Jonah Goldberg thinks the whole federal car-buying subsidy program is a clunker. Washington's notion that paying people who already own working cars so that they can buy new ones and junk the old is reminiscent of French economist Frederic Bastiat's "broken windows" fallacy, Goldberg says: Though it might benefit bankers and car makers, it doesn't take into account the economic stimulus that would have resulted if the car buyers had instead spent their money on more useful things.

And just when you thought it was safe to get out of Iraq, political science professor Barbara F. Walter asserts that it isn't. History shows that countries that have fought civil wars are likely to do it again, and that countries that end their civil wars with compromise settlements often return to fighting unless there is a third party present to enforce the peace. Most experts believe the U.S. would have to remain in Iraq for five to 10 years past the current 2011 withdrawal deadline to avert another outbreak of hostilities among Iraq's competing factions.

Finally, constitutional law professor Ryan Coonerty thinks the problem with California's government isn't an excess of democracy, but too little. Coonerty favors doubling the size of the Legislature, which could be accomplished without excessive spending by cutting lawmakers' current salaries ($116,000 a year) in half. Smaller districts would allow the people to hold their representatives more accountable, he argues.

Illustration credit: Paul Tong / TMS

Today's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the privately owned Staples Center reminds The Times editorial board of a sad fact of life in Los Angeles: It's a city without a public square. Though the backers of LA Live once promised that the downtown entertainment mall would become L.A.'s version of Times Square, the fact remains that it's a private space whose owners can bar the public anytime they choose.

We also weigh in on President Obama's trip to Russia, which isn't expected to accomplish much -- but even a small thaw in relations between the two countries, and the modest improvement represented by the nuclear weapons pact concluded Monday, is better than the chilly status quo.

And we ponder the lessons to be learned from the example of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died Monday at 93. Though many see parallels between the mistakes made in Iraq and the mistakes made by McNamara in Vietnam, we think the larger lesson is that using yesterday's solutions to today's problems is often the pathway to failure.

Over on the opposite page, columnist Jonah Goldberg thinks all the sturm und drang over the canceled "salons" by the Washington Post, in which lobbyists were invited to pay heavily to attend get-togethers with the newspaper's journalists and top politicians, amounts to little more than posing. After all, many publications offer similar meet-and-greet opportunities, Goldberg says.

The hand-wringing over genetically modified foods, meanwhile, reminds author Tom Standage of another food-related hysteria from a few centuries ago -- over the potato. When the tubers were first discovered in the New World, Europeans feared they were a dangerous, unholy poison. They got over it, just as they'll probably eventually get over their irrational fears about improved crops.

And psychiatry professor Sander L. Gilman cautions against jumping to conclusions about Michael Jackson's cosmetic surgery. True, the King of Pop clearly was fond of surgical reshaping, but that doesn't necessarily indicate self-loathing.

* Illustration by Bob Daly / For the Times