It is a truism that men engage in sex for the sake of having sex while women engage in sex for the sake of affection. Yet truisms are not universally true as the case of Natalie Barney illustrates.

The expatriate Natalie Barney (1876-1972) was an important literary figure whose literary works are now little remembered because, though an American, she wrote almost exclusively in French. As one source states: Barney’s weekly salon gatherings "brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation.

We see it on the news virtually every night: yet another in an endless succession of colossal mistakes by "government" agencies, often with horrendously tragic results. Innumerable examples can be cited from events in the national news: 9/11; the Enron and other major business scandals; etc.

But I want to discuss a micro-example that occurred in a city near me. In 9/2001 a 12 year old Oregon girl named Ashley Pond reported to a teacher [Linda Virden] that she was the subject of on-going sexual assaults by an adult neighbor named Ward Weaver. The matter was immediatedly reported by the horrified teacher to the so-called Oregon Department of Child Protective Services. When nothing was done the teacher reported it twice more, and Ashley's mother also reported it three separate times. Nothing happened because in each instance the matter was referred to the same state employee who did not think it worth referring to the local police, though the agency regulations required that all such matters be so referred.