In the second play, "Richard McBeef," a 13-year-old boy accuses his new stepfather of molesting him and murdering his father. After unleashing his rage with a tirade of insults, he tries to choke him by shoving a half-eaten cereal bar down his throat. Earlier, he throws darts at a target resembling the man's face, shouting "Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick ... You don't think I can kill you, Dick? ... Gotcha. Got one eye. Got the other eye."

The violent imagery in the plays, and similar works by Cho, had alarmed faculty of the Virginia Tech English department, who repeatedly tried to get him help. In October 2005, one professor, poet Nikki Giovanni, kicked him out of her class because his work was "intimidating" and scared students. Her female students stopped coming to class after they said Cho was photographing their legs with his cellphone.

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Somehow, the school learned what Jane had done. So when she returned to campus a week later, a Brown dean and a campus psychologist called her into a meeting with this message: "We need to talk about where you're going from here." They meant it literally -- the school would encourage her to take a leave of absence.

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"I can tell you that when you have a photo of what's happening underneath your skin, you get committed to preserving it," Helena Foulkes, senior vice president of marketing and advertising at CVS Corp., told the Journal. That undoubtedly means buying more bottles and jars to line up on your sink. The executive claims that the Vichy video microscope and hydrometer by L'Oréal helped boost sales in drugstores three years in a row. Other companies are getting in the game: Procter & Gamble plans to put microscopes in stores by winter. Estée Lauder will launch a new skin-analysis tool by next year. (Its Rodan & Fields division already uses cameras to show sun damage and other skin maladies.) And this week, beauty giant Sephora is unveiling devices that will evaluate your complexion and teeth brightness.

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Los Angeles Times: Football players at Fresno City College are questioned by police about the alleged rape of an 11-year-old girl.

Reuters: Women who work long hours are more likely to smoke, drink coffee and eat junk food than are men who work long hours, according to a British study.

Columbia Journalism Review: Interesting Q&A with Jemele Hill on what it's like to be the only black female sportswriter in 305 newspapers surveyed. Says Hill: "I don't mind being considered a 'black columnist,' because I bring those experiences to my column. On the other hand, it's sad. What does it say about our business that I'm the only one?"

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Research on the disorder traditionally has focused on boys. But a recent federally funded study, in which researchers at the University of California at Berkeley tracked 200 girls ages 6 to 12 over five years, found that girls with ADHD are at increased risk for substance abuse, emotional difficulties and academic problems during their teen years.

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The story would be an amusing look at the battle of the bulge gone topsy-turvy if it didn't include such a disturbing glimpse of what women have endured to stay heavy. It's a "tradition that's as old as the desert," the Monitor's Claire Soares writes to describe the practice of "gavage": the force-feeding of young girls so they fatten up and attract men, who believe that a woman's corpulence is a reflection of their wealth. (And yes, that's the same word the French use to describe pumping ducks and geese full of corn so they produce succulent foie gras.) Mothers concerned about their daughters' futures funnel sweetened milk and millet porridge down the girls' throats.

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This may seem like it belongs in the Department of Duh, but the Globe points out that pediatricians generally focus on the health of the baby, not the mother. So the whopping 10 percent of mothers who are estimated to be depressed may not get diagnosed. The study, which was published last month in the journal Pediatrics, found that pediatricians who ask a mom two quick questions -- whether she has lost interest and pleasure in doing things lately and whether she has been feeling down -- made a big difference in identifying the disorder.

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Walker tells the story of how 28-year-old Heidi Kenney was able to quit her daily grind at an insurance company and spend more time being a "working mom on her own terms" by making dolls in the shape of tampons. She also makes stuffed doughnuts, toast pillows and toilet seat covers and sells them on her Web site, My Paper Crane, which she started a few years ago. (She now fills between 100 and 150 orders a month.) Kenney has joined the growing wave of small, independent entrepreneurs who sell handmade toys, clothing, bath products and jewelry, among other things.

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Before they bask in the wonder of a life and cut the umbilical cord, men may first have to experience watching their partners writhe in pain -- not to mention seeing all that blood. Nowadays, many hospitals encourage dads to be present even during Caesarean deliveries. "Imagine if you were watching somebody stick a knife in your wife's belly," obstetrician David Downing told the Post. For most men, he says, "that's a horrible thought; it is a horrible sight."

As a result, hospitals are increasingly offering prenatal classes that do more than merely show birthing videos. These classes aim to prepare future dads to anticipate and manage their own overwhelming feelings, which in turn may help their partners have a calmer -- and some say less painful -- delivery.

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Health Day: Testosterone patch for women: helps mood and libido, triples risk of heart problems. Hmm.

Reuters (again): No surprise, but a first-of-its-kind study found that trafficked women suffer a similar level of post-traumatic stress as torture victims.

Slate: Meghan O'Rourke adds to Linda Hirshman's soup on why women should work.

Associated Press/USA Today: Good news: Fewer teens are having babies and dropping out of school. Bad news: More are living in poverty. (Children are "treading water," said Annie E. Casey Foundation president Doug Nelson.)

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So I was pleased to read Ellen Graham's insightful essay Monday (subscription required) in a special section on retirement in Monday's Wall Street Journal on how men deal with aging. She questions why at 70 years old, her formerly affable husband, Don, suddenly fell victim to what she calls "elder combustion" by freaking out about traffic injustices, misplaced items and automated telephone "help" lines.

"If aging, in part, is about declining powers, men seem to take it harder -- and more personally -- than women. I know, that's a sweeping generalization. But think about the stereotypes: sweet little old ladies, but grumpy old men. I wonder: Do men, after decades of work, still have their toughest job ahead of them? How do our husbands, and brothers and uncles and fathers, make peace with aging?"

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This comes at a time when widows -- many of whom are young, stay-at-home mothers -- must often deal with finding new housing, comforting grieving children and coming to terms with the fact that they are single parents. "A few widows simply fall through the cracks altogether," writes Alvarez. "The consequences are hard felt: they run up credit card bills, move in with relatives to save money, pull their children from private schools, spend money on lawyers or dedicate countless frustrating hours to unraveling the mix-ups."

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According to Reuters, researchers from the University of Chicago's Center on Aging combed through U.S. Census data, the Social Security Administration database and genealogical records to find 198 centenarians who were born in the U.S. from 1890 to 1893. Then they looked at family histories to see if they could figure out what predicted such longevity. The husband-and-wife research team of Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova found that the mother's age seemed to matter, but the father's did not.

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And yesterday, the highest court in the land decided it would further reexamine whether the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was signed by Congress and President Bush in 2003, is unconstitutional because it provides no exceptions for the health of women. (Back in February, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar case from Nebraska, which opposed the law because it didn't include such health protections. Though the act was signed three years ago, it has never gone into effect because it has been tied up in court.) The new case, brought by Planned Parenthood of California, charges that the federal law is too vague and imposes an undue burden on women. "This abortion ban would forbid doctors from providing their patients with the care they believe is safest and best, and would give Congress and states a green light to endanger women's health when they restrict women's access to abortion," said Eve Gartner, who represents Planned Parenthood. "This dangerous law should be struck down, sending a message to politicians to stop legislating medicine."

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Associated Press: Since nearly 30 percent of Florida women fish, why not ply them with mimosas and really cute pink boots and lures?

New York Times: Yahoo parents' group called Peachhead has become formidable force.

New York Times (again): Op-Ed argues that the family court system penalizes fathers if they miss child support payments, but doesn't protect their custody rights.

New York Times (yet again): Has the focus on women's health shortchanged men?

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Fawbush had sued for custody and visitation rights when her former partner didn't let her see the girl following the bitter separation. But the judges unanimously agreed that Fawbush was not the girl's "de facto custodian" because she was not the primary caregiver, despite "participating substantially in the support and rearing of a child for a significant period of time." A lower court had ruled that she couldn't apply for such rights because although she was the primary breadwinner, she was not the primary caregiver. Under state law, she had to be both.

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These are things neither her husband -- nor his father -- ever did, she writes rather wistfully. Rather, her father-in-law served as a disciplinarian, policing his children's table manners. "But he never sang a lullaby to his children. Fathers didn't used to sing lullabies," she writes of the former generation of dads. "They didn't know the names of their children's teachers. They didn't help with homework. They didn't take time off in the middle of a workday to go to their child's school for a concert or a field day or to eat chicken kabobs in the school cafeteria. And they certainly didn't cart their babies everywhere or stay home and play with them while their wives went out with friends for an evening."

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Though praised by many, the choice to elect Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada, has the potential to further strain the unity of the Episcopal Church, which has been in internal turmoil since it shocked the international Anglican Communion by consecrating the church's first gay bishop three years ago. As a result of that decision, some American congregations left the Episcopal Church and branches overseas threatened to break away.

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