I've been leaking readership lately, so in an effort to render seastreet a little more interactive, and also because these are topics I've gotten into arguments with people about lately, I'm going to ask you all to answer one or more questions in any way you like- in your own diaries, in my guest book, in email form, invective-spewing underground broadsheets, press releases, AIM; in short, in the manner of your choosing. I'm curious to hear what you have to say, readers.

No, I really, really am, and I'd pay you if I could, but I can't, so just donate a few minutes of your time to my curiosity.

[I hear survey questions are supposed to be short and pithy, and prompt short and pithy answers. Oops.]

(1) What personal qualities and skills do you think politicians should have, if you hold out for politicians with qualities and skills at all? Explain.

(2) If you're to design a semester's curriculum for a literature course, and your students can buy and read ten books, what do you put on the list, and why? What's your course called?

(3) What book has influenced your life more than any other?

(4) What's your impression of the study of philosophy? Useless bourgeois indulgence? Useless intellectual indulgence? Useless bourgeois intellectual indulgence? Out of touch with reality these days? All for it except when your tax dollars go for college students to read Marx/Bloom/Plato/Foucault/the Bible? Think reading Kant helps you with your tax returns? I realize this is probably a lame question, because either you won't give a shit, or you will and will probably not feel like going into details in service of such a puerile line of inquiry. So maybe I'll abandon this question altogether. But wait, I'm still talking. Oh, shit. I guess what I'd like to know is what those of you who read philosophy get out of it, how you got started, who you like, and why; those of you who don't, I'd like to know whether you object to it for some reason or just don't have time.

(5) I'm thinking of something... green. Something green.

(5) That was a joke. Ha, ha! Seriously. Is this the fifth question, or the sixth?

(5) The posers of the previous question have been sacked. For keepsies this time. Sleeping with your coworkers. What's your feeling? (Not that I am now or have in any way considered sleeping with coworkers lately. I promise.) Have you ever? Do you refuse? Morally wrong? All your coworkers are ugly/stupid/boring/probably bad in bed?