I need no lectures to remind me that good people inhabit the system; my cousin is a federal prosecutor. Nor do I need any lectures on the heroism of cops; I've ridden with police, been protected by them and yield to no one in my admiration for those who do that job with honor.

So save the lectures, just give me an answer: How can I trust a system whose biases against people who look like me are simultaneously well-documented, yet happily ignored by those who resemble me not at all.

The question matters because without trust, the system doesn't work. Everybody came down, and justifiably so, on the idiot rapper who said last year that he would not call police even if a serial killer were living next door. Unfortunately, fewer people bothered to ask where such profound distrust comes from. Fewer still bothered to ask what it leads to.

People don't participate in systems they don't trust. They don't come forward, they don't testify. So criminals go uncaptured and crimes, unpunished. Yet some black people apparently find that preferable to participating in a system they believe is rigged against them. I don't agree with them, but before you condemn them, ask yourself: Would you play in a game refereed by someone who hated you? What's the point?

“Christianity is the white man’s religion.” That was Malcolm X’s verdict, and though he meant it to be final, a generation of black Christian leaders decided to treat it as provisional. In 1969, a thirty-one-year-old theologian named James H. Cone published “Black Theology & Black Power,” a short, astringent book that Wright would use as a blueprint for Trinity. Cone proposed a reciprocal arrangement: just as the Black Power movement could find redemption in the Church, so the Church -- dominated and distorted by generations of white men -- could find redemption in the Black Power movement. He wrote that there was “a need for a theology whose sole purpose is to emancipate the gospel from its ‘whiteness’ so that blacks may be capable of making an honest self-affirmation through Jesus Christ.” And he argued that, since African-American suffering was such a powerful metaphor for the suffering of Christ, color-blind Christianity was a contradiction in terms. “To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen,” he wrote. “God has chosen black people!”

Like many brash-sounding manifestos of the era, this one came with fine-print qualifications. Throughout the book, Cone was careful to explain that a black-centered Church need not be a black-separatist Church. And even the simplest phrases -- “black people,” for instance -- turned out to be slippery. It wasn’t about being “physically black,” he wrote. “To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are.” In his view, blackness was as radically inclusive as Christianity itself, and just as demanding.

If the low “cost” of eating fast food is adding to the obesity problem, the solution involves increasing the cost, even in a nominal way. How do we give individuals the incentive to pay a little more — increased physical exertion, lack of convenience — to get their food? This is where a drive-through tax comes in.

We could tax the drive-through purchases at, say, 10 percent, while leaving the purchase of walk-in meals alone. At the very least, it may entice some to park and walk rather than waiting in the car.

Now, this may seem an invasion of personal choice or another step toward a nanny state. Maybe. But there are other arguments to be made. We tax cigarettes in part because of their health cost. Similarly, the individual’s decision to lead a sedentary lifestyle will end up costing taxpayers. In 2001, the surgeon general issued a report noting that obesity and its complications cost the nation $117 billion annually, much of it through Medicare and Medicaid.

Imposing a drive-through tax would be one way of recouping future taxpayer outlays — perhaps revenues could go directly to government health programs. And who knows, it could help the environment, too: with one move, we could fight obesity and reduce emissions from all those cars idling in the line at Burger King.

When I watched the game, I caught one sequence that would seem sure to prompt outrage -- your character gets falling-down drunk and can, if he wants, steal and then drive a car. The scene is undeniably fun and funny. Admittedly, the humor is low-brow, more in the tradition of "Jackass" than of Oscar Wilde, but it's still fun; like much else in the game, it's the thrill of discovery, the sense of, "Whoa, I can't believe I can do that!"

Of course, that'll be exactly the sentiment of the game's detractors: Can you believe they're letting children do that?! This has to be illegal!

Well, actually, nobody is letting kids play this game. It's rated M, which means it's for sale to people 17 or older. Kids will still get it, of course, just like they also get hold of R-rated movies and all kinds of perversities on the Web.

But nobody -- at least nobody sane -- calls for movie houses to refuse to play R-rated movies just because kids might sneak in. It's hard to see why the policy should be any different with video games.

It has never been easy to be a child star, but as an article in Thursday's Globe and Mail argues, today's teen actors are facing increasing scrutiny about their sex lives. It points to the media's fascination with the romantic lives of, among others, Emma Watson of "Harry Potter" and "Heroes" actress Hayden Panettiere as evidence of our growing obsession with teen stars' virginity. The article suggests that this development came in the wake of "Olsen Twins Countdown" (the Web site dedicated to counting down to the "Full House" stars' 18th birthday) and Jamie Lynn Spears' recent pregnancy. But it may have more to do with the fallout from her older sister's early branding strategy. As the recent (jaw-dropping) Rolling Stone profile of Britney points out, in the late '90s, manager Larry Rudolph turned her supposed virginity into a key part of her marketing plan -- as the "teenage Lolita of middle-aged men's dreams."

Spears was paraded around talk shows, discussing her virginity and, as the profile suggests, laying the groundwork for her eventual collapse. Jessica Simpson developed a similar look-but-don't-touch persona, and as they reached stratospheric popularity, Spears and Simpson managed to be both wholesome and sexualized -- a dichotomy that made it acceptable for prepubescent girls to show off their stomachs, and may have set a dangerous precedent for a new generation of teen stars whose entire life, including their sex life, has, without their consent, become a part of their public persona.