What a pleasure to see Maureen Dowd's column replaced by Dining With Jeff by Patricia Nelson Limerick.

When I find myself puzzled and even vexed by the opinions and beliefs of other people, I invite them to have lunch. Multiple experiments have supported what we will call, in Jeff's honor, the Limerick Hypothesis: in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90 percent of the uproar is noise, and 10 percent is what the scientists call "signal," or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that the actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale we can manage....

But even if I dine alone, I'll still hold to the conviction that American citizens have the ability to explain themselves to one another, and to let friendship redeem the Republic.

Indeed.