Very well said, thank you.

I will totally try this on my iPad. This looks like fun!

My wife and I dated for seven years, and then lived together for two, before tying the knot and buying a house together. Best decision I ever made. We'd already worked out all of the casual annoyances and gotten into a housework routine before we jumped into the 30-year mortgage... I can't imagine how much trouble we…

I knew this sounded familiar. Thanks.

This is from "Tapestry", which is one of my favorite ST:TNG episodes ever. It is indeed a Q episode.

I'm so happy I saw XKCD this morning and went to watch the livestream. What a fantastic moment.

<rant>

Do people actually whistle and snap at a server at a restaurant, or play the 'reverse tip meter' game? I can't imagine being so unconscionably rude to someone... it boggles my mind. >.<

It takes way longer than 'hundreds of years' to evolve anything. Especially away from something as fundamental as reproduction. It takes thousands of years for even a minor evolutionary change to take effect—see, humanity, which has been anatomically modern for nearly two hundred *thousand* of them.

The Vorkosigan Saga doesn't *discuss* artificial wombs, to be fair. It's a central conceit to her entire world-building. BARRAYAR is, in my opinion, one of the best representations of how an advance in reproductive technology would affect an old and backward society.

Based on the observable universe, our sun will peter out in approximately 1.5 times as long as it's been around... say, 7 billion years from now or so.

This is a very difficult subject, and you took it on with grace and poise, Annalee. As always.

Well-said. Antidepressants screw with some people to the point that they actually make the person want to die rather than continue living like that. Anyone taking mind-altering medication needs to be fully briefed on the possible effects, and needs to know that they can stop taking it anytime if it's screwing with…

Except that I think you're misinterpreting this quote. This quote is talking about *decreasing* the kind of "nudging" that the government already does in favor of providing education that would allow people to make decisions for themselves, instead of building them into policy (which is made way above our heads).

So, your arguments are all slippery slope now. Nice.

No, it doesn't, and the fact that you're comparing them is a great demonstration of why critical thinking skills are important.

Wow. Teaching critical thinking skills creates sociopaths. That is quite possibly the best non-sequitur I have ever seen. Well done.

So, you're saying that spiders would dominate humanity if they could only access our precious Interwebz?

With you 100%. There seems to be plenty of extra space on my dashboard—I think they could squeeze in one more icon for a "this is serious shit" warning light, and maybe a chime. "OH GOD OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" is probably not the way to go, but it would serve the purpose. =)

Yeah, a flashing Check Engine light is your car screaming "STOP RIGHT NOW YOU IDIOT OR I'M GOING TO DIE"