Thanks - that's a really good place to start. And my working style preferences are a lot less changeable than my interests!

Has anyone here realised fairly early on in their career that they've chosen really badly? For context, I've got a masters in my discipline and a couple of years' experience, so I'm fairly committed. The problem is that I'm a bit of a jack-of-all-disciplines and my main area of interest tends to change by the month. I…

I find it really sad when parents say (or others tell parents) they aren't their kids' friends. Of course, you have other responsibilities towards your kids but that doesn't preclude being a friend as well.

The NHS is hands down the thing I am most proud of the UK for. (Even if the current government is hellbent on ruining it.)

While becoming a mass murderer would obviously be a very extreme reaction, and one in which more factors would almost certainly be involved, there is evidence to show that men are more likely to perceive unemployment as a defeat than women. This doesn't mean that women somehow owe it to men to let them take all the…

My mum worked in a hospital before abortions were legalised in the UK. She said that on Friday afternoons they used to try to clear as many beds as possible on their ward in preparation for the inevitable influx of women who attempted abortion. What an awful reality to live with.

She certainly had an excellent point about ageism and expressed her feelings and thoughts on it very persuasively. It's just a huge pity she didn't take the experience as a chance to reflect on her own behaviour, as well as call others out on theirs.

Has there been any psychological research into this effect? Is it just a few bullshitters or is this a common response to being put on the spot, especially in the public view?

Wish granted!

I'll confess to not being particularly familiar with Seamus Heaney's work as a whole, but we studied Mid-Term Break at school. It's so evocative and desperately sad. I'll be studying Burial at Thebes later in the year and I'm very much looking forward to that.

Thank God it isn't just me! That would've been a very different movie and I was a bit worried I'd zoned it out and managed to completely miss the point.

Jolly good. I figured as much, but I'm a pedant.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. If you genuinely see the error of your ways, by all means, say so. But if you aren't sorry, don't say you are, or pretend to understand or agree with your critics.

Spot on. Engage with the content of the argument, not the insults. And where that content is fact, rather than opinion, ensure you are categorically right and back it up with cold hard evidence. Being wrong or arguing irrationally is fuel for the trolls and undermines your argument for the lurkers.

Absolutely. Even if his "jokes" had been appropriate anywhere, they were not appropriate as questions in a pub quiz. A pub quiz is a serious business.

It's so painfully obvious that they're only sorry that they got caught.

Aw, cheers! Just trying to keep it evidence-based.

Subjects in both groups were over 50 and they controlled for age within the sample, so the groups should be comparable. The study used existing data for subjects over 50, so it doesn't seem to be a deliberate choice to study that group only but a question of availability of data. The age of the subjects is a…

I think this balances out the bank notes in terms of discipline as well. We've now got a writer as well as a campaigner/humanitarian, economist, engineer and manufacturer. I know Darwin was a scientist, as distinct from an engineer, but it seems unfair not to recognise the arts at all.

I vote Mary Shelley.