As a person with bad balance who can't bike far without falling, that event terrifies me - I totally respect the important message that they are sending out, but any mention of the event just sends me recoiling at the thought of fragile skin and pavement.

I'm coming up completely short.

Ah, pubic/public. I check every document that I have to hand in for that particular inversion. So far, pretty much every text of more than ten pages had at least one typo in which I discussed the implications of a new 'pubic policy'. I'm pretty grateful to the find/replace function for avoiding much awkwardness.

My level of horniness varies a lot over the course of my menstrual cycle, and usually peaks during my period. Since I'm not particularly regular, this is one of the best tricks that I have to figure out when to expect it to start.

As far as I can tell, the 'young adult' category has only ever been used as a euphemism to describe books intended towards older children and younger teenagers (9-14 maybe?) who aren't necessarily interested in or mature enough to handle some of the content in books for adults. I assume that someone figured that no…

In which it becomes apparent that there are many, many incompetent doctors around.

Children who aren't conventionally good looking know it - we don't live in the kind of society where they are likely to get to forget it. So I don't think that compliments are going to give a child an unrealistic view of their appearance (or that ugly children necessarily grow up to be ugly adults).

This is what worries me about the idea that co-sleeping is only a problem when parents have had drugs or are drunk. Some people sleep as if they were dead, even under the best circumstances (I've slept through fire-alarms, a home invasion, and a cat clawing my arm badly - I'm pretty sure that rolling over a baby would…

Autopsies aren't necessarily able to pick up all of the health issues that put a baby at increased risk for SIDS - it's possible that the problem was genetic (after all, adults with sleep apnea aren't diagnosed with a physical examination that finds specific physical problems - they are diagnosed on the basis of their…

I feel the same way. It could be that I'm just bitter because I like hand-drawn and other animation techniques so much better than traditional computer animation, of course, but the Pixar pieces that I have seen really left me cold. This could be good, but I don't really see anything revolutionary about it, or about…

I think that it's because her family isn't related to the nobility/hasn't been rich for multiple generations. They are incredibly wealthy, but culturally, they aren't "culturally upper class", if that makes sense :).

Ha! I love that Eames chairs were already highbrown a half-century ago, and have reascended to upper-middle-brow-heights once more :).

What about lemon-stuffed olives?

True!

I feel like the subsequent contests are only held to give people an excuse to reprint Sam's photo every year.

I don't even like dogs and I'm melting from the adorableness here. These are like, a better, more ridiculous, and more silly/stupid looking (Gus!) version of regular dogs.

Even if we completely ignored the question of women's rights to control their own bodies, and their rights to preserve their health and life; even if we pretended that there were actually women choosing to undergo the incredibly painful and scary procedure required for an abortion five or more months into a pregnancy…

Yes! My mother went on a diet when I was in my early teens; which is great, except that she started to describe her body (really similar shape to mine) in the most horrible terms ("I've finally managed to loose those disgusting thighs", "I can finally wear a nice dress again without looking like a whale", etc.). She…

You are right - it is definitely encouraged, to the point where weight loss seems to occupy the social role (as an activity that is inherently virtuous, as something that you can actually brag about, etc.) that philanthropic activities did in the Victorian era. And I'm sure that many people who decide to look weight…

This.