Weighting only helps so much. In my district, the weighted grades were so out of control (an A+ in an AP class was something like 5.4!) that taking any “general placement” classes at all could lower your GPA. You could literally take an extra study hall instead of band or orchestra and have a higher GPA.

Another (much…

No mention of Wink? I keep a stick in the laundry room (it’s cheap, takes up very little space, and one stick lasts for years unless you’re super messy with ink) because it works so well for ink stains. You rub it on and rinse with water. Easy. No technique required.

It wasn’t supposed to be an academic study. It was supposed to be journalism.

And how many writers really have enough clout to choose their publisher? You want to get published, you take what you can get. (And which major publisher that takes women as seriously as men should she have picked? This is an industry-wide…

I’ve never really understood why anything counts as fun if, afterward, you can’t really remember it. If you can’t remember it, how do you know it was fun?

Thank you for this post. It’s helping me to imagine what it would be like. I can’t drink at all, so I’ve never really had a chance to figure out why other people…

The first round is just to see if it is safe for humans and get some sort of baseline for how antibodies are produced in response to the new vaccine. You generally want healthy people for that. Healthy people are better able to cope with potential side effects.

Vaccines don’t necessarily do much for people who are…

I know that participants in a study like this are compensated, but still: What a brave thing to do!

Finally, someone who gets me! Aren’t we all just pretending?

Finally, someone who gets me! Aren’t we all just pretending?

Only if it’s a really bright color, generally.

Only if it’s a really bright color, generally.

It’s also political theater. Done properly, it’s a dramatic gesture that attracts media attention. It’s exciting.

If you want to understand how this is supposed to work (and be entertained in the process), check out the classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. ( We know our system doesn’t really work like that, but…

People like to see alligators, actually. It sounds like that might be part of the problem - if people are feeding them at the resort (despite warnings not to do so), they’re going to be hanging around.

I spent some time at a game park once and the periodic signs warning you of the (very limited) potential for there to be lions weren’t so much scary as thrilling, a reminder that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, so to speak. I wonder if this could be approached the same way?

Also, I bet people would take selfies with the…

It was clearly not a good decision to go into the water at all. These parents have to live with that. It’s horrific all around. :\

I’ve only been in South Africa for a grand total of just over four weeks, but I’d say it probably depends a lot on where you live, like in the U.S.

Where I’ve been, fences around houses (with barbed or razor wire on top) are ubiquitous, but in some areas that’s as much to keep out the livestock as to keep out…

There are ways to cope with the heat, but they involve things you don’t normally see in jail cells, such as high ceilings and big openings between rooms for air to circulate.

Reminder to those who live further north: Air-conditioning is a luxury [that no one wants to live without] in, say, northern Illinois. It’s a necessity in Louisiana.

This is like not providing heat in a Minnesota winter.

It would be nice to see a Disney princess movie marketed like the princess (or any other female character, for that matter) was the main draw.

I’m sorry. :(

I can never give, either—I don’t even get as far as the iron test because I don’t meet the weight requirement! What I do is find out who organizes the local blood drives and get on the list of people they call when they need extra volunteers around the place (serving snacks, etc.).

In my case, I could easily get around…

Black Coffee was a real play, her first. (It’s pretty obvious in the novelization because except for a couple of brief interludes, pretty much all of the action takes place in one room.) The other play novelization I’ve seen (but not read) is Spider’s Web.

I have not read her Mary Westmacott books, which is…

There’s a compilation called The Mousetrap and Other Plays that includes her adaptation of And Then There Were None. It’s got some original plays (excellent!) and some adaptations of her novels - she wrote them herself because she thought other people did it badly (often she thought they were too faithful).

But there…