Ditto for Pirates of the Carribean.

I'm in the middle of some home renovations, so in addition to all the stuff that normally fills up my purse, there's also granite chunks and tile and cabinet samples making it weigh a million pounds.

I totally agree - and, I tend to remember the history better if I learned it via fictional accounts, because it was more personal. Getting a portrayal of how those events shaped people's lives and how those people felt about what was going on makes it stay with me in ways that a purely factual account doesn't.

Rome, NY is no gem. Versailles, Kentucky should probably be on the list too.

I actually think the snobbery regarding fiction is more of a deal-breaker than not reading at all. After all, lots of adults lead busy lives, and I know people (my husband included) who enjoy reading but who hadn't read anything for fun in a long time because they felt like they were too busy for it, had too much…

I'll never understand the notion that only non-fiction can be educational. First, I've learned tons from historical fiction I've read - sure, some bits are real and others are made up, but if you found the subject interesting, then you can seek out other reading on it, or read the helpful material the author usually…

First, really sorry to hear that you're in a rough patch - I hope you guys are able to work things out & figure out what you want.

That subatomic duck one gets big laughs out of my toddler - "Baby Loves Quarks" is a great nerd parent board book, by the way :)

That one actually happened - I had a college roommate who watched it semi-regularly, in spite of her generally seeming like a nice person (and not a sociopath, which is really the only type of person I thought could stomach that premise). I mean, really - they took women with poor body image and terrible self esteem,…

I think that's exactly where that National Geographic documentary series about Gen X put the cutoff.

Punky's Dilemma could be some sort of follow-up to Food Fight. "Wish I was an English Muffin, 'bout to make the most out of a toaster…"

I hope they included some clips from the version of the trilogy that the MIT Musical Theater Guild did a while back. It includes such musical theater gems as "I got the Force right here" and "I am the very model of a protocol and service droid."

It definitely was. His crowning achievement was when he asked me to prom, and when I said I couldn't go, he said "Oh. Can your sister go with me?"…I'm sort of surprised that I never realized before how Urkel-y he was, but there's a ton of parallels now that I think about it :)
I hear he's married and has a couple…

Thing is, that doesn't obligate her to be attracted to him - I had a fairly Urkel-esque friend in high school (extremely nerdy, wore the same outfit every day, weighed about 90 pounds), and we eventually drifted apart because he was so weird about his determination to become part of my family. I mean, if he just…

I'm not saying that you don't have a point about offering gay roles to gay actors, but you're not helping your argument by pulling out these grossly exaggerated hypotheticals. It's possible to have a straight actor respectfully and realistically portray a gay role, but it is not possible for a white actor to…

He was expanding the conversation to talk about the larger issues with representation in Hollywood. They've got terrible racial representation as well. I know it's not the point of the article, but they're certainly linked issues, as both stem from the problem that writers/directors/casting directors assume that…

It was a very sad day when I learned that that wasn't what real-life mathematicians did. Made my parents' jobs seem way less exciting.

I don't think I have any flat-earthers in my life. I mean, my family is really science-nerd heavy, and I went to a tech school (although some of those idiots turned into anti-vaxxers, so I guess you never know). If I do have any flat-earthers in my life, they're closeted, I think.

I'm saying, all he was asking for was 5% of characters to be gay, not 20% - you're intentionally misinterpreting other people's statements.

Most of those films with a gay character have just that - one gay character. If you assume that those films have just 20 characters with speaking roles (which seems very low for most major studio movies), then those films have a representative number of LGBT characters (5%), while the other 88% have 0. That puts us…