Okay, so how many active volcanoes are in California? I thought they were pretty much in the northern part of the state—the Trinity Alps—Lassen, Shasta and some others I can't name. Are there active volcanoes in other ranges?

There are a lot of volcanoes out there and most of the time they're not erupting. Yes, all of Yellowstone could blow, but the odds are pretty small that it will do so on the two or three days I visit. Since I'm not a particularly agile person, the odds are much greater that I'll die from falling off a mountain than…

Yep. I kept thinking—yes, that's cool—but why would I want to get married at Disney World?

Disney does do way cool stuff with technology though—3-D printed costumes and toys.

There was a study of Coke as a contraceptive that was a hit during the 2008 Ig Nobel awards—apparently Diet Coke works way better than New Coke.

I suppose it comes across that way, but since I'm not a successful singer and there are tons of beautiful voices out there, being complimented on mine doesn't mean that much to me. It's a little hard to explain—but if you work hard on something like singing what you hear when you hear a recording are all the flaws. …

Oh San Jose has *always* had a chip on its shoulder about that. San Jose loyalists will tell you all about how San Jose was the original state capital and San Jose had a big moment when it became a larger city than San Francisco. Unfortunately, nobody outside of San Jose noticed.

But, anyway, the growth is less in…

I like the way you think. I suppose moving walkways aren't that sturdy yet, but the idea of moving people without vehicles is an interesting one.

For one person, yes. More than two people, you start running into issues without a bigger fridge and a bigger oven. I do think most people don't ever use more than two burners, so a large hotplate will do.

Why? The whole thing's been known as the San Francisco Bay Area for ages—it's always been a collection of cities. Not quite continuous sprawl though—lots of density near the freeways, but the Bay limits it on one side and the mountains (and protected water sheds) limiting it on the other. Lot of the reason it's…

Well, the weird thing is that the density in SF hasn't increased all that much. That's a good part of the reason why the housing market's gone so completely insane with the increase in demand.

We're on our way to a population of 11 billion by the century's end. Unless you live in Asia, you don't have a realistic sense of what that kind of population density entails. Two-thirds of the world's population lives in Asia. Our population growth has been much more limited.

Fun though the speculation is, it's…

Well, to be brutal, the areas that have huge population issues are filled with poor non-white people—two/thirds of the world's population is in Asia. The area that still has population-growth issues (as opposed to having to deal with the ton of people that exist because of earlier population growth) is Africa. The…

I've actually been watching TOS in sequence—I'm halfway through the first season—and a couple of things really stick out compared to the later series. 1) The series got on its feet quickly—Kirk, Spock and McCoy fall into their dynamic early on, 2) the science fiction aspects were all over the place—it's not a cogent…

I dunno, I saw every Enterprise episode and I can barely remember it—which doesn't say good things. It didn't seem terrible at the time (except for the finale), but little of it stayed with me. It just wasn't that fresh in terms of ideas—the premise wasn't bad, but somehow it didn't add up into anything that…

Yep. Voyager swung wildly—it had some very, very good episodes and then some completely terrible, cringe-inducing ones, which made you forget there were good ones. The one where Janeway and Tom devolved into porcine creatures because the ship went so fast and then, somehow, returned to normal struck me as a…

It's not my no. 1 just because it's not really an SF story—the gist of it would work in any setting. So terrific episode, but I find other ones more creative.

Fortunately, biracial kids are becoming more common, so I think it has become easier over the years. Though a biracial kid with two mommies? Yeah, you'd want to be in a liberal area.

Oh, and as a mom, I just have to say—what an adorable little girl! (Sorry, just had to say it somewhere.)

I've actually sung professionally and have been told my voice is beautiful, but it still makes me incredibly uncomfortable to hear a recording of it. There's a video of a performance that I've absolutely never watched because of that.

They're broken down, but then only evangelicals are rated. I suspect mainline Protestants would have come out quite high if evaluated.

That sort of makes me think of the nearly immortal characters in Julian May's Many-Colored Land series—the most powerful long-lived ones are kind of evil until they find a cause that's actually big enough for them.