Eventually her torso would widen as she built up more muscle in the area. While this looks extreme, corset-wearing was a matter-of-course in much of the 19th century and the idea was to get your waist 18 inches or less. It looks strange to us and it's certainly not going to help with deep breathing (corsets are a…

Now, I know why my daughter's teddy bear is so ragged. It's had a hard job all these years.

I suspect a lot of this is stuff he's created to make his world work—he really does astonishing world-building, incredibly complex.

Actually, your English could use some work—"fingers of fault"? But, anyway, businesses are part of our social system, not separate from it. Why is there good childcare in Europe? Is it because everyone's amazingly enlightened? No. It's because many of the countries are facing falling birthrates and populations. …

There seems to be a research angle as well—how to get people up to the stratosphere (sort of) safely—so the engineering geek thing was part of it as well. The Web site of the company involved talks about being able to study the stratosphere.

I love the fact he took off from Roswell . . .

What on earth are you saying? Who/what are you trying to blame here?

No, she looks like she's had plastic surgery—her eyes are dramatically different and she's had her jaw tightened. The change in hairline indicates a facelift.

I don't fault her for having work done—it's Hollywood and the pressure is tremendous, but when you stop looking like yourself, it's a career disaster: Meg…

Yep, Meryl's voice isn't big and she's not been shown as much of a belter, so I don't see the Witch coming alive through her music the way she does onstage.

I've been in it a couple of times (smaller parts) and it's a really, really enjoyable musical to perform—except for learning the counting of "One Midnight Gone." I don't think seeing a film will substitute at all for a live performance—watching or doing. It's just one of those shows that really comes alive with an…

My understanding is that the big deterrent on offering at-office childcare has been the insurance hassle. There's got to be a better way since European countries offer childcare all over the place.

As for artificial wombs, it's already possible to use a surrogate. Not cheap, but I'm not sure an artificial womb…

No, they're parents. Are their partners the more active parents? Usually, no question. But that's a point I'm trying to make here—men don't think they have to make a choice. And they don't.

I'll add, though, that, yes, many of those big important guys do come to their kids' games. In fact, some of them can be a…

Really? Because I live in Silicon Valley and there are thousands of people here who are extremely successful, have all the toys and have the kids. But they're men.

When was the last time you heard a man say, "I decided not to have kids because I wanted to focus on my career."? Doesn't happen. Those guys have kids…

Nah, you want to keep discouraging childbearing among teens. It's one of the better ways to keep down population growth—girls get an education and, later on, when they have children they're better able to take care of them, less likely to be in poverty and they'll have fewer kids.

And, I don't see why reproduction…

I honestly think that artificial wombs would be one of those unintended consequence things. There are all sorts of indications that later stage fetuses are actually responding to the world outside the womb—they can hear from six months, recognize their mother's voice, things like that. There's a whole bunch of…

Oh, I hope this works on more people—there are so many serious side effects to paralysis—to be able to counteract them even partially makes a huge difference. We're a species that's meant to walk—when we can't at all, our bodies suffer in all sorts of ways.

(R.I.P. Christopher Reeve)

There have been some cases where people have successfully confronted their trolls, but this isn't one of those situations—i.e. where there was ongoing personal harassment and disparagement. It was a bad review, no death threats, no reposting of a nude or embarrassing photo. All it really comes down to is that a…

Oh this. I always read the bad reviews on Amazon, but I decide whether the reviewer's a good reviewer—i.e. what bugs them bugs me. I checked out what was left of the original review and I probably wouldn't have paid much heed to it because the reviewer was obviously having a strong emotional reaction to the…

Damn, she has all these connections and she's still falling into the sock puppet hole? Some things never change.

Oh, I can go for that—I don't mind a good round of the feels, just please don't let it be about cute kids dying of starvation after mom dies in a firebombing. It made that Lars Von Trier musical with Bjork look like a walk in the park.

Yes, I do, indeed, have some personal reasons for my interest in the subject (breast cancer struck three women in my family in a two-year-period without there being any other family history), but I try to stick to things that are known—i.e. radiation is a known and potent carcinogen; breast cancer in a young women is…