I think it is very possible for people to change. Chris Brown is immature and often acts like a jackwagon, but I have to think that the court dates, the public ridicule, the constant hate from random people, and the possible loss of his career might have given him pause. Hopefully, he's learned like you have.

Chris Brown was in a multi-year relationship with that Tran woman. Apparently he never beat her up. I am optimistic.

Right on.

He didn't start the fight, so it might have been hard to charge him.

Of course it's possible. I have heard men even say that they were abusive with one woman and not with another. People sometimes grow the fuck up. Sometimes they have enough of police and court and anger and all that shit, and finally figure out a way to communicate and deal with frustration other than with fists.

How is Anne Hathaway the Taylor Swift of acting? Taylor Swift does not take herself nearly as seriously as Hathaway does, and she is does not try to be the goody-2-shoes/teacher's pet that Hathaway tries to be. They are nothing alike.

He's more famous now because organizations like Jezebel cover him *constantly*. Chris Brown was a big star before, but he wasn't really an *established* star; he was new enough that he could have slipped off the radar if news organizations had simply stopped covering him. But Jezebel and others were SO MAD at him,…

I agree. What's the point of the show at all without Christina? And I hated that they were going to make it multi-cam with a laugh track. I don't know why they thought that was a good move. Maybe she also thought it was a bad idea and is moving on.

Agreed. If the fight were a lot longer than a couple weeks ago, I might expect him to stand. But if he did so tonight it would have seemed phony. He did clap. I think that's enough. Who says that everyone has to stand at moments like these anyway?

Expecting any random celebrity to be a role model is just an exercise in stupidity.

About Rihanna:

I don't know if I've ever been unfriended, but I have had some friend requests turned down by people I know very well. I thought it was pretty hilarious, actually.

Oh good then, it's not just me. I frankly believe it's ridiculous to expect grown adults to be hairless or near hairless down there. It's expensive and painful!

Read what I wrote. I said it was not particularly "uncommon". I took pains not to imply that it was common.

Well said.

My most Barbie Doll friends/family— shopping! hair! nails! fashion!— are engineers.

Exactly. It's very frustrating that there isn't much focus on teaching non-mathy people math. Schools focus on teaching *everyone* how to read, no matter what their abilities or disabilities. They don't treat math the same way.

Yes, that's the sense I get, too. Everyone is pushed in East Asia into specific mathy/sciencey careers. Either you are a doctor or engineer or you're considered virtually nothing. There is not a lot of respect or room for artists, writers, sociologists, etc. to make a viable living. I looked at the spreadsheet with…

It is complicated. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I LOVE science, but I dislike math. Math is not AT ALL intuitive to me, though I usually was able to work with it in high school given enough time. Science fields became untenable to me once math started being taught as a part of science. Worse, in…

You must be young. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were lots of studies that posited that the reason that girls did not do well in school was for exactly the reason your mother cited— girls are more cooperative/less competitive than boys, and boys bogarded all the attention in class. They were shown to be more active…