One of my favorite features of Discover is that you can use your cash back to purchase gift cards, and many of them for 80% of redemption value (i.e. pay $40 cash back reward for $50 gift card). I usually use these to buy clothes for kids (this is the redemption value for Gap/OldNavy/BR). And the occasional splurge…

I usually type Ms. to my kids' teachers even though they usually write Mrs. I try to call people as the prefer to be called, but it's habit to use Ms. It annoys me that the marital status of women gets to be public knowledge because of their salutation. I didn't change my last name and my husband is a doctor, so we…

Oooo I always use a bag because it has a strap etc, but now I"m extra glad I did. I haven't put the carseat in the plane largely because I imagine it increases the ease of the child to kick seat in front of them and makes the use of the tray impossible. But maybe that's because I'm thinking of a kid >2. Any of those…

Then you've obviously never seen hi-speed video of dragonfly nymphs. Here is a good example. Skip to 1:00 to start the really good slow mo parts, stay till the end to watch it chow down on another insect while it squirms in pain.

Dylan Moran is my god

My home airport is Philly and it was somewhat disconcerting when I was on layover on the way to a conference, expecting to be able to do work on free wi-fi and I got hit with boing boing. I had never tried to use wi-fi waiting anywhere but philly and I was perplexed and annoyed that they were gouging a captive…

I found German nouns held loosely to the gender rule of straight or long things were male, round or soft things female. This notion failed me completely in French, which doesn't have a neuter gender so that's kind of good, and they don't have obvious case sensitivity of nouns or verbs or articles... but if you do…

aw give the wasps a break. I bet they do more for farm pest problems than spiders. Just not the wasps you know about. Vespids etc are the tip of the iceberg

I will attest to the belly breathing actually. If you start playing a wind instrument at a young age and you have one of the best music teachers in the country, you'll learn to "Fill your belt when you inhale" This gives you lots of control over your tone. Keeping your stomach muscles tight while playing, to the…

It was a long time ago, that I read the series. I have a vague sense that I was left wanting a better resolution on the Shrike.

Tosses you in the deep end with multiple interwoven story lines. The very nature of the protagonists in several of the story lines is a mystery for half the book... in one of the threads there is a character trying to interpret things she is experiencing, but she doesn't have the same information you have. It's not…

because you posted this, now I can pick my other choice!

In my state the number for physicians is ridiculously high. Now, granted these are median numbers. But it if they accurately categorized a general practitioner (internist) it is seriously unlikely that there are many of them making much less than 100,000 a year, and they have the median listed at >187,200. My…

That's exactly what I thought about. I try to explain this to other people who might unfortunately be starting down a road of chronic pain/illness. Eventually you reset your expectations of what a normal day is, and you get on with everything you have to do, even in spite of misery.

See, this is where my general rule for multisyllabic words works, Primary emphasis goes on antepenultimate syllable (Third from last). I promise it will almost never let you down, especially in words regarding scientific or medical things.

Generally speaking, multisyllabic words like this have the emphasis (like emphasis) put on the antepenultimate syllable (third from the last). So under the general rules of pronunciation kilOMeter is actually more accurate.

yes, she was amazing and funny... and the show was smart and fast talking

Even a graph with units on the y-axis would be pretty much useless without confidence intervals around the lines. Take from a scientist who specializes in statistical analysis of data. At the minimum error bars on those points are necessary, ideally confidence intervals around the line... also connecting three…

This is what I do as a barely a savvy computer user. I have a partitioned drive formatted for Time Machine and for FAT32 (which I use to back up files that are important to be accessible, but not large). Need to get an offsite back up in place as well.