Hi Kurt,

These studies were funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which cautioned that "this was one particular set of women in one particular place." Also, "the studies did not look at other potential health effects in a child whose mother drank during pregnancy."

The title Skyfall always makes me think of this. (Which is probably where Q gets all those spy gadgets.)

I agree that Betty has hidden depths. But the fact that she keeps them hidden in that "pretty social cage" (nice phrase) is part of the problem, right?

From one guy's point of view, here's why this advice is wrong:

"How many of you just checked this book out of the library instead of buying it? Really? No one? So you're saying there was a sudden run on copies of Mountains Beyond Mountains for no good reason?"

Proponents of longevity research talk about extending healthy lifespans. The point is to stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible, then go quickly after that.

While dieting may be "safe" for pregnant women, they're not actually recommending it, according to an editorial that accompanied the research. Many of the studies they examined were "of small size and limited quality."

Interestingly, when fasting is done as part of a religious or spiritual tradition, the point is to stop obsessing over food for a while.

Apparently coffee or tea is okay, even with a little bit of milk.

A lot of people are already doing this, especially within the "paleo" community.

While these articles always mention wine, high-dose resveratrol supplements aren't even made from grapes. They're refined from a plant called Japanese knotweed, or Polygonum cuspidatum (which has a higher resveratrol content and is much less expensive).

I'm finding this argument a little nutty, starting with the contention that trying to avoid chemicals known to be harmful is the equivalent of "freaking out" over them.

If he did stick around, you'd get really, really sick of him.

I think someone at Spider-Man Central must have said, "This is a newspaper comic strip! We have to make absolutely sure that nothing exciting ever happens."

The great Josh Fruhlinger, otherwise known as the Comics Curmudgeon, has been gleefully covering this story line (and all the hilariously violent antics of Mark Trail) for a while now.

"So, tell us what you don't like about yourself."

This episode finally clarified that the former Jane Siegel, Roger's wife, is Jewish. (Her father speaks Yiddish.)

There's a strange 2005 movie called Zerophilia in which a young man has a supposedly real condition that causes him to switch genders whenever he has sex.

When I did a lot of Internet dating, I also occasionally kept notes about details such as where women were from, what their parents did for a living, or what they said in their profiles. I assumed other people were doing it too.