Have you ever been to Baltimore? Or actually know anything at all about the city? I'm betting no.

For my brother and myself it was not because our public high school was bad (it was a decent school) but we were pretty well ignored by teachers, and I was having problems with students in my school. My private school was a lot smaller, so I got more personal attention; it helped me become more confident in myself…

It's a very emotional thing to be unable to have children and turn to surrogacy. To then be unable to bond with the child as a parent? They've already suffered heart break after heart break. I completely understand.

My husband and I went on our honeymoon last October...on our second anniversary. It was funny explaining to people that we were on our honeymoon, but had already been married for 2 years.

exactly, as long as they are in uniform they are on duty, that means not having consensual sex and not playing strip poker. If you want to do that, wait till your shift ends.

Oh man, I knew I should have read the comments before voting, I would have changed my votes just cause of your comment!

You are right, I think this is an important step forward. (I'm a geneticist, so I love to contribute to science talk time :)

Just a correction: it's not 100% risk. Your cells contain hundreds of mitochondria and each mitochondria contains many copies of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). You can have both "mutated" and "normal" copies of the mtDNA which can be passed down to the offspring. During cell division, stochastic movement of the…

@ The_Cow_Palace:

Thank you! I get so frustrated with sensationalist science news articles.

My husband's pharmacy made a big mistake with his prescriptions last July. He has cluster headaches, and was given 2 prescriptions from the doctor: one was for blood pressure medication that he was supposed to take once a day, to hopefully reduce the number of headaches, the other was extra strength ibuprofen for…

@girl_talk: I understand. It's hard because there's still a lot we don't know about how different genes affect neurological function. And not all (or even most) alterations are even in genes, which just complicates things further. Anyway, sorry to have nitpicked, I'm a geneticist, so concept of a perfect genome is…

@girl_talk: Slightly nitpicky but nobody is genetically perfect. More than likely it's just that any differences in your brothers genome are small polymorphisms that haven't currently been linked to any neurological problems. But everyone harbors "mutations" in their genome, there is no such thing as genetic…

@princessshinylocks: I really wish we could bring the side ponytail back in style. I remember rocking that look in the late 80's (when I was 7-8 years old).

I've previously told a story on Jez about a woman assuming I was pregnant and touching my stomach (DO NOT touch my stomach!).

@personaldecay: I agree, that whole story sounded suspicious. I don't buy it (but it looks like it won anyway).

When I was around 19-20 my grandmother took my aside and quietly told me that she thought it would be best if I "married a nice Jewish boy." I just as quietly told her that I wasn't even dating but it was my business and not hers. She never brought it up again.

@ForgotMyMantra: I'm the same. Jewish mom, Catholic dad (with a wonderfully Catholic Irish last name). When I was in college I emailed someone from the jewish organization asking for access to something and I had to explain that despite my last name, I am in fact Jewish.

For me, to be honest, it was my brother that started me on the math/science tract. He started teaching me to add in pre-school, and attempted multiplication by 1st-2nd grade. When I was in 3rd grade he taught me some pre-algebra.

I loved She-Ra as a kid. I had a lot of the action figures and the castle which was so cool because it had an ELEVATOR! Which you moved using a string in the back...which could be used to fling the figures into the sky, as my brother discovered by pulling the string really hard. I've never forgiven him for breaking…