I haven't read the whole study, so maybe there's more to it; but to me, all this says is that women in swimsuits, for some reason, do more poorly on math tests. It seems like quite a leap to assume that they are "thinking about the body and comparing it to sexualized cultural ideals." Maybe that's what's going on. Or maybe they're just chilly.

I remember saying to someone, in the aftermath of 9/11, that GWB might turn out to be a Churchill figure -- not particularly highly regarded until circumstances gave him the crisis he was made for. In retrospect, that was wishful thinking; I'm still glad that Bush was president rather than Gore, but I see his presidency as a mixed bag.

But yeah, one of his biggest failings, in my opinion, was giving the Left such an easy target. Some of that he couldn't change: I always believed he was smart, but not a particularly good public speaker, and some people just don't have that skill. But he should have worked harder to communicate his ideas. There were good reasons to invade Iraq, but the Bush administration never did a good job of explaining them; that left its opponents free to construct their "Bush Lied" WMD conspiracy theories.

The Left would never have supported Bush's foreign policy, but it would have been better to have a disagreement based on policy than a disagreement based on a caricature of Bush as evil and stupid. It's a caricature that all Republicans are still fighting.

But implicit in that idea -- that the answer to everything is more government -- is the assumption that government is better qualified to make decisions than ordinary people are.

It's a common rhetorical device on the right to say that for liberals, government is a religion. I'm beginning to think this is literally true, though they'd deny it. They assume (without examining this belief) that government is omnipotent, quite literally. If that's not a religious belief, I don't know what is.

I'm one of those dreary people who fails to see the humor in practical jokes that are designed to deceive or embarrass other people. So I rather like the modern version of April Fool's Day: it's an opportunity for media outlets and corporations to parody themselves. The best such hoaxes are credibly presented but just outlandish enough that, if you're paying attention, you won't actually be fooled, just entertained.

Or how about Grand Canyon? A remarkable dramatic performance. Talk about casting against type.

What I find interesting (and I guess this is the "movie star versus actor" thing) is that it isn't necessarily a problem, or even really a deficiency, for an actor to play the same role over and over. It's all about knowing what you're capable of, and choosing your roles well.

That's the genius of Arnold Schwarzenegger (the actor, not the politician). Nobody pretends that he has any great acting ability -- not even him. But he's savvy enough to look for roles where that isn't a problem. His breakout role in "The Terminator" was perfect: an automaton who almost never speaks, and just has to look big and scary. I'm not sure acting skills would have helped at all with that performance -- they might even have hurt.

Anyone who thinks Robin Williams is strictly a one-note actor hasn't seen "One Hour Photo." (Or didn't realize that was Robin Williams in the lead role, which is possible.) It's true that in most of his roles he's basically just playing himself, but he can do more when he cares to.

The actor I usually think of in this category is Bill Murray. He's the actor you hire if you need someone to play a likeable jerk. For example, he plays exactly the same character (though with different names and contexts) in "Scrooged" and "Groundhog Day."

In fairness, though, Murray has broadened his palette in more recent years, with films like "Lost In Translation." I think many of the actors we're talking about here are actually capable of more variety, but typecasting means they don't often get the opportunity to stretch.

Just to pedantic, a Memory Stick is not a USB flash drive. Memory Stick is a memory-card format created by Sony, and as far as I know, only used by Sony. Some computers have Memory Stick slots, but most don't. I hope these dissidents don't end up with a bunch of memory cards they can't use because of their linguistic imprecision...

Just today I read a story on Fox about a certified firearms instructor whose house was raided by authorities after he posted a Facebook photo of his son (properly and safely) holding a rifle. Some "well-meaning" idiot called Child Protective Services, and CPS, compelled to respond, did so in a heavyhanded way.

How is this relevant? Stories like this aren't uncommon, and I think they have trained us all to see any attempt to involve yourself in someone else's parenting as a Big Deal. You either say nothing, because you don't want to make trouble, or you say something, potentially unleashing the whole ridiculous force of bureaucracy, lawsuits, and hard feelings.

A few years back I was in line at the grocery store. I leaned forward to reach something, causing my cart to roll a few inches and bump a little boy on the head. He wasn't hurt; but he turned to his mother, pointed at me, and said "Mommy, that man hit my head." Fortunately she laughed it off, but for a moment I was genuinely afraid.

We live in a society where every reaction is an overreaction. Safer to do nothing.

Lots of good suggestions here. I've read pretty much all of Asimov's SF, and while I love his stuff, I'd agree that his writing is not great literature. He's an "idea" writer. Occasionally he creates memorable characters (like Arkady Darell from the Foundation trilogy), but that's not really what you go to Asimov for.

My favorite SF author working today is Peter F. Hamilton. His world-building (or galaxy-building) is amazing, almost Tolkien-like in its detail and believability. His books tend to be epic in scope and page count. A good place to start is Fallen Dragon, which is rare single-volume Hamilton novel. But my favorite work of his so far is the so-called Commonwealth Saga, consisting of Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained. Hooked me from the first sentence.

I wasn't talking about the apparent location of the sun in the sky. I was talking about its actual physical location in space, from which its apparent location in the sky (and hence the local time) can be derived for given coordinates. Standardizing time zones and the like are part of the "measuring time" role I described.

I'm not worked up about DST as an attack on liberty. It's just one trivial example, out of thousands, of the federal government getting involved in areas that ought to be beyond its scope.

Why do we need a replacement? There is no world government setting the time for the entire planet, and yet we seem to function just fine even when we deal with people in other countries. There's a pretty clear consensus regarding where the sun is.

There's also an important distinction to be made between "setting the time" and "measuring the time." The time of day is, after all, based on  astronomical phenomena. I don't have a huge problem with a government-funded body whose job is to agree on a standardized representation of the time, factoring in necessary adjustments like leap seconds (e.g. NIST). It's another thing entirely to have the government decree that the time is what it isn't, for purely political or economic reasons. The latter is what I have a problem with.

No, but it is part ofwhy I pay the mortgage.

Here's what I don't get. If that's the true origin, why just half the year? And why the half of the year where daytime hours arealready extended naturally (owing to the length of the summertime day)?

If you really want to "extend" daylight hours for financial reasons, seems to me it would make more sense to do so in the winter, when daylight is a scarcer commodity.

Clocks (and their predecessors) have been telling time for thousands of years. It's an inherently physical measure of astronomical phenomena, expressed in terms that have evolved based on societal consensus.

Now the government decrees, because they have decided that it is good for the People, that everyone is required to change their clocks on a certain date. Where exactly does the government get the authority to tell private businesses and individuals what time it is?

Seems pretty self-evidently anti-libertarian to me.

That works for me. If government chooses to recognize it in some way, that's fine. But they're just granting legal recognition to a preexisting concept, not creating it.