Vera Mont

Why would any of us presume to know where someone else's thinking comes from? My own atheism is a very simple one: I don't buy that brand of insurance...

I can't desire any of that for myself. I have nothing against cyborgs in principle - up to the point where they're weaponized - but don't want to be o...

Sorry - unnecessarily defensive?

Boy, would that be useful in scratching inside my ear! OTH(npi) how vulnerable when chopping onions.

Hardly! People were brewing beer, poisoning arrows and embalming corpses long before they tried making gold. Chemistry has always been part of human e...

Seriously, there are some some excellent ideas here. Not everyone is a professional writer, and even for those who are, this format is challenging. So...

Same here. Don't know how I feel about that many w's.

Not at all! I actually liked most of them, so far. Some reservations, some quibbles, some suggestions for improvement - but that doesn't mean I don't ...

I wanted to like it because it's well constructed and started with an interesting premise. But then, some jarring elements: But there is no indication...

Some fictional aliens have longer fingers with an extra joint. I don't see the advantage in our present environment, which we have altered to suit our...

Also monkeys (plus the prehensile tail!), lemurs, chameleons, some frogs, koalas, and while Perhaps not fully opposed, but quite functional are also t...

Flashback to a scene in Caveman which is prohibitively off topic. ... .... not that an elderly person of any gender couldn't do some mischief with a g...

That's your version and you're sticking to it. I disagree, but admire your tenacity.

Because "the old country" is immediate and real to the grandparents; a nebulous memory to the parents, irrelevant to the children. Because their child...

Well, if you guys are going to abuse the innovation, I take it back. I'll invest in a better reach tool.

More likely. Monarchs are going extinct on Earth. And we hardly ever have blood-red sky on Earth, and when we do, we don't consider it gorgeous; we're...

That would have to include: and a lot more besides. People do try to teach their American children all of those things, and they more or less fail. I'...

Show me one! Mathematical realities are average income, average intelligence, average height, average vocal range, average running speed. What number ...

I said nothing about priorities or 'should's'. I agreed that what was lacking was lacking and will continue to be lacking, because nobody has a good e...

Extendable wrists would be good. I can't reach things on the top shelf and my cheap grabber is too feeble to lift down anything heavier than a herb ja...

I have my own little theory of how the young should be socialized and trained, as Athena has hers, and we each seem to have little comprehension of wh...

I didn't understand it as a story, but I liked it.

Wonderful!

A very good story in very bad words. I was repelled throughout, but the center holds; the plot works; the thing is consistent.

There is a contradiction. Did he flee or did he stay with his wife? without that resolution, the story falls apart, broken in the middle. It should be...

Always! You won't change that.

I protest the wife having to do all the work, while the guy who seems to be responsible for the mess is just sitting there, consorting with random but...

I think there is a very good story there. It centers on the character and attitude of the protagonist. Why did the father take karate lessons? Who is ...

A super-weird fetish... Yes, disturbing, but so unreal as not to register deeply on the sober mind. Pretty much. I don't. Let it remain between the au...

Sometimes that difference is hard to detect. Addiction is usually physical, with psychological side-effects; dependence can be predominantly psycholog...

Of course it makes a difference. It turns people who don't know something into people who do know something. What they are taught varies by time, plac...

Who knows? Stay tuned for the next micro-story.

My cats leave all kinds of mouse and chipmunk bits: viscera, heads, tails, sometimes the whole carcasse. I've been mostly lucky in that they're effici...

The organ transplant nonsense bothered me, too. About all you can harvest from corpses are corneas and bone; everything else has to be alive. Then the...

I could not sort out the dramatis personae. There is a father, a mother, a daughter, an addict of some kind (male) sitting at a table, drinking coffee...

It might, if you provided a context. What would most Americans do, if... when... with... about... what? In any case, I don't know most Americans. I kn...

Sounds good on the surface. But there are some assumptions I'd question. Like: Does everyone really always have total control of the pain and unhappin...

I wouldn't. I don't believe in them.

Are we seeing a trend? The story is good. But I have to wonder whether the subject-matter is personal to the author, or just a fragment of the current...

How should I know? You said it! Not very clear what equation is to be solved for what unknown.

If they didn't know, your grandmother had wasted her effort on them. What's the point of a democracy where the properly educated citizens are powerles...

Yeppers!

So, where did all of those properly educated citizens - which should be ever American who went to school - go? What happened in 1958 to disappear any ...

I took the question to mean: What would I say to the aliens? That doesn't sound like math. Anyway, I'm not that good at stringing 0's. A most responsi...

You keep talking about this wonderful education you used to have. I find no historical trace of it, and no resemblance to the Athens that also didn't ...

Obviously, it would impact me for very much longer than my has. But I know nothing about this afterlife - not its characteristics, requirements, rules...

"You" must have been very wise to realize that all non-English speakers are too stupid to understand about democracy before they decide to make the hu...

Run! (Sorry - been rewatching Doctor Who. But, yes, on the whole, that would be my advice.)

nukes? Maybe not. I guess it would depend partly on how they made the approach and partly on who did the first responding.

How do you teach the rules of logic to a three-year-old? By the time formal educators can teach him anything, he's already absorbed his society's valu...