Zelda

As in, within the first 10 seconds or so

...or at least close enough that a North American who is not familiar with the name might hear it wrong when the Indian person introduces him or herself?

I'm not talking about privacy in the bathroom or the bedroom here, but privacy in terms of one's personal space and communications.

Eg. If a teenager is being well-behaved, would they object to their parents reading their diary or looking in their school bag/purse?

If a person is not carrying contraband, do you think they would be likely to mind police searching their car?

If someone is not cheating or hiding other undesirable behaviours, would it be a problem to share their e-mail password with a significant other or spouse?

If a person is not plotting anything illegal, do you think that it would bother them if a government intelligence agency might occasionally monitor snippets of their phone conversations or e-mail?

...or do you each have your own, and divvy up the household expenses according to some scheme that you have devised?

These plates say "FARM FRESH" "HOMEMADE" and "JAMS AND JELLIES" around the border. There are also two rows of green checkers and pictures of fruit. Based on nothing but this choice of china pattern, please hazard a totally wild guess about the owner's personality.

Thank you.

We accidentally set a bag of groceries down on a hot stove. The plastic bag partly melted, partly burned onto the burner. Ick. What do you suppose is the best way to clean it? I don't want to scratch the glass.

I've peeled as much of the plastic off as I can, and scrubbed with glass stove cleaner to remove some burnt stuff, but some is too hard and cemented to the stove to be removed that way.

From the CNN website main webpage at this hour:

"Cute kids, pets nod off, fall over." There's a video.

Can you beat that?

-Washed the dishes or loaded the dishwasher

-Mowed the yard or shoveled snow

-Prepared a meal for more than one person

-Watered plants

-Painted a room

-Did a load of laundry

-Went to the grocery store

-Prepared a tax return

-Took care of car maintenance

-Ran the vacuum cleaner

-Scrubbed the bathtub or shower stall

-Washed windows

-Fixed something that was broken

-Put up or put away holiday decorations

-Took care of removing unwanted bugs or rodents.

Just curious. No agenda, honest. :-)

To me, it feels like my chest is a little hollow, like some of the stuff under my sternum was scooped out with a spoon.

If you're a man and a paternity test showed that you are not the father, how would your feelings towards the child change, if at all?

Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but if you're a woman, imagine you had IVF and the fertility clinic made a mistake and implanted some other couple's embryo in your womb, and you found this out years later when blood type showed you could not possibly be the child's mother. How would your feelings towards the child change, if at all?

Do you suppose it has any significance beyond the fickleness of fashion? Like does it mean that women are privileged because they have more freedom to wear what they like, but men have limited choices if they don't want people to look at them askance? Or does it mean that women have lower social status, so if a man wears a dress, he's thought to be demeaning himself by doing so? Is this social taboo something that is more enforced by women, by men, or both?

My psychologist suggested taking an antidepressant and I'd like to start as soon as possible (tomorrow would be good) and start putting my life back together. Unfortunately, this probably means going to the university clinic for a prescription. (I'll try a psychiatrist, but I'm afraid I may have to wait until after Christmas for an appointment, which doesn't thrill me.) So while the doctors there are nice enough, and I trust them not to prescribe anything dangerously stupid, they're not specialists and they're often in a rush, so sometimes it pays to go in knowing what to point out and what questions to ask.

From what my husband says and a bit of web browsing, I see that Wellbutrin is supposed to be nice because it doesn't have some of the common side effects associated with antidepressants - drowsiness, sexual dysfunction and weight gain. It may or may not come with more risk of seizures, though Wikipedia claims the evidence is unclear. On the other hand, Lexapro, which does come with these side effects seems quite popular, as do other typical SSRIs. I wonder why. Do they just work better?

I'm 30 yrs old. I'm not about to overdose on anything or kill myself. No other meds or health problems in the mix, for what it's worth.

For some reason I have the urge to go get fake acrylic nails today. I never got them before. This probably sounds silly, but how do they work?

How long do they stay on?

Are they painted or do they just come in different colours?

How do you get them off?

Do they damage your real nails?

Once upon a time, there were 2 brothers, Ned and Daryl. One day, Ned was late for a hot date. He dashed around the house shaving and getting dressed, ran outside, jumped into the car, and in his rush, he backed out of the driveway without looking very carefully. He accidentally ran over his brother Daryl, who was just going out to check the mail. Daryl was rushed to the hospital and treated for extensive injuries. There was no doubt that the accident was Daryl's fault, but there was no reason for anybody to think it was anything but an accident.

Unfortunately, Daryl experienced a rare side effect of a drug given to him during his hospitalization: severe irreversable liver damage. Without a liver transplant, Daryl would die. Every family member was tested as a potential donor (because it is possible to donate part of a liver and live) and databases of other potential organ donors were screened. Ned was the only match. Unfortunately, Ned doesn't want to donate half his liver. He's scared of the surgery because he has heard horror stories of people who were conscious but paralyzed during surgery.

Should Ned be compelled to donate half his liver whether he likes it or not, since it's half his fault that his brother needs a liver transplant? Or should his consent still be required for the procedure? (I'm not asking whether he would be compelled to under existing laws; I'm asking whether he should be compelled to under hypothetical ideal laws that you make up.)

She lives far away and I don't see her a lot. We chat, but being 6 and all, she wants to play. If there were some kind of game we could play together online, I bet she would like that.

Would it violate a person's freedom of speech, for example, to be told that they may not have a computer dial people's phones and play them a recorded message unless the person has explicity consented to such automated calls? (Eg. you could give the library permission to have their computer remind you about overdue books.)

I have 250 pages of genetic code, and the hard returns in it are preventing another program from analyzing it. How can I get them all out without having to go through it line by line?

...since the drinking age is 21, but you're over 18? That would be sort of ironic.