I wear a size 4 dress most places, and I am not skinny (upper-mid-range for normal BMI, with some pudge) so I wonder where all the *actual* size 4 girls shop.

Me too! I just purchased a new pair of jeans, because I've lost some weight recently. The "designer" jeans I got at Macys this weekend are as size 3. Size three! I haven't been an actual size three since I was eleven. I'm 5'5", and I weigh about 122 (almost all of it in by bum so jeans-sizing looms large in my personal universe.) That is not a size three. Of course if I shop at Target I'm a size 9, so what does that tell you...

I despise vanity sizing and whenever I shop for something fancy I want to get violent because I'm so annoyed that the high-end shops think I'm that much of an idiot.

Then again, I've never heard anyone from outside the British Commonwealth get Worcester (WUSS ter) right.

I beg your pardon, it's pronounced WISS ter.

I have some affection for Aer Lingus, which is an English bastardization of the the very pretty Aer Loingeas, but since only Irish people can pronounce Irish words (seriously -- that's one hard mf-ing language to learn), they had to do something. Mostly it makes me giggle a little bit in my head every time I say it.

Wizz Air has to be the worst. I actually did a double-take when I saw their sign up at the Beauvais airport. FlyGlobeSpan.com is also pretty crappy, I find it hard to take them seriously with a name like that (their ridiculous "discount" prices that are $300 more than what I pay on Aer Lingus, as well as their absurd schedules and destination airports are the other reason I don't take them seriously.)

How does the subject even arise? Shut the conversation down when it comes up, and say that it's not appropriate, you're not comfortable having conversations of that nature with them, the end. I had to do that with my mother, although she has the opposite problem, she's really into over-sharing (and trying to get me to over-share; some crackpot therapist along the way seems to have convinced her that "boundaries = bad").

If you're in their house, you have to abide by their rules even if that means separate bedrooms or whatever, but thats just common courtesy no matter who you're visiting. You don't have to agree with it, but you have to abide by it or find another place to stay.

Regardless, some of the findings reported in the article are a bit disturbing -- like quotes from young people that say things like, "'Having an STD is so much worse than getting pregnant.'" Um, I'm glad people are worried about HPV -- but I doubt this attitude is what sex educators are aiming for.

Doesn't that kind of depend on how you define "young people?" If you're in your 20s and have some measure of stability in your life, then for a lot of people having a disease *is* substantially worse than having a baby. If your life is more or less on-track, an unintended or unexpected pregnancy really isn't all that bad. In fact, I'd wager that a substantial number of us are here *because* of unintended pregnancies while our parents were in their 20s.

Unintended does not equal unwanted. Some people are happy to adjust to surprise circumstances, and find themselves quite happy about it.

A friend of a friend owns a restaurant that was on the show and went out drinking with Anthony Bourdain after the shoot, says the guy you see on screen is 100% authentic.

I thought CJ's comment as he was leaving was pretty telling, he said he wanted to go out and get loaded with Bourdain and talk shit about his broccolini. If even the guy on the receiving end of the nastiness thinks he's a hot ticket, then he's a hot ticket.

Also, I am a little bit in love CJ. That is all.

There is one caveat: The data comes from health plan billing codes, which are not as detailed as medical charts. In other words, a doctor could have said, "By the way, are you on the Pill?" but not coded it in his or her records.

Actually, that's HUGE So huge, that's probably the biggest, most glaring flaw in this study, so much so that it renders all of their "findings" irrelevant.

The billing codes that go on claims refer only to office visits (actually having a patient in your office and performing an exam), procedures (mole removal, etc.), and injections (B-12, Depo, vaccinations). There are other codes for surgery claims, physician time use, anaesthesia, nursing home oversight, etc. but those also don't include all the details that go into a patient history, or what is actually said during an exam.

Patient education is *not a billable service*. It will never show up on an insurance claim. It will only show up in the patient history and on the actual patient visit write-up. In order to obtain an accurate illustration of what physicians are telling their patients, the researchers would have had to go through thousands of de-identified charts to comb through looking for (probably) handwritten text stating something like "informed patient of birth defect risk" or somesuch.