I love a nicely aged, rare steak. I like a guy who appreciates it too. It’s nice when you both order steaks and can share a bottle of wine – that strikes me as romantic, nice and just my speed.

Once I broke up with a guy who wouldn’t eat cheese. He was wonderful but I can’t be around someone who thinks my fine cheeses are stinky and gross. And as someone who loves to cook (mostly French and Cajun) I can’t live with someone who won’t eat meat. Plus I really do hate traveling with vegetarians – there was this one vacation in France and I almost had to kill my vegetarian travel partner. Of course – I don’t want to date anyone who won’t eat tofu either. I want someone who enjoys all sorts of food.

And I really am starting to hate on Broadsheet – rather then finding interesting links and articles I spend most of my time here getting pissed off.

“FYI: For this study, "Sexual behavior" = sex by means of vaginal, oral, or anal sex.”

I can think of lots of other very hot, naked, intimate ways to have sex that wouldn’t amount to sex given the above definition. According to this very conservative definition I think even Bill Clinton is off the hook.

The worst is all the ‘writers’ who come out of the wood work talking about their own trials and tribulations. This topic seems to bring out the absolute worst, most navel gazing, elitist trash talk I’ve ever heard. It would be funny (like an Onion parody) if it weren’t all so tired and warmed over.

I’m fine with the occasional ‘artistic process’ letter - they're fun even. But enough is enough. Dosen’t anyone out there have a crappy mother-in-law they need advice on?

How is anyone supposed to tell what you wrote in a previous post? Are you hoping your unique writing style is going to set you apart from everyone else who posts under ‘anonymous’? Do you really think people read your posts and think, ‘oh, this is my favorite Anonymous!’

Get a unique user name and stand by all your posts and then we can about it how you’re supportive and productive ways are superior to mine (maybe they are). But until you can point at something supportive or productive you’ve written you have a weak case.

I wanted to go camping and hiking and get survival badges and all we ever seemed to do was sit around and talk and make god’s eyes and those dumb key chains that you make out of plastic ribbon. I was so jealous of the Boy Scouts – it seemed like they always had the coolest projects. The thing is about half the girls in my troop wanted to be outside too – but it was the troop mom’s we were fighting against. Those ladies just didn’t want to be out in the woods baiting hooks and they were the ones making the rules.

The best camps I ever went to were co-ed with both men and women acting as councilors and organizers. I’m not really sure what the benefit is of splitting up young children across gender lines is – it’s never worked for me. The best day of my young life was when they opened up the Boys Club to girls too – I think I was the 7th girl to get admitted to the Boys and Girls Club and I never heard any of the boys say they’d rather have the place to themselves again.

It’s interesting to me that the author seems to focus in on Sperm Whales given the time line the book covers. My understanding was it was the North Atlantic Right Whales that Nantucket whalers hunted while that port was young and in its prime: unlike the Sperm whale a Right whale is at home in shallower waters, it will float when it’s dead and it’s much less likely to pound a wooden ship open – it was the ‘right’ whale to go after for lots and lots of reasons.

The way I learned it in school was the heading out on year(s) long trips into distant, deep waters for the toothed Sperm whales was an act of desperation taken by New England whalers when the Right, and then the less desirable Humpback, populations had thinned out to the brink of extinction.

Melville wrote Moby Dick in and about the mid-1850s (right?) when whaling in New England was coming to an end. I always thought , read in that context, Moby Dick took on a more desperate, dangerous sort of feel as it wasn’t the sort of Whaling that Melville’s grandfathers would have experienced.

When I was a poor student (15 years ago!) all my girlfriends knew that all ‘plan B’ was two triple doses (in most cases) of a regular old birth control pills. A quick internet search produced a chart of how many pills you need to take at what time per your brand.

http://www.fwhc.org/birth-control/ecinfo.htm

I realize this isn’t the same thing as being able to walk into a pharmacy and being treated like an adult who can make up her own mind (and of course you’ve got to have or know someone with the extra pills) but in a pinch it’s still a good tip.