The problem with UK dentistry is precisely that it is not available on the NHS for many people. After some Thatcherite ideological reforms, NHS dentists are now hard to find, forcing most people to go private thus driving up the expense.

The British moan about their NHS all the time but woe betide any politician who suggests privatizing it, or even parts of it - that's a definite no-no.

Of course, some people in the UK choose to pay for private health care as well - this normally enables a bit of NHS queue jumping for routine minor treatments and the like. But even these people have a stake in the NHS: for anything major, or chronic, they rely on the NHS like everyone else.

Also, while I don't have the numbers, I bet private healthcare in the UK is cheaper than in the US because healthcare companies compete with the mother of all competitors - the NHS. People know private healthcare is pretty much a luxury and not a necessity - price it too high and people would just fall back on the NHS.

Russell Brand is not "going to be a big star" - he IS a big star. Just not in the US.

You'd thing his brand of humour and whole persona would be incredibly irritating but he gets away with it somehow. I think it's because, underneath that ridiculous hairstyle, there's a fierce intelligence that drives what he does.

This was an astute piece which nailed many of the irritations non-Americans have with (some) Americans.

You see plenty of 'ugly' Americans abroad but it's true that you also see ugly Germans, Japanese, Brits, etc; anyone, in fact, who's secure in their own supremacy over the lesser breeds.

I have one quibble:

I'm just so excited that America can provide leadership again. When we opt out of these things, we're not providing leadership.

The rest of the world doesn't necessarily want American leadership; they want a fully-engaged America that may or may not play a leading role in the problems we all face. But for Americans, even enlightened, liberal Americans, there seem to be just the two possibilities: unilateralism (bad) or American leadership (good).

But there is a third possibility: involvement and engagement but not necessarily leading. This would be just fine - really. After all, it's how most of the rest of the world operates.

So if consciousness doesn't just reside in the brain, what is it?

It's no good giving us vague formulations about the 'environment' and so on; that's just verbose camouflage for saying 'I don't know'.

Sure, there's a lot we don't understand about consciousness and about the brain - after all, we're using our brains and consciousness to try and understand our brains and consciousness. Only by standing outside the system and looking in could we achieve a proper understanding, and that's obviously not possible in this case.

So, in the absence of any other evidence, or even in the possible unattainability of any concrete evidence, I vote for the brain as the seat of consciousness.

As far as I can tell, the main difference between the American and British responses to this is that in Britain there just isn't such a large constituency of opinion makers trying to brush the whole question of torture under the carpet as there seems to be in the US in the shape of most Democrats, nearly all Republicans and much of the media.

The British government has dissembled and prevaricated to avoid this investigation, but there are so many voices pushing for it now - MPs of all parties, much of the media, civil liberties groups - that they can't avoid it without, as GG says, openly flouting the law, which they seem reluctant to do.

To be sure, I doubt any meaningful prosecutions will come out of it - I'd dearly leave to see Tony Blair have his collar felt by Inspector Knacker - but it's a step in the right direction.

No other Western democracy has any problem with evolution. You find a few 'my grandfather wasn't a monkey' idiots but they're on the fringes, but in the US they seem to have real influence.

Is it connected with religious fundamentalism? The other prominent group of evolution nay-sayers that springs to mind are strict Moslems. A connection here?

I haven't seen the American version of Life on Mars but in the British version the whole mystery thing about Sam Tyler's past was, for me, a bit of an irrelevance.

What was good about the show was the recreation of 70s culture, style, fashions, etc, but mostly of the unreconstructed policing methods of the day - the ingrained prejudices, the caveman attitudes to women, and so on - and the way this conflicted with the 'modern' methods of Sam Tyler. Often very funny, especially the Gene character's outrageous behaviour.

In an era of mostly wall-to-wall dross on (British) TV it was one of the few programmes I watched.

If anybody in the UK is the slightest bit concerned about supposed 'protocol breaches' then it's passed me by.

Obama is very popular in Britain and the vast majority, with the possible exception of a rabble-rousing tabloid or two (although I haven't seen any), don't give a monkey's about who gave what to whom.

Referring to England rather than Britain is irritating to Scots and Welsh, but most Americans do that anyway so nobody's going to get in a tizzy about it.

Maybe I read the wrong papers but I've heard no mention of these 'offences' - not in the British papers I read nor on the BBC nor anywhere else in the UK.

In fact the only place I've seen this mentioned - twice! - is here on Salon. Stop making such a fuss about nothing!