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Answer by Brian Dunlap, (Lived in Cairo as part of the U.S. diplomatic community) :

It was not weak. It was not incomplete. It was not inappropriate. It was not misguided.

There are plenty of Monday-morning-quarterbacks who can attempt to find fault with the statement. The fact of the matter is, though, the statement was not intended for U.S. audiences, and statements such as the one issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo have plenty of precedent, during Obama's administration, George W. Bush's administration, and plenty of administrations prior.

• The statement was made prior to protests taking place outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
• The statement was made in an attempt to ease tensions, anticipating the potential for violence during the protests.
• The statement was made as an expression of U.S. understanding and decency and is perfectly in line with any effort to impress upon the rest of the world that we are a tolerant nation.
• No such statement can be, nor should one expect it to be, a novel-length history lesson or treatise on U.S. history, politics, or civics.
• The statement was issued by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, a diplomatic mission expressly tasked as a mission to Egypt and Egypt alone: not the U.S. press, not the U.S. itself, not Libya.
• U.S. embassies are authorized and trusted to issue statements on their own, independent of both the State Department and executive administration stateside. This is not to say they are unaccountable and can do whatever they may please. Foreign service officers and embassy staffers are trusted to understand circumstance and policy and act in accordance with that policy; embassy staff are responsible for knowing U.S. policy and both reflecting and projecting that policy. Nonetheless, given the intent of this particular statement—easing tensions in Cairo and delivering a message to the Egyptian people and press—the statement as issued was entirely reasonable and, in fact, entirely in line with U.S. policy.
• Given the potential volatility of the situation, the time frame involved, and the overall circumstance, a short statement would really be the only type possible, appropriate, and that stood any chance of making an impression upon its intended audience. With roughly 600 characters of text, the Embassy's statement condemns those behind this film (and it is becoming increasingly apparent there are some real whackjobs behind it), references Sept. 11, 2001, as an attack upon democracy, reiterates respect of religion as a vital component of American democracy, reaffirms the universal right of free speech, and condemns attempts to abuse said right of free speech for no other purpose than to offend others (which it certainly seems was the sole reason this supposed film apparently exists).
• The statement is not only intended for protesters or those considering protesting, but the wider Egyptian audience beyond. The statement reflects an awareness that the protesters themselves may likely do whatever it is they plan to do, whether or not any statement has been issued and whether or not police in the area stop them. Egypt is a country of tens of millions of people who carry countless different political beliefs, and the overwhelming majority of the country's population will not participate or engage in the protests. Far more Egyptians will be made aware of the statement, reading it in local papers and online or hearing it on local television and radio, than participate in the protests. Many of those will emerge from the events of the week appreciating the statement, and in fact disapproving of the behavior of violent protesters.
• The statement acknowledges an awareness that it will end up "on the record," reprinted by media and passed on between individuals. As a reasonable, well-spoken message of tolerance, understanding, and respect, it will stand in stark contrast to the violent behavior of protesters or inflammatory language likely to follow. I'm thoroughly convinced that, had circumstances not unfolded during a presidential election year, it would have either been ignored completely or welcomed warmly as a fine expression of U.S. tolerance and decency; it seems those most bothered by the statement are ones hoping to gain domestic political advantage by interpreting it in a way that suits them.
• The statement was delivered in a country and to an electorate newly experiencing democracy, having newly elected an Islamist president, and having recently experienced many near-continuous years worth of volatile and violent protest, and had to acknowledge an awareness of that.
• Like it or not, embassy statements are not intended to be forceful, comprehensive, lecturing, or absolute. They are diplomatic, unoffensive, and restrained. Especially when it comes to sensitive issues or volatile situations with uncertain outcomes or uncertain circumstances, statements should be limited in what they say and what they cover, and how. They are often meant to buy time or consideration until more comprehensive or deliberate statements can come from the State Department itself or the administration.

If you find fault with the statement, get over it. Such statements can never, will never, and are not designed to ever, appease any and everyone. They are issued with limitations and restrictions and within a particular context; they come amid particular circumstances, with an intent to address particular circumstances. They are composed and issued by individuals who do not formulate policy, but rather implement policy. Countless such statements get issued each year by various diplomatic missions, and you've lived your life entirely unaware either because no one has gone out of their way to bother you about them, or the statements proved themselves entirely effective.
...

Answer by John Burgess, former U.S. foreign service officer:

I have to take exception to Brian Dunlap's answer.

I, too, have worked for the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, as well as holding the job of counselor for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The press statement at issue was released, if not written, by my professional counterpart. In other words, I know what position he was in; I understand both the job and the pressures of working in a high-threat environment.

Leave aside for the moment that the press release was sent out after instructions to not do so. That in itself should suggest that there were problems with it. It should be a career-killing move.

My problem is that as a commissioned foreign service officer, the PAO (public affairs officer) swore the same oath I did to "support and defend the Constitution." The whole Constitution, at all times.

As foreign service officers, we are charged with representing our country, its government, and its people. All of its people, even the stupid ones, the misguided ones, the malicious ones, at least if they are acting within the law.

By not pointing out in the press release that freedom of speech, guaranteed to Americans under the First Amendment to the Constitution, protects even idiots like the filmmaker, the PAO did not do his job. By suggesting government condemnation of the film, he gave the impression that the U.S. government has some role in controlling speech. It most decidedly does not.

The promotion of freedom of speech is one of the major efforts of the U.S. government and especially of the various offices of public diplomacy. It's a hard concept for some to understand, that people are free to say stupid, even insulting things. But we protect those people's right to be idiots because we want to support those who say smart things, even if they might offend others.

In the United States, there is simply no right to not be offended. Why is that? Well, a good place to start is that no one can categorically know what will offend another. I hear things that offend me everyday. Some of it might be personally insulting; some of it might insult my intelligence; some of it might be because a speaker is on his hobby horse that bores me to tears. Should I be able to call down the force of government to stop those who offend me with their misinformed opinions?

We can take a good guess that saying nasty things about their religion is going to annoy people. But so what? I have a hard time finding any religion that does not think poorly of other religions. Practically every holy book strikes out at one or another religion. Whose religion gets the protection? Why that one instead of this one? Is it only because one religion has a majority following in a certain place? If that is the rule, what happens if a society changes?

We have recourse to offensive speech: counter speech. Under some circumstances, we might even have recourse to courts of law. We do not have legal recourse to violence.

Sometimes it's hard to acknowledge that one's life may be threatened by the actions of some moron— our moron or his moron. But our oaths of office do not permit us to protect only those with whom we agree or think smart or think "right." Half the population of the world is below average intelligence, after all.

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This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by an Anonymous User on Quora:

As an Arab American woman raised in a conservative Muslim family, I would say that yes, Islam is a misogynistic religion.

The messages about gender that I received from my parents, extended family, family friends, religious teachers, and so on ranged from subtle to extreme. I was told, among other things, that:

• Women can't speak during prayer to correct an Imam (men can) because their voices are too "distracting." (This is based on the hadith, see "From Hadith – Regarding Concealment Of Voice During Prayer")
• Women should lower their eyes in the presence of men. (To be fair the stuff about lowering one's gaze is also directed toward men, not the other stuff though. This surah is significant in that it is often cited as evidence that hijab is a requirement of Islam, which is a subject of debate within the religion.)
• Women shouldn't wear tampons, to preserve their "purity." (No quotes from the Quran on this as tampons weren't around in those days, this is another topic of debate and from my understanding, people outside of Islam also debate the issue. So I have only anecdotal comments here in that every Muslim woman I've known has been told something to this effect, and on a personal level, when my mom discovered I was using tampons, she completely freaked out, started screaming, and threatened to take me to the doctor and have them check to see if my hymen was still intact, which seems to be not infrequent behavior—a Muslim friend of mine who was caught skipping class had her parents ask the doctor to check her hymen. But again, this is anecdotal, and I'm just mentioning this as a qualitative "data point," as it were.)
• There are passages in the Quran that advocate beating disobedient wives (see this paragraph"In fact, the word in the Quran in 4:34 used for "beat" is "idreb." It is a conjugate of the word "daraba" which primarily means "to beat, strike, to hit" - Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, page 538").
• Polygamy is legal and practiced in many Muslim countries and permitted by the Quran
  

... and so on and so forth. Honestly it would take me hours (and probably lots of therapy) to be able to cogently list all of the misogynistic aspects of this religion and the cultures that have flourished from it. Maybe some of the aforementioned things seem minor, but in my mind they're not negligible, and taken together, so many things have made me feel like my religion hated women.

It's ridiculous to me to hear qualifying statements that Islam is "paternalistic, but not misogynistic." Believe me, as a young woman growing up and struggling in Islam, there is little to no distinction between the two.

I'm not saying by any means that these characteristics are unique to Islam. But the question was not "Is Islam more misogynistic than other religions?" but rather "Is Islam misogynistic?"

Some people have mentioned that there is a distinction between culture and religion in Muslim countries. I would argue that that's not really true, at least not in the way that it is in the West. Islam is integrated into Arab cultures in a way that's probably unthinkable to many in Western countries. With the exception of the occasional very small Christian minority, virtually everyone in Arab countries is Muslim, and this basically dominates the culture. Public newscasters casually attribute occurrences to Allah without any controversy, domestic airlines recite surahs from the Quran over the intercom during flights, and so on.

Muslim countries touted as being more liberal, such as Turkey, are such because they are not as strictly and fanatically religious as countries like Saudi Arabia, where the laws and regulations are for the most part drawn from edicts in the Quran and where "religious police" (note that they aren't called the cultural police) patrol the streets, harassing women for showing their ankles, preventing women from driving, enforcing the laws that prevent women from working or travelling without permission from a male guardian, and oh, don't forget "beating young girls" to prevent them from escaping a fire because they weren't wearing proper religious dress.

I understand, respect, and appreciate people outside of Islam trying to be open-minded about this religion. But to be honest, sometimes it bothers me, and I think people can try too hard to be "politically correct," for lack of a better expression, about this topic and overlook the reality of life in Islam.

I'd like to reassert my argument that Muslim countries heralded as being more liberal are not following Islam as strictly. Any Muslim country that affords, for example, a woman's testimony in court the same worth as a man's testimony, is not actually following the Quran (one male witness equals two female witnesses). The same holds true for countries where polygamy is illegal, and in most cases for any Muslim who affords a female heir the same inheritance as a male heir.

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Answer by Mark Hughes, screenwriter, Forbes blogger:

I'm imagining the candidates are not revived from the dead with their full history in tact per se, and that we are supposed to envision them as they were at the time of their presidencies, but implanted on today's world and with an eye toward how the public overall viewed their presidencies (as if they hypothetically had each served one term and so had some "history" to look at as a guide about them). So each president is "as is" from their own presidencies, in a weird reality where they aren't updated to our time but are also not exactly stuck in their own 100 percent, either.

It would come down to a handful of final contenders:

FDR
JFK
Reagan
Clinton

The oratory skill, political savvy, key policy interests, public perception, and personal charm of these candidates dwarfs all other contenders. Most of the early presidents are disqualified due to worldviews that accepted slavery and a view of the country strongly influenced by the early years when it was smaller and easier to conceive of strong state powers and unregulated capitalism. The one among them who would do the best would be Thomas Jefferson, but in the end, I think a lot of his views would be too problematic for the modern world.

So, let's look at the four candidates I chose as the finalists ...

I think JFK would be similar to Obama in many ways, but more hawkish on foreign policy and would benefit greatly from his instincts and charm. However, his chronic adultery and shady connections would probably hurt him, as today's political and media climate would unearth those things and cost him too much to win.

I think that in 2012, Reagan's age (assuming he was hypothetically the same age as when he was first elected president) would be a factor against him. And his open embrace of trickle-down economics in that overt form would likewise hurt his chances, since for the most part, the concept has been rejected by most of the public nowadays (which is why conservatives no longer sell it by that name or with such plain language that's so honest about what it really is). On the other hand, his charm and positive attitude, and his undeniably very clear vision of what sort of country he wants this to be would be powerful motivators in today's climate. But Reagan would, I feel, be overshadowed by another candidate who by comparison renders Reagan a shadow of what true power of personality and vision looks like. And that candidate is ...

FDR stands above all others, as a visionary and a true leader who personifies what it means to be "president of the United States" in an idealized sense. When he took office, much of the nation expected him to declare a dictatorship—indeed, much of the media openly endorsed the idea of Roosevelt announcing on Inauguration Day that he was taking full dictatorial powers over the country and ending the experiment of democracy. Luckily, he decided against such extreme moves, which is just one of many examples of why he looms tall over all other presidents. He was a visionary, ahead of his time, and one of the few presidents we've had who obviously cared deeply about the suffering and needs of the average person. I believe that contrary to the claims of those who might think he is too liberal to get elected in the modern world, his honesty and plainspoken blunt assessments of the nation's needs and the character (or lack thereof) of his opponents would serve him well. There is only one other candidate with the brilliance of mind, intense charisma in the truest sense of the word, and statesmanlike sensibilities mixed with keen political instincts who could challenge FDR, bringing us to ...

Bill Clinton. I've written about Clinton before in great detail, regarding his charisma and the scope of his intellect. His charisma and intelligence are matched only by his mastery of the art of politics, making him the most formidable candidate on this list. I am speaking of Clinton the former president here, and he is the only president I can think of whose personal failings and affairs would still seem to ultimately fall short of being enough to stop his rise to victory. I think it would be a contest between Clinton and FDR, and that in the end, Clinton's nuanced grasp of history and policy would win the day by a hair. I realize some will contest this based on Clinton's failure to garner 50 percent of the popular vote in either of his elections, but I think that has to be seen in the context of the Perot campaign's impact (which mostly hurt Clinton, contrary to all the myth-telling by those who claim Perot stole Bush/Dole votes). Clinton at his best, particularly by the end of his second term and after, had become an almost perfect president by most objective standards, I think. I say this despite my significant disappointments and strong objections to many of his policies, mind you. But at the end of the day, when we line up all of the presidents, Clinton seems to be a master incomparable to any others save FDR. And Clinton would have the advantage of seeming less economically liberal than FDR, making him appear more fiscally moderate (or even conservative, really).

But since I'd give Clinton a win by only a slim margin, I might wake up tomorrow and think that FDR would actually take the victory after all. So I'll have to say it's about a tie between FDR and Clinton, with Clinton my presumed winner by Electoral College standards, as of right now. I'd not argue much with those who think FDR would win, though.

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Answer by an Anonymous User on Quora:

Your assessment is pretty spot-on, and this is one of my biggest issues with the show.

I've read some commentary criticizing the depiction of women in the series. I've also taken issue with the way that Aaron Sorkin writes women before. Female characters mostly seem to fit into familiar archetypes across his other works. I'm losing interest due to the lack of complex and nuanced women on the show. Most of them come across as unprofessional and boy-crazy, despite their accomplishments. -Question Details on Quora

I've worked in two newsrooms, currently at one of the largest in the U.S. in Washington, D.C., and have worked with several high-powered and accomplished women.

MacKenzie McHale would be eaten alive in this business. I find it incredibly hard to believe that this woman who can't conduct a news meeting without constantly stumbling over her words, or send an email or deal with personal relationships outside of work, was a foreign correspondent in areas where supposedly "bullets were whizzing over her head." With the exception of some scenes where she's in the control room, I've yet to see this strong, accomplished woman they tried to paint at the beginning.

Some might say that "oh, but it makes her real." Yeah, sure, there are women like that, of course there are. But they aren't executive editors of major news shows, and they don't lose their shit constantly or encourage employees to throw water in the face of the boss as a team. We have several female foreign correspondents, and they are some of the strongest and bravest people I've ever worked with.

Margaret "Maggie" Jordan is also an incredibly weak character. No woman in a professional newsroom would ever whine in a news meeting to their superior (even if it was on a weekend) about them being a liar or get all pissy about something that happened outside of work. I realize (now) that she's the intern who perhaps got promoted possibly too quickly, but she should still have a grasp of the basic tenets of journalism. I went to a third-tier j-school, and it's pretty well cemented in my mind. I find it highly doubtful she'd be at the level she is at, at a major network news show, if she was someone who couldn't control her emotions (at work at least) or hold her tongue when it was necessary.

We haven't seen enough of Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn) yet to really get a handle on how well her character is written, though right now it seems similar. She holds two Ph.Ds supposedly, but seems chiefly concerned with getting her boss laid.

The good thing is that it's early in the show, and characters develop over time and as storylines occur. It's been picked up for a second season, so hopefully he'll take some of the criticism to heart (when has he ever done that) and make these women characters more realistic as strong, professional females.

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Answer by Mark Rogowsky, internet entreprenuer, @maxrogo:

In theory.

In a world where corporations actually paid the corporate tax at anything near the statutory rate, taxing dividends again on distribution would be bizarre.

Fortunately, we don't live in such a world. We live in a world where major corporations pay significantly less than the statutory rate of 35 percent. In fact, the United States collects less corporate tax relative to the overall economy than almost any other country in the world, 1.7 percent of GDP vs. 2.8 percent on average globally.

Look, our tax code is ridiculous. An innovative young company like Facebook is paying close to a 40 percent effective tax rate. A giant multinational like GE has averaged 2.3 over the past decade!

This is dumb.

But it also means GE's dividend is not "double taxed," OK? And Facebook? Well, they don't pay any dividends, and really the tax code has nothing to do with that.

I'm a pretty big advocate that corporations ought to hand the cash back to shareholders in the form of dividends. Stock buybacks are a very obtuse way of "returning money to shareholders" and are often used to mask options and RSU-based dilution that are occurring anyway. So if you ask me (and you didn't, but I'm telling you anyway), the correct way to fix this is to largely get rid of the corporate tax such that you can fire the 500-plus tax accountants at GE. Make it some low, flat rate that is free of deductions, affects profits here and abroad, and is basically easy to comply with and well-understood and nominally among the lowest of OECD countries. That will end the insane political nonsense that comes from people claiming "we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world" when that simply isn't true. (Except on a piece of paper that affects one Facebook out of every few hundred companies. The average corporate tax paid by U.S. companies is lower below the global average. This is a fact.)

Let's figure this rate should be something around 15 percent to 20 percent. By also affecting foreign earnings, it will discourage the process of multinationals off-shoring increasingly endless amounts of cash (Yes, you, Apple and Google.)

Then, you should tax dividends like ordinary income. This means you will have to also tax capital gains like ordinary income. This means you will also have to cut marginal rates. OK, we've gotten all that out of the way. I know, I know, you're sure you need a favorable capital-gains rate to stimulate investment, right? Except there is no data to back that up. When you find the data, I'll reconsider this hypothesis. Until then, we're going to put that myth in the same circular file we keep the myth about the U.S. having the highest corporate taxes.

That dividend/capital gains/ordinary income rate will cap at about 30 percent and will be lower for nearly everyone else. Today, ostensibly, you can get "hit" with a 35 percent corporate tax and 15 percent on dividends (although that increases next year). So together, the max is 50 percent, right? In the new, cleaner system, the max will almost certainly be below 50 percent, but I'm not the CBO, so I'm guessing here. Probably like this: Corporate tax, flat at 15 percent. Personal tax, 25 percent for incomes from $250,000 to $1 million, 30 percent for $1 million and up (the so-called "Buffett rule").

It appears I wind up with lower tax rates than Mitt Romney's plan, except for those in the $1  million and up bracket, where Romney goes to 28 percent. But he wishes to maintain differential treatment for different types of income (i.e. lower capital-gains taxes). I recognize many of you are sure this is a good thing, so I'll leave persuading you why it isn't for another day. Whatever small effectiveness of it may exist, incidentally, is reduced by every reduction in marginal rates. It's likely rates could be lowered further if more deductions/preferences were removed across the board, and especially from those higher up the income chain. This would also free up accountants from tax scheming to potentially productive work. Who knows what kind of boom that might unleash?

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This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by an anonymous user on Quora:

Being smart is usually an incredible gift but occasionally a difficult burden.

At the peak of my high school math competition "career," I was ranked about 25th in the United States among all high-school students. Given that there were  about 15 million high school students in the U.S., this put my math skills somewhere in the 1-in-a-100,000 to 1-in-1-million range. This felt—and still feels—pretty freakin' awesome.

Being that good at something had several significant benefits. One benefit was that I had a ton of confidence in high school, and that confidence quickly extended far beyond math. I was nerdy, but unlike the stereotypical nerd, I was pretty sociable and even felt borderline popular. I also felt like I was capable of any academic feat and basically assumed that my 1-in-100,000 status applied to most subjects. I ended up winning state and national awards in things like Science Bowls and marketing competitions, and I also took more Advanced Placement tests than anyone else in the state during my four years in high school. Thinking back to those days is pretty amusing because I wasn't that great at most of the things I was being recognized for, but it turns out that being good plus  being a good test-taker plus being confident can take you pretty far in the academic world.

Anyway, the confidence was great, and doing well in various math competitions helped me get into some of the top universities, which resulted in me getting great jobs after college, and subsequently led to a very happy and successful career (so far).

Now for the negatives:

1. I assumed intelligence and academics were all that mattered, and things like friendships, sports, etc., were nice, but not as important. A pretty bad assumption, in retrospect. As a meta-comment, I think people frequently tend to overvalue things they are good at and undervalue things they are average at.
2. For a long time, I used to discount people who were less smart. That doesn't surprise me given that rankings were so heavily emphasized during my school years, but I wish I hadn't fallen into this trap. I ended up having fewer real friends than most of my classmates. I try not to regret things that have passed, but I also wish someone had slapped some sense into me when I was younger.
3. I assumed that being in the top 0.001 percent in math meant that I was in the top 0.001 percent in overall intelligence. Not so. IQ tests showed that my overall intelligence was somewhere in the middle of the 99th percentile, and real life showed that I was far from exceptional in things like social skills and work ethic. It took a while for my ego to come down to earth and match up with reality. The fall was necessary but often unpleasant.
4. The pressure to perform can be very high. When you have a reputation for being smart, many people assume you can solve any problem that comes up. If something is hard, everyone's eyes turn to you as if you are the golden goose of bright ideas. If you struggle a little bit, you get teased with, "Hey, I thought you were smart!" If you fail, people are surprised and say a lot with their silences. When you have a big ego, disappointing people is really painful. I remember making up excuses about not having time for various tasks so that I could maintain my reputation. Today, half of me writes this off as being a teenager who didn't know how to act with integrity, while the other half cringes that I actually lied to people in order to avoid the risk of public failure.
   
5. Meeting people and dating are often frustrating. The difference in IQs between me and someone who is a little above average is the same as the difference between someone average and a moron. (What can I say, Wikipedia is harsh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ) Well, it's not exactly like that, but sometimes it feels like it. It can be hard for me to connect with people I meet and find good topics of conversation. On the flip side, to a person who is socially gifted, I'm probably the one who seems like a moron.
6. While I've worked hard, most of my successes came from my innate intelligence. As a result, I got used to being naturally good at things. Recent studies have shown that people who believe intelligence is innate tend to give up much faster than people who believe it can be developed, and that was definitely true for me throughout most of my 20s. I'd try things once or twice, then stop if I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, which was often. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance when you're not good at something you expected to be great at, and the easiest way to resolve that dissonance is by quitting.
7. I sometimes feel guilty about how much easier some things are for me than others and also about how I let them get to my head for so many years.
   

Overall, being smart brought many accolades and successes, but it also made me anxious, afraid of failure, and eager to quit at the first signs of hardship. I recently entered my thirties, and while now I have most of these issues under control, it took a good ten years to do that—10 years that I could have spent building stuff, trying more things, and not vacillating between being annoyingly cocky and being insecure. At thirty one, I'm finally working on things I wish I had worked on at twenty one.

Conclusion: being smart brings a lot of advantages in life, but it can also keep you from being well-rounded and warp your views of reality. If you know someone smart who views intelligence as the only important thing in life, please give them a whack on the head. Tell 'em Anon User sent you.

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This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, author of Cracking the Coding Interview and The Google Résumé:

I became negative about it because of what I saw it do to guys.

When I first learned about it, I was mostly just intrigued. I ended up learning a bunch about it. I read The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (which I still think is a really interesting book) and ended up meeting a lot of people who were in the pick-up artist community (not a goal—it just happened).

I even ended up helping out with one of their weekend seminars, to be a "female test dummy," essentially. Far from the stereotype of sleazy guys who want one-night stands, 24 of the 25 guys in the class were just awkward, nerdy guys who just wanted a girlfriend (the 25th wanted to bring home a girl for a threesome with his girlfriend). But that's not the instruction of these classes. The classes are about getting laid, not getting a girlfriend.

This was my first big hint that something was wrong.
There was a mismatch. They were taking guys who wanted girlfriends and teaching them how to pick up girls in bars. How many relationships do you know of that started in bars? Do you know any? If you want a girlfriend, go sign up for an online dating site. Start dating! Statistically speaking, bars don't work.

And then there was the instruction itself.
The problem is that what works for one person doesn't work for everyone—not all guys, and not on all girls. They were telling guys things like:

• Touch a girl when she talks to you.
• Criticize a girl (sorry, I mean "neg").
• When a girl seems uninterested, she's just playing games.
• Don't talk about "real" topics, like education and your job. They're too "boring."
• No woman is out of your league.

The problem here is that touching can be flirty, but it can also be really creepy when the touching isn't natural. And when you're telling an awkward, nerdy guy who has no idea how to flirt "OK, now, touch a girl here," it's almost always creepy. (Personally, I don't like random guys at bars touching me. It makes me really uncomfortable.)

And then you're telling the guy to criticize the girl, which is just plain mean.

And then, when the girl isn't interested, the guy is now being told, "Oh, she's just trying to play games with you." He doesn't back off. Eww.

And all of this is ridiculous because sometimes, the girl is out of your league or at least just isn't interested. I'm 5-foot-9, and I'm just not going to go home with a guy who is 5-foot-3, goes by the nickname "Snake" (seriously?!?), and is overweight, and pimply, and won't just answer a direct question about what he does for a living. But he keeps pursuing because, well, "I'm just playing games with him." I'm trying to see if he passes some test, apparently.

These are the sort of repeated interactions I had with guys in the PUA community, and why I got turned against it. Once upon a time, this guy might have been a perfectly normal but nerdy guy, who could have dated online, met someone nice, got married, and been perfectly happy.

PUA instruction turns awkward, nerdy guys who just want a girlfriend into creepy guys who harass and insult women. And that's not OK!

PUA instruction teaches guys these mechanical ways of interacting with women that don't really work and fails to recognize that every woman is different. Some women just won't go home with you. Sorry. Maybe she's out of your league. Or maybe she's just not interested in you. Or maybe she just doesn't go home with random dudes from bars.

The words coming out of a woman's mouth? It's not all a game. You can have actual conversations with us. When I say "What do you do for a living?" it's because I actually care. Because I'm looking for someone to build a relationship with, and someone with no career goals is not a good match for me. Answer the question.

Conversation is not all a giant game. When I'm not interested, it's because I'm not interested. Not because I'm putting some sort of girl test in front of you.

So that's why I'm against it. Because, beyond just giving men the courage to approach women, the instruction is harmful to the guys.

Some of my friends who were involved in the community got out of it OK, but they were probably more normally adjusted to start with. Another friend, well, he got his taste of one night stands and "can't understand the point of girlfriend." And other guys I've met are so uncomfortable to be around that, well, we never really became friends.

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This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by an anonymous user on Quora:

There are a lot of interesting aspects to it, and I'm sure my experience is different from that of others, but I'll relate my story here since I was asked to answer this.

I dated a model during what you might call her "declining" years. I put that in quotes because to a normal person the idea is absurd. Models have a shelf-life of maybe 10 years, 15 if they are lucky. Once a model hits 30, the modeling industry considers her old and used up, and there is no shortage of eager 15- and 26-yearolds from Eastern Europe who are willing to work longer hours, fly more places, and get paid far less. Almost every model in her late 20s (including the woman I dated) begins to worry incessantly (when she isn't worrying about nonexistent eye wrinkles) about how to make herself into a "brand" and transition into being a supermodel, which is pretty much the only postmodeling career available to you in this line of work.

Dating a model is pretty interesting. As a couple and as a man, you are immediately accorded utterly absurd amounts of social consideration. Any time we were out, we'd get special treatment. Not just from service people but just regular people. People would regularly offer to let us cut in front of them in lines at restaurants, grocery stores, even once at the DMV(!) when we happened to go together. Of course we could get into clubs, although this is not as great as it seems because every two-bit wannabe pickup artist would try to chat "us" (really just her) up when we were just there to dance and have a good time with friends. Probably the biggest benefit is that we always stood an extremely good chance of being offered upgrades to first class when flying. Airlines look for well-dressed people to offer first-class upgrades to when seats are open, and dating my girlfriend had led me to up my game in terms of dress so I always wore a jacket and tie when flying, so we were a pretty good-looking couple (well, she was—I was a chump in a nice suit), and we would always get offered the first-class upgrades. And we flew a lot, because my job is pretty portable and she would have shoots all over the world. I eventually decided that dating a model was potentially a cash-flow-positive arrangement in that during the seasons where we traveled frequently enough, the value of the first-class upgrades we would receive (sometimes thousands of dollars) actually exceeded the amount of money I spent taking her out on dates or covering for her fraction of the rent (more on this below).

Speaking of money, her finances were always a mess. I've heard this is often an issue with people who work in industries where you get irregular lump-sum payments for your work. She would get huge checks every few months, but on a highly irregular and totally unpredictable basis. And as a contractor, she would be responsible for handling her own tax withholdings (which she would never do), so she would always have a huge unexpected tax bill in the spring that she would freak out about, and each time she was only saved in the nick of time by the next check that (luckily) came in the mail. I was brought up to be pretty good with money, so I tried to help her keep her finances in order, but she never understood why she should put away about 45 percent ("That's like half my earnings!") from every check to account for the self-employment taxes that would be due at the end of the year. After being together for a couple years, I got a good sense of how much she earned over time, and I tried to explain to her what she should try to think of as her average income stream over time and to keep weekly expenses in line, but it was something she just wasn't very interested in. Instead she would go on partying and shopping binges in the weeks following getting paid and the rest of the time scraping by when she wasn't. Luckily, I made the wise decision to keep our finances completely separate even when we started living together and "splitting" the rent, which more often than not turned out to be me footing all of the rent for that month and her paying me back months later when she got paid. But like I said, sometimes this was offset by the tremendous material consideration in the form of airline upgrades or hotel room upgrades when we would go on vacation.

Ultimately though, the most frustrating thing about the whole experience is that despite being absolutely drop-dead gorgeous (some models look "strange," while others are more conventionally beautiful, and she was one of the conventionally beautiful ones), she became increasingly insecure and worried about her "declining" looks. To give you an idea of what this is like, imagine someone who is literally better looking than anyone else you know or ever meet on the street. Not only this but they are, by dint of their profession, an expert in terms of how to dress and apply makeup, so you are basically dating a walking Photoshop commercial. Despite this, she would obsess about what I could only perceive to be completely invisible fat on her thighs and just-as-invisible wrinkles around her eyes. She would literally ask me, "Do I look fat?" or "Don't you think I look old?" and of course as a man with a good sense of perspective about what I'd managed to snag, at first I would enthusiastically answer, "Of course not! You're the most beautiful woman on the planet!" which as far as I could tell was 100 percent the truth. The problem was, none of these really assuaged her insecurities (of course) so she would keep asking over and over, and there is a limit to how many times you can enthusiastically exclaim about how beautiful your girlfriend is, even if you do believe it to be the truth. Obviously, she noticed this difference in the enthusiasm of my answers, and it didn't help her insecurity about her supposed fading looks. Remember, again, during all this time she is still better looking than 99.99 percent of all human beings, so you get a sense of the utter absurdity of the situation.

She was also spending all of her spare time trying to "make it" as a supermodel, which for those who aren't familiar with the industry, doesn't mean "extra-good-looking model," it means models who have the brains to figure out that they have to leverage their looks into building themselves into a brand and business before their shelf-life runs out. She had several friends who were doing the same thing (models have wised up to the game, with the success of supermodels like Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum who have parlayed their careers into television shows and such), one of them is having some measure of success at it—you would probably recognize her name since she hosts a minor show on cable. But of course to build a business, you need to, at a minimum, be pretty good with finances, and she had no interest in it, despite my continuing attempts to try and get her to pay attention to the basics. It wasn't that she wasn't smart—she just hated finance. As a result of this, she became gradually more demotivated, insecure, and would complain often that she was "over the hill," which is pretty absurd at 28 or 29 (although I hear it sometimes from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, which I consider equally absurd) and it became a continual source of negativity in our day-to-day interactions.

I met her when she was 25, and we dated nearly four years until finally breaking up just a couple months before she turned 30. I know I've sounded pretty negative in this answer, but in the first couple years the relationship was so good that I thought she was marriage material, but her insecurity and negativity became such a problem later on that despite my attempts to be supportive and make it work, we eventually had to part ways. I really thought we were meant to be together so I probably let things go on for much longer than was wise, in retrospect. At one point, I thought maybe we could make it work as a joint venture, with her doing the modeling and speaking and industry relationships, and I would handle the finance and "business" pieces, but her negativity and insecurity about everything had totally poisoned things between us so much by then that I just couldn't handle it anymore.

One funny postscript is that my mom perhaps recognized this before I did, and (to my chagrin at the time) tried to set me up with various hometown girls when I would visit for holidays. Finally, I met someone when I was home for Christmas when my mom, before I could stop her, introduced me as "my son, who is dating the supermodel" to a girl I'd been friends with in high school, which of course got her to talk to me. She now says she was impressed not because I was dating a supermodel, but because I was helping her with her finances and "good with business," and now she is my fiancee.

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This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Ti Zhao, biomedical engineer:

Sort of. It's somewhat complicated since there are genetic as well as environmental components to this.

Natural lactase production is genetic, but is not the only thing that determines lactose tolerance. Illness, damage to the small intestines, and the composition of your gut bacteria can all affect your level of lactose tolerance.

The Basics
When lactose enters the body, it's cleaved by the enzyme lactase into glucose and galactose via a process known as hydrolysis.

Once lactose has been cleaved into glucose and galactose, those two simple sugars can be absorbed by the body and used as energy. However, when lactose isn't broken down in the small intestines, it moves to the colon, where it interacts with the bacteria there. Bacteria in the colon can break down some of the lactose, but it produces various gases in the process. The rest of the intact lactose draws water into the colon via osmosis as it passes through. I don't think I need to go into detail as to what excess gas and water in the colon can lead to ... But there you have it, hallmark symptoms of "lactose intolerance."

The Genetics
Lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose) is produced by cells in the lining of the small intestine. All humans have the ability to produce lactase during infancy, but for many, that ability is turned off in adulthood. In Caucasians, the rs4988235 variant in the MCM6 gene acts as the switch to regulate the expression of the lactase gene (LCT). Individuals can have one of three genotypes (GG, AG, and AA). Those with the GG genotype are known as lactase non-persistent (aka likely, though not necessarily, lactose intolerant). Lactose intolerance resulting from the downregulation of LCT is known as primary lactose intolerance. If you're really curious, 23andMe can tell you which genotype you have.

Sidenote: the GG genotype is native, and mutations that allow for lactase production in adulthood came fairly recently (evolutionarily speaking).

Genetics is set before birth, so if you're not a lactase-persistent individual, your body is probably not going to suddenly ramp up production of lactase at a later point in life. But, you could be a lactase-persistent individual with lactose intolerance and vice versa, depending on the degree of gene downregulation and envrionmental factors.

The Environmental Factors
This is where things can get pretty complicated, the major factors at play are the health of the small intestine and the composition of gut bacteria.

The health of the small intestine can lead to what's known as secondary lactose intolerance. It occurs when the small intestine decreases lactase production after an illness or injury to the intestinal tract (sometimes, food poisoning can do the trick). Anything that damages the intestinal villi can decrease lactase production. It can take months or years for the lining to fully heal and for lactase production to return to normal, if ever. When adults become lactose intolerant for a few years and return to being lactose tolerant, it might be because their small intestine was damaged and then slowly healed.

The composition of gut bacteria can also contribute, although their effects are complicated and not fully understood. We know that your gut is abundant with microbea: so abundant in fact, that they outnumber your own cells by a factor of 10. These bacteria are busy doing so many metabolic activities that they can be thought of as an additional organ.

Some gut bacteria produce lactase, which can can compensate for a natural lack of the enzyme. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB)—found in some yogurts—is an example. This may be one reason why people who can't tolerate milk sometimes have no symptoms when eating yogurt. However, there may be other factors—such as intestinal transit time—involved as well.

As mentioned previously, lactose in the colon interacts with the resident bacteria and gets broken-down into simple sugars (glucose and galactose). These sugars can be further metabolized into short-chain fatty acids and other metabolites. How much (and how quickly) these compounds accumulate and are removed varies depending on the types of bacteria present. Certain gut flora compositions lead to higher accumulation of these compounds during fermentation, and may be a potential cause of lactose-intolerance symptoms.

Sidenote regarding gut bacteria:

Radiolab did an awesome show on the gut a few months ago, including a segment on gut flora: http://www.radiolab.org/2012/apr...

If you're not easily grossed out, you might find this article fascinating:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/...

So, what can you do to turn lactose intolerance into lactose tolerance?
Well, if you are among those lucky enough to have the lactase-persistence genes, then keeping your gut healthy is a good idea. If you aren't lactase-persistent, then your options are more limited. You could try taking probiotic bacteria dietary supplements, or eating probiotic yogurt, but it's unclear whether or not these measures work.

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This question originally appeared on Quora.

Answer by Jonathan Weinberg, founder and CEO of AutoSlash.com:

I arrived for work that morning on the 77th floor of World Trade Center Tower 2 around 8 a.m. It was a bright, beautiful morning, and you could see seemingly forever out the floor to ceiling windows of the building. My company had offices on the 77th and 78th floors. My office was on the 77th, facing the north tower.

I was standing in the hallway outside my office talking to a co-worker when I heard a tremendous explosion at 8:46 a.m. I looked into my office (office wall was floor-to-ceiling glass) and saw a gaping hole in the south side of WTC1. We had no idea what had happened. No part of the plane was visible (it had hit WTC1 from the North—the opposite side from where my office faced).

Eventually, word filtered in from somewhere that it was a plane that hit the building. We didn't know whether it was a commercial jet or a private plane like a Gulfstream. It also did not occur to me at the time that it was a terrorist attack. I just assumed it was a terrible accident.

At some point, I saw people appear at the edge of the gaping hole. Smoke was pouring out, and while I don't recall seeing much in the way of flames, it was clear that there was a raging fire going on inside the building. I saw a number of people jump to their death, desperate to get away from the heat/flames.

It's hard to express what I felt at that point, because I can only describe it as shock. Your mind cannot really comprehend what is happening—almost an overload state. You see it with your eyes, but you are somehow mentally detached from it at the same time.

I called my wife to let her know what was happening. She was just walking out of Penn Station on her way to work. I quickly apprised her of the situation and told her that within a few minutes there would probably be pandemonium as people learned what had happened. I assured her that I was OK, and my building was not impacted. I told her I'd call her again when I could.

Many of my co-workers began to leave the building immediately after the plane hit. For various reasons, I decided to stay. This was partially because I believed that it was an accident, and I was in no immediate danger. I was head of technology for a financial information firm at the time. Based on what I was seeing, I figured it might be days or weeks before we could return to our offices, so there were many things I needed to attend to so that operations could be moved to an off-site location.

At some point, I left my office and took the escalator in our space up to the 78th floor. We had a large conference room there with a projector and cable TV, so I wanted to get the news on to see what was happening. I turned on CNN. Information looked pretty sketchy, but I decided to return to 77 to inform my remaining co-workers that I had TV coverage on upstairs if they wanted to come up.

I returned to my office and decided to call my mother. A few seconds after hanging up the phone at 9:03 a.m., I felt a violent jolt and then a falling sensation. I remember thinking that the building was coming down, and it was the end. The impact caused the building to sway heavily. It was actually designed to sway to a certain degree as the towers have to withstand high winds on a regular basis, but this was far beyond anything I'd ever felt before.

Eventually the building stabilized. Much of the ceiling had come down, and I could feel the breeze from blown out windows on the other side of the floor. This felt oddly disconcerting since none of the windows were designed to open in the WTC.

At that point, I honestly didn't know what had happened. Strangely enough, my first thought was that WTC1 somehow exploded, and what we experiencing was the impact of that.

I found myself outside my office with a number of co-workers. There was a ton of dust and debris in the air, and the electricity was out. While I was covered in dust and other particles, I was not injured. We (about ten of us) made our way to the stairwell on the NE side of the building.

Upon arriving at the stairwell, we ran into some people who had apparently just come down from the 78th floor. One woman had a severe laceration on her arm. While the wound was quite serious, it did not appear to be life threatening. There was some brief discussion about going up (I cannot recall why), but the injured woman or someone she was with mentioned that everyone was dead on the 78th floor.

I later found out that United Airlines flight 75 had slammed into the southwest face of the tower, creating an impact hole that extended from the 78th to 84th floors. Apparently the conference room that I had been standing in just a few minutes before was now obliterated. Had I decided to stay up on 78 instead of returning to my office when I did, I would not be alive today.

Tragically two co-workers who I considered personal friends apparently took an opposite path that day, making their way from the 77th floor to their offices on the 78th floor just before the impact. I never saw them again.

Seemingly insignificant decisions a person made that day determined whether they lived or died. It's still something that's a bit hard to fully come to terms with.

Unbeknown to me at the time, my wife had arrived at work at the Midtown financial firm where she worked, right around the time my building was hit. The WTC towers were clearly visible from the trading floor of her firm. While we'd spoken earlier and she knew I was OK, that was before the second plane hit WTC2. She knew I was still in the building at the time, and she knew what floor I worked on, so at that point, she had no idea whether I was still alive.

Once we got into the 77th floor stairwell, I recall jet fuel pouring down the stairs. I mentioned previously I was definitely in some form of shock at that time and not thinking rationally. Having worked as a baggage handler at JFK airport for a summer (ironically for United Airlines of all companies), I knew what jet fuel smelled like. Still, I could not put one and one together and make the connection that a jetliner had just crashed into the building only a few feet above my head and split open, spilling the contents of its fuel tanks into the building core.

We slowly made our way down the 77 flights of stairs. A woman there who worked for me at the time was about six months pregnant, so we went slowly in order to stay with her and help her down.

At some point, I remember passing a number of firefighters heading up the stairs. They had a full set of gear on, and they looked weary and frightened, yet they continued up past us. It's hard to put into words what I feel for the firefighters who sacrificed everything that day in order to try to help others. Reverence is about as close as I can get.

Eventually, we exited the stairwell and made our way into the mall connecting the WTC complex. I recall thinking that we were still alive and basically were out of danger. It was then that I saw police officers or firefighters yelling and waving at us frantically to get out of the building, and we quickened our pace.

We exited the mall in the northeast corner near the Millennium hotel. We were standing on the street, and it was chaos. I was with a colleague and my boss at the time. There was debris falling off the building, and my boss suggested we get out of the area.

We began walking north. We had gotten maybe five blocks away when we heard a large rumble and saw a massive dust cloud to the south of us from the direction we came. Word eventually filtered up through the crowd that WTC2 where my office resided had just fallen. It was a strange and surreal experience. Thoughts flooded through my mind like, how many people just lost their life? Do I still have a job? Even a mental inventory of the things that were in my office that no longer existed.

Words with my co-workers which I cannot recall were exchanged, and I decided to set off on my own to try to get home and reach my family to let them know I was OK. I eventually walked over the Williamsburg Bridge, caught a bus in Brooklyn heading for Queens, and then flagged down a gypsy cab in Queens to take me to my home in Port Washington, Long Island.

I eventually got through to my family via phone to let them know I was safe. I also spoke with the president of the company who was down in Florida at the time. He later told me that I was speaking very quickly and not making much sense. I guess the events of the day had taken their toll on me.

I made it home a number of hours later. My mother-in-law was there with my daughters, but my wife was still trying to make her way home. I walked in and hugged my two daughters like I had never hugged them before.

The rest of the night was mostly a blur. I spent most of it on the phone trying to account for every employee in the company. It was emotionally draining, but necessary work. I think I collapsed for a couple of hours, and then was picked up by one of the guys that worked for me to head to Philadelphia where my company had a smaller office.

I recall driving down the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and passing the downtown area, seeing a massive plume of smoke still rising from the WTC site. I can only describe it as surreal.

At some point during the trip, I received a phone call from a relative of an employee who had not yet been heard from. I tried to remember where and when I had last seen the person. It was one of the most difficult and emotional conversations I've ever had in my life.

We arrived in Philadelphia later that morning to ensure that we had accounted for all of our employees to the best of our ability, and then to set about the task of trying to resurrect a business that was basically in tatters.

I still had not had a chance to really process what had happened, but I realized that unless we immediately got to work, hundreds of people were going to lose their jobs.

It wasn't until later that night when I checked into my hotel, about 36 hours after it had all begun, that I had a chance to turn on the TV and watch a full account of the events. Sitting there in front of the TV, it was like a floodgate had opened, and my mind finally had a chance to deal with the tragedy and all the emotions that went with it.

Recently, Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. As a survivor of the 9/11 attack on the WTC, I'd like to personally thank the U.S. armed forces, our intelligence community, and President Obama for their relentless pursuit of both Osama Bin Laden as well as other extremists who carried out acts of aggression against Americans.

As President Obama pointed out, the American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens.

I lost four friends and co-workers that day who will forever be in my heart. I try to live every day to the fullest, to honor their lives, and the lives of others who perished that day. While nothing will ever bring back our friends and loved ones, it's a testament to the resilience and fortitude of America's people that we were finally able to gain some measure of closure following this dark event in our country's history.

We must remain vigilant, and most of all, never forget -- both to honor those we lost, as well as to protect our loved ones, fellow citizens and future generations from similar tragic events.

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