But we can strike one unknown from our lists, as an intrepid Quora user boldly went where no Quora user had gone before -- and asked if female astronauts wear bras.

The answer (according to one astronaut, at least) is "Yes":

Astronauts spend more than two hours a day exercising.  A lot of that time is running on a treadmill.  Even though there is no noticeable pull from gravity, there is still inertia.  So while they are running on the treadmill, their rib cage is constantly changing its direction of motion and other more delicate parts are resisting those changes.  That's a lot of stress, so sports bras are commonly used during exercise.  When not exercising, it varies based on the preference of the individual astronauts.

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But, does the public know if she's a natural blonde? Or if she wears eyeliner? No, they do not -- and that's where the Wendy Davis truthers come in.

An anonymous blog popped up over the weekend to ask these and many other important questions about the filibustering senator; questions that would no doubt be asked of any man in a similar position.

For example: Why does Davis look a little different than she did in law school?

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I would like to make an apology.

In this recent column my prose was offensive. It was pointed out to me but, as often happens, it took a few days to sink in. I can see now that I was wrong to take the tone I did and to say the things I said the way I said them. I apologize for my tone of overbearing, hectoring intolerance and arrogance, and for the careless ignorance that underlay it. I berated the letter writer for doing something that was quite well-meaning -- carefully avoiding gendered pronouns in the text.

Now, just to clarify: I thought I was talking about language in a humorous way. I really did. But I was wrong. The "God gave us ..." part: That also was meant in an ironic vein. I can see now, though, that it didn't come off that way. That's the only clarification I wish to make.

I do have some sincere and serious thoughts about the matter in general. I would like to argue for greater explicitness in such matters. I would ask that letter writers with progressive thoughts on gender in language express those thoughts explicitly. I would ask that letter writers not just avoid using gendered pronouns but openly draw our attention to the issue.

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It wasn't until Nakia Grimes recently tried to renew her driver's license that she noticed her birth certificate mistakenly stated she was male. When she tried to update the document, a state official told her she would need a pap test to prove that she was a woman.

"She [the state worker] said I needed to go have a pap exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you’re a woman, and bring it back -- notarized," Grimes told Fox 5 Atlanta.

Fox 5 Atlanta reported the invasive request to Vital Records Services, where the director told her there was no need for the exam and that the employee's request was not standard protocol.

Instead, state record officials simply used the birth certificate of Grimes' son, which lists her as his biological mother, to verify her sex, Grimes says.

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Garrett Epps at the Atlantic noted Alito's judicial rudeness on Monday, and Dana Milbank from the Washington Post published a laundry list of the justice's high school antics in a Tuesday editorial.

Apparently, it's not the first time Alito has visibly expressed disdain for his female colleagues:

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The decisions in Vance v. Ball State University (authored by Justice Samuel Alito) and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar (authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy) each watered down the ability for employees to sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex or national origin." The first case, in which a kitchen employee of Ball State University said her co-workers had harassed her because she is black, narrowed the definition of a "supervisor" in determining whether an employer is responsible for harassment. (The central question was whether the harasser counted as a supervisor if he or she could assign responsibilities but not hire or fire someone.) The second, in which a doctor said he had been discriminated against for being of Middle Eastern descent and subsequently retaliated against, set a near-impossible standard for what constitutes retaliation after an employee complains he or she has been discriminated against.

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Ever since we learned you were coming into our lives, your mother and I have strategized for ways to make sure that you never feel limited by some of the common gender stereotypes that we see everywhere in our society. And after almost three and half years later, we’ve come to realize – it ain’t easy.

It really started to hit me a few days ago.  You and I were walking down the street and I pointed to the picture on the front page in the newspaper stand.

“Do you know who that is?” I asked.

Beaming with pride that you knew the answer, you looked up and said, “President Obama!”

“That’s right!” I congratulated you.  “President is a very important job.  Would you like to be president some day?”

Then, turning to me with a look as if I had just made the silliest suggestion ever, you laughed and said, “Daddy … I can’t be president! I’m not a boy!”

Talk about a verbal gut punch.

Now, I get it.  You’re 3 years old.  Your entire life you have only known one president, and he is, indeed, clearly of the male persuasion.  That is your entire frame of reference.

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The report represents the first "systematic study of global data on the prevalence of violence against women," according to a release from the organization.

In addition to statistics revealing epidemic levels of violence affecting women and girls in countries across the globe, the report also details the impact of violence on their physical and mental health, ranging from death and serious injury to depression, substance abuse, increased vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections and other negative health outcomes.

“This new data shows that violence against women is extremely common. We urgently need to invest in prevention to address the underlying causes of this global women’s health problem,” professor Charlotte Watts, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement.

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But on Tuesday, Powell had a much more coherent take on why women should be paid equal wages for equal work: "This is not OK. It needs to be equal pay for equal work; and it's hard enough already to earn a living, and it shouldn't be harder just because you're a woman."

Succinct and totally true. Internet redemption is a fine thing, indeed.

You can watch the full segment here (if you're interested in seeing Lauer act kind of lecherous toward Miss USA winner Erin Brady and pretty condescending to Powell):

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News of the major first was announced on Monday, the eve of the 30th anniversary of Sally Ride's glass atmosphere-shattering space mission.

Nicole Aunapu Mann is a fighter pilot, Anne McClain is a helicopter pilot and the two other women, Christina Hammock and Jessica Meir, are scientists.

"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here -- developing missions to go farther into space than ever before," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "They're excited about the science we're doing on the International Space Station and our plan to launch from U.S. soil to there on spacecraft built by American companies. And they're ready to help lead the first human mission to an asteroid and then on to Mars."

The team of eight will be joining 49 active-duty NASA astronauts at the agency's astronaut corps at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, and may be among the first to lead a mission to an asteroid and Mars after 2020, according to Bolden.

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"A recent report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?," asked pageant judge and "Real Housewives of Atlanta" alum during the question and answer segment.

The 21-year-old Salt Lake City native proceeded to answer the question with a rambling assessment of education and job creation in the United States, finally landing on: "I think, especially the men are ... seen as the leaders of this, and so we need to see how to … create education better. So that we can solve this problem. Thank you.”

She came in third place.

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Turns out the editors of the much-ridiculed magazine were often asking themselves the same questions as the general public: Who reads this?

Those "tickle gizzard" fans -- "the wankership," as she puts it -- would flood her desk with letters. "Frequently, the handwriting on the envelopes [was] what one might call 'serial killer,'" she writes. "Just as frequently, it was heart-inflected in the manner of a giddy teenager. Sometimes the pages were tacky or crumby with substances better not wondered about." The mail was "totally creepy, a little bit heartwarming, and super tragic," she says. "Always, it made me need to immediately wash my hands." Among those were the often bizarre submissions from everyday men who wanted to appear in the magazine. She remembers one that read, "'I would like to pose in your prestigious magazine as a lumberjack and beside a nest of hornets."

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“In that respect, biologically, females have more potential. Females have more sensitivity about others’ wellbeing. In my own case, my father [was] very short tempered. But my mother was so wonderfully compassionate,” he told the Australian Associated Press.

Sure, assigning a wholesale biological predisposition to women -- or men, for that matter -- is problematic. Essentialist thinking is all too often used to justify keeping women outside the halls of power or to explain away the violence committed by some men as being rooted in "nature," and the research on whether women are more empathetic than men is complicated and often contradictory.

But his comments still bring much needed attention to gender parity in governance and compassionate leadership more broadly, which are both really good things.

He went on to say, in fact, that his own successor may be a woman, telling reporters: “If the circumstances are such that a female Dalai Lama is more useful, then automatically a female Dalai Lama will come.”

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The change comes nearly five years after the Australian Human Rights Commission recommended the government expand its guidelines to accommodate greater gender diversity, and two years after Australia made similar changes to gender designations on passport forms.

In a statement on Thursday, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said the new guidelines will ease the process by which intersex and transgender people can "ensure the gender status on their personal records matches the gender they live and how they are recognised by the community."

"We recognize individuals may identify, and be recognized within the community, as a gender other than the gender they were assigned at birth or during infancy, or as an indeterminate gender," Dreyfus said. "This should be recognized and reflected in their personal records held by departments and agencies."

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Female genital mutilation (FGM) has no medical benefits and has been banned in Egypt since 2008, but the parents of Soheir al-Batea brought her to Aslan Fadl's private clinic near Cairo to have the procedure performed anyway.

After her blood pressure dropped as a result of the surgery, al-Batea was rushed to the emergency room on Thursday of last week; she died that night.

Fadl turned himself over to the authorities, but has denied any wrongdoing: “The operation was successful and the girl did not suffer any bleeding,” he said.

UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund in a joint statement called on Egypt to enforce its law against FGM and urged authorities to launch a full investigation into al-Batea's death:

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It seems to be the year of female Internet vigilantes taking on male misbehavior. Just last week, as Salon's Anna North reported, a woman outed on Facebook a stranger she allegedly overheard boasting about his marital infidelities. Naturally, the post went viral. A couple of months ago, Adria Richards tweeted a photo of men at a tech conference who she claimed were making sexually inappropriate jokes. It too blew up online, and one of the men was fired.

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The answer is no, you can't.

And Nestlé knows that, which is why the company launched "Resource" on Monday, a premium water made specifically for “a woman who is a little more on the trendy side and higher-income side,” according to Larry Cooper, group marketing manager for Resource.

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Just kidding! While things have improved significantly since 1963, women, on average, still make 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The numbers are even more dismal for black women and Latinas, who make 68 and 59 cents, respectively.

As E.J. Graff at the American Prospect notes, women's earnings have been stalled for close to 15 years now, leading many labor advocates and politicians to push for new legislation to keep chipping away at the gender wage gap. Namely, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which, among other provisions, would prevent employers from firing workers for comparing earnings -- a major barrier to investigating claims of wage discrimination.

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According to the analysis, men spend an additional five hours each week watching television, exercising and doing other activities geared toward relaxation and recreation. The gender gap among working parents is slightly smaller, but working fathers have an average of three more hours of leisure time than working mothers each week.

The difference, particularly among couples with children, may be explained by how men and women spend their free time. Free time between activities is more fractured and less likely to become leisure time for women, as Pew notes:

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As Science Daily reports:

For the study, 751 college students provided information about their past sexual experience and their views on casual sex. They read a near-identical vignette about a male or female peer, with the only difference being the character's number of lifetime sexual partners (two or 20). Researchers asked them to rate the person on a range of friendship factors, including warmth, competence, morality, emotional stability and overall likability.

Across all female participants, women -- regardless of their own promiscuity -- viewed sexually permissive women more negatively on nine of ten friendship attributes, judging them more favorably only on their outgoingness. Permissive men only identified two measures, mate guarding and dislike of sexuality, where they favored less sexually active men as friends, showing no preference or favoring the more promiscuous men on the eight other variables; even more sexually modest men preferred the non-permissive potential friend in only half of all variables.

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