Under Every Question Mark, A Periodical

Jane: "Who's naughtier in bed: men or women?"

A: None.

In this poll, Jane readers never answer the cover question, but they do reveal a lot of other interesting info -- 28 percent of them have engaged in a threesome, 21 percent have nicknames for their partner's genitalia and 23 percent have walked in on their parents having sex. And one Jane reader revealed that her most embarrassing moment occurred when she and a friend had sex on a mountain trail and then hiked down to a parking lot, where a little kid pointed and yelled, "Look Mom, that's them!"

Business Ethics: "Why Is a Corporation Like a Stray Cat?"

A: Because it needs an owner who will keep it out of trouble.

This revelation comes in the introduction to an interview with Bob Monks, who is identified as the "grandfather of the responsible corporate governance movement." Monks is also a man capable of uttering this sentence: "I'm trying to use accounting to create a more holistic vocabulary." And he admits he's not having much success: "I find the progress I've made virtually nil."

Brain, Child: "Is There Going to Be a Mothers' Revolution or What?"

A: Or what.

Stephanie Wilkinson, co-editor of this magazine aimed at smart mothers, goes on for 11 pages about the need for some vaguely defined mom's revolution but she admits it's not happening: "If there is a mother's movement going on, it hasn't reached my neighborhood yet."

Scientific American: "What is spacetime?"

A: Nobody's really sure but it might be "a kind of fluid, like the ether of pre-Einsteinian physics."

This article fails to come up with a definitive answer but it does raise the right question, which is, as any schoolchild knows: "Might the properties, even the existence, of Hawking radiation depend on the microscopic properties of spacetime -- much as, for example, the heat capacity or speed of sound of a substance depends on its microscopic structure and dynamics?"

The answer to that question is definitely maybe.

Okay, one last question before we go: Should readers expect answers to the provocative questions raised on magazine covers?

A: You've got to be kidding.