Readers’ Mailbag: November 6, 2015

Last week I started a new feature on the blog, a weekly “Readers’ Mailbag,” where I answer two or three fairly random questions that have come in to me, ones that I do not simply want to answer in a sentence, as in most of my replies to “Comments” on my posts, but also not as fully as a thread or even a full post. Most of these questions do indeed deserve full posts, or threads, and I may in fact get around to devoting some to them. But for now I will be content with giving short answers that...