Stop the pot splashing me

Adding a starchy substance such as rice or noodles to boiling water increases the surface tension of the water. When it's just plain water boiling the surface tension of the water can't hold back the force of the steam rising and the bubbles burst. Starches increase this surface tension making the bubbles more elastic/pliable (essentially creating a foam), thus requiring more force for them to burst. This makes the bubbles last longer which allows them to build up and eventually boil over.

It's more likely to occur with anything starchy like rice and pasta.

A lower temperature should help to control a boil over as it will allow the water to cool somewhat and slow the boil.

I'd assume that, from your quoted text, that if you use less water you're still imparting the same amount of starch making a thicker solution. More water would dilute this and bring it closer to normal water. In my own experience, small amounts of water allow lots of bubbles to form but nothing really boils over, it just splatters a bit. But reducing temperature and tilting the lid to let some air in has helped me in the past.

There's an interesting article on The Straight Dope that tests the question of how well a microwave kills bacteria on pizza. Here's a few quotes:

If I take a piece of pizza that's been sitting on the table awhile and microwave it, would that kill the bacteria, or am I just eating nice hot bacteria?

Will a microwave kill microbes? Sure. Microwave ovens use electromagnetic radiation to heat water molecules in food. It's the heat, not the microwaves, that's lethal here; the hotter you make your food, the more likely you are to kill the bacteria in it. (Some contend microwave energy itself is fatal to bacteria, but that's unproven.) The key is making the food hot enough uniformly enough for long enough. If it heats unevenly, a common problem in microwaves, some bacteria may survive.

After running some real-world tests and examining their petri dishes, they concluded:

1. Heating the pizza for 30 seconds was relatively ineffectual.

2. Heating it for a full minute killed most of the bacteria but not all.

3. We didn't go in for another round of testing, but suspect that at least two minutes of microwaving would be needed to ensure 100 percent bacteria eradication, at the possible cost of rendering the pizza inedible.

Checkout the full (quite entertaining) article here:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2947/do-microwave-ovens-kill-bacteria