The UK is vulnerable to the occasional strong extratropical cyclone/windstorm.

The current "far-right fundamentalist" SBC is only about 40 years old. Prior to that, it was much more moderate, and SBC educational institutions were perhaps about as "religious" as most U.S. Catholic universities are today (to make a rough comparison). Carter was of this generation of pre-takeover Southern…

Maybe I missed my calling as a surgeon, because I find none of this gross.

As an expat, I can't really even stomach U.S. news anymore. Honestly, the entire American journalism profession is all about whipping people up into a constant frenzy for ratings, and I really didn't notice until I left the country. I can't tell you how much lower my stress levels went just from getting out of that…

I think the problem is that even if you could engineer this, Venus is just largely inhospitable to long-term life. The biggest problem I'd say is that Venus rotates very slowly; one day on Venus is the equivalent of 243 Earth days. I'm not sure one could ever create an environment on Venus friendly to complex…

A companion piece to the most bizarre anti-contraception book ever, it appears!

I think there's a bit of a "Nutella invasion" going on in the U.S. It's definitely new for them. It's been in Canada longer, though, so not as big of a deal there.

Just the other day, I was thrilled to have found a specialty store that sold Italian Nutella—as in, Nutella in a glass jar with Italian-language labelling. And it wasn't that much more expensive than the North American stuff. I hope they keep selling it, because I sure as hell don't want to go back to the shitty…

God...that sounds absolutely awful. I hope things work out eventually!

I haven't used Siri much (she's largely quite useless outside of the U.S.), but shitty maps are enough to make me wait before upgrading to iOS 6. I've been quite content with iOS 5.1 as it is.

If you lived in Canada, I'd ultimately suggest a day trip to America, then bring them back across the border. As processed frozen foods and not fresh meat or fruits/vegetables (which are banned on both sides of the border), they're probably importable!

I've always said that people never notice a good marketing job; it's only the bad ones. I guess then the best you can aim for in this line of work is to be invisible!

The problem is that 20th century mass murderers are low-hanging fruit. Go back a bit further into the 19th century and you have the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864):

So does male circumcision. The foreskin keeps the glans soft and sensitive; ripping it off dries it out and, over time, many men become less sensitive. Also, it may be a minority, but there are cases of botched infant circumcisions where the head gets lopped off entirely. It might be a "mistake," but just imagine…

Agreed. It's completely barbaric. And it's all the more hypocritical in light of the West railing against female genital mutilation, while jumping over hoops to justify their own "male genital mutilation" traditions. All those excuses about it being "cleaner" or women finding it "more attractive" are frankly the…

That tragedy aside, moving away from the U.S. did absolute wonders for my stress levels. I never really realized how much politicians and the media (of all stripes) just whip everyone into constant hysteria. It's just dreadful, and I question whether I could live there again just for the sake of my own sanity.

I tend to feel it's taken Square-Enix a really long time to find its footing again after the merger. FFXII and FFXIII feel like they were rushed out of the gate, due to their unusually long development times. FFXII has great, if a bit imperfect, gameplay, but the story really falls apart (a pity, since it had all…

I've generally been hesitant to go grocery shopping in the U.S. and bringing the stuff back to Canada, but it sounds like a lot of people do it. So what kind of things are you NOT allowed to bring back?

Buuuuut...as someone who is sensitive to the chemicals in milk, I can definitely say that U.S. regular milk is toxic compared to Canadian regular milk, but both still give me digestive issues. Organic milk in both nations, though, are fine with me—and Canadian regular milk tends to cost as much as U.S. organic milk. …

Yeah, Canadians have a lot of accents; they just tend to be more subtle outside the fringes. And, definitely, there is quite a noticeable difference between the English spoken around the Great Lakes in Canada and the U.S. The region around Detroit/Cleveland/Buffalo has kind of developed a more "nasal" sounding…