I worry that it will lead to a case of alcohol poisoning.

That would require thinking outside of a male perspective, though, and thus giving up the make privilege of never having to think that any view but a man’s matters. /Snark

On that one at least, you can’t say he didn’t warn you.

Considering that coming of age is a huge theme that record in a lot of King’s work, I’m much more inclined to let the one instance slide as a bad attempt at making a metaphor that went way wrong, than I am to let off an author for whom the pedophilia/etc keeps coming up again and again, a la Piers Anthony.

Goodkind started at bdsm, and the streets right into thinly-veiled right wing political screeds. Just, blech (even if not quite on par with the whole pedophilia-rape endorsements etc)

Those are what my county used now, but we had the touch screen ones in the past. Apparently some people do still.

Easier than you’d think. Those things are so vulnerable that all it would take is to piggyback on a single point of failure, such as when they’re loaded with the data for a particular election. Attach your malcode to that, because you hacked the board of elections, and they’ll never even realize anything was amiss.

Yes - why is it only part of you? What’s wrong with the other part? ;)

Reporting for duty!

Understanding, sure. Forgiveness depends on other things - but really, the key thing to do is to say that while this isn’t unusual, it’s bad and should be avoided, not a “boys will be boys” dismissal of any of the problems.

The experience is definitely different depending on where you’re from, and if you’re actually trying to live there rather than just as a tourist/exchange student/etc. It’s not to say everyone is horrible, but some people certainly are, to varying degrees. Trying to trip foreigners up with use of obscure kanji on…

I’d go so far as to say it’s a simple fact of a sufficiently developed/advanced society, because it’s happened to some degree everywhere. Even countries that are only moderately developed have seen a dramatic drop in the birth rate in the last 30-40 years. We’d be facing the same thing in the US if it wasn’t for…

In many cases the odd hair colors are for easy differentiation of the characters (and it tends to show up more in fantasy or sci fi settings where that wouldn’t be quite so odd). Oftentimes the art styles do vary, too, from the more “realistic” to the less so. In most cases though, there are very clear differences in…

It’s important to keep perspective. There are a lot of things that are view as “sure things” or “impossible” in politics, until they happen. We’re stuck in the results of one of those right now.

I won’t say that it’s unrealistic, but there’s a difference in how something gets presented that has real importance. There’s a HUGE difference in how movies/books/etc portray people acting badly in whether it’s shown as sympathetic or horrific, or even just as a “don’t do this” example. The issue in this case is that…

This isn’t my story (thankfully), but the convoy ambush where Jessica Lynch and others were captured in the Iraq War was a case of GPS fail, where the convoy took a wrong turn (or more than one possibly). Which brings me to an old saying I heard while I was in the Army, which went something like: “The second most…

I’ve always preferred http://www.wouldisurviveanuke.com/ if only for a side helping of dark humor with my terror.

Legally speaking, they don’t have racial purity laws or anything like that, though their citizenship laws are much stricter than those in the US/Canada/Europe/etc. It’s not a (explicitly) racial thing, but the requirements (and knowledge of the spoken/written language) are high. It’s certainly possible though (there…

They’ll change the law before that happens. Granted they’ll do so grudgingly and only when it’s clear there’s no alternative, but they will. Had Hisahito (the son of the current crown prince’s younger brother, making him 3rd in line now) not been born, they’d have probably already changed the law to allow women to…

Same experience here. It’s fascinating in a way, to go from being relatively ordinary to having little children stare at you wide-eyed like they’d never seen anyone at all like you before. It’s even more pronounced if you get away from the major cities (which I recommend, the countryside and even the smaller regional…