Courts have been really reluctant to broaden the consent-was-vitiated-by-fraud argument. To the point where it's not enough simply to prove that an accused had HIV and lied about it, you also have to prove that their viral load was at a level whereby transmission was reasonably possible. Maybe it's because I came of…

I don't think either option is clearly right or clearly wrong. On the one hand you're his friend, not hers, and back-stabbing a friend isn't a nice thing to do. On the other hand, based on what you've told us, he's not a close friend anymore, and he's almost certainly being a sleazebag, and he's wasting this woman's…

Careful there. Just putting my lawyer hat on, if you call this rape then what do you call it when a woman tells a man she's on the pill or has an IUD but she's lying about it? Assume he's made it clear to her that he's not interested in having sex with her unless she's using some form of birth control….

I started reading ASOIAF before book 3 came out. I reread them all at once just before Book 5-and the tv show-came out and much preferred them the second time around. The first time I just kept forgetting who everybody was, outside the main story arcs.

I loved these books as a kid and reread them dozens of times. And one day, in my late twenties, when I hadn't thought of them in years, I happened to be in a remote tea house in the Himalayas and I saw it had the most beautifully illustrated poster and it was a map of Prydain. I spent the evening looking up at it…

I have heard that complaint. It didn't bug me because he does stupid things quite frequently and does fail at things, especially as the story moves on. And in the envelope story he's clearly got some serious problems so I see the story as being about a fall. What I like about Rothfuss is the elegance of his…

I really like Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards sequence http://gentlemenbastards.co… and Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle http://www.patrickrothfuss…. Of the authors you listed I'm a fan of Martin and Abercrombie, not so much Jordan, Erikson or Hobb.

Also halfway through the second book and very much enjoying them. I can't come up with a direct comparison to anything else. Probably a good sign.

Weren't you reading? Obviously it was MSG……. :)

Check out The Dam Busters if you haven't already. They're supposedly remaking it too.

You should read The Battle of Maldon. Eoldorman Byrhtnoth was a real man who decided the gentlemanly thing to do would be to allow the Vikings to land rather than fighting them on the causeway like he should have. It didn't end well for the English that day. And amazingly, someone in the 10th century thought this…

That happened to me once (& let me emphasize, only once) and twenty-something me felt ridiculously virile and proud and pleased with myself. So bragging totally understood! I think the fact that sex with my previous long-term gf had not been good contributed a lot to the moment.

That is a wise principle, as is the tit for tat principle which actually has empirical proof supporting it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/… It's funny you brought up Heaven and divine punishment because in my first draft of that comment I wrote "…overrated, probably because it's a Christian virtue" but I decided to…

Well by "merciless" I meant 100% committed/firm, with no wavering, no being open to the possibility of changing your mind. Not being a bastard about it.

Forgiveness is overrated. If people do bad stuff to you, put yourself in a place where they can't hurt you again and never forget, is what I say. Don't be a sucker. If they want your forgiveness they'll ask you, and be genuinely contrite. In that situation I'm inclined to forgive them only if I understand why they…

I got dumped once by a girl I really liked. She said "It's not there." To me that is the perfect way to put it. It's basically honest, in most cases. You're not putting the other person down, you're not personalizing it, you're not being disrespectful. You're just saying you haven't fallen in love with them. And…

Without knowing the terms of the settlement agreements, it isn't possible to say that there isn't much incentive for him not to repeat that behaviour.

With a couple of X rated parts if memory serves!

Ok, and I apologize in advance for dredging up painful memories, but….Dragnet….so let's parse your comment to "…first <successful> breakout reboot…."

With respect to that phenomenon, my musical tastes kind of froze in 1992 (ie post undergrad) for about ten years because that was when I started fending for myself without the bank of mom and dad and I just had no money to buy music. And even then it was a slow recovery and after playing catch-up with bands I already…