Yeah, I'm thinking if that wasn't meant to be an engagement ring, he probably dodged a bullet there. Pulling out a ring on your three-year anniversary? She's not going to be thinking "How sweet! He got me a pretty ring!", she's going to think "Oh my god, he's proposing! Oh.... wait... no? It's... just a ring? Okay…

Why the back side of glass? Does that make it look better somehow?

I agree. It always seemed to me that a lot of people's dislike for Mockingjay seemed to boil down to them wanting a book where Girl Power Katniss leads the Plucky Rebels in overthrowing the Evil Empire, and instead they got something a lot more complicated and ambiguous. A big theme of the series is the importance of…

Huh, I never thought of it that way. I guess that would explain all the stuff with Mina and the train timetables - that must have seemed pretty modern at the time.

Huh, I never thought of it that way. I guess that would explain all the stuff with Mina and the train timetables - that must have seemed pretty modern at the time.

I wonder if doing that actually helps you memorize the codes faster. I've heard that your brain uses sleep to try and organize the information you come across during the day. Maybe it's practicing...

Agreed. I have a mild Auditory Processing Disorder and as a kid I had a hard time with class activities because they usually involved the teacher explaining orally how it would work and what we were supposed to do, and by the time they were halfway through the explanation I'd be lost.

I'm not sure this is really evidence of empathy - a purely selfish pig would react the same way. I mean, it's pretty basic that when those around you are signaling danger, there's probably danger. And when those around you are signalling "food!", there might be food nearby. So you get nervous or excited accordingly.…

What is "AKA"? I googled it but couldn't find anything.

Not to mention LOTR gets plenty dark in places, too - Denethor almost burns his own son alive in a murder-suicide attempt, and Frodo's reward for destroying the ring is crippling PTSD.

A heist movie set in SF? I'm calling it now - he ends up breaking into some supervillain lair under Alcatraz.

Cyr Wheel! I've been dying to learn it since I first saw it, it's so beautiful and it meshes wonderfully with dance.

Do you work at a startup? I'm a software engineer as well, and I *do* sit alone in a cubical all day wearing headphones. I'd love an open office like yours, but that hasn't really caught on at most big companies yet. Plus most of my coworkers prefer the quiet.

When I was a kid, we had all the Thomas Covenant books around the house except Lord Foul's Bane, so I just skipped it and started with the second one. It didn't occur to me until years later that maybe that wasn't an accident.

I don't think Kim Jong Fun is that far-fetched either, actually. I probably wouldn't have noticed anything odd about those three names if I hadn't been primed to expect it.

Truth! Also, the one-two punch of LOST and Grey's Anatomy really popularized large diverse ensemble casts, at least for a while there.

I was sad they left out some of the creepy Mirkwood stuff, like the black river and the white stag. Makes me wish for the Guillermo del Toro Hobbit we almost had...

Personally, I would love to see The Battle of the Five Colleges done as a real film.

Considering that (as you bring up at the end) if they did this study in China they'd probably end up with a different result - should you really be stating in the first line that 7 is "humanity's" favorite? Just because an internet poll could theoretically be taken by anyone, doesn't mean its results are actually…

Seven generations straight of Barbaras!