I can think of a couple of seasoned commenters in particular who take any article even vaguely-related to Britain as an excuse to bash the royals. I tend not to bother arguing with them about it, but it infuriates me that theirs is the impression broadcast loudest to the American half of the commentariat.

Those flags were in place for Trooping the Colour last weekend, and I imagine the segment for the show will be themed along the same lines. On the other side of the camera, running down the side of St. James's Park, are the flags of all the Commonwealth nations, so they aren't as out of place as they seem regardless.

This is pretty awful. I absolutely hate the trivialization of suffering and this is pretty much the textbook definition. It reminds me of an event my university has held the past few years (including tonight, funnily enough) called the "Homeless Experience", in which students descend from their comfy dorm rooms and…

As a teacher, you really ought to be better aware of the macro-level factors of your profession. Read the Coleman Report, "Savage Inequalities" by Kozol, and a couple more of the numerous studies that have been conducted to assess the most critical educational inputs, and then come back and argue why lowering a…

I was diagnosed with Type-I Diabetes at age 14, after about 9 months of near constant discomfort, and an average of 3-5lbs of bodyweight lost per week. My rapid weight-loss was as mysterious to me as it was to my family and my friends, and I didn't think much about it because I had gone from being a chubby kid to…

You have it completely right. Parts of this article sound like some "abstinence-only" propaganda, and I'm glad you and others are taking Tracie to task over this.

"Don't guys generally refuse to wear condom because they "dont like how they feel"...meaning, they want skin on skin contact? What makes you think if a woman has a female condom on, that they aren't going to get similar pressure from a man to have unprotected sex?"

"What would be a really good form of justice would be if rapists could be made to understand just what they did to their victims."

Wow, I hope you aren't actually in charge of Criminal Justice policy. That's a horrible thing to say, and makes you no better a person than the kid whose head you are calling for.

My father taught me that if I ever called a woman (or man, in theory) a c-word (or ever struck a woman, or abused a woman in another way), he would personally knock all of my teeth out. If I have any sons, I will tell them the same thing. This is a word that no man needs to say, and if determining when it is and…

Wow, you can't even defend your position any more so you're reducing your arguments to insults? I normally know better than to fall for semantic trolling. Its clear that you hold white Americans to a different standard than others in terms of what is acceptable behaviour to be done to and by them, so why are you…

I see that you aren't going to get it. You're terribly invested in defending a stupid, thoughtless, sweeping racial generalization, and it's obvious that you will go down with the racist ship rather than admitting that stereotyping and insulting a group solely because of skin color could possibly be wrong.

No, context is not the all-determining factor. Content is. Please stop excusing racist behaviour.

Historical "context" doesn't excuse hatred, ignorance, or bigotry. Ever. It may explain it, but History is not some tool you can trot out when you want to justify being rude to others. We all, at an individual level, should treat others how we would want to be treated, regardless of the larger social forces at…

As others have mentioned, the US was responsible for the three of the deadliest days of WWII (Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) for civilians, so I think you have underestimated the Blood Index here.

I don't think he was disparaging sex workers as much as he was disparaging their fashion choices.

Nope, just those trying to extrapolate a rare personal experience into data. Actual, factual, scientifically-collected data shows that your experience is an outlier, yet you present it as the norm. Pre-school is, as a matter of fact, "super awesome and necessary" and you are using non-scientific arguments to try to…

Real relationships don't involve contriving 'tests' like that. I'm sorry that she did that to you.

The plural of anecdote is not data.