Pro-tip: never move to the UK. The British response to the impending apocalypse will probably be; "I'll go and put the kettle on then."

What is this Spring Break of which you speak? (No, seriously; Imperial considered Easter Holidays an excellent time for Summer Exam revision, and categorically did not do reading weeks.)

Actually this lot are a new IRA by their own proclamation (and want to be known by those letters alone), being a merger of the RIRA, Republican Action Against Drugs, and some other unionist militias.

And London doesn't want Shankill or Falls Road, but we're effing stuck with them until we can be sure our leaving the damp, expensive, little place to it's own devices won't lead to a civil war. Seriously, there were three attempted IRA bombings in Great Britain this year, and the year before that has seen rioting and…

Sure, you're welcome to the place. Enjoy the rioting and the nigh intractable sectarianism.

It is always going to be a mystery to me why American universities place such an emphasis on sports. My alma mater in London had varsity teams, but they were purely amateur, and to be done on your own time.

Yes, my brain went straight to weird Criminal Minds type stuff as well. I need to stop watching that show.

Aaand this is why the British have school uniform (which never stopped the girls from rolling their skirts up to make them shorter, but hey, its a start).

Happily as in confidently; no, I am not happy that the EU struggles to enforce the laws it makes. That rather defeats the point of it's existence in the first place.

I can happily assure you that most EU states (bar the Netherlands, the Scandinavian nations, and the UK) keenly ignore diktats from Brussels if it suits them, with very few consequences. This is a long standing gripe among the British.

It's complicated. Women, like men and nationalities, are also people, not two dimensional stereotypes. We differ in opinion and practice. For reference, you wouldn't catch me dead in a skirt and makeup (jeans, fleece, walking boots; much to my mother's annoyance), but I'm an ecologist so there is no expectation that I…

*sighs, facepalms* But most of the original Western liberal thinking came from a Christian standpoint of loving your neighbor in the first place...

If it were easy Jesus wouldn't have had to command it.

The happy medium for ecologists is what's called 'the khaki shorts photo'; you in field gear, wielding a hat and appropriate implement (a butterfly net or Japanese flight trap in my case). That said, it's a very strange day for a biologist if you ever have to do a book tour; we publish almost exclusively in journals…

Damn, I wish I'd had your parents; I don't think I've ever had unreserved approval from either of mine (though that may be a combination of bad memory and depression speaking). Cue major inferiority complex.

Again a field thing; being a dashingly handsome, well dressed, science student will have people accusing you of being a banker in disguise (to some extent this is true; an alarming number of British science and engineering graduates go on to take jobs in the City). Men in my end of biology (specifically I'm a field…

Oddly, this doesn't seem to apply to scientists; there's sort of a cultural expectation of tomboyishness/frumpiness in my field (biology). Look too good after the conventional fashion and everyone vaguely suspects that you aren't taking your job seriously.

At my school? Field hockey, lacrosse, and rounders (functionally baseball, much to the amusement of most Brits); we walked away from almost every games lesson covered in mud, sweat and buises. It was glorious.

Practically non-existant, largely mocked.

This is in the UK; we don't have a federal government as such, much less quotas for school and university sport, much less semi-professional sport at either level.