I'd be the smug vegetarian here, but I've caught nasties before from salad bars in restaurant-chains-that-shall-remain-unnamed, this in Europe as well, where we like to scoff about our superior safety standards (or did until it transpired that half the UK had eaten horse-meat at some point without knowing.). It's…

But ladybirds (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) are by and large predatory, and the primary herbivorous subfamily (the Epilachninae) mostly eat squashes and solanacids, not trees. I now feel a need to go and take samples so I can figure out why LaBonge is saying this and what's really eating the Beatle tree.

My mother had a simple response to picky eating; "I buy the food and I cook the meals; eat up or go hungry." Sending us to private school probably helped as well; there is very little that matches the horrors of English boarding school food (and she couldn't afford to give us allowances because of the school fees, so…

If they're looking at mine then no doubt they're giggling at the aspie attempts at characterization and the obvious daddy issues. Probably the biggest audience any of our writing will ever get.

In Guild Wars 2, in Lion's Arch there are a pair of children playing together; one Charr and one human. They sound so happy, and so hopeful (even with all the death and destruction going on in the rest of the Tyria), that I couldn't help but look in on them every time I was in the city, especially after the Claw…

English football fans tend to be bad; our teams were banned from the continent between 1985 and 1990 because of persistent hooliganism, and excessive drunkenness is still common at overseas fixtures (I don't believe you can buy alcohol at most stadia in the UK anymore). Football matches in England are not the sorts of…

I heretofore apologise preemptively for the street violence that will occur when England finally gets kicked out of the World Cup.

As it was at my all-girls private school: "you're all women, this is a safe, stereotype free, environment; we're going to perform the thermite reaction today girls!"

How did you get it to set with pineapple in it; I thought that was nigh 'pon impossible.

Nope, sorry; that was actively predator behavior, exactly the same as my family sees when our terrier goes after a rat.

Because other than being about gambling the lyrics are fairly harmless? Just because the minstrels sung it desn't make it evil, anymore than Golden Shred Marmalade is inherently evil because it used to have a golly on the label. I think it probably comes under logical fallacies: affirming the consequent to do so.

Be fair, new gamers do have to start somewhere.

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).