I really wish the entire article was available to the public (and I'm not paying $32 to read it).

It's perfectly historically accurate... for Thedas.

Yeah, I'm a biology student, and I've had to spend a fair amount of time neck-deep in scientific papers and then translating them into English. This is... not a good job.

It's debatable whether the Maker actually exists in this setting, but the dragons themselves... are interesting.

Very true about the last point. I grew up with a border collie/heeler cross as a pet, and my dad has a border collie now. They can thrive as pets (and ours did), but they are high-energy animals that require a lot of attention and room to run and things with which to engage themselves. At the best of time, they…

What JennyGirl says is true, but a small addendum from the dog side of things:

A probably apocryphal story about the famed judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, who travelled British Columbia in the mid 1800s on foot and on horseback to deliver justice where it was needed in a new province in the middle of a gold rush:

Planned Parenthood is a business. It's a business that sells sex. It's a way to get clientele and to sexualize young people and turn them into lifelong clients.

I read it for a while, oddly amused, and then hit this and had a good laugh:

This summer I lost a pet of the sort who adored me and followed me around and wanted nothing better than to spend all her time with me, and it hit me really hard. Possibly it hit me so hard because she died in my hands. One of the best pieces of advice a friend gave me was to go find and watch the Mr. Rogers bit…

Nah. This just means we need better robots, ones who are capable of discerning emotional states.

In the eighties, I did a demonstration of the tongue map for a science fair. Sugar water, salt water, grapefruit juice, Q-tips and helpful passing volunteers. This was an idea that came from a book of science projects for small children, also published fairly recently. I seem to recall it being a David Suzuki book,…

I'm a mermaid. Not a particularly sexy mermaid, either, unless fishnet crochet sweaters, fishscale-print leggings, and tutus are sexy. I did make myself a crown out of a thrift store shell necklace and some ridiculous fake pearls.

I always feel like a terrible hypocrite when it comes to flu shots. I think they're great, I encourage other people to have them, but I never do. Why? Because I appear to be allergic to the shot. It's not a fatal reaction, but it's a nasty nasty rash, and every year I had a shot, it was worse than the year before. I…

Ah, pyramids. Everyone knows them, and everyone thinks they know everything about them because they saw a documentary on TV. The Egyptian section of my art history class got pretty ridiculous. Also, true story: the instructor stressed at the beginning that we are not discussing aliens, no, she hopes nobody believes…

My sister had that! She also built a stunning dreamhouse out of cardboard boxes, complete with elevator made of plastic strawberry baskets and yarn. My own favourite doll, Miko (anyone remember her?) had a houseboat made of a shoe box that she sailed across the carpet.

... I sort of want this, actually.

I'm Jessie, frequent reader, rare commenter, lost in the greys eternally. I'm in my thirties and also a first year university student in a smallish Canadian city, lost in a sea of eighteen-year-olds and in having to learn how to study again. My focus is biology, but I think I'd like to get into education eventually.…

There is a girl in my college biology class who wears a tiara. Every day. Tiaras with bedazzled hoodies. I kind of love her. I have no idea what her name is, so I call her Science Princess in my head.