I'm kind of concerned that Dragonage Origins was held up as an example of sexism. The knights-kidnapping-my-fiance/me narrative is a pretty good motivator in a medieval-themed story. As a female gamer, do you think that example was portrayed out of context to spice-up the segment, or is that narrative itself…

It's still a major problem in groups who've been alienated from the replacement measures of masculinity. Traditional masculinity could go one of two ways. For the better socialized it was about stoicism and patience, and working hard to support a family. For the neurotic and insecure, it was about gaining respect…

The existence of "Gamergate" reflects a major glitch in American media: In a world where anyone anywhere, child or adult, can say anything they want on the internet, you're *going* to have angry people threaten you when you insult their hobby/sports team/religion. The media continuously treats these sporadic…

That's a major problem with the CIV series as a whole. They'd pay lip service to different civilizations by throwing in the other factions' immortal leaders, and a couple unique units for each faction, but ultimately none of the games provide an actual alternate history experience. It always ends up feeling like…

Israel really isn't the place to go "to actually be shot at", considering the only shooting that goes on there is directed the opposite way.

I too saw children playing it in a public library. They were so excited and wanted me to join. I didn't dare tell them about Everquest.

what exactly does total war look like? We know which side is helpless and which has overwhelming force. Since israel will never accept an arab majority, and considers its arab citizens a demographic threat, what exactly would happen to those millions of defeated non-citizens?

um, the only way we as a society determine who is a rapist is by convicting them in court. If only 3% of reported events result in conviction, that actually suggests a lack of evidence, and suggests a higher % of accusations likely to be false.

lets say an accusation makes it all the way to court. Can we assume that those acquitted did not commit rape, despite the accusation having been strong enough for a prosecution?

so does that mean 92-98.5% of accused rapists are convicted? Or do we acquit people we know are guilty? How does one account for that?

the statistics are all over the place, depending on what study you believe, up to 45%. We must assume (being a lawful society) that those acquitted of the charge of rape are innocent, and in england that was 40% of the accused.

seriously??? Hes being criticized for not validating a rape accusation against him?

I wouldn't call it mental evolution though. It just requires one generation of good public schooling for everyone, and to put those young people in positions of authority. And it doesn't necessarily correlate to war or oppression on the shortterm, because it's a top down thing. If a regime is abusive, rich, and…

I don't mean to refer to tourists, and I'm not really going off of tourist report. I know a few people who teach in other countries and have become fluent in their languages. There's a latent hostility and paranoia between local people in some places, even though their idioms are full of excessive, rigidly false…

So, I guess I *would* try to explain that I'm not at all a xenophobic, 'ignorant' American, considering my world travel and foreign/minority origin and such, or that i'm basing this off of what non-Americans have told me about visiting, or what Americans teaching in other countries have complained about; but it's not…

I'll have to get to know some New Zealanders. I just know that a lot of young Americans really latch onto what's meant as a self-effacing joke, or self-aware ribbing, and they get this warped view of themselves, as if the rest of the world is much better than them, when the truth is few places are on the whole. …

Even if only a third of us are conscientious, polite, honest, creative critical thinkers, that's still 100 million people. I'd bet we have more people like that than any other country, and it's extremely easy to find them everywhere. I know of some otherwise developed nations where you can go months without finding…

Pretty much every developer is American. We preface some developers with "Australian" or "French" or "Canadian" only because we'd assume they were American by default.

This is actually one of the things that makes a country great. There are many other countries that don't joke about themselves, whether they're too thin skinned or because it's literally against the law.

That's actually true. Nazism was a rising political ideology in America, gaining in popularity among the common and educated the way it did in Germany. It's only due to heavy WWII propaganda advocating tolerance and fairness, and condemning even the slightest pro-nazi sentiments, that protected America from actually…