Recent content by David Farnell

Excellently put!

Thank you. Yes, addressing the initial post (and pointedly ignoring the enormous thread hijacking of arguing about who's worse, Americans or Nazis...holy crap): Read Jared Diamond's excellent book Guns, Germs, and Steel. It answers Clearing the Eye's original question, definitively. To...

And Exodus International has even admitted that their "pray away the gay" treatment does NOTHING to change sexual orientation. In other words, all that psychological damage they've inflicted on thousands of people over the years has been FOR NOTHING! Of course, most intelligent people already...

I live in Japan, where we don't have Chick-fil-A. So...EASIEST BOYCOTT EVER! Whoo! Of course, even when I'm visiting the US, I don't eat at Chick-fill-aye. Ate there once--yech. At the low end of the American Recycled-Cardboard-Tasting Fast Food school of cooking. So even if I were living in...

Google "Debunking Handbook." It's a PDF produced by a couple of psychologists from the University of Western Australia that gives simple instructions on how to talk to people who believe ridiculous myths.

Good point. The most recent Savage Love podcast talks about a similar issue: in the US, therapists and psychiatrists are required by law to report pedophiles who come to them for help, whether or not the person is actually abusing children. This is incredibly counterproductive! Obviously, people...

I'm just trying to bring perspective to people who are slamming Japan on this thread and acting all "more advanced than thou." As for more sexist, nothing across-the-board maybe, but you can find plenty of shockingly backward notions and horrific isolated cases (that are as equally "products of...

I think you're thinking of Thailand. Marijuana is illegal in Japan, but it is nowhere near being a capital offense.

Thank you so much for that, Lilith. I've met too many people that I love and respect who say things like, "Well, Ishihara's bad, but we need someone strong to lead the country!" AARGH! NOOOOO! I know Japan has ineffectual leaders and a government that is dysfunctional (just like America), but A...

As for child-rape comics: Yes, Japan has them, and they are disgusting. I once sat next to a skeezy businessman on the subway who was reading such a comic, which features a woman with breasts bigger than her head, wearing a torn schoolgirl uniform, in the most improbable bondage you can imagine...

THANK YOU! Beat me to it. Yeah, I've lived in Japan for 16 years, and I've never seen a vending machine that sold underwear, girls' or otherwise. I have heard that there was at least one such vending machine outside a porno shop in Tokyo about 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure a Western reporter...

I don't think you knew before. Every country is a mix of old and new. Look at the marriage-age laws in every US state. Look at the Amish. Look at Rick Santorum. These are all representative of medieval attitudes. Hey, some people in Japan are ignorant about homosexuality! Wow! What a surprise...

And Japan is a whole lot LESS sexist than many other nations, too. In fact, less sexist than MOST other nations, including many that could be included in "The West," depending on how you define that nebulous term. Japan is a country with its own culture, no better or worse than any other...

To quote one of dozens of similar comments: "Why is Japan doing this??" JAPAN is not doing this. A GUY is doing this. Granted this guy is a product of Japanese culture. But so are 127 million other Japanese people, each of whom is a person with his or her own personality, none of which are...

I had much the same experience--I made a female character and she "woke up" in my mind. And she became pretty much Lawful Good, not because of any decision on my part but just because that was who she became. And she sacrificed herself at the end, and I felt really down, but also really happy. I...