October 31, 2006

Implications of Plan B availability

Yes, fisking is the second-lowest form of blogging, and yes, I really ought to write this as a letter to the editor, but I'm worn out, so you're lucky you're not getting a link dump. It's long, so meet me below the fold.

Charles Rice, entirely representative of the ND law faculty, had the following op-ed in the Observer today.

The Food and Drug Administration's approval of over-the-counter sale of the morning-after pill deserves more attention than it received.

Well, the feminist blogosphere raised one collective cry of "about damn time!", but I suppose that's little comfort to Prof. Rice.

Plan B is a higher dose of the birth control pill which can be sold only by prescription. Plan B is marketed as an "emergency contraceptive," but that is a misnomer. Like most oral "contraceptives," Plan B operates in three ways: it prevents ovulation; it prevents fertilization, the union of the sperm and the ovum; or, if fertilization occurs, it alters the lining of the womb so as to prevent the embryo (i.e., the new human being) from implanting in the womb. Implantation, five to seven days after fertilization, is necessary for the embryo to draw nutrition and survive.

Uh-oh. Except, of course, Plan B (and hormone contraceptives in general) only does the first one. Think about it: assuming Rice, non-MD, is right, and implantation takes place five to seven days after fertilization (that is, seven to ten days after intercourse), Plan B wouldn't have an effectiveness window of only 3 days after intercourse.

Let me say that again, with a strong tag: Plan B is only effective in the period of time before fertilization is likely. If Prof. Rice was right, it would be effective for almost twice as long.

Maybe Prof. Rice is a liar. Maybe he's just a bullshitter. Either way, this sort of behavior is entirely inappropriate.


That embryo is a human being. Beyond any rational doubt, the life of each human being begins at fertilization. When Louise Brown, the world's first "test-tube baby," was born in 1978, the whole world knew when her life began - at the in vitro fertilization. Even with identical twins, we know there is at least one life present at fertilization.

First of all, not to play asshole-with-a-dictionary, but it's not an embryo until after implantation. Second, "beyond any rational doubt" isn't an argument; it's begging the question and bullying impressionable undergrads into intellectual submission. If it wasn't already obvious, Prof. Rice is nothing more than a sophist and propagandist, with no respect for his audience.

I'm just a few column inches away from calling him evil. For now, I'll stick with douchebag. Charles Rice, professor of law emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, is a giant douchebag.

Since the mid-1960s, "pregnancy" has been widely redefined so as to begin not at fertilization but at implantation. That made it possible to market birth control pills as contraceptives despite the fact that most of them prevent implantation and are therefore abortifacients. Plan B, in preventing the implantation of the new human being in the womb, perpetrates a homicide.

No, he's getting around to the point of the column. Wait for it ...

Proponents claim that easy access to Plan B will reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Recent studies from Washington State and Scotland, however, draw that assumption into question. The security blanket of the "morning after pill" can reduce barriers to a girl's consent to sexual relations.

Plan B lets people women girls have teh SEX!!!!! And once those sacred barriers girls have to consent -- you know, the fear of getting pregnant and having to drop out of college, quite possibly ruining her life -- are gone, civilization is doomed, DOOMED!

Because of the plague of paedophiliacs that inevitably results.

The authorization for over-the-counter sale of the morning-after pill can also facilitate sexual relations between minors and adults. A girl under 18 cannot go to a pharmacist and get the morning-after pill. But her over-18 male "partner" can get it. In 2002 the California Center for Health Statistics reported that a "slight majority" of pregnancies of girls ages 10 to 14 resulted from sex with an adult. And, of course, the morning-after pill can provide an added means to induce the consent to sexual relations of a female of any child-bearing age.

(1) Of course, since Plan B is just another abortifacient according to Dr. Rice, non-MD, it really doesn't offer anything, does it?

(2) One might think the obvious solution to the paedophilia plague is to follow through on the original recommendations of the FDA committee and authorize sale of Plan B to women as young as 14 or 15. Ironically, it's the anti-birth control fundamentalist crowd that pushed the age of sale up to 18.

(3) WOMEN HAVE SEXUAL AGENCY YOU MISOGYNIST DOUCHEBAG. They do not sit around waiting for men to trick them into spreading their legs with chocolate and birth control. Astoundingly, they will express sexual desire and even have unprotected sex when they don't want children.

Plan B, incidentally, is not free from its own complications. The package insert notes the following possible reactions: nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, tiredness, diarrhea, dizziness, heart pain, headache and menstrual changes.

You know what else is dangerous, gross, and usually involves a period of great discomfort? Pretty much every kind of medical treatment known to humanity. And here I assumed Prof. Rice was a Catholic, not a Christian Scientist.


So why is the over-the-counter sale of Plan B an important cultural indicator? The over-the-counter approval of Plan B reflects the decadence of a culture in which the intentional infliction of death upon the innocent as an optional problem-solving technique. Legalized surgical abortion, of course, provides the primary example. Another is the acceptance of the killing of some kinds of patients by starvation or excessive sedation, when the family and caregivers agree that the patient would want, or perhaps ought to want, to depart. The Schiavo case moved this allowance of homicide to a new and compulsory level - Judge George Greer ordered, rather than merely authorized, Michael Schiavo to remove all "nutrition and dehydration" from his wife, Terri.

Ideas have consequences. The Columbine High School massacre in 1999 was the first of many comparable incidents. If one has a personal problem, homicide is now on the table as a culturally, if not always legally, acceptable solution.

The over-the-counter sale of Plan B brings us down to a new level. You can buy an instrument of homicide, such as a knife or a hammer, in any hardware store. But Plan B is different. To use Plan B, like a hammer, according to the manufacturer's directions, necessarily involves a conditionally homicidal intent. The intent is to "prevent pregnancy," including by homicide if the life of the child has already begun. The message is that innocent life is so cheap that its termination can be included in your shopping list, over-the-counter. We can predict the expansion of providers beyond pharmacies to convenience stores, gas stations, mail order, etc. And we can hardly expect that this cultural and legal verdict that innocent life is so cheap will be confined to the unborn.

As Mother Teresa said at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, "[I]f we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" Especially if the potential mother can buy the murder weapon over-the-counter at CVS or Wal-Mart.

This goes beyond intellectual dishonesty, beyond disrespect for one's audience, beyond sophistry, beyond propaganda, beyond misogyny, and beyond ad hominems. How else to describe the end of this column but simply spewing spectacularly vile rhetoric? How else to describe Prof. Rice but ... evil?

October 28, 2006

Bizarrissimo email du jour

Yes, I'm mixing bastardized Italian with French. I also don't care.

Anyways, make of this what you will:

[Subject:] Hi, I'm searching the Truth

[Body:] Hi, my name is Emanuele and I study philosophy in Milan. This mail only to inform you that you are really a beautiful boy. You know, I'm gay as Socrates and Wittgenstein. All the best, my friend. Hi,

Emanuele

My ex choosing to harass me in the most obscure and confusing way possible? Completely random internet admirer? Hell if I know.

In other news, Battlestar Galactica (the recent version, not the old one) totally kicks ass. No, seriously. It's not as good as Firefly (how could it be?) but it comes damn close, and I've spent the past four hours watching it instead of getting my reading done.

October 27, 2006

Yeah, ND brings in some GREAT speakers

Tonight, Amy McInerny gave a talk sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. This is a talk she's given at several other venues around Indiana, including last semester, at the Edith Stein Project conference. She is, as the advertisements stated, the founder of an organization that calls itself Women's Injury Network. A Google search doesn't turn up much other than this:

"Represented by attorney Joseph P. Stanton, a Pennsylvania teenager had sued abortionist Charles Benjamin and the Cherry Hill Women's Center. She successfully settled her medical malpractice case on October 17, the eve of trial, in a Philadelphia County Court," announced the Women's Injury Network (WIN). "Her case is the first medical malpractice lawsuit in the United States to reap a settlement based on a claim over the failure of an abortionist and/or clinic to inform a woman of the increased risk of breast cancer due to abortion. The clinic required that the settlement amount be kept confidential."

This piece is dated November 17, 2003. They provide this quotation from the executive director of Women's Injury Network:

Asked whether abortion directly increases a woman's risk of suffering from breast cancer, Gertz said, "That is much more controversial but there is a lot of evidence."


The problem is that the scientific consensus in February of 2003 -- months before the settlement -- was precisely the opposite:

Several studies have provided very strong data that induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer. Also, there is no evidence of a direct relationship between breast cancer and spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) in most of the studies that have been published. Scientists invited to participate in a conference on abortion and breast cancer by the National Cancer Institute (February 2003) concluded that there was no relationship. A recent [relative to 2006] report of 83,000 women with breast cancer found no link to a previous abortion, either spontaneous (stillbirth) or induced.


I don't like to casually accuse people of lying. In order to lie, you must (at least) know that the falsehood you're telling is not true. So it may very well be the case, for example, that the conservatives Amanda of Pandagon calls liars are, in fact, just spectacularly ignorant -- quite plausibly so ignorant that they fail to even realize how ignorant they are -- and are making shit up. That is, rather than liars, it may very well be the case that they're just bullshitters. Likewise, Gertz may be lying, or she may be bullshitting.

But both lying and bullshitting are (or really should be) utterly contemptible acts in the context of an intellectual forum. Even if McInerny herself presented nothing but facts firmly accepted by the mainstream medical community, her continued association with this organization, even if in name only, tarnishes her reputation.

October 25, 2006

Yes, I know only like half of the four of you who will read this know who Charles Mudede is

He's a pretentious jerkwad and a terrible film critic, but this is still `no, seriously, what the fuck was he thinking?' funny:

And if a woman’s pregnancy is far along the way, having sex with her must mean having sex with the baby. Is this acceptable? Here is my personal answer: Sex with a pregnant women is not right or wrong but dishonest. It’s an act that is close to pity. One does it because one is trying to be nice, and not being honest about how much their partner’s body has changed.

The body that had the sex that resulted in the pregnancy is not the same as the body that is in the process of producing a whole new life. The first body was attractive (like a flower is attractive); the pregnant body, on the other hand, is used up by the function of the pregnancy. What a woman loses in the long process of a pregnancy is precisely what made the pregnancy possible, the flower of her body.

October 24, 2006


I'm honestly not sure why I find memorial statues and grave markers such intriguing subjects. (Well, besides the subversive pleasure of giggling at the 10 foot tall phallic symbols.) Perhaps it's just the way carved marble gives light and shadow a chance to play.  Posted by Picasa

The triumphant return of Separate but Equal

It turns out segregation is a-okay, so long as it's `voluntary' and based on gender instead of race:

The Bush administration is giving public school districts broad new latitude to expand the number of single-sex classes, and even schools, in what is widely considered the most significant policy change on the issue since a landmark federal law barring sex discrimination in education more than 30 years ago.

Two years in the making, the new rules, announced today by the Education Department, will allow school districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary. School districts that go that route must also make coeducational schools and classes of ``substantially equal'' quality available for members of the excluded sex.


Now, I'm not a lawyer, but isn't the reasoning behind Brown v Board of Education that segregation in and of itself is a grave injustice? Pragmatic arguments -- ``girls are intimidated by boys'', ``boys develop self-esteem problems if they're shown up by girls'' -- identify problems, but segregation just ignores (and even reinforces) the sexism that's their underlying cause.

More at Stone Court.

October 23, 2006

In Case You Didn't Know

Heroes and Studio 60 make up one of the sweetest evening lineups I've watched in a good long while. If they're not on your current TV schedule, or Tivo program list or whatever the damn thing is called, they should be. That's it.

October 22, 2006

Me All Over

I can't remember who mentioned to me that they hadn't seen Weird Al's new video "White & Nerdy", but here it is for you poor unfortunate few.

Also, another great Special Comment from Keith Olberman on the death of Habeas Corpus.

October 21, 2006

$11.72 per hour

As a Ph.D student, I'm supported pretty much exclusively by the stipend I receive from my university, which is right around $15k before taxes. That covers rent and utilities, food, transportation, books, health insurance, everything. When I have the time, I can teach at a local CC for an extra couple thousand, and summer support is an additional few thousand. But those are extremely contingent -- they depend upon whether my department decides to give me support over the summer, and whether or not any nearby CCs need someone to teach a math class. The $15k is the only reliable form of income I have.

As a Ph.D student, I study a lot, and TA for a couple of sections of Intro to Philosophy. I would estimate that I've averaged 60 hours a week in studying and TAing for all but a few of the last 30 weeks; but perhaps this is a bit exaggerated, and it's more like 40 hours a week. If you think that's too high, consider this: I did not take a single day off between 21 August and 13 October. Some days I was only putting in, say, four hours; but most of those days I was working more or less continuously between 10 am and 10 pm.

Put this all together, and I earn about $11.72 per hour. With the 60 hour per week estimate, it drops down to $7.81.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data on average hourly wage for a wide variety of jobs. Airplane pilots (because of their low weekly hours) are at the top, followed closely by university-level instructors, engineers, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. This means I can compare that $11.72 with averages in other jobs.

In particular, my hourly wage is comparable with that of "Guides", "Bill and account collectors", "Supervisors, food preparation and service occupations", "Furniture and wood finishers", "Production inspectors, checkers and examiners", "Automobile mechanic apprentices", and "Animal caretakers except farm".

October 20, 2006

October 18, 2006

Oh Yeah

The Jersey kids already know this, but last week I found out that I passed the Pennsylvania Bar Exam, thus making me a real lawyer. I'm still waiting on the New Jersey results, which don't come out until November. I *also* need to sign up for the Washington State Bar Exam, but that's not on till February.

October 17, 2006

How bad is the state of civil liberties in the US?

Well, this guy has been held for five years. He is `not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.'

Oh yeah, and he was `abused'. Remember: in this context, `abuse' means `torture'.

But it's not just one guy. Today habeas corpus was repealed. Lindsay highlights some rather appaling subtleties.

Last but not least: being a citizen doesn't matter a bit to this lot.

To answer the question, then, the state of civil liberties in the US is terrible.

I think it would be absolutely unconscionable for any eligible voter not to make throwing out the officials responsible for this travesty of justice a high priority over the next two elections. I'm not a fan of the Democratic party, but given the political context, there seems to be a clear moral imperative for Greens, Libertarians, and even sane conservative Republicans: the Republican party must be removed from power, and the Democrats put into their place.

October 16, 2006

Indiana Green Party platform

Link! It makes me a little homesick for the Green Party back in California. No money, no real chance at the polls, just a list of good ideas and a strong sense of justice and the social good.

I've been mulling over a post on Joe Donnelly, the Democrat running against incumbent Chris Chocola in this part of Indiana. That may be forthcoming later this week (though the one or two long-term readers should realize how flimsy that promise is). In the meantime, they're running a write-in candidate for Indiana Secretary of State, so you could busy yourself reading about him.

Fall colours of Notre Dame


9 October, 2006, in front of the Morris Inn. Posted by Picasa

Just in case you forgot

Bob Herbert takes us on a whirlwind tour of the pervasiveness of misogyny and the objectification of women in our society. Even for someone like me, someone who takes the time every day to read about the injustices suffered by women both here and around the world, it really is shocking to step back and see how much continuity there is between `risque' ads in mainstream magazines and hate crimes targetting women.

At the bottom of it all is pornography. I should stop and clarify that. Pornography is not the root cause of misogyny in our culture; it's the primary symptom. In that respect, my analysis runs in precisely the opposite direction from Dworkin, MacKinnon, and plenty of other prominent, contemporary feminists (though certainly nowhere near all of them). Furthermore, I don't think banning or restricting the sale of pornography (as though that were even feasible) is any solution.

I should also say that I don't mean all pornography. Like prostitution or lap dances, I see nothing wrong with an exchange of money for sexual tittilation per se. Nor do I think that, in these exchanges, an attitude of disrespect and objectification is necessarily transmitted or supported. However, such an attitude can be transmitted and supported, and we have to question how much consent is really involved in each case (eg, is she doing that because it's part of a career she enjoys, or is there a kid at home who'd starve if she didn't?). Clearly the sex industry as it exists today is in an appalling state, and that alone ought to cause us pause before consuming any of its `products'.

But even if the sex industry was cleaned up overnight, it seems that the pervasiveness of pornography through our society is still of some concern. And now that I've explained what I don't mean, I'll explain what I do mean, though still indirectly.

Perhaps using the term `pornography' is misleading, because it seems this term refers to two distinct types of media. On the one hand, pornography is media designed to tittilate the viewer/consumer sexually or erotically. My claim (not really argued for) above was that pornography in this sense is not necessary morally problematic per se, and yes, you should still take note of the qualifiers. On the other hand, pornography is media that portrays persons as objects for sexual use.

There are two things to note here: the second kind of pornography is morally objectionable, and is logically independent of the first kind. Contra Kant, one can be tittilated or sexually aroused while still regarding the object of arousal as a person in her own right, even if she's a stranger and you know nothing about her other than the acts she's performing in front of the camera. And contra Dworkin, I would suggest that this distinction between the two uses of pornography is even viable in our present cultural climate.

The problem, then, with pornography is that this distinction is almost never made, and the overwhelming majority of pornography is quite explicitly designed to tittilate by annihilating the agency of the women it portrays. It next seems to immediately follow that the vast majority of pornography is actually rape -- at least, rape according to the feminist understanding, as a sexual act symbolizing the annihilation of the victim's agency.

Combine that realization with the realization that so many of our media portrayals of women are designed to tittilate by removing their agency -- by portraying them as sexual objects for men's use -- and the conclusion seems as inevitable as it is horrifying: we live in a culture where the portrayal of rape is as mundane and unremarkable as this week's specials at the supermarket.

And, remember, I said this was a symptom. How much more disturbing must the underlying pathology be?

October 14, 2006

Photoblogging II: Electric boogaloo


Yes, some actual vacation time means I get to take pictures again. And getting to take pictures again means the son of return of photoblogging! Hooray! Posted by Picasa

October 13, 2006

The strange intersection of He-Man and philosophy

I'm speechless.

Via Lindsay. By the way, she's been all over the "critiques" of the Lancet study reporting 665,000 excess deaths amongst Iraqis since the beginning of our little sandbox adventure began in 2003.

Cooking with feminists!

Wednesday night's episode of the Colbert Report was probably the most surreal episode he's done so far. And below the fold is the most surreal six minutes of that episode.


When quote-mining bites you in the ass

Like proponents of Intelligent Design, the anti-abortion psueodfeminist org Feminists For Life tries to use quote-mining appeals to authority to prop up their position.

There's just one little problem:

What is generally not mentioned is that the essay [by Anthony, at the top of that FFL list] argues against an anti-abortion law; its author did not believe legislation would resolve the issue of unwanted pregnancy. Also not mentioned is the vaporous textual trail. According to the editors of Anthony’s papers, the article is not hers.


There's a bigger point, of course:

The bottom line is that we cannot possibly know what Anthony would make of today’s debate. Unwanted pregnancy was for her bundled up with a different set of issues, of which only one truly mattered: rescuing women from “the Dead Sea of disfranchisement.” In the 19th century, abortion often was life-threatening, contraception primitive, and a woman as little in control of her reproductive life as of her political one. The terms do not translate, one reason time travel is a risky proposition. No amount of parsing the founding fathers will reveal what they think of the war in Iraq, just as no modern chorus of mea culpas will explain away their slave-holding. To suggest otherwise is to wind up with history worthy of those classic commercial duos, Fred Astaire and his Dirt Devil, Paula Abdul and Groucho Marx.


Also, this Anthony quote is great:

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.


Via Amanda, whose take on this is also worth your time.

October 12, 2006

The Pathology Of Gilbert Arenas

I know next to nothing about professional basketball, especially the last five years or so, but Gilbert Arenas has got to be the most interesting and bizarre sports player I've heard about in a long time. Well, other than that guy that thinks he can talk to lizards.

I Not Read All The Time

Thanks to Matty Y I read this great piece on "How Not To Read."

Actually, I get a lot of flack from friends about about the fact that I don't read many books these days. There's a great episode of "The Show with Ze Frank" that deals with the concept of the increasing tradeoff of more information at a lower quality. I'll find a link to the specific show when I get home. In the mean time, the basic concept is that we're increasingly exposed to massive amounts of information and that in order to absorb this information we're willing to accept a bit less detail or a bit more noise in the signal. In order to cram thousands of songs on our computers and ipods so that they're just a click away we accept lower sound fidelity. Or, as is partially dealt with in "How Not To Read," we're willing to take a Cliff's Notes version of a book to avoid reading it. Frankly, it's not that I don't read. I spend the majority of my free time reading, but I rarely read books and when I do I frequently skim. Why *should* I read Bob Woodward's new book if I can get the key information through a handfull of websites and television appearances. There are so many concepts out there that I feel like I want/need to absorb that I just don't have time to read everyone's book.

Don't get me wrong, I'll read a small handful of novels in a given year, but frequently I find out the main plots and important details of a story and just avoid the book altogether. The bottom line is that I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I can sleep on a train, I can sleep on a plane. Anywhere Samiam might want to take me, I could ease the travel with a nap. That being the case, if you put me in a comfortable chair or bed and it's relatively warm and quiet, I'm going to fall asleep really quick. I just don't take enough pleasure out of the ritual of reading to do it all that often and it takes way too long for me to do it that often.

Hell, I Cliff Notes movies too. Basically, whether we're talking about Shakespeare, Scorcese, or political science, I'm interested in the knowledge I can get from them and apply in life. I want to be able to drop a quote from Hamlet or Mean Streets (which I haven't seen, by the way) in conversation or an internet post. I want to be able to use Rawls' philosophy in a debate. I want to be able to answer a question about American history if somebody asks. I want to be able to do all these things and I don't really care how I get the information that allows me to do that, but I know that I don't have time to take the long route to all that information.

What do you guys think? Are we better off reading 100 Wikipedia articles on 100 different subjects or should we spend the time plowing through a 400 page book instead? What is the value of the activities that traditionally have been the source of information? If we can get the information in a way faster than those traditional means, is there some reason why the traditional means is still relevant?

October 10, 2006

Final Guitar Hero 2 Tracklist

Evidently they don't want to talk about the bonus tracks to keep something a secret for release, but this is a very interesting set list. Looking over the lists for the the two games, I think the first game has more songs that I was immediately excited about playing, even though the second game has more tracks overall. Who knows, maybe a lot of these songs will grow on me and maybe the bonus songs will be a bit more playable than in the first game.

October 05, 2006

Easy activism

I have a splitting headache, so I'll let Amp do the explaining:


Eteraz has written a post outlining some easy actions (emails) that can be taken to object to, and hopefully help prevent, the executions of Iranian women who have been convicted of adultery, or of defending themselves against abusers.

According to Eteraz’s post, international pressure has been helpful in similar cases in the past, so this seems like an action worth taking.


You don't even need to think, just cut-and-paste and fill in some forms. It'll take all of five minutes.

Speaking Of Heroes

Here are some clips from the pilot for the 1997 Justice League live action TV show. Wow. You know, I'm not sure anybody told The Atom what to do, so he just wandered around helping cats and stuff.

October 03, 2006

So, last night's episode of Heroes

No spoilers, but: wow, when did NBC get that graphic?

Also: each episode is associated with an online comic. Rather unimpressive, actually, but a way to kill fifteen minutes.

October 02, 2006

Technically, this shouldn't qualify as food

 

And I'm not just saying that because I'm an obnoxious vegetarian. Via SLOGPosted by Picasa

October 01, 2006

Trojan's sexual health report card

Trojan (as in Trojan Condoms) sponsored a survey of 100 colleges and universities across the country, evaluating them in terms of their support for students' sexual health:

Criteria included: Informative and helpful Web site; condom advice and availability; contraception advice and availability; HIV & STD testing; sexual assault counseling and services; advice column or Q&A feature for sexual issues or relationships; counseling services, peer counseling, campus events, and other outreach.

Note that the criteria mean a school can still get a decent score while, eg, not providing condoms and not condoning sexual activity in general. Notre Dame came in tied for last with BYU; these two schools were the only ones to rank an F in every single category.

The conservative Weltanschauung

Whenever we get around to redesigning SoR and including some categories, I definitely need one like that. Though perhaps it's a bit too Freudean?

Anyways, Amanda has an incredible post up on ... well, the fundamentalist Christian Weltanschauung. There's way too much going on for me to summarize, but there are bits on the psychology of fear, social hierarchies (wealthy white male Christians on top, everyone else strictly organized beneath them), embodiment and transcendence, torture, and so much more. Well worth a read.

Calling All Nerds

World of Warcraft in Southpark.