briardahl commented on Not Yet Rain: Ethiopian Women Struggle To Obtain Abortions

"@graciousplum: I think what people are objecting to isn't the idea that population control is important -- it's maybe your framing access to abortion as particularly big part of that issue."

briardahl commented on Lisa Simpson Becomes A Crosswords Wiz

"@bananastand: I had no idea it was going to tie in, and I was actually sitting on the couch doing the puzzle while watching the Simpsons."

briardahl commented on Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?

"@PilgrimSoul: I follow you, yeah, though I have a bit of trouble with the way you're putting it."

briardahl commented on Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?

"@tweenmama: Umm I'm just referencing that phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations." The point is that we are unsurprised and lacking in outrage about certain crimes because we "expect" them -- and sometimes this means we'll give harsher punishment for crimes we somehow don't "expect." Even if the crimes are similar, or our expectations are wrong."

briardahl commented on Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?

"@PilgrimSoul: Ha, you know, chances are that he did abandon the family, but that first statement of yours is kinda ridiculous -- like I said, we have zero idea if the guy's even alive."

briardahl commented on Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?

"@PilgrimSoul: I'm not sure what the thrust of this is -- that her biological father shares some level of culpability? His family was at the child's wake, but I can't recall anything about him specifically."

briardahl commented on Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?

"So far as I know, there's not much legal distinction between hurting someone else's child and hurting your own, but people tend to have some instinct that the latter is worse -- that's surely most of the double standard here. (It comes from the other direction, too -- there's a form of low-expectations bigotry involved in being somehow "unsurprised" that a man would beat a child to death (we put that down to a tragedy we almost "expect" to happen, to someone, somewhere), but being extraordinarily shocked and appalled that the child's mother would be either complicit in it or hapless to stop it.)"

briardahl commented on This Year, Does Christmas Seem Like A Waste Of Money?

"The word "useless" is doing a lot of work here!"

briardahl commented on Famke Janssen & Dog Have Dapper Duds

"@Your Screenplay Sucks: From what I know about that dog, you do not want it."

briardahl commented on Supreme Court Justice Scalia Sides With Domestic Abusers

"@NefariousNewt, Serving at the Pleasure of the President-Ele...: We're talking about the Supreme Court here: the very basis of their job is to argue semantics!"