You both mentioned season 3 in your comments. That was a great season, with episodes like Jewbilee topping the profound meter.

I was 13 when South Park came out and I also feel like a grew up with it. I took a hiatus there for a while because I was only enjoying the dirty words and not the point of the episodes, but when I returned to it a few years later it instantly became my favorite show. . . and has been ever since.

There’s always season 14 to look forward to!

Type of SF preferred? The more realistic the better. When I was a teenager I liked fantasy as well, but as I’ve gotten older I find I can’t stand fantasy. Tolkien is about the only fantasy I will read today. I like writers who have either created realistic worlds (like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Larry Niven’s Ringworld) or environments (like the operations that go on in CJ Cherry’s trader spaceships and space stations). “Hard” SF, mostly, but also some other genres like the more psychological SF of the “New Wave” SF from the late 60s-early 70s.

You know, when they did the last episode of season 10, the one that was a parody of the Mighty Ducks… that was probably my least-favorite episode ever. I didn’t think it was funny until way later. And this season disappointed me a little because they made very few jabs at social happenings (in comparison to other runs)… but watching the last episode yesterday reminded me that this show is sometimes at its best when it’s about being totally stupid and immature. It seemed like they had fun with this episode, and it reminded me of shit that happened in seasons 2 & 3. Maybe they’re doing some reflecting =)

Enjoyed the article, take care

Definitions
Halal and Haram Foods
Intoxicants
Historical Context
Menstruation and Breastfeeding
Sexual Relations (both hetero and homosexual)
Suicide, Death and Infanticide

…and a sidebar addressing:
Cleanliness
Smoking
Dogs, and
Martyrdom

I chose Health to write about first because it was a topic I thought would be easy to write. In certain respects it was, but because of the need to be thorough in my research, it took about four-five months to write. (Often I got, at most, a paragraph done per day, spending most of my “writing” time doing research.) Still, the first chapter has 25 pages of text, with 3 pages for the sidebar, with a total of 220 footnotes/endnotes for those 28 pages. This second chapter has been going slightly faster; I’ve written a little over two pages so far (in about four or five days), and there are only eight endnotes so far.

And congratulations on beginning the second chapter. Are you free-writing this as it comes to you in the order that it comes or is this something that you’ve outlined already and mapped out?

I understand how the busy-ness of life conflicts with blogging, especially for newliweds (BTDT), but I do hope you’ll continue with the Qur’an series. (BTW, I started the second chapter of my book this past week.)

This is all too true. There are at least five female SF authors who used either “ambiguous” names, initials or pseudonyms. The ambiguous authors are Andre Norton and Leigh Brackett, neither of whom I’ve read much. The “initialed” writers are C.L Moore and C.J. Cherryh. The latter I’ve read many of her novels; the SF she writes tends to be either space opera or alien-human interactions. Her Chanur series (start with “The Pride of Chanur”) and the Alliance-Union series (start with any novel in the series) are my favorites. The last author was Alice Sheldon who used the pen-name James Tiptree, Jr. (also, Racoona Sheldon). Her most famous work was a short story, “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” That story is very interesting.

BTW, yes, most of them hid their gender in order to gain acceptance from the male readership. Cherryh (also a pen-name of her real name (Cherry)) is probably the last of the active writers to have used a pen-name for this purpose.