Most pilots have STEM degrees going in.  For AF it's pretty much impossible to become a pilot otherwise.

I'd double check on the people getting graduate degrees. By brother and most of his friends have their masters in engineering management. They're not actual practicing the discipline.  Yes, there are schools that cater to the military and accommodate a military schedule. My brother and his friends chuckle at the quality of education vs the schools that were actually trying to prepare them to be practice a discipline. Compared to checking a box for promotional boards.  My brother has also laughed about needing to go back retake his entire bachelors if he wanted to engineer. Yeah he has two degrees in it, and they helped inform his piloting reflexes.  But he hasn't done any engineering in his entire career as a pilot, nor will he.

Yeah I have a marine friend getting a phd, but he's a linguist & teaches at the...DLI? So it's in his discipline.

I dont think it can really be argued that learning how to use a gun would somehow hinder the use of magic. Regular mortals IRL learn more than one skill in addition to using a gun. You can go to school for engineering and still be a special forces person. For the same reason you can play in the NBA and go to school for something useful. When you add in that wizards live for centuries, this becomes even more moot

I don't really agree-people who learn multiple skills to a professional or elite level are exceedingly rare.

In the US military, you probably not going to be pursuing an engineering degree while serving in a combat unit.  If you're in med school as active duty-THAT is your job, not preparing for/fighting war.

Some NBA players pursue degrees in summer, but not during the season. And being in the playoffs wouldn't allow summer classes either. For NCAA players in major sports, actually getting a good education is an aberration, not the norm.

Sure a bit of versatility is always welcome. But your average wizard is likely better served by becoming a better wizard, rather than worrying about 'muggle' skills.

I'll offer a real world example as a rebuttal: the minimum salary in the NBA is over $400000.  Is an NBA player better served by finishing that accounting degree, or becoming a better basketball player and chasing a max contract(20 million+ a season).

Gotta shape it, but I like the idea of super-coral.

That'd be a pretty damned big tree.

What do you mean?  A slope to the sides? or a sloped roof?

It's not going to have a perfectly flat floor.

Except they were explicitly stated to be blocking out Etheric effects which cause Madness before eventual Blindness.  Not to mention that the Googles are literally at the Core of the Setting, because he started the entire exercise on the Question of "why do they all need to wear goggles?" and by the time he'd answered it he has the setting.  (Ill see if I can find the WOJ)

guess I'm wrong then!

((Dina  ))

Lack of malicious intent or genuine ignorance doesn't mean it can't be legitimately offensive, though.

I think some of the gay jokes in Dresden are cringeworthy bad(the earring conversation, especially).  If "being ____" is the punchline, it's probably an insensitive, bad joke.  Was it in character for Dresden?  Absolutely.  Do I think it was in poor taste and should've been left out?  Yes, yes I do.  Does it greatly upset me?  No.  Do I think Jim's editor should've gently said something like, 'you're making being gay a punchline, and that's kind of offensive.  You try to be inclusive in so many ways-are you sure you want this in here?' to try and convince him to cut that joke?  Yes.  Hell, for all I know, that conversation happened, and Jim decided to leave it in.

On a side note, that byplay actually confused me a bit, because Harry and Thomas used the whole Tomás thing as an explicit criticism of bigotry...and then Harry makes off-color jokes in poor taste.