Almost, but not quite, true. In Norway, you get your sentence of e.g. 21 years imprisonment, then there's forvaring (translates to something like custodial sentence), which means you cannot be released until a board deems you to be rehabilitated. This can mean that you may get out of jail after 2/3rds of the sentence, i.e. 14 years (unless there's a different minimum specified), if the board thinks you've understood the seriousness of the crime and are remorseful; if they don't think so, you're stuck.

Oh, it may be easy, but it's not cheap, in either time or in money... if you want a good book to be the result of your efforts. Charles Stross, http://www.antipope.org/charli... , had a series of posts about this a couple years ago (can't find the specific posts, sorry). First, there's proofreading - you're unlikely to spot your own errors in a 40,000-word novel, because you know what you meant and will be blind to typos. Then there's editoring, checking for continuity errors and/or anachronisms? Same as above. Both of could be done by crowdsourcing, but then your book would be in the wild before it's released and would be torrented or on IRC (I know, right? But it's still very much alive!) within hours. Getting those tasks (and others) done is what publishing houses are for, and those tasks are not cheap to get done well by freelancers.

Hang on, there are legitimate religions?! Besides, I don't see why your superstitions should rule over my (or my girlfriend's) body.

I think freedom from religion is a basic human right.

FTFY.

Technically, you're there, since the "first inch of expansion" contains the entire universe... literally.

Ummm... I hope that was facetious, since you wouldn't be able to enjoy "the incredible standard of living I have gained" without "my Pension, the money I've been able to save for retirement, my vacation time every year, my 40 hour work week, that sort of thing" that came from that most anti-Capitalist of all things, Labour Unions.

What does having a licence to practice law, an MD or (especially) an MBA have to do with intelligence? If going to a college was a proof of intelligence, the US wouldn't like a prequel to Idiocracy from the outside. As long as all you have to do is pay to get a diploma, IQ isn't an issue (I thought Dubya proved that once and for all - maybe not inside Douglas Adams' Asylum...??).

Are you sure? I'll give it 16 years 'till China owns USA outright at the rate you're going...

Ooo...! You! I mean... What? Oooh! (Or rather, What about internal consistency?)