I've had the exact opposite happen - 400 student lecture, Prof spends 3-5 minutes on lecture, the remainder of the period answering questions in detail, TAs for this class pretty much had to fill in the rest of the lecture. 20 student lecture? Prof says "See me after class, talk to your TA, or come to my office hours on Thursday".

I stopped going to the big lecture.

The first article you link to does not have the same conclusion as your very brief summation, nor is it ever stated in the article that "GMOS are allergens".

The article does discuss allergens, including the possibility of introducing allergens from one organism to another through GM techniques as well as the possibility of using GM techniques to remove allergens from certain organisms.

Portraying the article the way you did comes off as dishonest.

Sure it's a choice, I certainly made a choice when I decided I was no longer a christian, but that was also a fairly painful and difficult experience to go through. Most people are religious because they've been indoctrinated from birth and it is a central and significant part of their life. I consider myself an athiest now (and have for over 30 years) and while I have a very negative opinion of religion as a whole, I also recognize that it can be a critical part of a person's identity and generally refrain from ridicule and mocking. Criticizing their beliefs is a completely separate issue, especially when it involves them imposing their beliefs on others through violence, threats, or legislation.

I still prefer the 360 controller, but the Dualshock 4 is a huge improvement over previously stagnant dual shock form factor.

While a definition relating to organic farming itself is given, definition #3 is likely the origin of the term.
From google:

Organic
1. of, relating to, or derived from living matter.
"organic soils"
synonyms: living, live, animate, biological, biotic
"organic matter"

Chemistry
of, relating to, or denoting compounds containing carbon (other than simple binary compounds and salts) and chiefly or ultimately of biological origin.

(of food or farming methods) produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents.
synonyms: pesticide-free, additive-free, natural
"organic vegetables"

2. Physiology
of or relating to a bodily organ or organs.

Medicine
(of a disease) affecting the structure of an organ.

3. denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole.
"the organic unity of the integral work of art"

synonyms: structured, organized, coherent, integrated, coordinated, ordered, harmonious
"a society is an organic whole"

characterized by continuous or natural development.
"companies expand as much by acquisition as by organic growth"

Scrabble has some flexibility in regards to skills, at least if you're looking to make it enjoyable. My wife is not a native English speaker, so if we play together, we throw out the standard scrabble dictionary and allow words from her native language as well as proper nouns. I'm not sure how highly competitive play goes, but I usually adopt the approach that I need to maximize my score, while minimizing tile usage. This makes the game just math, with valid plays restricted to the set of tile combinations listed in the official scrabble dictionary. Playing informally with my wife, we just use a set with different elements. 2 letter combinations can be extremely valuable, and the set of valid 2 letter plays is fairly small, making it easy to memorize over time, after that a good working knowledge of valid 3-4 letter combinations combined with a good strategy can make a player dangerous.

I can't speak for Chinese or Korean, but Romanized Japanese is a pain in the ass. Even writing only in the Kana, Japanese is rough. The Kanji isn't actually that difficult to learn, helps greatly with understanding the language and even learning only a couple hundred characters (which can be done fairly quickly) can help immensely (also, the more you learn, the easier they get). A benefit to non native speakers is that each character has an abstract meaning associated to it that can often be learned in the student's native tongue. Even if the student forgets how to read/pronounce the character, as long as the character isn't being used solely for phonetic properties, the student can probably get a basic understanding of any signs/documents using those characters. I'm a bit out of practice with my Japanese, I couldn't "read" a sign to you in the traditional sense of the word "read", but if it includes characters I still remember, I can still provide you the general gist. It may not sound useful, but being able to differentiate male and female toilets is often a useful skill when travelling, as well as being aware of warnings.
A lot of this is lost when the language is Romanized, and can even make translation difficult as the Kanji don't represent "words" as much as they represent abstract meaning.

English and its (relatively) close relatives do well with Romanized characters as they've evolved together for quite some time and therefore seem natural and simpler to native speakers. Japanese got a hell of a lot easier to learn once I got over my apprehensiveness about learning Kanji.

Simple.

God got up to use the bathroom and grab some chips.

Take your silly propaganda elsewhere.

I'm kind of surprised Scrabble hasn't really gotten any mentions here. While not perfect, it has an overall good design, balancing player skill against chance on each letter draw and allowing players to play both offensively and defensively.

I approve.

I would tend to agree with that for any game played professionally, maybe the competition itself may still be enjoyable, maybe even more than normal at that level, but the amount of work you would have to put into it to maintain your skills would seriously detract from the day to day enjoyment of it. I'd apply that to poker, chess, settlers of catan or counter-strike.

I don't mind chance in games, so long as it complements the skill/strategy aspect of the game. I like poker as an example, chance determines the hands in play but a skilled player can turn the weakest hand at the table into the winning hand, at the same time chance can override a seemingly impossible to beat hand.

And then there is Mario Party which destroys relationships.

I like my board games to be based purely on chance. #LifeforLife

While it doesn't have a single player mode, you can "sim" one by creating a match and setting it to invite only, it just irks me that it includes an offline local multiplayer component that still requires a network connection.