This (nice post++ btw) combined with butthole-politics brings me to think about verification of an object. Is that subject an object of our class?
Hmm... is this really an Irishman (or insert $country instead) and not some offspring of Letonian, given that there was a wave of immigration from there to Ireland? and he claims to be irish because offsprings of his ancestors moved to Ireland?
Depending on that, what methods are available? etc. Maybe I'll be coding something like Acme::Object::Racist or such :-D
perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'