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The principle issue is simple - passing school has effectively become a necessity rather than a privilege (that's not a bad thing), which means that the curriculum does need to handle people that aren't really terribly suited to schools. It also means that if the government (in a state-run...

No, it really doesn't, B0b3rt. I worked in a supermarket for a while. In the event of an armed robbery, we were told to do whatever the robber told us to do, slowly and carefully, making sure that it was obvious we intended to cooperate and were no threat. We were specifically told not to try...

Because all political threads on Smogon eventually turn into socialism vs libertarianism vs Deck Knight's crazed theocracy*. :P. It's an effect of Deck Knight, Luduan, Akuchi, Ancien Regime, etc. all being on the same board. Give me a single instance - one single concrete example - of a time...

Ancien Regime, your analogy is horrendously flawed. Taxes are your membership fee for being a part of society - paying them allows you the right to vote. Well, that and provides useful services that could never be effectively provided by private enterprise (Or should never, in the case of the...

Disturbingly, Lexite is partially right - when it comes to sheer physical strength, women are weaker than men - on average. And by enough that it's relevant. When it comes to any mental measure, you'll find that one gender is generally ahead of the other, on average, but generally by so little...

Certainly, a captialist /could/ provide it at a better quality - emphasis on could - but I think you're rather missing the point. As far as I'm aware, you're reasonably well-off - employed, educated, have enough money to afford all the essentials and some left-over for fun. Good for you. The...

Two important things need to be brought up here. First, the concept of defence in depth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_in_depth Yes, if gun ownership is illegal or heavily restricted (And quite frankly, even the most gun-control happy country only heavily restricts gun ownership)...

Because the children of someone who has committed a crime should be punished for said crime, clearly.

I must admit to not being familiar with the ins and outs of US media, but in Australia at least I find that the only media bias is towards what sells - whether that's inane criticism of the current (centre-left) government by the (centre-right) opposition or whatever meaningless photo...

Much as I favour gun control, the statistics are not so clear-cut. There are a lot of confounding factors for crime statistics - in particular, the significantly higher population of the US compared to, for example, Australia probably increases the per-capita crime rate, as does the higher...

Banning pursuit is likely to have an incredibly massive effect on the metagame. Not implementing this glitch will have /no/ effect on our metagame. This glitch favours one player over the other - one person can activate it, the other can't. We're not playing competitive pokemon either way - if...

That's 'procedural generation'. What that means is, basically, instead of storing the entire creature that you've made, with texture data etc. etc., they store the instructions required to recreate the model - it's like sending a program that generates the model, rather than sending the model...

That's mostly because the average brain has 10**10 neurons and 10**12 connections, and the biggest chip manufactured to date has ~2.5 * 10 **9 transistors, which are substantially simpler than neurons. And the brain is an evolved structure, and evolved designs are generally far more efficient...

The chinese room problem is a terrible criticism of AI in general. Why is the ability to simulate speaking chinese by following simple rules different to speaking chinese? How do we know that's not how it works in the head of a human that speaks Chinese? And more to the point, the simple rules...

I wasn't trying to rationalise it, Vineon. Note the 'partially' in 'partially a french thing'. As far as I am aware, the French, in general, like their language. Once again, AFAIK, they are more likely to try and speak French at a tourist than, say, a German is likely to speak German at a...

I'm pretty sure it's partially a french thing. :P. If you only know a few words of french, it's pretty likely you'll sound like you don't speak french - much the same way you can spot someone who learnt English as a second language. You don't pronounce things right, the emphasis on syllables is...

Clearly we need Arceus in OU to counter all the trickers. ;)

Except in some cases. I make a positive claim that the Christian deity as he/she/it is usually presented does not exist, on the basis of the problem of evil, among other arguments. I also claim that Allah, Jehovah, and essentially all pagan deities don't exist (Even the cool ones, like Odin)...

There probably is some form of life elsewhere in the universe. Hell, if we're lucky there are single-celled lifeforms on Europa or Titan or Mars (Recent measurements suggest that there are local sources of methane on Mars - which means interesting chemistry. The most likely option is geological...

I've got a bit to say on the topic of the Problem of Evil discussion a few pages back. None of the standard arguments against the PoE hold any weight. In particular, the argument that God doesn't 'have' to intervene shows, at best, an incredibly distorted view of morality - perhaps because...