I was under the impression that education at the university level was not job training but about concepts and understanding.

I would expect a new student at a university to already know these things.

You are very correct. the Middle East is a very different place than it was 30-40 years ago.

Most of this change seems to be fueled by oil money from Saudi-Arabia. Nearly all Qurans printed are using their version of interpretation of the texts. At least that's what I've heard.

The unresolved conflict between Israel and Palestina isn't helping either. Every time it errupts it reopens old wounds.

The USA has had a lot of advantages by being a largely immigrant country.

It's not just education, but also things like healthcare, age and health of the workforce, etc.

If you stop the immigration, you all of a sudden need to start caring for your own population much more. I think that in 50 years, America will look much more like Europe than today.

And that's assuming you live in the USA.

I can't watch movies onine legally anywhere. Not Netflix, Hulu, Amazon.com, iTunes, etc.

I got onto the BluRay bandwagon just over a year ago. It lasted for about 4 months.

The 6th or so disk I bought was for Avatar. I couldn't get it to play. When googling I found out that it probably required a software update to my Pioneer player. Due to some weird incompatibility with my TV, the software update menu doesn't work. I fiddled with it for an entire evening, over 3 hours.

In the end I downloaded the movie and watched it that way, despite having a legal copy.

I decided then and there never to buy a BluRay movie again, despite having paid good money for a decent player.

Of which Apple made the first one.

And the PC market exists mostly because of the deal Bill Gates made over MS-DOS. The PC hardware was nothing new, I have an ICL machine from 1979 with the same components as the first PC, it runs CP/M-86.

I don't agree with you. The success of the PC industry has been because of this high flexibility.

The problem I have with the Linux kernel, is that as a programmer, the abstraction isn't of a high enough level, so a lot of stuff needs to be done by the desktop environment. Maybe there should be a layer between the kernel and the desktop environment, or the level of abstraction should be much higher within the kernel itself.

My knowledge is somewhat dated, as I left Linux land about 5 years ago, but my problem was that often the abstraction stopped at the level of character/block device, while I wanted to talk to "scanner"/"modem"/"TVtuner"/"camera".

Without good abstraction at that level, there is no way for a device manufacturer to write a proper driver, and then I'm not even touching the binary/source debate.

There is no way to expand the interfaces, as the capabilities of a type of devices expand, if the kernel doesn't even have an abstraction at that level.

The numbers I've seen are 5-7% for rape and 3.5% for consensual intercourse. The explanation being that often rapists target the most fertile women in the 15-25% age bracket.

That sounds quite reasonable to me actually. Most crime goes unreported, and rape being a rather shameful one, I wouldn't be surprised it often went unreported.

I don't know the statistics, but the numbers you quote don't seem that odd to me. It's not statistical evidence, but there have been many cases in the news where a sex offended got caught on a few reported cases, only to have many more victims show up once the initial story hits the news. See for example the recent paedophilia scandals in the church.

If anything, the statistical evidence points to a higher chance of getting pregnant from rape (5-7%) than from consensual intercourse (3.5%). Most explanations I've seen suggest this is because rapists often select the most fertile women in the 15-25 age bracket.

I think religion plays an important role in cultural evolution. It's why the religions that preach "go forth and multiply" in general are the successful ones.

Religion has shown itself as a very good mechanism for cultures to survive (and keep those in power secure). The power of religion should not be underestimated, it's survival of the fittest at the cultural level, and religions have proven themselves very good at that.

It's still higher than the average chance to get pregnant (3.5%) from voluntary intercourse. The best explanation I've seen for the number for rape being higher than that is that rapists often target the most fertile women in the 15-25 age bracket.

If anything, most studies seem to find that there is a higher chance ( 5-7.5%) that a rape victim gets pregnant than the average chance to get pregnant (3.5%). The explanations I've seen is that rapists will usually target the most fertile women in the 15-25 age bracket.

I have a lot of experience with being uncircumcised. And I can tell you that it's one of the most sensitive parts of my body and a great source of "pleasure". I would never voluntarily have it removed unless it was to save my life or something similar.

You're right that I don't know how it is to be circumcised but I definitely don't want to find out.

My opinion is that unless there is compelling evidence, which seems to be lacking here, you should not do procedures like this.

There are cases that seem to demonstrate a much clearer health benefit, like removing breasts and prostates in women and men to prevent a large number of cancers. We don't do that, at least until a cancer is actually detected, when it might be too late, so I don't see why we should do this.

So, you're basically saying it's for the same kind of reason that in the USA a lot of teenage girls get breast implants?