My take on this story: Give me six lines by the hand of any honest man and I'll show that he's religious.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but do you essentially mean that everyone is religious, any anyone who says they're not religious is just lying? If that's essentially what you mean, then do you really believe this, or are you just lying?

The top scientists don't have a problem with religion. The most unscientific don't have a problem with religion. It's only those in the middle, those who think they know science but probably don't, which have a problem, statistically speaking.

Really? Where are the statistics for this? Or do you just think you know about this, but probably don't?

It's possible to be born with both an X and Y chromosome, but have all the physical traits of a female. There's a few ways a Y can be "defective".

It wouldn't be fair to force such people to compete with the men, because they've got the body mass/strength/endurance/etc of typical XX humans despite having a Y.

I'm not questioning the biology here, and this is kind of going on a bit of a tangent, but really whether or not it's fair kind of depends on what you mean by 'fair'. If we consider equal opportunity fair, then it is fair to have men and women compete together. And if we consider equal outcomes fair (which is kind of where gender separation is going, IMHO), then everyone should come equal, including me (who is not blessed with an Olympic physique). In the equal outcomes sense, it wouldn't be fair for me to compete with those Olympic females, since they're an awful lot better than I am. But, then, that's the point of competition, really, isn't it...

I agree, Eiffel would be my choice too. Pascal syntax is nicer to learn programming concepts with than C syntax, IMHO. Students can learn other languages once they've learned the concepts. OTOH, I think it's better to start straight on OO than do procedural programming first and 'work up' to OO, because students will come to OO with a procedural programming mindset. The availability of a nice IDE, GUI toolkit and libraries is just as much of a consideration as the language proper. Eiffel does well on all counts, IMHO.

creationism is very much a minority opinion amongst christians

Perhaps not a minority, but certainly smaller than it once was. Jesus himself applied remarkable contortionism to the Torah, and his followers have faithfully continued this tradition to the present. I dare say current revisionist reinterpretations of scripture are the best yet. The eternal truth has come a long way in 2,000 years.

My sister-in-law's kids don't seem to give a shit about whether I suffer either, and I would love to rip their intestines out if I could get away with it. Do you think this defence would hold up in court?

Only if you're a lawyer. It seams clear enough to me, I get 'a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work', without responsibility for 'enforcing compliance by third parties with this License'

It seems clear? :-/ As an introduction to the GPLv3, you've quoted the first paragraph of Section 10, paraphrased to make it clearer. I think the first paragraph of Section 10, if thus paraphrased, would be an excellent introduction to the GPLv3. However unfortunately it is not worded quite how you worded it, and rather than being at the start of the GPL, it's buried down in Section 10.

There are 242 lines of licensing text (not including the preamble and definitions sections) before the paragraph which you quoted (paraphrased) to demonstrate that the GPLv3 seems clear. What is abundantly clear is that you've not just looked at the GPLv3 for the first time, because no one doing so would, without sarcasm, say "It seems clear."

I disagree with this statement: "Understanding licenses isn't really an Open Source issue." Even for someone who understands the basic idea of the GPL, understanding the finer details of how the licence is intended to achieve this may be difficult, IMHO. For someone who doesn't understand the basic idea (and outside the world of GNU/Linux this is the norm), the GPL is undoubtedly even more confusing.

IMHO, the GPL would be easier to understand if it was arranged to list the rights it allows, and all the responsibilities associated with each right, something like as follows (numbers in braces refer to corresponding sections in the GPLv3):

Preamble
0. Definitions. [0, 1]
1. Receiving a Licence.
  1.1. License grant is given upon receiving the Program. [10p0s0, 2p0s0, 11p0-2&7, 3p0]
    a. License acceptance is implied by modifying or propagating. [9]
    b. No warranty is provided, unless in writing for a fee. [15, 16, 17]
    c. Additional liability disclaimers may apply. [7a]
    d. Additional publicity restrictions may apply. [7d]
    e. License adherence is not excused by other obligations. [12]
    f. License termination may result from license breach. [8]
  1.2. Additional permissions may apply. [7p0, 7p9s0-1, 14]
2. Using the Program.
  2.1 Using the unmodified Program and fair use are unlimited. [2p0s1-3]
  2.2 Making and using covered works is permitted. [2p1, 2p2s0]
3. Conveying Source.
  3.1. Conveying verbatim copies of source is permitted. [4p0s0, 4p1]
    a. Licensing restrictions may not be imposed. [10p0s1&p2, 2p2s1]
    b. Patents, if they protect you, must protect everyone. [11p3-6]
    c. Technical measures may not be enforced. [3p1]
    d. Notices must be retained and made conspicuous. [4p0s0]
    e. Additional names and marks terms may apply. [7e]
    f. Additional liability indemnification terms may apply. [7f]
    g. Transfer of control requires transfer of rights. [10p1]
  3.2. Conveying modified source versions is permitted. [5p0s0 parts]
    a. Above terms of Section 3.1 apply. [5p0s0 part]
    b. Licensing must be available under this License. [5c, 7p1-2, 7p9s2]
    c. Notices must be included and prominent. [5abd, 7p10-11]
    d. Additional notices terms may apply. [7bc]
4. Conveying non-source forms is permitted. [6p0s0 part]
    a. Above terms of Sections 3.1 and 3.2 apply. [6p0s0 part]
    b. Source code must be made available. [6p0s0 part, 6p1-6, 6p11]
    c. Installation information is required for User Products. [6p7-10]
5. Conveying Non-GPL Works.
  5.1. Conveying linked Affero GPL works is permitted. [13]
  5.2. Conveying aggregates is permitted. [5p5]
How to Apply this License

Three things:

• Patents aren't secret, that's the whole point of them. Inventors divolge ideas to society, and as an incentive for doing so, are allowed exclusive rights to them for a limited time.
• The only thing that would be unfair about withdrawing such laws, is that work has been invested with the expectation that these laws would allow income to be generated by that work. Had the laws not been in force, people would not have laboured under this expectation, so would not be wronged.
• Plagiarism is the misrepresentation of the origin of material, which is to say it is essentially a form of lying, and not the same thing as patent or copyright infringement. One might use patented or copyrighted material, and acknowledge that use, but not have a license (which would be patent/copyright infringement but not plagiarism), or one might use material that has been licensed, under the terms of that license, but misrepresent the material to some others (for instance examiners) as being one's own (which would be plagiarism, but not patent or copyright infringement).

If all of society could simultaneously use the same property without any risk of damage to it, or interfering with each other's use of it, or even knowing whether or not others were using it, then property would work as an analogy for ideas. On the other hand, if this were the case, there wouldn't have been all those conflicts over property, and there wouldn't be any justification for property laws as they are.

It's one of the few explicit powers of Congress in the Constitution, important enough that the Founders put it right there in Article I, Section 8. It's also an affirmation of a right that has existed for a few thousand years. The "I don't believe in intellectual property (in spite of making my living through its creation)" meme you're espousing is the new one, and yes, it does show just how well brainwashing works.

Take another look:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Note my emphasis. Copyrights and patents were not designed to support some fictional 'intellectual property' rights, rather they were designed to give people an incentive to contribute to human knowledge. That's an essential part of the reasoning behind disclosure of patents. People explain how their invention works (their contribution to human knowledge), and, as an incentive for them to do so, they get an exclusive right to it for a limited time.

Notably, copyrights on software entirely fail to achieve this purpose. In the past, copyrighted material would be copied as it was originally written, so the ideas used in the writing would be evident in the copies. With software, source code is written, but only object code is copied. Consequently, people who hold copyright on software get an exclusive right, but never actually contribute to human knowledge, which was the justification for allowing that right in the first place.