Is it different in the US because you have a lot more infrequently used roads that require manual triggering?
That rather prompts the question of why you bother having lights at all at junctions where traffic is so infrequent.

Things have certainly moved on from when I was a kid, although quite how dangerous a school journey would have to be to necessitate bulletproof bike tyres I can't quite imagine.

No, as a parent you need to keep some sort of balance in kids' lives.

Otherwise, they will just sit around eating junk food and watching a screen all day, and yes I know this is slashdot.

So how should people deal with video games that take 75 minutes just to get to the first save point, like Majora's Mask?

Is that seriously a problem for most 9 year olds?

I think the only thing my kids ever did at that age for 75 minutes without a break is sleep.

A very fundamental question that no one has answered yet and few people even ask is this: does the brain produce consciousness/mind/spirit or is it the other way around?

This is not an interesting question. You are essentially asking if the universe is based on physics or mysticism. Idealism is absurd, Dualism leads to unanswerable questions and Materialism seems to be working out pretty well for us.

It's not quite as black and white as you make out. You don't have to believe in "mysticism" or "idealism" to know that consciousness exists. Cogito ergo sum still seems true to me.

Cartesian dualism might produce unhelpful consequences , but you can't handwave it away simply by saying there's no such thing as mind or consciousness.

If consciousness can't be explained by pure materialism, then pure materialism is an incomplete theory.

There doesn't have to be a magical explanation for something that we don't (yet) understand, but that doesn't mean we can simply write it off as imaginary.

This isn't like talking about the existence of gods or an immortal soul. I have no direct evidence for them, whereas I do for my self.

Ah yes, the ever-popular "but evolution's only a theory" argument used by pro-Creationists with no understanding of the scientific method.

But, hey ho, we're still going to have Artificial Intelligence/the Singularity in the next twenty years, with perfect emulation of the brain, a virtual reality universe indistinguishable from the real one, and immortality. Ray Kurzweil says so.

Little known fact: Bennet Haselton is a regular contributor.

This was a simple retail transaction, not a commercial negotiation.

Luckily, I doubt that this hotel will be seeing many of the latter until they come to talk to their liquidators.

That's a bit like saying we don't need to magic up near light speed travel tomorrow, we just need to increase our capacity by 1% a year, and in 99 years we'll be at 99%.

Hint for internet tough guys: don't boast about your fencing skills unless you habitually wear a sword.

I read that as "63" (as in years) and couldn't for the life of me work out why it was supposed to sound tough.

"I'm 85 and used to play football, so don't mess with me, young man".