I would say what matters even more is the fact that parents care about their child's education in the first place. Both my parents are teachers, and from what I have gathered from them, the worst problem children come from families who don't care. I'm referring to parents who don't check their kid's report card, doesn't see to it that homework is getting done, and sometimes isn't even bothering to make sure the kid is actually at school at all. A child quickly learns from this attitude that their academics don't matter, and thus most of them stop putting any effort into it.

Home-schooled children by definition have parents who care, be it for religious reasons or not. And really, even an education mutilated by religious concerns is still better for a child then absolutely no education at all, which is what happens for some in public schools. Instead of crying about parents caring enough to intervene in their child's education, I think we need to worry much more about the children who have no one to care for them at all.

Odd that you mention that, because my mother worried about the exact thing when I was younger. When going through a foreign airport while we switched flights, she told us to keep quiet; she figured if me and my brother started going on about some video game, the only word out of the conversation that'll easily get recognized is "bomb" (or variations thereof), and the airport security would freak. That was pre-9/11, oh the fun it must be now...

Have to call shenanigans on this one... My CPR instructor actually directly stated 1. This probably can and will happen, and 2. You can't get sued unless the person in question dies, even if you aren't certified or whatnot, due to there being "Good Samaritan Laws" - read, this guy just saved your ass, stop whining about it.

Uhhh... have you also noticed the shockingly high rates of disease, starvation, and infant mortality in some of these very same nations with insane birthrates?

Actually since they recently added the ability to grow flowers, I was wondering what level unlocks Poppies...

Interestingly I observed this in one of my sister's friends. The first pig he raised was named Elmo; subsequent pigs received names such as Porker, Bacon, and T-Bone.

Oh yeah, and as a sidenote, if I remember my US history correctly, all of the above happened on a fairly regular basis before the introduction of the secret ballot. We aren't talking hypotheticals here - there are unscrupulous businesses and politicians out there, and if we can do a little to protect ourselves from them, then we should.

I agree whole-heartedly with you on this point, but I must then ask: why is it teachers in K-12 education get tenure too? Last I checked, these teachers are explicitly NOT supposed to be able to say whatever the fuck they want in a classroom, because they are instructing minors. I also don't remember the last time high school teachers were expected to publish research papers that could contain controversial theories/opinions.

In other words, the tenure option was intended for university professors, not the rest of the education system, and we might've been better off if we had kept it that way.

I hate to say it, but all the "informing" isn't going to do a lick of good, because the almighty public isn't listening.

That would depend on said robot's tastes. Somehow I don't think the typical slashdotter qualifies...

I would disagree about Magic's balance being because of player choice. The idea of players arranging options is no different then a "skill-based" system that several RPGs sport. It is not impossible for such a system to break. It has done so in Magic, and in RPGs, usually by someone finding some "perfect" combo of options which everyone else automatically copies. Some examples include Necropotence decks way back when, and Ravager Affinity in the Mirrodin block.

Its also still entirely possible for a single option to be overpowered. In the case of Magic, this can be loosely defined as cards that change the game into a question of which player pulls it first (and yes both players will have it because its so damn awesome). Examples include Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Will. There are even less extreme cases like Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall which are not game-winners, but cross the line by being such good enablers.

Ironically though, even Magic has its holy trinity: Aggro, Combo, Control. Pretty much EVERY and I repeat EVERY deck that has won a high-level tournament can be placed into one of these 3 categories, or on rare occasions a combination of two.

Never a single deck on top is also blatantly false; there's several occasions where Wizards has point blank admitted that to be so, and banhammered cards because of it. One particularly memorable example was the days of Mirrodin Block and Ravaffinity, in which half the decklist in question literally got banned in one go.

You are correct in that Magic tends to stay balanced, but that is solely because its so damn old. Try playing a game with only cards from when it initially came out(Alpha, Beta, would probably would have to use proxies to test this one), you'll find its so horribly fucked up broken that its beyond obscene. The balance of Magic comes from the experience of its current design team, not because "there are so many cards".

But, I think his point wasn't so much that our lack of caveman skills is a bad thing, but rather, that we have come to accept a certain amount of dependency on others. The real question then becomes, how much dependency is too much?

Godwin'd.

Haven't I seen this (word-for-word) post before...

Hmmm. Some AC really thinks he's got a point to make...