forsaken

47? That's either bs or insanity. I got 36.7, I managed to balance the top ball so it just went up and down. The bottom ball was slowing down then stopped - but as soon as it stopped, I lost the game, so I'm assuming you can't have any ball stockstill. Dammit, I balanced it PERFECTLY.

I don't see your logical leap here - how does the existence of god have any effect on the concept of intrinsic morality? It seems that you're basing the concept of morality with that of religion. There are morals influenced by religion as well as those that aren't.

Finally, 35 seconds.

I keep getting 28-29 seconds, and then my mouse usually goes out of the screen [which causes it to choke]

68 on first go. I think I can get myself to around 75 at least on the next one, but it's too time consuming lmao.

*grins* If you re-read my sentence, you'll see that I agree to a degree with what I said. Bolded is what I think you thought was my opinion, italics is my catch-phrase.

Have you heard of the "Doctrine of Natural Justice" and "Doctrine of Natural Law"? It's one of the basic tenants of the Australian legal system, and I believe somewhere in it lies the belief that there is a set of "divine" natural law that is inherent and can be found in any human being. In short, we need only look into ourselves deep or hard enough to find what we can universally demarcate as basically morally correct or incorrect conduct. However, I haven't studied it in depth so I'm not sure if I've got the philosophical grounds of it down to pat. If I've got it right, then I think what they essentially put forth is that there is a set of basic, universally applicable morals intrinsic to the human condition; values which we are born and instinctively recognise. Then you might raise the counter-point of, "then why do so many people kill eachother, or believe that doing [insert something considered generally morally incorrect] is correct?" And if you did, I'd have to say that's a valid point of view, a view with which I wholeheartedly share. In this case, I'd say it's because those inherent values have the ability to be shaped by the imprinting of society, parents, people and the basic culture around you. So in the end, my view sits in the murky position somewhere between the belief that there are intrinsic, basic moral values which we have, but also that they can be influenced or wholly twisted by our surroundings.

Arranged marriage, marriage first and then let the love come. Love doesn't necessarily eventuate from an arranged marriage - most of the time it's tolerance and fondness towards your partner at best. In contemporary context however, I hold the view that I expressed earlier on in this thread.

First of all, I've always thought of the word "love" as a ridiculous one - having a singular word for such a profound concept which can vary at times in its application has - to me - always been regarded as consummately stupid. As mentioned earlier, the word can denotate strong sense of a bond you feel with family, friends as well as your "lover". In each case, I think we can all agree that the meaning of "love" differs somewhat. In any case, in regards to your question, I think my dissemination up there answers it in a vague and not so well manner. Love is just a feeling of a deep and profound bond to someone, in which trust and respect is one of its main tenants. Following that course of logic, it can be ascertained that love, therefore, can be applied before and after marriage, as you need only to have that bond. Generally, the way I like to view it is that marriage is a symbol and solidification of the bond - or love, if you want to use that poor word - that you feel for your significant other.

And here I thought the following process held true: Meet Girl => Girlfriend => Fiancee => Wife Or do you have some other system whereby you go straight from "Meet Girl" to "Wife"? Because last time I checked the marriage divorce rates weren't at 100%. Anyway, sarcasm aside, in terms of highschool [or even younger] relationships, I guess the broad generalisation of girlfriends not lasting can be exercised. There's another analogy for the "Mates before Dates" and "Bros before ..." but its mildly cruder. Goes along the lines, "[Male anatomy] before Chicks".

Maybe the fourth group is disillusioned with the educational system. Maybe they feel that the subjects learnt aren't conducive to their lives later on - for instance, Reverse Trigonometry. [unless of course you become an engineer or along those lines]. Regardless of what it is, people have different views and precepts regarding how they want to live their life. There's no changing that. If everyone who had the potential to do well at school [which shouldn't be mistaken for being smart - intelligence and being able to rote learn are altogether different] did so, then there would be very few people to conduct the jobs we consider distasteful, such as cleaning toilets. However our society relies on this integral element of the human condition, because without them, our community wouldn't function very effectively, now would it? Imagine have 99% of people wishing, and achieving degrees in law. What are we going to do with 6 billion lawyers? More importantly - who's going to farm the food, process it, distribute it, maintain our sewerage and etc. Or maybe, I'm just a fourth group person in disguise.

Personally, I think in terms of "encouraging students to stay at school", delaying driver's licences will do as much to achieve that end as attempting to clean a cesspool by urinating in it. That's to say, not very much at all. If anything, it'll increase the amount of illegal driving.

Has anyone deigned to think that the apathetic attitude adopted by most "students" towards education might be because they feel that much of what they are supposed to be learning has no relevance to what they perceive themselves to be doing later in life. For instance, what use would inverse trigonometry have in fields other than engineering and the like? Not very much. How about studying linguistic techniques used by poets to display their emotions? Or how to analyse a piece of artwork? Just a thought.

I listened to it, after a while it just merged into background noise and I completely forgot it was still on lol.

Is Microsoft. Is bad. That sum it up for you? [;

That the specific funding for repairing and not necessarily everything else. Consider the following: 1. Private schools already have BETTER and updated equipment, thus negating the need to repair. 2. Public schools usually have outdated and old equipment, ergo the need to repair is significantly greater. My school's infrastructure is pretty run-down for example, though that might not be a particularly accurate representation of other public schools. 3. There are considerably more public schools than private schools. This is shown in the very same article you used, which states: "Overall, state government schools enrol 68 per cent of students, while non-government schools enrol 32 per cent of students." This however, is still not an accurate indicator of how much overall funding is attained by either public or private schools. At best, it's split 50-50 now, as it should have been, However the private schools - by looking at the earlier figure of 4.7 billion to 2.7 billion - were getting 370% what public schools were, for what, at least over 10-20 years you'd think. That puts them quite a bit ahead of public schools, regardless of contemporary evened-out funding.

No, the funding going to non-governmental schools usually exceeds that provided to governmental schools. According the the above, they exceed the funding for public schools to the tune of 4.7 billion to a mere 2.2 billion. Take into consideration the fact that there are far more public schools then private schools and I'll leave the conclusion to you. Note the fact that the private schools also get subsidiary funding by means of the students paying to go to the school, to the school. Personally, I'm a bit saddened at the hefty amount of generalisations in this thread. All I will say is comments regarding the pupils - or more specifically, quality of pupils and teachers - are inherently ignorant. There is just as much likelihood of turning out a bad egg in a private school as there is in a public school, period. Utilisating that as a basis of an argument to or for either system is poor at best.

Well, what everyone's reiterated pretty much. The main gripes which I have with school, in no particular order, are: ENGLISH: Only one guy ever gets 100% or even near full marks each assessment/exam task - and I can safely say almost everyone in my school is relatively academically smart. The grading - what's considered as correct and incorrect - seems to change every time a different teacher marks the assessment, that is to say, every assessment. There also seems to be a notable amount of bias, if your name is one favoured by teachers, you generally get better marks, regardless of content. As said earlier, the "My subject is the only subject worth learning subject" mentality by teachers. I think the education system needs to take a good, long and hard look at how things are run. If I were to do every piece of hw expected of me, I'd be up til 2AM every night. Considering I wake up at 6AM, that's only 4 hours of sleep. Quite a bit of sleep deprivation and I'm sure it's at least mildly bad for your health. The time taken to get there and back. It takes me 3 hours to get to school and back. That's 1/8th of my day gone. Apart from that, I can't complain. I've pretty much just floated through the last 5 years of highschool, and only just gotten serious in the senior years.

Random note: Sir Galiga! I used to know him on RS a long long time ago. Sorry, just amazed to see an old name. In response to the actual post: From what I've seen, you do the same things over and over again D2K. You create a random background, and throw an image [i don't understand the use of render substituted for the word image or picture. "Render" is a verb, not a noun] on top of it. To be a true "GFX MASTER" you have to branch out and try new things. Merely recycling the same concept and style over and over again does not constitute calling yourself a master. If you want to be a truly good artist, stop making similar sigs, and try making actual artworks. If you want to create better sigs, do something new.

I don't live in the US, but I have a question. Under what basis are the immigrants entering the US - are they asylum seekers? Or are they just people who entered illegally so as to garner better job opportunities? If the former, I think they have a very good, solid case to work with. If it's the latter, I have another question. Does the government know they are illegal immigrants on the basis, and if so, what is their argument for allowing them to say and granting them citizenship?

If you're saying that the actual event of the rats tail has effected the resulting decision made not to eat it, then I'd have to agree, of course it has. Indeed it does influence what I choose to do, but that's where I draw the distinction. All it does is influence, at the very last, it's your own choice - your "free will - that determines what you end up doing. In this case, we aren't forced not to eat the icecream as a result of the event, we choose not to. That's what remains as the important distinguishment for me. Regardless of what events happen [within the realms of reasonability of course, if I lose the use of my legs, I'm not going to disregard that and start miraculously walking] we end up choosing what we do. In this case, what the person sees as a logical or favourable course of action is to not eat icecream. But on the very same note, the person could disregard what they think is good for them and eat the icecream. For example, people who know smoking is bad, but continue to do so. :P

Yes, it used to deduct several hours of my life per day, which left me at the days end pondering what I had done in that time that was of use. At which point I would swiftly reply: "Nothing."

How has the event controlled the reaction? The person could have two main reactions to it, they could have deigned to ignore the experience and continued to eat icecream, or in this case, for reasons of their own, found eating icecream not to their taste. It is an example of their own free will in the matter - HOW they respond to the situation is entirely up to them and their own values on what makes something desirable or undesirable. You yourself pretty much prove my point, "you no longer want to" It is your want not to eat the icecream. According to your definition of Free Will: "The ability to select a course of action as means towards the fulfillment of a desire." You select a course of action to to satisfy your want of not wanting to eat the ice cream - which is not eating it. [; And about BlueTear's post - he raised the question of whether he would be able to accurately predict the reactions of a person to any given stimuli if he had a computer with enough processing power. To which i responded in the negative, because personally I believe the computer wouldn't be able to respond to an experience previously undealt with by the, or any, person. :P

In response to this, all I can say is that computers are - at least at the moment - unable to follow the set of heuristical rules to which humans abide by. In your example, you set forth a hypothetical situation where a computer has catalogued each and every one of your experiences and then come to the question: "Would it respond in the way the person of which it is based on would?" To that, I answer no. Purely on the basis that although it has past experiences and reactions of a person, it cannot possibly make a decision on its own. For example, what if you were to be exposed to a situation completely out of your experience, some concept or happening that you - or anyone else for that matter - would never had ever even contemplated, your response would be the first of its kind as well as unique to the situation. A computer requires programming to map what the variables are, else it can't properly respond to the situation at hand. In response to the actual post, I don't see how "followinga path forged by your resultant character or psychological state" is throwing out your free will and just an illusion of a choice? Yes, your environment and previous experiences play a huge part in who you are - but it doesn't "force" you onto a path. The path is chosen by you, the only thing your resultant character does is advise you - by means of previous experiences - which path taken would be the most advantageous to your situation. You can choose to go against your common sense - for instance, someone may be the most reasonable person you know and do everything meticulously and carefully. But then they might surprise you by going bungee jumping. You wouldn't expect it, it's out of character, but if it happened, you'd accept it. It becomes a small portion of "what they've done" but not necessarily who they are. In essence, I think that Determinism [though I hate working with rigid definitions of anything] is just a component of Free Will. What you think of as desirable is directly or indirectly affected by your past events. For instance, you may love icecream, but one day you might discover a rat's tail in it, at which point you decide to stop eating icecream. You stop desiring it. So I guess I agree with knives669's definition.

Look over it, attempt questions. If you can't get the questions right, find out how to do it. Rinse and repeat until you know everything, basically.