By not solving the root problem of 'some men are intimidating and coercive,' you're merely creating a system where women feel compelled to have abortions, and allowing these men to continue to dominate and control the lives of these women. You also make the problem worse by insisting that it's ultimately the woman's decision, totally ignoring the situation that she came from.

Way to go, hero.

Look, I'm not a fanboy - I hated FF8, never touched FF11, and thought FF5 and the NES titles were largely forgettable. But I've got to say something about this "linearity is bad" mentality.

Look at the FPS genre: the earliest examples were very nonlinear (W3D, Doom, Quake, etc.), providing the player with very little information about the environment. Half-Life and Half-Life 2 come along, providing the player with a completely linear experience with very little real choices for exploration, and get lauded as some of the finest games ever. Those who originally thought that exploration was a necessary part of the genre were proven wrong.

FF13 was an attempt to see if the same principle worked with RPGs. The answer is: it's mixed. On the one hand, the path forward never seems confusing or unclear, which is a mechanic consistent with the narrative (the protagonists always have a clear mission and destination in mind.) However, the lack of meaningful actions to take during the non-battle sequences (your choices are basically "advance to the next battle/plot point" or "open the menu") makes time in the field seem wasted or unnecessary. I hope future entries in the series (and JRPGs in general) take lessons from the game - the compromise seems to be "have a clear path forward, with optional activities available down alternate paths that clearly indicate that they are asides from the main quest."

Let's look at this year's State of the Union, shall we?

"If we had allowed the meltdown of the financial system, unemployment might be double what it is today. More businesses would certainly have closed. More homes would have surely been lost."

"A strong, healthy financial market makes it possible for businesses to access credit and create new jobs. It channels the savings of families into investments that raise incomes. But that can only happen if we guard against the same recklessness that nearly brought down our entire economy."

"But understand -- understand if we don't take meaningful steps to rein in our debt, it could damage our markets, increase the cost of borrowing, and jeopardize our recovery -- all of which would have an even worse effect on our job growth and family incomes."

That's one speech, and the themes of "do as I say, or else disaster is imminent" are all there and all clear. I could dig harder, but I don't have the time right now.

Bush's fearmongering was "do as I say, or we'll be attacked again." Obama's is "do as I say, or our economy will collapse." Same rhetoric.

You don't understand the point of bail.

Bail isn't a presumption of guilt. Bail is required so that you actually show up in court. When the trial is over, innocent or guilty, the bail gets repaid. It's not saying "we think this person is guilty," it's saying "we want some sort of guarantee that the person is going to show up at trial."

Without bail, realistically, we'd have a huge number of arrested people running away and assuming new identities.

And atheist scientists continue to try to use science to suggest the nonexistence of an omnipotent being. An omnipotent being, by definition, could render itself immune to all forms of detection, including detection by scientific/rational deduction. In the end, therefore, it's faith one way or the other: faith that there is no God, or faith that there is.

I would have thought Dr. Hawking would have been above succumbing to such a simple fallacy, but I guess not.

You, and much of the Internet population in general, are acting like there's some sort of massive scam taking place. Scams typically don't come with no-questions-asked money-back return policies. If I didn't like my iPhone, I'd take it back and get a refund. So could anyone else. It's not like anyone's being cheated out of their money here.

But don't let facts get in the way of your outrage over a device you don't own.

There was a coding error with the signal bar graph. They admitted it, and fixed it.

To summarize Jobs: "Most people aren't seeing this issue. A small percentage are." They didn't say it wasn't a problem, otherwise they wouldn't have given out the free cases. At the same time, you don't hold a giant mass recall for a product that 99% of your customers are satisfied with.

I don't see how anyone could have an issue with Jobs's response. Like the iPhone? Great, keep it, and you get a free case. Like the iPhone, but are in the small minority having signal issues? Consumer Reports says cases fix it. Have a free case. Still don't want the iPhone? Return it, get your money back.

What's the problem for the consumer here?

By that logic, should any work of the mind be copyrightable? Paintings are existing colors turned into new pictures. Novels are existing words turned into new stories. Computer code is existing bits given new values. Inventions are just existing raw materials turned into new devices.

If your answer is "that's all free too, no one should own that" then you have created a world where no one can make money from the fruits of their mind, only the fruits of their physical labor. In essence, everyone must have a job either physically laboring or selling things that have been physically labored for, and intellectual culture would grind to a halt.

Copyright guarantees that you can make money coming up with better ideas than other people. How could that do anything but create progress?

I'd just like reasoned answers to the following questions by objective and informed people who have no stake (financial/career/political/etc.) in their answers:

1. is climate change a man-made phenomenon,
2. if so, is it a net bad for the world,
3. if so, is it worth stopping,
4. if so, can we stop it,
5. if so, should we try to stop it (costs/ethics/potential for worse catastrophes),
6. if so, how should we stop it?

The fact that I have yet to see such answers from the aforementioned neutral parties makes me a skeptic. The "denialist" label is insulting to skeptics, and is at war with reason.

Since I could return my iPhone right now for a full refund and go back to using my old one, that kind of blows your "reinforcement dynamics" theory out of the water.

Not to be an Apple apologist, but dropped calls were frequent on my iPhone 3G, and have been nonexistent on the iPhone 4 I've been using since launch. Same apartment, AT&T service, and I haven't been paying attention to how I've held the phone.

Obviously, this is a statistically insignificant sample size of one, but lower reported bars does not automatically equal "dropped call," and many of the loudest and most vocal critics of the iPhone 4 issues have not been actual iPhone 4 owners.

You're in here stereotyping theists as irrational, delusional, bigoted murderers and suicide bombers, and at the same time decrying their supposed intolerance?

Do you honestly not see the irony of this?

If something is in the public domain, anyone has the right to publish it. If something is not in the public domain, only certain people have the right to publish it.

Thus, removing something from the public domain is revoking people's right to publish it.

Isn't revoking rights of publishing a pretty egregious violation of freedom of the press?

The fragmentation issue is that there might be two phones and App #1 will run on the Red Phone but not the Blue Phone, and App #2 will run on the Blue Phone but not the Red Phone.

Apple doesn't have that problem, because everything will run on the newest model of the phone. As soon as they break that trend, they're fragmented, yes.