Airline prices are already insanely deflated and subsidized. $15 to check a bag is chump-change next to the cost of the high-octane jet fuel they have to fill a plane with. Frankly, if the $15 dollars went to- I don't know- actually researching an alternative to air travel that uses less fuel (blimps anyone?) I would be more than happy to donate it.

Frankly, the $15 you don't pay to check your bag has to get paid by someone. The mere fact that the industry is still considered profitable is proof that someone other than the airline companies are footing the bill. Most likely, its the federal government, which means we end up paying for it anyway.

Well, frankly, gaming companies are supposed to supply something new in terms of their games every once in a while. Nintendo has merely repackaged its various franchises with new interfaces, whereas Sony has had to actually innovate new play styles.

Yes, Nintendo might revolutionize the interface, but we are talking about the actual games that are produced for each company's platforms. So far, Nintendo has done really nothing to produce effective games that break the mold, they've only created new arcade terminals.

I've always loved the idea of the journey rather than the landing. Plus, its the freaking moon.

You look up into the stars and see the entire universe laid out before you. It would be beautiful. I wouldn't care about the environment, or the oxygen problems, that kind of travel is an idea that has always intoxicated me.

Standardized tests are ineffective because they don't gauge the proper indicator of intellect. School is not a place where knowledge is taught, but where skills are learned. For instance, there is a skill in programming, a skill in reading, a skill in skimming. If there was a concentration on skills rather than knowledge, there would unquestionably a growth in the intellectual capacity in the student body today.

Who here remembers what their teachers taught them in the 6th grade? Yeah. Now, who remembers what grade they learned to read?

College is really the environment where people learn knowledge, and by knowledge I mean subjects that the common citizen does not access on a regular basis (like differential calculus). If schools instead concentrated on creating the most competent learners rather than the most knowledgeable students, the students would be far better prepared to take advantage of the higher learning offered in college.

I have done very well in mathematics classes, and I am always amazed by the simple things people don't see when they look at an equation merely because they haven't been taught that skill. I only know how to take apart an equation because I had to learn that skill in order to be successful in math, but the inherent skill wasn't hard to learn in the least, and it didn't involve advanced mathematics knowledge at all.

Standardized tests concentrate not on the skills learned, but on the knowledge gained. That knowledge, too often, is forgotten over the summer or forsaken when cramming for the next test. A skill is like riding a bike: you can't forget how to do it.

P.S. for those of you who say some people don't go to college, that is true. They, however, still have the skills that can help them in any environment, business or academic. Its not like you read only in college.

If your product is being bought for nursery homes (the Wii), then I don't think you can consider yourself a gaming company. If you look at the gimmicks that Nintendo products are based on, they really are personal arcade terminals and nothing more. Franchises like Zelda, Mario, and Pokemon have not innovated their presentation, but have relied on models that are already at least a decade old. On the other hand, Sony has tried to produce a product that is truly next generation. While Nintendo might decide to merely convert all of its old paradigms into remote form for the Wii, Sony has had to tap not only state-of-the-art graphics but develop new styles of gameplay in order to stay viable.

Take, for instance, the PSP. Originally scoffed at, it has gained new fame as the fashionable Nintendo DS has dissolved out of the limelight. Why? because the PSP was inherently a better, more fully intuitive product while the DS was just a gameboy with a touchscreen.

The same thing is seen with the Wii. The PS3 is so obviously the more powerful gaming product, but the Wii is more shiny because it has a few gimmicks that make it more attractive to the non-gaming customers. We have, here, a piece of technology that will revolutionize the gaming industry, while on the other hand we have a gamecube with an infrared terminal.

Suck is, frankly, an insipid word to use in this argument. It is, however, inferior to other products on the market, and I'll explain why.

Microsoft runs its computing conglomerate like a company, and that is its worse flaw. Companies are creatures of the 20th century: in a high-tech company where innovation and expansion are vastly more important than consolidation Microsoft established its position as the de facto operating system producer, then, like all companies, grew a middle management that was far too large and proceeded to relax in a languid stupor.

However, does the product "suck"? It still has value in that it is still the operating system that is embraced by the companies that produce device drivers, and therefore those companies still exclusively program for that system. The vast majority of the problems that occur on a linux machine come from the fact that they don't have the necessary drivers to allow all the disparate components to work properly.

Frankly, the system isn't made for Apple and Linux, and that is why they suffer with relatively low market shares. The expensive nature of Apple's product design makes it infeasible for businesses (by far the largest purchaser of computers), and Linux's open-source philosophy severely cripples its ability to interface properly with the actual component manufacturers. The competitors themselves are vastly superior to Microsoft in terms of their products, but its the fact that Microsoft is still given to power to define the rules of the market that keeps Microsoft from tanking.

Humans have no reason to live at all. They live because they are impulsed to. Have you ever seen someone die from holding their breath? They can't, because once they get knocked out, they return right to breathing. The fact is, living is so very deeply engrained in our subconscious precisely because its a phenomenally selfish act.

Take, for instance, suicide. People who commit suicide are inherently selfless people. They have so destroyed their own self that the act of killing themselves is easy: there is simply no self left to remove. The very act of living is a defining of self, a recognition of the fact that one is important enough to continue consuming.

Thus, saying that there is a reason to live is ludicrous- it somehow justifies and makes selfless an act that is based on a recognition of self.