So 60% of faithful Americans have zero doubt? Kierkegaard would question whether they had any faith at all, then.

Oh poop. My reply was unnecessarily verbose then. Yes I see your point. Although I have to wonder about the efficacy of financial / legal burdens, if they are prepared to throw out (presumably) years worth of emotional investment. Then again, I don't think everyone goes into it with a realistic attitude, so the…

I disagree. The legal relationship is just a facade constructed over the face of real marriage. Real marriage is simple commitment - an attempt to make it work for life- nothing more, and nothing less. It is far more than anything that can be contained in a simple statute, and enforced by mundane law.

That line implies to me (possibly as it does to you?) that the author still doesn't get it.

I'm hoping for ME2 style ending where you need to call in assets or characters you've built up / kept alive to do things / intervene in a grandiose final mission, wherein the wrong call results in losing characters, getting negative plot elements, etc.

It satisfies me when people come out and say the ending is fine, outing themselves as either contrarians, or people who clearly don't care about things like thematic cohesion or narrative logic (which probably explains why the Transformers trilogy did so well).

The subtle trick of turn A's "black history" was the insinuation that all Gundam shows, including UC and all alternate-Cs are part of the same history, just spread out across an unknown time frame.

Thanks for the discussion.

Well, isn't that the irony? You are hardly alone. Everyone wants a better world.

Well, I wouldn't call it a position... just the reality of history of the world.

Haha, I don't know if I'd argue for it; I'm just stating the (perhaps depressing) truth that military hegemony is what underpins the rule of law - even if voluntary compliance with just laws maintains the topcoat of social order.

I subscribe to a more bleak view of reality.

The context is different. It doesn't work well with nukes because they are a little extreme. Robots with guns? Not so extreme.

I actually think it's (ironically) an argument for us to build a ton of them and make them as effective as possible, ensuring that ours or dominant over our rivals'. Then we can sit back and deliberate on the ethics of their use... in safety.

if they are effective -which is what would make them dangerous, and worth discussing- they are inevitable, which ironically makes discussing them interesting intellectually, but pointless as far as preventing their creation and proliferation

I had the same reservations, until the last (?) preview from an E3 some years back. The only concerns I had were Mass Effect combat (when Brothers in Arms probably would've been a better model), and branching mission structure - although a true 1:1 X-Com FPS would need nothing short of a random map generator for…

Why the hell am I the only old school X-Com fan who actually wants a squad-based FPS X-Com?

I find the idea of a "net pleasure" to be a strange one, and I don't believe it has roots in classical or even modern applied hedonism. As you implied, one of the core hedonistic tenets of the United States and other first world countries is the "pursuit of happiness," and this is clearly taken to mean the personal…

But governments are not ethical.

I disagree, but do welcome the discussion (so please see the above reply). Cheers.