Rezilia

It should be more like "Land of the beached whale, & home of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man" with the way it's going now.

Thanks :)

I'm good at exams, but I hate them. Partially because the people who make them are stupid.

In my country, everything is dictated by exams. All state workers are chosen by exams. Lawyers can't be lawyers until they pass an exam. Oh, they want to stipulate that for doctors, too. I HATE THAT.

Another reason for my decline is that the exams at college didn't reward effort. I studied a lot and my 10 (A in your case) was worth the same as the guy who did the minimum possible. Aggregating something to classes wasn't necessary. That, combined with teachers who give grades according to their mood, made me give up on trying to score good grades at university.

So I totally get what you're saying.

Another problem is that, because of this overreliance on exams, there are a lot of private courses which focus on these exams only. They cost a lot of money. So they create an industry of courses and their owners become rich as a result.

The US surprises me negatively in more ways than one...

However not all is roses. Since places are limited, they run an exam to see who enters university. If you don't pass, you can't study for free. :(

I love your avatar. The Mismagius hat is adorable! <3

Well nothing is really free, in reality the government pays for it, but the student studies for free. ^^

Thanks for explanation, that was refreshing. The grail got tainted because the Einzberns summoned a servant in one of the early wars that was a servant upon which all the evil wishes of mankind were imprinted, and he was weak so he was defeated easily and sucked into the grail, but, since the grail grants wishes, and he was the embodiment of bad wishes, the grail was tainted and doomed to serve only the evil in the world. Which is why the grail becomes evil energy and corrupts Kotomine and Gilgamesh at the end of Fate/Zero.

Yeah I love it.

In my case my degree was worth squat because here in Brazil to work as lawyer you need to take YET another exam to evaluate your knowledge. It was pretty annoying and I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown before learning I passed, since I didn't want to have to study stuff all over again.

Public university is free but funded by taxes.

I was so lucky the local Animax channel decided to broadcast FSN on a whim before going down, without it I wouldn't know about the Nasuverse today and possibly wouldn't even have started writing my book, or the book would've been completely different.

I'm very sorry for not answering in time. I just found out I posted my answer in my own profile, not yours. My apologies. :(

Actually in my experience I've found the opposite. It seems to me that schools are giving up memorization in favor of giving the students the ability to understand and rebuild the codes they learn, as well as possibly creating something anew.

However, I won't say you aren't right. Recently, high schools in my country have resumed the teaching of philosophy, but it's still like what you said it is, they feed the student with info on a one-way route and make him/her sit exams. I'm good at exams, but I've always found I was lacking in certain other areas, because, really, most exams have rigged questions. An exam master isn't a master of wisdom. In terms of examination, my country is still behind the developed world, because we use exams for EVERYTHING.

I'm writing a novel and much of it is influenced by the Nasuverse. I actually thought the explanation of the fundamentals of the Holy Grail War was quite complex in the VN. I don't remember most of it, though, because it's been four years since I read it.

Why is college a heated subject for you? You can write in PM if it's something delicate.

Sounds interesting.

I GMed a guild that was pretty tight for a while, but everybody ended up moving on and it kind of just died. We had some good times, though. There wasn't ever any drama or anything because I always put a stop to it if there was.

I responded.

I have not read that. What is it about?

Yah! Most people think of anarchy more as a state of lawlessness and choas, though, so. . .

Aha, you'd probably like Sword Art Online. :p

I'll be honest, though, I would love to live in a world like Soul Eater.
Basic tech, a focus on the capabillities of the human mind/body/soul, and, it's just, geez, I don't know.

Why can't I just magically wisk away to an anime world? ;-;

I'm glad to hear it, friend~

How's it going?~

Haaaaaai!

Oh, I strongly recommend the Type-Moon VNs, although they're eroge so they have sex scenes, not sure you're into that, I personally don't like sex scenes either and Nasu doesn't do a stellar job of telling them. Fate/Stay Night has a censored version called Realta Nua, but I still recommend you read the uncensored version since some things make more sense (the whole Sakura ordeal for example).

Well I misphrased myself, I was referring to your whole knowledge system you said you built yourself. I have been in contact with theosophy in the past, but I'm skeptical when it comes to metaphysics. You may want to forgive my philosophical limitations as I did have philosophy classes at law school but it's been a while since I touched anything of the sort.

Oh sure, I agree with that totally. I'm a bit of a budding epistemologist myself, so I know the different modes of knowing we adopt- and how more often than not the concern of the human psyche is not to know the certain, but to know the "more plausible". I think insistence on certainty is pretty much a bygone view in modern philosophy, still unfortunately held by some scientists who seem naive about the philosophical underpinnings of science. This is why I'm such a big proponent of Philosophy of Science studies.

I think when you and I say "proof", we mean different things. You have in mind mathematical or certain proof or something in that vicinity. But for me proof (=evidence) is broader- anything that makes a proposition more plausible than its contrary i.e. e is evidence for hypothesis h over ~h if P(h|e)>1/2, where P(h)+P(~h)=1. I know this equivocation between proof and evidence may not be common in modern talk, but this is what I find semantically helpful. You don't have to agree with it or anything!

So when you say "X isn't limited by proof", what that essentially boils down in my terminology is "X is entailed by proof all right, just not the mathematical type". This is totally uncontroversial to my mind, and I wouldn't have any problem embracing such an epistemology.

I guess the next logical concern of mine would be to understand the purported evidences for "ether".

Thanks for liking my posts! I needed an excuse to talk to you, because I wanted to know better about your religious views.

I see you mentioned somewhere that you're a FSN fan, I've read both FSN and Tsukihime with the mirror moon patches. Arcueid route on Tsukihime is one of the few written works that genuinely made me cry, it's so touching...

I have not. You should link me.

What other things by Nasu have you read/played/seen? I've pretty much gone off the deep end, I read Fate/stay night, Fate/Zero, Tsukihime, Kagetsu Tohya (possibly my favorite), and I'm waiting for Fate/Hollow Ataraxia and Mahoyo to be translated. I also played Fate/Extra for PSP.

Yeah she is pretty neat.

Thanks for the detailed explanation! If I'm not wrong, your explanation seems to boil down to this: New Age seems to be similar to other worldviews (e.g. naturalism) in that it is the quest for truth and concerns about implementing the results of that truth, with certain presumptions in place (not to say those presumptions are unwarranted or anything). If the outlines of the New Age movement's objectives are as diverse as you state- this would always be a more or less heterolithic worldview, incorporating many ideas in its body while keeping some basic assumptions in place.

One thing I didn't get is how you said that New Age isn't limited by proof. Could you explain that part a bit?