I don't understand why people have to change their name in the first place.

Keep their original names.

Unfortunately, about 90% of what Koko could or did do was a hoax. I don't know specifically if this particular graphic is included in that or not, but when I hear Koko, I am immediately super-skeptical.

Which is kind of sad, because it masked a lot of really amazing things apes actually can do.

I totally understand this guy's perspective. When I was 10, I thought that President Bush (H. W.), should get to stay president.

My reasoning was "No one likes to lose his job. It would be sad for him to lose his."

Our political, religious and philosophical beliefs aren't really our own until we've had a chance to explore them.

@Ryan

You have a well reasoned and detailed opinion. Damn, I never thought I'd write that on internet comment boards ever.

I usually focus on a more psychology perspective myself (being a psychologist), so I tend to avoid broad scale sociological and cultural accounts. I prefer individual cultural accounts. Both are important perspectives.

By the way, I'm not saying Canadians are better or worse than Americans (nor are you saying this), but Canadians, Americans, and some other English speaking countries do share a lot of cultural background, so Canada is an interesting foil for those who argue for American Exceptionalism. There are differences, sure, but a lot more are in commonalities in religion, politics, legal system, and more.

@Yran,
I saw that article, but it is not convincing to me.
Note Denmark. 9.5% belief in hell according to the link you supplied. 2nd to last on belief in hell, yet on world peace it ranks 2nd in world peace.

I can understand the motivator of punishment affects human behavior, but it always bothered me that it had to be based on religion. It doesn't. Perhaps a different measure (that may correlate to belief in hell), would be belief in a just world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

@Joshua,
The U.S. is a fair comparison to say, Canada in culture. They have approximately 1/10th our population. Admittedly they are somewhat less diverse, but they are much more diverse than say, Iceland.

Yet Canada is 4th. The US is 88th.

Of course, you might argue that it's population density that matters. So then I would draw your attention to say, the U.K, which is a more dense nation. They are 29th, on this ranking. Again, similar culturally to the US.

@AGFH. The UK and Canada both have mandated healthcare. The population of the UK is 62 Million, about 1/5th of ours. Yes net cost goes up, but not cost per capita. Actually, with overhead, you might expect per capita costs to go down in a larger country.

It also paid for a new library, athletics center (for ALL students), pool, a couple of other buildings, and probably a lot more at Ohio State just in the last 10 years. It likely helped me get a non-athletic fellowship and assistanship to get my masters.

Also there's the old argument that school is about more than just academics.

I love democracy, but you have to admit, in a authoritarian regime it would have been built in half the time.

For perspective, a BMI of 35 is:
258 lbs on someone who is 6'0"
217 lbs on someone who is 5'6"
179 lbs on someone who is 5'0"

It does NOT include measures of muscle mass. Ideally they should use body fat percentage, and even that is iffy.

Frankly, I don't have a problem dismissing employees who do not match an example of good health who are in the healthcare industry. But if we're going to do it there, we should dismiss politicians who can't practice what they preach either.

Sad. Language is generative. Language is living. It will change with use.
In fact, the real power of English as a trade language is that it is so flexible. The language takes (some say steals) from other languages whenever convenient. It is lacks a governing body to tell you how to use the language.

Of course, this also makes it really hard to learn.

It's a simple cognitive dissonance effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Because you pay less for something, you think that it must therefore be worth less.

What Asteier said. India is quite messed up. They answered all 1s or all 10s. Looks like a translation problem, and as a result, it makes me question all the others. They might have had the same problem.

Also “One sentence contained within every HTML tag in alphabetical order” is actually only a fragment and not a sentence.