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You are aware that Universities are also state-funded throughout the civilised world?

Not all of them.

Done. Now believe.

It's not a university -- just a "college" (and I've never been really clear on the distinction) -- but there is at least one institution of higher education in the U.S. that quite consciously and deliberately refuses all forms of government aid, either directly or through its students, in order to maintain its independence from government controls: Grove City College in western Pennsylvania.

Freedom from entangling ourselves into the business of other countries secures us from the threat of terrorism.

Our pal, Bin Laden, apparently has some rather (to my mind) irrational reasons for declaring war against the US -- and this mindset might have been sparked by the US maintaining forces in Saudi Arabia, or it may have been simply sharpened thereby. See here for an analysis of bin Laden's manifesto, and a link to the manifesto itself. One of bin Laden's bones of contention was the occupation 80 years ago of Constantinopel by "European infidel Christians", something the United States did not participate in.

In short, much of the motivation for these people's campaign of terrorism is things having little to do with our entangling ourselves into other countries's business. Keep in mind, too, that when Islam conquered the northern tier of Africa and invaded Europe via Iberia and the Balkans that they didn't do so for political reasons, they were simply conquering in order to spread their faith. Bin Laden apparently sees himself in that light.

Intelligent ID-ers like the ones mentioned above do bring a very critical scientific eye to areas of science that is mainstream scientists as dogmatic.

...of course, it helps when we write sentences in english instead of whatever that was that I just wrote. BRAINFART. Tangent: I got my undergrad in electrical engineering at a very conservative christian school (which also has a pretty decent engineering program). I was a devout evolutionist while I attended there. Later on, I went to a well known secular school to get a masters in applied biomedical engineering. It was there that I started buying into the ID side. When I saw how complex and beautifully intricate the inside of a single cell could be, the idea that it just kinda happened due to random mutations (almost all of which decrease genetic information, by the way) seemed impossible to me.

Students have complained, and God knows why the college hasn't fixed their policy. They're normally so wise with money, and they don't overcharge for anything else (except the food, which they should pay us to eat).

This week, Half.com ran an ad in my college's paper (the creatively named "Collegian") advertising its low textbook rates.

I am currently in year nine of nine for my BA/CS degree. I'm pretty sure that I've done all permutations of the work/schooling thing. Here is my history to date:

• Two years full time at Grove City College until I decided that their CS program was weak. (Good academics, otherwise.)
• Transferred to Taylor University for a year and promptly ran out of cash.
• Worked full time (well 70hrs/week) for Phoenix Contact, GmbH in the MIS group at their North America headquarters.
• Returned to Taylor University to run the university Computing and Systems Sciences department's network and take a class or to on the side. I worked for the university for three years.
• Hired by HP (nee Compaq) Took two classes correspondance through Taylor University World Wide Campus during the last year.
• Still working (as long as I can... ;) for HP and about to take my final two courses during nights at local colleges to transfer back to Taylor University.