This is exactly the reason we need mandatory military service. If everyone - men and women -had to serve in the army then everyone would have a vested interest in how the military is being deployed. Everyone would know someone - a friend, neighbor, or family member - who was currently enlisted and whose life would be on the line in whatever military action was taken. The electorate would be very vocal with its elected leaders should they propose deploying the military, unless the cause was just and important.

Just think of how many lives could be saved around the world if the US adopted a mandatory military service...

You'll have them until you tell them they have to shut down their web browser, email client, and IM application and wait 30-60 seconds to boot up to do their online banking, not to mention another 30-60 seconds of wait time after they finish their transaction.

You mean Joe Average doesn't have an SSD boot drive yet? What is this, 2006!?

Hrm, your opinions run counter to a water taste test in 2008, where the LA tap water won first place. From L.A. water tops national taste test:

Though they might not believe it, Los Angeles residents have the nation's tastiest tap water, according to the judges of a national competition. The 18th Annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting was held Saturday, with more than 120 waters competing for top honors. ... The entries were judged by ten journalists and food critics. The contest is known as the world's largest and longest-running water tasting. The title for Best Municipal Water in 2008 is shared by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves Los Angeles, and Clearbrook, British Columbia. "It's not the first time Los Angeles has won, they've won a number of times over the years," said event producer Jill Klein Rone.

Subsidizing corn, soy, wheat, and other high calorie, easily stored and non-perishable foodstuff is responsible government policy. It's a precautionary measure, just like how the government maintains reserves of oil and gas. These reserves are in place to cushion the effects of some catastrophe that would impact our food supply (drought, mass famine, some sort of biological or nuclear incident, etc.). If spinach were high calorie and could be easily stored for years then the government would be subsidizing its production instead/as well.

Did you even read my comment? I said "To be fair, Microsoft has made a big push into opening their source code and helping spearhead community-led projects."

No where did I say that Microsoft was using OSI-compliant licenses or that they were even working on open source projects. Just that they were opening their source code (making it available) and helping and encouraging community-led projects. Those are two undeniable facts, regardless of whether you're a "Micropologist" or "Microhater."

True. Although I prefer Jeff Atwood's definition of open source:

• The project must use an OSI approved license
• The project must use a commonly available method of public source control
• The project must provide public evidence that it accepts and encourages code contributions from the outside world.

To be fair, Microsoft has made a big push into opening their source code and helping spearhead community-led projects. Two examples:

• Source code for ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET AJAX, etc.
• Source code for the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, a joint project between Microsoft and the community

Granted, the first one isn't a true open source project in that they don't accept patches from the community, but I think that if you compare today's Microsoft and their culture toward sharing source code with the community is quite a bit different from what it was, say, 5 years ago.

There was some founding father who said something like, "Those who will sacrifice a little liberty for temporary safety are very cautious people and will live a long and peaceful life." Or something like that.

As others have noted, the truck will be WAY faster, and could take an hour break every 5 minutes and still win hands down. Heck, a person with a small rig attached to a bicycle could beat the T1.

You can't very well make someone feel safe if they weren't scared in the first place.

Their job is not to stop terrorism, but rather to make people "feel" safer.

I still think you're succumbing to two major flaws in your logic:

1. You presuppose that home schooled children will never experience the traits you listed - being bullied, having unpleasant consequences for failure, being "bored," and so on.
2. You assume that all public school children experience all of those qualities in their public schooling.

Regarding (1), I don't see why home schooling has to be that way. Perhaps the home schooled persons you know had it that way - a focus on not being bored, no negative consequences to failure, and so on - but who says it has to be that way? Why can't a home schooled child be told something like, "You have to do your _insert boring task here_ lessons now. I know it's not fun, but this is important to learn. Sit down and get cracking." And I posit that a home school child has more pressure to succeed at home than at school. A poorly performing public school child can hide his grades, lie to his parents, etc. And a parent who home schools their child can put the same punishments in effect for not succeeding academically, such as no playing with toy X until you get your grades up, or whatever. Additionally, there are outlets outside of the home school where kids can have social interactions: sports leagues, clubs, etc. For example, I was in Boy Scouts throughout elementary school and there were sufficient amounts of bullying and teasing to give a home schooled child the experience!

Regarding (2), I think there are plenty of schools in poorer areas where there is not an impetus to succeed. Rather, teachers are more focused on teaching the requisite curriculum and getting the kids onto the next grade. Also, not all public schooled children experience bullying or even mild teasing. Do you think the star quarterback or prom queen is getting bullied?

For the record, I was public schooled and my mom has been a public school teacher her entire life. However, I plan on home schooling my daughter. Not because of religious reason (I'm not), not because of wanting to "protect" her from those that are different (I like different people), but rather because I think we can provide a more focused curriculum and foster her emotional and mental growth in a more positive way than is possible with public schools. That's the plan, anyway, we'll see how it works out.

That's why God created Wikipedia.

I hear this criticism against homeschooling a lot, namely: "I know a homeschooled person and he is X." Yet you never hear anyone say, "I know a public schooled person and he is X." Because I do know several public schooled people who are unprepared to do things like deal with workplace bullies, keeping track of their time for work, or see the value in something that wasn't 'fun' for them.

There are much fewer home schooled persons, so it is only natural for us to extend certain traits from a small known sample to the population as a whole, but to do so is faulty logic. Of course, I say this when the only person I know who is home schooled is a very bright, outgoing, socially adept person who does well with mundane and 'boring' tasks when needed.