Give me a grant and I'll get right on that arc reactor project....

I don't mean to make light of your experience, but I did the same in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I worked several jobs to put myself through a reasonably well-respected northeastern university, and got through 2 bachelors' degrees and a master's in just under six years.

And while I got a great education, and graduated very near the top of my class (top 1%), I'd have learned more, better, faster, in a model where studying was the chief obligation, not keeping myself housed, fed, and clothed by working many jobs. There's a reason why some cultures which value education have tended to give their students and scholar candidates the opportunity to nearly exclusively focus on their studies - in the near term, the return is highly variable, but in the longer term, the return from better-trained students is far higher.

Yes, there'll be people who abuse the system. That *always* happens. But that doesn't invalidate the value of better-educated students who can actually spend time *learning,* not constantly cramming to pass a class to acquire a credential. Look at what happened after the GI Bill - we had a high percentage of reasonably-well-educated people, who had gone to college in a wya that didn't give them a free ride but also didn't make their lives the grind that your life - and mine - was during their college years. The education afforded those people brought tremendous technological advances in every field from medicine to engineering to physics.

I would like to hope that the US, as a nation, finds it in its national interest to provide not merely incentives, but reasonable paths including publicly funded loans and grants, to educate its citizens. At the end of the day, an educated population benefits everyone.

Actually, it was the GOP who initially dubbed PPACA "Obamacare."

While the term "Obamacare" reads as disparaging the paln to certain parts of the GOP base, the use of the term may prove detrimental to the GOP in future, if it works. Given that MA enacted the same general plan as "Romneycare" based on Heritage Foundation ideas, and that it's generally worked OK in MA, the association of (the potential success of) individual-mandate private healthcare with the Democrats means the GOP threw away a mimetic advantage. If they'd called it "Romneycare Redux" or something like that - which is to say, associated it with its initial instantiation - they'd have kept a connection to the GOP.

I'm not too concerned about it. While it's not perfect, it's not godawful, either, and I'm curious to see how it'll play out. I'm hoping it does, not out of ideology, but because I know too many people who have been wiped out by medical costs when insurance dropped 'em -

This. I mean, private third-party validation is useful, but it shouldn't be the auditor of last resort.....

The HR drone prefers *credentialization* over demonstrated skillsets.

Been there done that....the credential wins too often, sadly.

I agree - I still have old Perl books, and as a basic language reference, they don't leave much to be desired. I've used them to teach beginning users and they're perfectly acceptable for that - particularly insofar as you make it clear to your student base that the language changes, but the core (generally) doesn't.

I've also got a Simple Touch, and it's great. It's easier on the eyes than a bright tablet screen, and it does a pretty good job of rendering text.

If it had a browser on it which could be considered reliably open-able, I'd use it. Without it....well, it's an e-reader, and it's a bloody annoyance because it means I either leave it at home and use it at night, or carry it and leave the tablet home. Neither alternative is good.

I have also used these (I have a vest) in hot weather, and it's wonderful - carries phone in one pocket, iPad or Air in another, and a charger in a third. Surprisingly comfortable, too.

Umm, a means of quantifiably demonstrating that a harm occurs, using rigorous and repeatable methods?

Note phenomena occurs
Identify large enough sample size
Document phenomena
Look for patterns in data
correct for bias and post hoc ergo propter hoc
present for peer review
take lumps & criticism, review work as needed, refine and re-present.

That would form a valid basis. "Goddon'tlikeit" isn't a valid basis, because we can not establish, in an empirical sense, that God or gods told someone $statement*, or that the profusion of %claims made in a written text cited are demonstrably factually accurate.

* Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication-- after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

Your religion, whatever it is, is based on a set of axioms which are beyond the bounds of what can be empirically tested.
If I stated that purple socks were a requisite of my religion, and that all barefoot people must be denied rights, would you consider that a valid premise?
If I stated that people going barefoot were unnatural, and lobbied to legislate purple-socks-wearing as a normative behavior, would that be valid?

Of course not.

So perhaps stating that ones own set of unprovable axioms are inherently correct to the extent that they should be codified into statute is an argumentum ad populem, because 'everyone knows it's right' shows a bit of hubris, no?

Umm, if a person calls out someone making bigoted statements - that is, statements which are not factual, that claim that certain behaviors or characteristics inhere in $class_of_people because of a shared characteristic, and using that to bolster an argument for the inherent inferiority of that class - then naming that behavior is hardly bigotry.

false analogy, ad ignorantium, argument from final consequences, tu quoque, moving the goalposts....might want to reconsider your position.

I'm blinded by science!

Heh. Anyone looking at my friends' gun safes would be disappointed.....three expensive guitars fit into each. What guns?

You can only get a license for the space modulator if Earth obstructs your view of Venus.

I'm just sayin'

They want to deregulate business to benefit unfettered greed and to deny the social contract.
They want to regulate personal sexual/social behavior to increase social control.

It's a toxic marriage of unregulated capitalism and unchallenged religious fundamentalism....