While that is a huge number, and certainly a lot of it is not terribly secure, I have to wonder how much of it is very secure? Though I went to an instate school & worked 3 jobs my last few years to try & minimize debt, I still took out some student loans. I think in total maybe $11k. I've been out for over 10 years & employed the whole time. I still owe about $5000. At numerous times I've considered paying it off but the rate is so low it's just never made financial sense to do - I've always had better places to put the money.

Put me on the side of believing too many people go to college when a trade/tech school would be a better choice. I have a tough time feeling much sympathy for those who voluntarily took on huge debts without consideration for how they were going to pay it off. I worked my tail off, had a ton of fun & drank plenty of beer, but never did the tropical spring break thing and don't regret it at all.

Fuck. That's not old, she's about my age and I'm most certainly not approaching 40...Ah Fuck.

Huh? How do you know she's going after roles inappropriate for her age? For the most part, there's not such thing as an "appropriate age" for a role in Hollywood anyway. They don't give a shit how old you are. How old you look on the other hand matters tremendously. Think of how old the actors often are who play teens on TV & in movies.

Why do you believe that recognizing the impact of Jobs necessarily discredits the contribution of those who worked for him? It does not.

But it's so much more pervasive than that. The fact is all over the place from national to the most yokel local reports on it, and all over including common conversation even among people who should know better, "How'd the market do today" almost universally refers to how the Dow did. Maybe it's just laziness, I don't know but I try to point it out to people I run into whenever it comes up.

I have a hard time coming up with any sympathy towards Adobe. They're a billion dollar technology company. If they couldn't figure out a way to either modernize the code they bought or rewrite it to be more efficient and current, it's their own damn fault. I met a lot of Macromedia people awhile back - there were a lot of great people: some brilliant geeks, some brilliant artists and even some really rare freaks who were both. I think Adobe replaced them with "brilliant" marketing people.

The problem is I've heard an awful lot of legal experts say that by putting the IRS in charge of assessing & collecting the fine, they've done enough to get by it because the courts have given the the Federal government so much latitude as far as taxation for the "general welfare."

Honestly, I'm so down on things. And not just that a monstrosity of a bill that will only make things worse has passed. But more that it will also accelerate us into an absolutely frightening death spiral of debt leading to nightmare inflation. The ends justify the means is just so common and accepted, and the federal government effectively has almost no restraints any more. The courts have ceded so much ground. The attitude of the Constitution being just some quaint old document, that liberty and freedom are just words the fringe use and care about. It's really sad.

I really like those definitions - though I'm in my mid 30s so I really don't know that I've ever actually seen the second one in the wild.

It's a tool GMs can use to help keep players who are most important to them when they can't get a deal worked out in time. On the one hand, players shouldn't be too upset about it since it guarantees them a salary in the top 5 at their position. But by the same means, if they are just unhappy with a team/coach/city, does force them to stay another year. Plus, it's a profession where you're career is always one play from being over. Psychologically, this is something many players are afraid of, even bordering on paranoid about. A guy who gets tagged - it means he gets a one year deal instead of the long-term (set for live) contract he was hoping for. Certainly it's a fact of life for them - just one of the rules of the game they play by, so being bitter or whining about it isn't really justified. But I can at least understand the discomfort - when you've spend your whole life preparing for one thing, beat incredible odds to get to the point of one big contract, being that close and losing it, even if for a year has to be a frightening thing.

Don't underestimate Wally Pipp syndrome either. His whole career, Favre never forgot that he earned his starting spot when Majkowski went down with injury...in fact, that was one of the single biggest motivating factors for him and his consecutive game streak. He lived in constant fear that he'd get hurt & Detmer, Brunell, Hasselbeck and Rodgers would step in & he'd never play again. Then again, that was but one of the many psychoses of Brett Favre.

Don't have kids, do you?

This is essentially what parenting is. Sure at the extremes, it's bad news. But being insistent that my kids use good manners - please & thank you, etc is forcing my ideology onto them.

The social aspect of development is not something that's going to sneak by - it's a known issue and been talked about for decades. The overwhelming majority of home schoolers know full well that education includes intellectual, physical and emotional/social development. Between sports, music and all of the other youth programs, there's never been more opportunities available for children outside of school to interact with each other.

And as far as teaching kids to think for themselves, if anything, it is a weakness of public schools in this area that leads to parents choosing to home school.

I got to meet with the head of video for the Packers. They put together a DVD for the coaches to review with each play of a game 3 times - one normal view, one endzone view & one tight shot focusing on alignment, line splits & line play. Each play of an entire game - only the play itself, snap to whistle, three times took a total of 19 minutes. Also, they had the video edited and burned onto discs for coaches to review by the time they got onto the plane for the trip home on away games.

Since the Slashdot, I'll add that the technology is pretty awesome. Every play from every game is tagged by personnel, formation, down & distance, etc. The coaches can pull up say all 3rd & 1 plays, every pass thrown the the Y receiver, or whatever. As a result of the renovation at Lambeau a few years ago, all the position groups (ie linebackers, QB's, receivers, etc) have classrooms with computers, a projector & screen, and each has access to the searchable video database of plays. Finally I should mention that the NFL is fanatical about making sure the technology is level among all teams.

Yeah that's what SRO means & yes I think FINRA and it's precursor, the NASD have historically been very good at oversight. In addition to the approval of marketing materials & enforcement of requirements & standards, they're the ones that administer securities and principal licenses. You may have heard reference to a series 6, series 7 or series 63 licenses. Anyone who sells securities must be properly licensed to do so & this also involves a bonding, a background check, credit check and a requirement to keep your records (address, disclosure of outside income, legal info) up to date. Anyway, it's not perfect - bad eggs certainly get in - but serious violations will mean losing your license which means you can't be hired.

If that is the case, then are you suggesting that a similar setup might be wise for selling health insurance on a nationwide level - some self-policing for most matters, with a fairly strong governmental organization available to step in when things get severely out of hand?

Not health insurance - all insurance. And almost exclusively self-policing, federal regulators just outline the major framework for things. For example, the SEC sets some of the general guidelines about what a mutual fund is. FINRA then has rules about things such as requiring a prospectus to be given prior to a sale - and of course there are requirements about what must be in the prospectus - for example full disclosure of returns and expenses (and how those numbers are to be calculated).

Were this applied to healthcare, guidelines would be set up for levels/categories of insurance. To market and sell your plan as say Plan A, you must cover X, Y and Z. Take down the state barriers and instead of the few companies you might have been able to choose from, you can now choose the hundreds of companies and price shop comparing each one's Plan A, knowing all of them meet the same requirements. Some may add optional coverage to try to differentiate, but if you've determined that Plan A fits you, then it's a matter of which additional options and/or price (ie premiums) you like best. Competition comes in because of the market is now national. Also, it's much easier for new companies to enter & existing companies to expand into the health market because the framework is there. A new company can be smaller & more efficient or just that they're happy with lower margins & can price their plans lower.

This brings me to the last major element. Health insurance needs to be just that - insurance. Insurance involves a shared risk - actuaries decide what premiums to charge based on the likelihood of something to happen. For the most part, these are fairly unlikely things - but if they did happen could be...well catastrophic financially. But our health insurance right now, covers everything from a heart bypass things to routine things like physicals, a flu shots, antibiotic for a stubbed toe, etc. These sorts of things make the actuarial tables impossible. We need to separate health insurance - coverage for the major, catastrophic problems - from minor problems & maintenance. Yes, the minor things are going to require us to either pay out of pocket or come up with some addition support systems. But by separating the two, we divide & conquer. That sort of insurance - coverage for major/catastrophic things - is something the free market can do very very well. Look at life insurance - almost anyone you can go online, price shop & select the best choice from a ton of options. It's something the math geeks...uh actuaries can calculate and know what their payouts will be and what their premiums need to be to make a reasonable profit. But by muddying it all together you get...well the big mess we have now.

Are you proposing that instead of states individually approving insurance policies, it should be done on a federal level instead? Is that a proposal that is common to a lot of people who want to use insurance policies that are currently forbidden from other states? I could also imagine a parallel school of thought that approaches the issue by asking for complete de-regulation of insurance policies, with no governmental oversight for approval.

I don't know to what extent others have proposed things like this. What I know is that it just plain sucks to have to deal with 50 separate offices with such different standards for everything. Even filing is a horrific process - some states allow electronic, some require you to actually do hard copy. Some are backwater, some highly professional. Filing fees are all over the place lately, with some states really piling them not because of anything associated with costs to the product or process but simply to make up for low tax collections.

Conversely, the setup with the vast majority of oversight done an SRO - with higher level, criminal type enforcement by the SEC has worked very well. Sure not flawless, but given how dynamic the financial product market is, they've been very effective and efficient. Nobody likes it when FINRA is in for an audit (surprise or planned) but in my experience, they've been professional and the things they're looking for are typically good indicators of potential problems. So not solely federal control or oversight, predominately self-governed, but with the big stick looming like "wait 'til your father gets home" to encourage the kids to play nice.

The "no government oversight" thing is a straw man. I don't know any rational person who believes that despite prevalence of it being framed that way. Minimal and efficient and effective oversight is not at all the same as no oversight.

Quite possibly one of the most depressing things I've read in awhile. Except I don't share the optimism you expressed in your last 2 sentences. They're going to get it done - there really isn't any stopping it at this point. And like you said, once enacted it's going to be all but impossible to kill.