The way this body is formed is of no interest to the public outside of it.
Actually this is only true if it is formed through some recognizably fair and democratic process. For example if it is formed based on a hereditary concerns or an unfair and biased electoral process the public outside of the group will probably feel free to ignore it as not representing the people it claims to represent. While this may not apply here the way a governing body is formed does play a role in whether people outside it accord it any legitimacy and respect.
The level of radation in california is 8 disintegrations per cubic meter per second.
If correct then that rate is far, far lower than the level of radiation in Californians. The tiny amount of potassium-40 in the human body produces 4,400 disintegrations per second. Then there are other isotopes such as carbon-14 to consider so the actual rate of decays will be even higher. In fact if we assume the average Californian has a mass of 80 kg and a density roughly equal to that of water then the decay rate per cubic metre of Californians is just under 55,000 decays/second or 6,875 times your background rate just from potassium-40.
However you typically only get about about 10% of your annual radiation exposure in the US from the potassium-40, carbon-14 etc inside your body so I expect that your background radiation estimate is on the low side.
One you would remove the value of the degree,
The value of a degree is in what it lets you do not in how much it costs to get it. The skills you acquire are valuable both to the individual and to society.
two it would be discriminatory against those with learning disabilities.
I utterly fail to understand this point. Your statement is as logical as arguing that governments should not fund vaccination programs because some people are allergic to vaccines and can't have them. The reason degrees should be free is the same reason why school education should be free: society as a whole benefits from having highly skilled people available for employment or even who can create new employment.
There are many degrees that have absolutely no value in the modern world.
I would not go that far but I would agree that there are some degrees which are more valuable than others. However this is the great thing about making degrees free: governments can choose how many slots to fund for each program based on the need. The university then selects the best students for those funded slots. Too many english graduates then fund fewer spaces. Not enough teachers then increase the funding for education degrees etc.
This is far better than the current system where many students pick subjects for less sound reasons such as which subject they think is easiest.
Someone earning 21,000 a year only repays 66 a month. There is no reason someone who has taken a serious degree and gotten a job can not pay back that.
You are missing the point. Yes they can afford to pay the amount but the problem is that the loan comes with interest. Someone in a job like teaching gets a reasonable but certainly not high, salary. Given that the interest rates on the load is RPI+3%. On a 36kGBP loan that's just under 2k interest per year which is 166/month. So your person paying 66/month will never, ever pay off their loan. Essentially they will have a permanent extra 9% marginal tax rate throughout their life.
Compare this to those entering a high paid job in finance. They will have a 9% marginal tax rate for a few years until their loan is paid off and then it's over. This means that the loan not only discourages graduates from taking lower paid jobs but the interest means it acts as a regressive tax where those earning less pay more.
In the previous system we had higher rates of tax for high earners and this was used, in part, to fund the university system. Not only was this clearly fairer it did not dissuade people from important jobs with lower pay scales and it reduced the grumbling about tax of those earning a lot because they could see that they had benefited from taxes.
It isn't getting outsourced until roto-rooter starts sending robots.
Ah but when they do you will be glad you took that pre-school computing science class won't you!
Many of the creative geniuses in know, including myself, educated ourselves in technology and other subjects.
Clearly modesty was not one of the subjects you covered.
Maintenance caused the failure, but it was unquestionably pilot error that caused the crash.
Actually not according to the linked article. The pilots followed the correct procedure which was a slow climb with flaps open but the engine falling off the wing severed the hydraulic lines and caused a partial power failure which meant that the slats retracted on the one wing and the warning indicators both for stall and asymmetric slats did not work. The crash might have been avoidable given hindsight but I would not call it pilot error by any stretch of the imagination and again according to the Wikipedia article neither did the NTSB.
Inspecting the tail fins, and the top of the fuselage is far easier, quicker, and cheaper with a drone.
I agree that it might be easier, quicker and cheaper with a drone. However I don't really care. As a passenger I'm far more interested in whether it is just as effective as spotting problems as the human eyeballs it replaces. On the plus side images can be zoomed and you might see more detail than a human eye. On the downside the image is probably not going to be 3D and it sounds like the person taking the pictures with the drone will not be the engineer who inspects them.
Well, except when the smoke detector catches fire, like in a fire.
In that case if you are still around then clearly the beeping did not wake you up so perhaps the sound of the exploding battery might. See, it's really just an extra safety measure.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire