Having homeschooled one college honor student from birth though high school I'd like to weigh in...

Homeschooling does NOT require any special training or education in education. If you can read and do simple math, all you need is a determination. The hard part is teaching kids to read and despite how daunting that may sound to a new parent, it's really simple. Learn your letters, learn their sounds, then start making words. It just takes repetition and if you keep at it with the kids, reading comes easy once they are old enough. Teaching kids to write is not hard, nor is math. These days there are curriculums that you can buy that will have everything you need which are turn key, just follow the schedule they give you. Some come as video with teachers doing the teaching while your kid watches. It can be as easy or as involved as you want it to be as a parent.

Neither my wife or I have any formal training in education (I'm an electrical engineer, she has 2 years of college) and we are 2 years from being totally done with our two kids. Both kids will get a better education than the public schools would have provided and our oldest (who was our problem student in the school) is an honor student at a local college working on a STEM degree. If we can do this, almost anybody can, trust me.

That's not to say homeschooling is easy all the time, I'm saying that it doesn't take special education or training to be effective. But it does take dedication by the parents to make it work. It can be hard work to push kids to do their school work. It's a daily grind that wears you down and it takes year after year. When you are in the mist of it, it can be frustrating not to see the daily progress for all the effort put in. However, your kids will get a better education than the public school could ever hope to provide. The teacher to student ratio is better, you know your kids better than any other adult and they will benefit from all of these things, while learning to teach themselves, a skill that will benefit them for a lifetime.

For my wife and I the benefits of homeschooling where worth more than she could ever add to our standard of living so she stayed home with the kids. Your mileage may vary of course, but the benefits to children of having a parent at home with them FAR outweigh the benefits of that second income to us. Our kids will be much better off for it.

No but there is an award for those who are stupid enough...

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Man you started out so well... Then slam, you dove into the deep end with all that "Vaccines are dangerous" tripe. All that junk about vaccines being bad is mostly just junk with very little fact and even less science to back it up. Vaccines are safe and effective if given properly to as many people as possible. They prevent sickness, pain and death. Don't fall for the people who are selling you a different story.

Look, the reason to reject such fascist like rules like mandated vaccinations is quite simply freedom. Religious and personal freedom. If a parent has a religious belief (and many religions hold just such views) that say no vaccinations, in a country where religions freedom is a fundamental right, the government simply cannot side step that, even if the future health and welfare of children is at stake. Unless the parenting is an immediate danger to the children (they are being abused or refused necessary medical treatment) the parents must have the right to do what they see fit. It's called freedom, and in this case religious freedom trumps the CDC's wish to vaccinate. Sorry, it just has to. Unless you ascribe to a fascist view, where government rules everything.

That being said, I strongly recommend that parents follow their kid's doctor's advice and vaccinate their children unless they really feel they shouldn't for religious reasons. Vaccinations are safe and effective and prevent much pain and suffering, not just for your child but for other people in the world. They are not without their risk, some do have adverse reactions to them (and I personally know one little girl who will suffer her whole life from having a vaccination), but in the over all accounting they PREVENT pain and death and therefore should be taken.

" or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is the phrase many miss so readily here. The SCOTUS has made it pretty clear that the MINIUM interference with religion possible by government is what the constitution was driving at. In fact, that's what the Hobby Lobby decision was base on...

The depth of your misunderstanding of the constitution is breathtaking.... Do you *really* go for all this fascist interpretations of our founding documents? Dang I hope not.

And electricity doesn't? Around these parts we get the bulk of our electricity from Natural Gas.

Look, natural gas is 100% domestically sourced here in the USA. We export a LOT of the stuff actually, although Natural Gas is difficult to ship compared to other fuels because you generally have to liquefy the stuff to put it onto boats/barges and the like. Piping it is relatively easy though so being domestically sourced it's going to stay cheap as long as supply and demand remain in balance here in the USA, which seems to be pretty much a given right now.

Fracking has taken a once marginal resource and made it profitable to produce at the current price level and we've not yet scratched the surface of the resources we have domestically which are *currently* profitable. Prices going up can only increase the economically viable supplies, which will keep prices in check over the long term. This isn't to say short term spikes in prices are not possible, they are, but any sustained price increase will just spur on more supply development. Prices or Natural Gas will be stable, at least all the indicators point to that, unlike electric and other fossil fuel prices.

The nation's electric supply has been switching from Coal to natural gas for over a decade now. Natural gas is so cheap that even nuclear power has been falling out of favor on price. So the bulk of your electric cars will really be running on Natural Gas anyway. You are just not burning it at the point of power use, but incurring all the losses of the electric grid, the charger and the battery before you get the wheels of the car turning.

So, I highly recommend that we start incentives to move the nation's cars and trucks over to CNG as a motor fuel. In most areas it will be cheaper and emit less CO2 per mile than that electric option. Natural Gas conversions require very little change in internal combustion engines and runs much cleaner. Refueling times are similar to liquid fuels, and existing cars *can* easily be converted for very little coin. EV's are much more costly than this, and have only marginal gains anyway. Just go with CNG, save more.

Which makes my point. Fascist support governments that have far reaching authority over it's citizens lives. Socialism leads to people being fascists because in order to sustain a socialistic government one must advocate for more and more control over individuals lives in order to both collect resources from the people and attempt to put curbs on the spending of resources on individuals which are "less deserving".

Examples of this kind of thinking are out there today on the left. "We spend money on public health care and fat people consume more than their share of resources. Sugar Soda makes people fat so lets put curbs on the size of the cups you can get at 7-11." That's borderline fascist, because you are putting the government in charge of cup sizes, instead of letting the market decide.

The Tea Party's position would be towards less government involvement, less regulation and not supporting health care on the public dime and not making laws about cup sizes either. It would be for lower taxes, less regulation and the government being out of your life when ever possible. This is the exact opposite of being Fascist.

First, we don't know WHY people are switching back, there are other possible reasons. The theory is that with lower gasoline prices, there is less of an incentive to go with an EV, and likely that's true to some extent, but I'd bet that there are other reasons for the move too. EV's are incredibly inconvenient for most of us compared to a traditionally fueled car. They have limited range and long refueling times. Where they are great for daily commutes (Drive 50 miles to work then home and plug it in overnight), they are horrible to road trip in (Drive 200 miles, wait 4 hours [if you can find a rapid charger], repeat until you get someplace).

I'm guessing the bloom is off the EV rose and people are done trying to spend more money to assuage their guilt about harming the earth.

Not around here there isn't.. Even Costco took out their chargers because nobody used them.

The main problem with EV's is range and recharge time. In some areas this is less of an issue, but here in Texas, having 300 miles of range (without running the AC) is going to be a problem for most people. In NYC that might not be a problem because where you want to go is likely a whole lot closer.

After spending THAT much money and not actually making any measureable difference in CO2 output, you'd think that they'd at least save something because the earth isn't being helped here...

Which is why I STRONGLY recommend CNG powered cars... If not 100% CNG, at least bi-fueled cars.

Personally, I drive by two CNG stations every day I go to work. It's the fuel of the future!

So what about people who buy that electric car and find out that their electric rate is going up? Not to mention that the electric car costs more per mile to drive over it's life and is less comfortable, less safe and limited in range.

Personally, I'd advocate moving towards Natural Gas powered cars myself. It's cheap, it's US sourced, and the price is likely to be low for the next decade according to most knowledgeable individuals who project such things. It's the benefit of Fracking....

The Tea Party are Fascists? Fascists believe in a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government. This is totally opposite from what the Tea Party actually supports, which is Smaller Government, less intrusive laws, lower taxes and "getting the government out of your life, business etc. " "Taxed Enough Already" is why they picked "TEA", well that and the relationship to the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Party is decidedly NOT Fascist.

However, Progressives on the radical left ARE much closer to Fascists, at least if you push their view and actions to their logical extent. While they are closer, I'd not go so far as to label them as fascist, at least not yet.

Don't be confused with this idea that the right is where Fascists always live. Where it is true that in the 1930's Fascists where seen as mostly right wing radicals, not all people who are to the right are Fascists.

Then this article is worthless because the benchmark is not measuring anything worth measuring.. But Slashdot tends to be that sometimes.

However, I'm not so sure you are correct. The decompression of textures, while CPU intensive, is not that much of an issue for a modern multicore CPU. (Unless the codec being used was poorly implemented or something).

Ok, automakers want to force me to obey their license terms? WHERE ARE THEY?

I've never had a dealer make me sign a EULA or license terms to use the car they just sold me... Go ahead guys, TRY IT!.

Once you do this, I'm going to review all the software I can find in my car and start looking for Open Source libraries in all that fancy user interface stuff you are providing now and make you comply to the license terms for it all. I have a feeling that we will find that you have some legal problems..

Next they are going to try this on hand tools....