This doesn't surprise me in the least. Various stories have been done on the fact that not only are we living longer, we're healthier as we age. The nineteenth century in particular is rife with forty-somethings suffering from afflictions such as gout, the aftereffects of rickets, or severe arthritis as well as the travails of various malnutrition diseases. At the time Einstein made his quote, the examples presented to his awareness would primarily be those giants of the nineteenth century, as his contemporaries were yet to show their true glory.

So imagine how hard it is to focus when you're dealing with continual pain, and you'll understand quite well that most scientists of the time had to make their contributions before the onset of age-related issues, or their concentration would suffer markedly.

Quick answer: You don't. The American school system is designed for an average student, and he's definitely not average.

In reading the article, it seems as though his parents have come up with a good educational plan: they're keeping him in non-math pursuits at an age-appropriate level and getting special classes and tutoring for the maths and sciences, where he's excelling. Basically, he's half-homeschooled (because homeschooling doesn't just mean the parents as teachers.) They're catering to his needs while looking out for his emotional stability and development.

The American educational system still has enough flexibility to allow parents to do these things. It just does them by allowing the parents to work in parallel to the system rather than within it.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least that a look/feel would be emulated, especially if the designer were idolized. It might even be a sort of design Easter egg, the sort of in-joke that only those in the know would get as funny. Like font jokes, which are only funny if you use the fonts every day.

Social services folks are taught to look for specific types of bruises, not just a highly bruised kid. If a kid has bruises up and down their shins and scraped knees, that's an obvious active kid. Even a black eye by itself doesn't call for suspicion. The types of bruises they look for are the more subtle injuries—bruises on the insides of the arms, or fingerprint bruises (looks like—and is—the result of a digging grab.)

It's also the attitude of the kid. I gave myself a rather spectacular black eye by running into the corner of a wall at home—my second day at a new school. The teacher asked me to do show & tell about it when I got back and it took me years to realize that this was her subtle form of investigation, because no abused kid in the world would give the performance and details of the event that I did. "I fell" or "I ran into a door" is typical for abuse, not "I did this, and this, and this, and then I turned the corner too quickly and BAM, and then my brother started laughing, and so on..."

I am personally very fond of that paint—is it ceramic?—that stays cool in the sun even when it's on top of metal.

Technically, property taxes can be raised every year, but the amount they can be raised is limited to a percentage of the valuation at time of sale. And I'd blame a certain NIMBY-ism in areas that are way overvalued (Marin County, anyone?) You're certainly right about the building regulations.

Though IIRC, property tax revenue is currently about 200 times the increase in population as relative to 1977 values, which is one reason I despise politicians who use Prop. 13 for an excuse for our failing schools. They've had more than three decades to adjust; the fact that it's gotten worse as they spend money on every pet cause they can think of instead of education, public safety, and infrastructure is not the fault of the voters who were trying to fix something that was clearly broken (as evidenced by folks in other states slammed by the recent housing bubble in regards to their property tax valuations.)

The problem is that unlimited development—one of the ways Texas has kept its housing prices down—isn't necessarily the best idea in California. Either you have building up on arable land—not a good idea for an agricultural powerhouse—or on a floodplain (they're often both for a reason), or you have development in nasty areas that no one really wants to live in (Salton Sea.) This makes those folks living in areas that are actually desirable price their houses in the silly range, and they think their house actually deserves it.

I know that at least one buggy whip manufacturer saw the writing on the wall and went into another braided-cord technology—high test fishing line. You know, for swordfish and other large sea game. They're still around, and tout this change on their website.

So technology gets rid of jobs and doesn't replace them? You say this on a website, created by people on software created by people on hardware designed and built by people. You do this with your computer which was designed by people and assembled by robots which were designed by people.

Heck, my job as a Photoshop manipulator for a photography studio didn't exist ten years ago.

In other words, you may want to rethink your premise.

"They decided to tie their hardware and software together, forcing the end user to buy their hardware - at a drastically increased initial investment cost"

This is because Apple is primarily a hardware provider, something people seem to forget. The software is a loss leader to sell the hardware.

This sort of problem is one of the reasons I hold the radical view that the federal government should not be involved in education (beyond some basic standards saying what an eighth-grade diploma or high school diploma consists of.) It's too far away from the issue and there's way too much involved; the ONLY way that the feds can get any information is to reduce it to a basic level. Which means "one size (doesn't) fit all" education, and we all know that means rote, rote, rote.

Here's my idea: Trust the teachers. Sure, make it so you can swap your kids around a bit easier, but give the teachers the authority to go with their responsibility. Every teacher I know bemoans the amount of time spent teaching to the test. My friend the English teacher would love to be allowed to teach novels before spring. My SiL would like to tailor her education to the wide variety of elementary students she has. My BiL would like to be able to spend time explaining why an education is important because of the students he has from a culture that doesn't value education at all. But with one test after another, they have to spend all of their time trying to meet the deadlines.

I used to be one the side of "big athletics don't do much for a school." And then it happened to my school— I went to Gonzaga, and my senior year they did the NCAA March Madness blitz that took them to the Elite Eight and taught the nation to pronounce it properly. (Gone-ZAG-uh, as in "zig zag.")

The year after that, they took all of the dorms that had been converted to office space and changed them back to dorms. And they rented a wing of a hotel to use as freshman dorm space as well. When I visited the campus two years later, they'd put up a number of new buildings and were making improvements to the engineering and chemistry buildings. Now— a decade later— the footprint of the campus is roughly twice what it was, though the campus had owned much of the land before. (It had mostly been houses that the campus rented out; now there's more dorm space and other buildings.)

The population of campus isn't actually too much higher— about a third again, maybe 4000 undergrads. But the facilities improvement has been immense... and it's all because of the basketball team.

So— as close to a scientific study as you can get, before and after— it seems that a winning team CAN be really good for the rest of the school. I'm sure it can go the other way, but don't discount the power of sports.

Gahh, it stripped a character. It should read More taxes != (does not equal) shrinking national debt.

Just imagine how much MORE national debt we would have if the government had another source of revenue. More taxes shrinking national debt when the budget has little or nothing to do with the revenue stream, except that Congress takes the idea of more money and spends it twice over.

The districts in California are horribly drawn, hence the recent proposition that appoints a non-legislative group to draw the lines. I, personally, would have preferred a simple computer system with a limited number of rules (such as "make the shortest possible outlines" and "follow natural boundaries such as rivers and highways when possible") and required NO input as to voting registration, racial demographics, etc. But I'll take this system. The results won't be obvious until after the lines are redrawn as a result of this year's census but with any luck we'll get districts that are less gerrymandered.

Since it's radio, the opportunity cost is much lower, and he does, in fact, have a number of advertisers. Local nurseries and gardening products.

This also broadcasts on a Sunday morning, which is the old fogey timeslot anyway.

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