What JSTOR especially provides, and part of what Aaron was reaping wholesale, was its organization and links, basically the indexing and cross-indexing. _That_ is what makes JSTOR so useful, and what people pay JSTOR for: the breadth and searchability of the data.

This is not true. All of this existed before JSTOR. For example, the big databases for mathematics back in the day were SilverPlatter and then MathSciNet. JSTOR is just a small evolutionary step above these, which publishers starting using for convenience. It was never some amazing revolutionary tool. Essentially everything on JSTOR shows up in a Google search anyway.

If you are woman or minority that got into tech through Codeschool and the like, you won't be working in my shop.

If you even have a "shop", you might consider hiring someone to filter you careless comments. Taken by itself, this statement suggests you discriminate against women and minorities, but not white men. If you really meant to exclude everyone who "got into tech through Codeschool and the like", you would have said so, right? I see you clarified your statement below, but from the perspective of a potential investor in your company, I hope you agree this is not a good way to get your point across.

...In relation to programming, stat is very nearly worthless...

Have you ever needed to make an informed choice of pseudo- (or quasi-) random number generator? The first 200 pages of Knuth volume 2 (Seminumerical Algorithms) is highly enlightening for programmers, in my opinion, and reads better if you know the standard statistical distributions. Also, the more you know, the more likely it is for you to establish important relationships between concepts which are seemingly unrelated. People seem to miss this as the dumbing down of education continues...

Everybody says this. It has been repeated hundreds of times on Slashdot. And it is just wrong. Fuzzy text looks fuzzy whether you're 2 inches away or 2 feet away. You might not be able to see individuals pixels, but you can clearly see the resolution is not sufficiently high to allow clear and crisp font rendering. I'm over 40 and my eyesight is worse than most people, but I sure as hell know that zooming out does not make a fuzzy picture look smooth.

Some people would rather spend their taxes on charities than the war effort, even if it costs more money to do so. I suppose you could call this "altruism", but some just consider it the lesser of two evils, the "evil" being spending money at all, not donating to charity.

The insightful part is realizing that healthcare availability provides more "economic freedom", as the libertarians like to call it. The part about Republicans hating it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Republicans love or hate it, freedom is freedom.

I think Obamacare will do one really big thing that truly scares the Republican Party. It will free up millions of smart people to be self-employed, who formerly stayed in the corporate world.

Insightful comment of the year!

I don't know the rules in Virginia, but can't he run as a third-party candidate in the general election, just like Lieberman did?

Of course, now the best teachers will flock to the poorest schools since they no longer have job security. It's about time! I refuse to work for any Wall Street firm which gives year-end bonuses. How can you attract the best and brightest by making the job more attractive? That's insane.

In real life, the opposite is true, unfortunately. Even without tenure, incompetent teachers will never get fired, UNLESS they either get active in union politics or express mildly controversial opinions. An obedient drone who doesn't do his job is nevertheless an obedient drone, and thus is not threatening to administrators.

However, in a public school at the primary or secondary level, what new and contentious ideas are expressed?

Another example: Instead of participating in "social promotion", an 8th grade math teacher fails 50% of his class since none of them can add fractions. The principal considers this outrageous since the students have been taking lousy math courses their entire lives and deserves a break. The teacher disagrees, and is aware of state (California) law which says teachers have the final say in grades, unless there is an error in computing the grade, or fraud. The principal fires the teacher, since such teachers can not and do not exist in the public school system here.

Your example shows that if a knowledgable person takes a single student under their wing, the student might thrive. Now, imagine yourself in front of a classroom full of 30 students, most of whom are totally uninterested in your field. Do you have the same amount of time to commit to that one student who is really interested? You can't compare yourself to "bad" teachers, for you might be a bad teacher yourself under the same circumstances. Anyone can be a great teacher to one bright, really interested student.

Nonsense. It's not unheard of that an unscrupulous principal tries to fire a teacher who makes his incompetence evident via simple free speech.

However, in a public school at the primary or secondary level, what new and contentious ideas are expressed?

That's easy. A 3rd grade math teacher insists on his students memorizing multiplication tables. The principal disagrees, saying "drill and kill" is just outdated, and the students must use calculators instead. The teacher ignores the principal, who knows nothing of mathematics instruction. The teacher is put on leave for insubordination, and eventually fired.

Nonsense. If your reason for the existence of tenure is valid, then K-12 teachers need it much more that university professors. K-12 teaching is ALL politics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have no experience in education.