Are there not sands that are a fine enough grain that they can be used instead? That would at least mean we're putting something that is commonly found in the water back in it instead of plastic microbeads.

Psssh... only high school and college? How about politics and big businesses?

You keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means. Now according to the summary millenials started being born in 1981. In a few more articles, millenials will start encompassing those who were born in 1975 or later...

Ya know, lots of written languages in the world have no cursive equivalent. Those folks seem to do quite well without that b.s. "important to the development of young brains" cursive writing. In fact, many of them seem to do much better than we do with our dying cursive (haven't used it myself in over 2 decades).

Blaming the microwave is like blaming a car for making somebody fat. I use my microwave all the time - to heat up pre-made homemade meals that I divide out into single servings and freeze...

Forgot to add that the kid that wasn't vaccinated was a child of antivaxxers, and was in the ER for... wait for it... MEASLES.

"1. If I send the kid to private school, I still must pay school taxes -- so I get dinged twice, once for the tax bill and again for the private school tuition"

And if you have no kids, you still pay property taxes for other kids to go to school. What's your point? I smell a lot of entitlement in your post. Even if the tide does turn eventually for home-schooled kids, unless those kids are locked up in a subterranean dungeon somewhere, they will and do interact with society. I don't want to have to take an infant to the ER again to be exposed to the kid whose parent didn't vaccinate them for measles (yes, I *have* had that wonderful experience). Measles is highly contagious and an infant isn't fully immunized against measles yet.

...you are HIV Alladeen...

"they have an obligation to their shareholders to make as much ROI as possible."

I get sick to my stomach every time I read this bullcrap. ROI is not simply just cash. ROI can be a lot of things, including the improving of the quality of life for the workers, or the areas in which the company operates. Since nobody has the balls to fight the "it's only the green" mentality, we all get fucked in the end.

Ok, so let me get this straight. Society at large *still* judges men based upon how much bacon we bring home. Society still expects us to be the primary bread winners in the household. Except for anecdotes, there is huge pressure for men to fulfill this role... and now not only do male tech workers, who if they are in their 30's or older were likely ostracized, ridiculed, or harassed on their way through k-12 to earn this spot, now not only have to compete against H1B's, but also against the very same women who will still very likely judge men, even on a subconcious level, by how much bacon we bring home? This is a bandage on a wound that requires stitches. The whole foundation needs to be ripped up and our society first has to deal with these other issues before we start pushing more women to this job because there's not enough vaginas there, and we need to push more men into these fields because there's not enough penises there, and for some reason penises and vaginas as somehow vital to occupations that aren't strip clubs or sex work...

And how do you propose to accomplish this? I'm sure that the gov't would be just happy to stamp those permission-to-land-a-gyrocopter-on-capitol-hill forms in a heartbeat...

What "better" way would that be? Seems to me guy's got balls of steel or is mentally unstable.. I'm going with the former, and I think I'll contribute to his needs-stronger-underwear-to-hold-his-steel-balls fund. :-)

The fear of our internet becoming like that provided by Smart and Globe in the Philippines, where every other month there is a special payola deal where visiting Facebook or using Viber or whatever does not count against your quotas. It's not like these things we fear don't already exist out there in the wild...

Sure you do if their policies are what led to this being unnecessarily possible. Why do the call centers need access to the full social security number? Why not the first two and last two digits or something like that? Surely these weren't the sales call centers - Americans in general tend to not like speaking to sales people with accents.

The Retail Equation is what a number of big retailers in the USA use (i.e. Victoria's Secret). Even if you show up with the original receipt in hand and are just asking to do a like-item exchange for a different size, they demand to scan your gov't issued photo id. They will refuse your exchange unless you capitulate or try to dispute the purchase with your credit card company.

If there was ever a legitimate use for a fake id, this is it.