Were any of you in band? There was a "first chair" idea. Essentially, the best people were ranked highest. Skill was determined anonymously. At any time, you were able to improve or lose rank.

Why can't we simply do something like this in all subjects? The best brains are all grouped together and given the most attention. If anyone in that group can't keep up, they drop down to the next group down. If anyone in the lower group wants to improve, and is able to, they're welcome to.

Why can't we implement something like this, if we really want to be competitive in the world. Yes, it would hurt the feelings of the kids that weren't in the top group, but only if we keep telling everyone (starting at birth) that you can be anything you want to be. (I want to be a world-class sprinter, but I don't think that's going to happen no matter how much I work on it.)

The pace being slow isn't necessarily the fault of the teacher, it's the fault of our expecting the best minds to be grouped with the middle minds.

I know it's bad form to post on just signatures, but I just had to point out the relationship of the P and GP's signatures.

GP:What will happen when no one will loan Congress any more money?
P:I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.

Due to the cost and limited use, I chose not to store the cord blood. I also saw the donation option and thought that an interesting and fair middle ground would be for the donation centers to pay for the processing, and in return, you keep rights to the blood for X years. After that time, they take ownership of it. I just figured that if they really had use for it, they could cover the costs using economies of scale, and I would still have the option to use the blood if needed. Everyone would end up better off.

I prefer disks to DLC. There are many reasons to prefer a disk too. For me, I can move the game to either of my 360's without being online. Or, if I don't like the content, I can sell it or give it away.

I agree that the disk swapping sucks, but they could work around that easily enough by making you do it just once a month (to verify you still have the disk).

Of course, the real reason they won't offer $50 DLC is that when most people spend that kind of money, they want something to have and to hold -- a new game package.

I agree with you. You easily have enough time to read everything and understand it. Just signing whatever someone gives you is begging for trouble.

When I sat down to close on my first house, they brought in that stack of papers and a couple of pens. The lady from the title company immediately flipped to the first signing spot and slid the packet to me.

I closed the packet and started reading on page one. The lady looked incredulously at me. After I read the first page and flipped to the second, she huffed and asked me, "Are you going to read that entire thing?".

My response to her was, "Only the parts I'm supposed to sign." (To those who don't know, you end up signing or initialing just about every page.)

I've worked 9/80's for a couple of years. They're great! It's nice to have a weekday off because you can easily get through a weekend's errands in a day because of the lower crowds, and in my case, no kids to slow me.

As for management respecting the day -- that's like any off-day. You have to enforce it yourself. I've been asked to work on my 9/80 day, and never had a problem agreeing to it. I just swapped it for a different day. Management loved my flexibility (in when I took a day off).

Absolutely right!!! It's not Nintendo's fault at all!!! Obviously it's a design flaw with the TV, as my Wii was made to use with the TV. Heck, the TV even has matching pluggy-things that the Wii fits into. Coincidence!? I think not.

Once one of my 3 kid breaks the TV, I'll be suing the maker of the TV.

Ps, nice to meet you MrSmith. It's always nice to meet someone slower than I am. It only took me 3 kids to figure out what was causing them. ;)

I have kids and proudly side with all of those "pretty goddamn horrible parent"-types. I teach my kids to be more careful by not enabling them to get a free replacement by being careless. Your point is that accidents happen and we will give exemptions for them. In my household, accidents happen and you learn to be more careful so that they don't happen again.

More simple example: Yes Son, you dropped your ice cream. Take it as a lesson that next time you have an ice cream, you'll stop running around with it (and reduce the likelihood of an accident). For now, you get to clean up the ice cream mess too.

In a grown up example: I buy a nice sports car. I then speed down the road with it and have an accident. I don't declare "accidents happen!" and replace it. I change my behavior and slow down, watch for cross traffic, and generally drive more safely.

Of course, I don't believe in luck or fate either. I follow Samuel Goldwyn's quote, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

Walmart doesn't really take a check anymore. They process it as a debit so it's immediately taken from your account.

I noticed this when the lady before me in line started to freak out. She had just bought a cartload of stuff and handed the clerk the check. About 30 seconds later, the cleck handed it back and the lady looked really confused. The clerk then explained that they now immediately take the money out of the account using the account number. At this point the lady started to really freak out as she was apparently relying on the check's float so her other checks would clear.

Anyhow, that's how I initially learned about it. So yeah, Walmart is happy to take a check from someone with no credit - they just hand you the check back a moment later.

I know that this will be taken as a troll-post for any Obama advocate, but that's not my intent. I feel this way for all of our representatives.

My mother taught me that actions speak louder than words. That means to me that when you stated his action, "he only voted for it", then it was much more important than his words "he doesn't support this".

My real problem with your post is your acceptance of Christmas Tree Bills. I personally feel those are a crime because it allows our reps to slide anything they want into law without being able to be blamed -- after all, "I 'only voted for it as part of a larger bill, feeling that the benefits of having it pass outweighed the down side.'"

You're exactly right. It's the same as the lesson Niemoller wrote in "First they came..."

Our politicians have learned from history and strive to avoid the public's wrath though. They've learned that as long as you take rights away from one group at a time, the whole of the group won't retaliate.

This was a lesson learned in the US previously. Take the traditional example of the Boston Tea Party. Despite the Brits raising taxes bit by bit on small groups, the increase of a tax that impacted everyone - a tax on tea drinkers - incited violent rebellion.

Had the Brits not levied a tax on everyone, we'd still be speaking English!! ;)

"who cares about a piece of metal on your finger?" There are actually a lot of people that care and want you to have a piece of metal on your finger. It means that the person wearing it -- if they accept -- wants no string attached. Worst case, they say no. Or so I hear...

Of course, there's also the logic that "all the good ones are taken" so you go after one of them. If they weren't flawed, they'd be married already, right?

The most likely way that they can raise awareness is by suing a large country. If they were to sue the US government for providing an environment which encourages companies to pollute in, they could then collect for damages in the form of a replacement parcel, or enough money to buy a replacement parcel. Granted they would likely lose their country due to eminent domain, but they would gain awareness and money in the meanwhile.

Ps - I'm not trolling by saying the Gvt is encouraging it, that's just how I would phrase the lawsuit.

While I certainly do not disagree with you, you're simply arguing scale. Using the "massive impact" tactic, I would counter with saying that the bailout of CC would be minimal in cost. To the employees of either company, they see the same effects.

The better and more sensible argument to make would be that mismanagement caused CC to fail; but then the same would be said of AIG. Of course, I haven't heard of any executive packages for CC execs. Perhaps we should simply bailout all of the smaller companies in the country instead of the massive ones.