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).