The 'no shit' will continue with soccer players' brains next.

I feel like society wants me to feel bad for these men playing a child's game for millions of dollars. To me the football brain damage 'revelation' is similar to the 'revelation' that smoking isn't good for you and may cause cancer.

In ye olde England, Stone Soup was the first 'crowd sourcing' project. Whenever I read these 'first' summaries all I think is the shoulders of giants, this one experiment.

OT: I have a friend who lives in St. Louis and will only recycle once the city of St. Louis lowers it's murder rate. He just wants the random murder rate lowered. Getting murdered affects his long term outlook more than making sure he recycles.

In addition, the U.S. should stop subsidizing it's farmers. Having to compete with a country that pays for over production is very tough.

Forget video. Just post a transcript of the interview to Slashdot and a link or embed the youtube video. I really enjoy being able to read the TED talks because I can't stand watching most of the videos. I like reading because it's faster than listening to some one pause between concepts.

Good question. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

I haven't checked the fact checker.

Tax money spent on government education has more than doubled on a per pupil basis in the last 30 years.

In K-12 education, no results have been seen since the customer, guardians, have no involvement in the pricing, i.e. tuition, pay. This leads to a lack of quality, since the customer is told to take the product, education, as is or pay an exorbitant amount of money, private schooling.

Colleges are a mess due to the ridiculous subsidizing that occurs with their customer. The more customers the college gets the more funding, government loans, the college gets. This drives prices skyward.

I'd say banning printing presses and burning books is in general a bad sign. Partially defunding schools without making alternatives available is worse than continuing to fund them. I say demonize the whole failed government education system. Teachers' unions are part of the failed government education system that perpetuates the ideas that only the government can educate children.

The government complains about plenty of things in which it's already heavily involved. The last thing those sectors need is the government to start helping.

The main issue with the public school system is the lack of feedback from the consumer. Taxes for schooling leaves the consumer, i.e. parents, out of the loop. Parents become complacent and in a lot of areas see schools as a daycare. If the parent's money is being spent, there will be a lot more interaction with the school and the child. An open voucher system would be a good way to hold schools accountable. This way the tax dollars would follow the student.

Is there lack of preschools where you live? Usually, the answer is no. Why? There are very few if any tax funded programs for preschools. This allows for a myriad of choices, i.e. price ranges, for consumers. Competing with another business is difficult. Competing with a business which has tax funding and offers the product for "free" is very difficult. The business which is not tax funded must show quality and charge an absorbent amount of money compete with free. Phasing out tax funded schooling would allow private school tuition to normalize over time.

Lastly, grin because you might think this is ridiculous, roll back some child labor laws and mandatory schooling laws. Some people just don't have what it takes to progress further than McDonalds. (Although, I was told at Occupy Portland that "Any one can be a doctor with enough schooling." This gem as well "A garbage man and a surgeon should be paid the same.") Some people also don't have to know more than grade school math and social facts to get through life. This might also open people up to having more children because all I see coming out of a womb is 15 years of my money, your money too if the kid goes to public school, going down the hole.

I have been ranting about a 13 month year to my coworkers for about a year now. 12 months would have 28 days. The last month would have 29 days. Every leap year the last month would have 30 days. A lot of companies would be giving an extra day of vacation every four years.

8a. I think people should be given the option to opt out of Social security (but not the full tax) and it should be illegal for them to be re-admitted later for any reason (including disability). My guess is less than 1% of Americans would even opt out, even the most vocal critics are likely to not opt out.

The government pays out Social Security (SS) benefits based upon how much you paid into the system. You're supposed to be paying for yourself not others. To still require those who opt out to pay into SS is unjust.
 
Would businesses still have to pay the other 7.5% of SS per employee who opted out?
 
OT - Do you find it a bit ridiculous you have to enroll in a federal retirement program (SS) to file your federal taxes?