I find http://feedbin.me/ to be pretty good. Certainly hasn't required me to get a Google+ account and it is free software (with an account on the main hosted instance available for $20/year)

There are various sites that have done this in the past, I'm sure someone has mentioned them above.

What I've not seen anyone mention yet is https://www.gittip.com/

Gittip basically lets you set up weekly payments of like $1 or more to a person who does something, like, say, maintains some free software. If you are prepared to do that, it's a great way to support developers because, at its best, it would a regular income.

I don't really know whether Gittip will amount to much, but at least it's a new take on the "funding free things" problem rather than a rehash of something that has been done several times before, which "bribe.io" appears to be.

I didn't get that from the article at all. The word "fault" doesn't turn up once. Nobody is trying to pretend that you can eat lots of food and lose weight. Pretty much the entire article is about factors other than overeating that can contribute to being overweight, so I don't see how you can think that the author doesn't spend enough time discussing "why" in there.

This post contains a fairly fundamental contradiction. We do teach reading and writing for the sake of reading and writing, initially -- children don't hold off learning to use a pen until they have a specific sentence in mind. It's taught from the basic principles (this is an "A") and taken for granted that in later life it'll be useful. Programming could probably be taught in the same way and at the same sort of stage of development in the mid future. It cannot be learned on the hoof the first time someone tries to make a computer do something that hasn't been done before, though, which seems to be what the article is suggesting.

Was providing satellite imagery of the entire world to a level where I can make out the plants in my garden, and then providing street view for every single road in my country something that was done by a startup and then bought by Google? Or is something anyone could do with a weekend and a camera mounted on their car?

Yes you can. You need either -
  a Windows system and unetbootin: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
  or, an Ubuntu system with usbcreator: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#usb-creator%20(Windows%20or%20Linux)

I used unetbootin on Windows and it's a very well-made program, no problems at all.

"1) We are not running out of land to build houses on."

True, but I don't particularly want to live in a country that doesn't have the capacity to feed itself.

...with taxpayer money.

Want to make money? Play live.

I would put money on you having never tried to make money playing live.

Just to note your scalping solution, Glastonbury Festival in the UK actually implements that solution, because at one point 150,000 tickets would sell out within a couple of hours of being released and would mosty go to touts. Since I think last year you've needed to register a photo before you buy a ticket and they are non-transferrable.