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Here, have some statistics.
http://contentcat.fhsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15732coll4/id/456
Click the "Academic Achievement and...." link on the side.

Every graph you will find on the topic will show, in order of performance,
Public Schools
Private schools
Homeschools / Catholic schools (I forget which performs best)

If you really want to be lazy,
Good old wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Research

This one is a goodie-- its in a peer reviewed journal, shows the full demographic breakdown, and indicates that 65% of homeschool families in 2007-2008 spent less than $900 on schooling (compared to the average $9000 /pupil in public schools)-- a full quarter spent only $200-400. It also indicates that in all tests the students on average achieved 84th and above percentile.
http://contentcat.fhsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15732coll4/id/456 (pick "Academic achievement and.....")

If you need more, you should really just google "homeschool achievement". This isnt even news, youre just trolling at this point.

Take a look at the Department of Informatics at Fort Hays State University - you can take all of the courses (at both undergrad and graduate level) online to complete a degree. It is not one of those curriculum sets you can just ace - it is a challenging set of courses which encompass internetworking, web development, media studies, and information assurance. You can pick your specific concentration, but you will still get to see a little bit of everything. This is one of the best programs in the country for updated networking and web curriculum. It is both a Cisco Networking Academy and an NSA Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance. You can work toward you CCNA/CCNP/CISSP if that is the direction you'd like to take, or you can work toward an advanced degree in web development. I know these classes are quality because I have taken them - the internetworking series of classes were the most difficult classes I have ever taken. I loved the challenge and the connections you gain with classmates from around the world are invaluable. http://www.fhsu.edu/informatics/ Thanks for posting and good luck!

"Sports teach leadership and teamwork,"

Thats a myth. There can only be one leader in a team and most kids just want to play and have fun anyway, they're not interested in having an outdoors team building workshop with balls despite what some team coaches seem to think. When I was at school there was nothing worse than having some teacher take the sports too seriously as it just spoiled the fun. In the end I got sick of team sports altogether because of the borderline psychotic behaviour of some of the sports staff.

You are half right. The link between sports participation and leadership skills has been shown generally to be a myth, however there have been links between sports participation and teamwork. For a citation, look at page 224 of this pdf from the Journal of Leadership Education.

Additionally, I call [citation needed] on your reasoning for why sports do not build leadership. Maybe there can only be one leader in a team for most sports, but I would argue this is not a universal truth -- you could easily play a modified game of capture the flag where there are still 2 teams, but participants are broken up into "squads" of 3, with each squad having its own leader. Furthermore, if you choose sports with relatively small teams and then rotate leaders, everyone will get a decent exposure to being in the leadership role. You create a false dichotomy between "just playing and having fun" on the one side versus "having an outdoors team building workshop with balls" on the other. The study I linked provides some interesting conjectures about the disconnect between the perception that sports builds leadership and the reality, and mostly what I got from it actually agrees with your last couple statements -- the problem could well be that sports staff don't know how to properly make the sports environment a valuable leadership- and teamwork- promoting experience, and thus focus on promoting athletics to the detriment of possible leadership and teamwork promotion.

Someday when you've been banished to the most mundane drive in the USA (I-70 through western Kansas and eastern Colorado), make a stop in Hays, KS, and visit the Sternberg Museum of Natural History. They have an incredible collection of fossils (many from the same Kansas regions which produced the marine fossils being auctioned off from Gove, Logan counties) and some robotic big boys (like a reactionary T-Rex) to keep the kids happy. http://www.fhsu.edu/sternberg/ You can also check out the world famous "fish-in-a-fish" exhibit, very cool stuff. For an hour or two, you'll completely forget how hideous the rest of your 4 1/2 drive to KC or Denver is looking.

medireview , anybody?

Language is something funny. Even if you write your filter in a way to take into account word boundaries, you still have the problem of same words meaning different things in different contexts. Ironically, dirty words are more prone to this that polite conversation. I'd find it funny to read that certain academic institutions award summa ejaculate laude honors...

Hays, KS: Sternberg Museum of Natural History
http://www.fhsu.edu/sternberg/.

Hutchinson, KS: Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center
http://www.cosmo.org. "With a U.S. space artifact collection second only to the National Air and Space Museum and the largest collection of Russian space artifacts found outside of Moscow, the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum is uniquely positioned to tell the story of the Space Race. By focusing on the human story of space exploration and punctuating that story with one of the finest collections of international space artifacts in the world the Museum places space exploration in a broad historical context and presents the story of the Space Race in a way that no other museum in the world can."

Kansas City, MO: Linda Hall Library
http://www.lindahall.org. "The Linda Hall Library, opened in 1946 is the largest privately endowed science, engineering and technology library in the world." I work at Linda Hall, so I'm a little biased, but we really do have tons of journals, monographs, and rare books on just about every geek topic you can think of. :)
...brig

The single biggest problem is that Interstate 70 (which runs across the northern section of the state) goes through some of the most MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING terrain I've ever seen, and since that is how most people who cross the state see it they form an unjustified opinion.

Most of Kansas used to be inland see, millenia ago. Hence the flatness - the ocean bottom deposited uniformly across the state.

However, IF you are going to be going through Kansas, let me give you some pointers on where to go:

Southeastern section: Go see Big Brutus in West Mineral, KS.. If you have any interest in mechanical engineering you'll love this.

South Central: The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center has the best collection of Russian space hardware outside Russia itself, as well as US gear. They were the first to be made a Smithsonian partner, and that was as much so that the Smithsonian could gain access to the Cosmospere's collection as the other way around. Hutchinson, KS - and if you were planning on going across on I-70 I's suggest you drop down on I-35 (throught the Flint Hills)to US-50 then across into Hutch. Stop by Yoder, KS and get some Cinnamon Rolls at the Carriage Crossing Restaurant.
If you are going towards New Mexico, drop down and take I-160 from Medicine Lodge through the Gypsum Hills. There IS scenery in Kansas - we just don't run our major roads through it.

North West: If you are heading to Denver, you pretty much have to take either I-70 or K-96. If you are on I-70, stop through Quinter, KS and see Castle Rock, a natural formation akin to the Badlands in South Dakota.
Also, you can go to Monument Rocks which is a similar sort of geography.
Also on I-70 in Hays, KS is the Sternberg Museum of Natural History which will be a hit with any parent of children who are interested in dinosaurs.

...one in Sweden has Pluto 300km from the Sun.

A slightly larger one is in Kansas with pluto being 219 miles (352km) from the center.

If you really are a hawk bug -- as you claim -- then it's probably quite safe as -- in my experience -- no one messes with a hawk bug.

Having a hack for the iPod would be an excellent solution to last-minute tracks (for those of us that produce) and more convenient than CD's. I often play in venues where there are no DJ-oriented CD units; just Technics 1200's. I love my vinyl, but this would be excellent for extending my repertoire at live events.

Picture of a 5 Euro bill, 10 Euro bill, 1 Euro coin

They are pretty cool looking.