I had Convergence Insufficiency and poor eye tracking, which made concentrating on reading extremely difficult. Maddeningly few optometrists bother to check for it. The website directs you to docs who do. Eye fatigue can present in really non-obvious ways.
Sitting further away from your monitor helps. Close to 3 feet if your eyes allow. Look away now and then. Take breaks. Keeping your eyes fixed at a 2 foot distance for hours is bad.
Anything with synthetic food additives is Bad News for your brain. Most are petroleum derivatives (toxic). Yellow #5 in Mountain Dew is a big one. Add aspartame, which is nasty stuff, and extreme acidity that wipes out your bicarbonate stores, and you've got a really nasty chemical cocktail. Regular Dew just substitutes liver-stressing and obesity-causing HFCS for brain-damaging aspartame.
Getting all synthetics out of my diet was one of the best things I've done. Drink water, cut out processed foods, ease up on refined sugar. Some people have even cured their ADHD this way. THEN work on exercise.
the National Security Agency is 'a secretive, hidebound culture incapable of keeping up with innovation,
Yeah, right. That's why the NSA-proprietary software actually works and the rest of the DoD is "innovating" by wasting billions of dollars on contractor-developed software that doesn't work. Maybe he thinks innovation means cutting off USB ports like the Army has done?
And Lee just happens to work (or have worked) for such contractors. Gee, what a coincidink...
to diagnose Convergence Insufficiency. It's an incredibly simple eye problem, should have been caught in grade school but wasn't. Anyone who's having trouble keeping their mind focused while reading should get tested. I drove myself crazy, thinking I had ADD (that catch-all for "brain no work good"), until I stumbled across this. It might have been tolerable to ignore CI before we all started staring at computer screens all day and could easily get high paying jobs that didn't require serious reading, but now it's not and it's worth the cost of an optometrist's exam that you're likely overdue for anyhow. The CI website will direct you to doctors who know what to check.
The Kindle DX reads.pdf's natively, which was enough to get me to order one. I have a lot of eBook.pdf's purchased from Pragmatic, Manning, Packt, etc. who long ago figured out that the most effective DRM is simply embedding the purchaser's name in the files.
A quick Google search shows that there are.chm to.pdf converters available. I have some old Microsoft eBook's in that format, now that you mention it.
Now that I'm acutely aware of eye strain problems, Kindle's e-ink screen looks like a really good idea. So the voices in my head agreed to call the Kindle DX a medical and educational device and authorized the purchase.
Convergence Insufficiency is often misdiagnosed as ADD and you're 3x as likely to have it if you have ADD/ADHD. It's a very common eye disorder that makes reading and other "near work" difficult, causes the mind to tire quickly from visual stress, etc. Most people with CI go undiagnosed because people didn't used to sit in front of computers all day and for some reason the average optometrist only cares about moving you towards 20/20 vision and doesn't take 2 minutes to check whether your eye muscles are working correctly.
CI usually presents in the mid teens, around 15 for me. It really messes with your head. The CI website can direct you to a clueful optometrist. If you think you have ADD and have trouble with reading in particular, get tested for CI. A few months of vision therapy fixes it.
Getting petrochemical additives out of your diet is a Good Thing too. So's exercise. Both helped me. Most artificial food coloring, preservatives and flavoring are petroleum based and thus toxic. Britain is in the process of banning the stuff. Food allergies and intolerances should be attended to too.
AFTER you've done all that, if you still need help THEN try meds. You may have abnormally low dopamine, etc that stimulants tweak. If you take serious doses of stims and it calms you down, you have geniune ADHD. Most people don't but stims will "help" just about anyone if they can handle the side effects. I wouldn't give stims to children but for adults with decent cardiovascular health, as a last resort, go for it.
So to discourage the development of NSA-proof networks the Obama administration should announce that the RIAA and MPAA have been told that they will no longer be able to sue free P2P sites and users? Or that the definition of "fair use" has been redefined into something more agreeable?
Comcast is rolling out DOCSIS 3, just like the "$20 per house" Japanese company, because they can reuse their existing coax cable. They may have to move the fiber nodes in their fiber/coax hybrid network a little closer to their customers but hey, no big deal. Eventually they'll have to go FTTH but they can get by for now.
Verizon's old telephone copper wire pairs are woefully inadequate for high speed Internet, much less video, so going straight to FTTH and reaping the operational cost savings from their state-of-the-art FiOS network (reliability of fiber, more automated diagnostics, fewer maintenance truck rolls required) makes sense. Fiber optic cable is expensive but it'll last for decades, just like the copper it replaced did. They can own the high-end of the market easily.
AT&T, unfortunately, decided to shoehorn Internet and TV into their existing copper pairs, call it U-verse, and trust that the average stock market analyst and NYT journalist is too ignorant to know what a joke it is. But at least they can reuse their new fiber nodes and settop boxes in the unlikely event that they finish the job and build FTTH.
Somebody smart could build dark FTTH networks and lease them to competing carriers, setting up the company as an old-fashioned dividend paying utility (which would work better were it not for the double taxing of dividends that's killed many a capital intensive American company but I digress). Separating the dumb dark fiber that lasts for decades from service providers' rapidly evolving electronics makes a lot of sense. Municipalities could build them, if they could refrain from the control-freakishness that helped kill UTopia. So could the power companies who already have rights-of-way, or new companies could emerge. But the incumbent carriers seem more interested in suing anyone new than engaging in rational cooperation.
Playing video games and otherwise stressing your near vision can aggravate convergence insufficiency, which causes headaches, makes it hard to stay focused while reading, etc, and can be mistaken for ADD. In fact ADD and CI correlate strongly. You can have "perfect" vision and still have CI. I'm getting my eyes checked soon.
FTA: "It showed aggregated rates of above 0.5Gbps at 500 metres, bonding six lines."
So if you happen to have six unused lines lying around and happen to be within half a kilometer of the fiber node and nothing else goes wrong you could get 500Mbps. Realistically you won't be that close to the node, you won't have that many spare lines, and for the sake of a "consistent user experience" (hi AT&T!) you'll get the same craptastic service that someone at least 1km out with at most two pairs would get.
But some PHB will decide to deploy it because his spreadsheet says that FTTH is too expensive, even if it is a one-time expense, and marketing swears that most people can't tell that their upstream is slow and their HDTV channels have been recompressed into mush. The only people who would notice are the ones who'd buy high-end service tiers if they didn't suck...
I restarted my Netflix subscription a couple months ago so I'd have some Blu-ray discs for my LG BD-ROM drive. Unfortunately, out of the last 8 discs only 1 arrived. I only received a few discs in total, nearly all of them late. Twice Netflix received discs back marked "undeliverable" despite my living in the same condo for 12+ years and having no such trouble with Netflix delivery before. Complaints to US Mail didn't change anything. Returns to Netflix were reliable though. I gave up and shut down the subscription.
THAT'S the reason to build a decent online delivery option. But it'll require decent FTTH networks and lots of regional video servers directly connected to the various ISP networks to do it right. Streaming 40Mbps Blu-ray video is doable under those conditions. DOCSIS 3 might work. Of course, the ISPs would probably try to do everything in-house and screw it up, in the unlikely event they'd build proper networks in the first place (AT&T, grrrr).
Plenty of bacteria, yes, but some strains are better than others and some are outright harmful. Plus there are yeasts, molds, parasites, etc. that good bacteria help to crowd out. All I can tell you is that the first few days on a good probiotic are not pleasant (die off) but afterwards you'll have less gut trouble. You'll want to stop consuming sugar (including fruit) about a week before starting probiotics and keep it up for a week afterwards, maybe two. Right now your balance of good to bad gut flora is decidedly bad.
Splenda is bad too. There are natural no calorie sweetners like Stevia that are OK but the synthetic ones are all evil. They mess with your brain. If there's a Whole Foods Market near you, shop there, it makes it much easier to avoid synthetic crap in your food. Soft drinks irritate your gut and most give you a pretty nasty dose of petrochemicals (artificial colors and flavors) and/or HFCS.
Try one of the better probiotic supplements. Align is the one doctors usually recommend, if they've heard about probiotics at all, but Jigsaw's is more complete. The probiotics sold at most chain stores are worthless.
Go easy on wheat and dairy. Gluten and casein (wheat and dairy proteins) are very hard to digest. Digestive enzyme supplements can help.
Go easy on refined sugar. That feeds all sorts of bad things. Fake sugar (Aspartame) is bad too. Forget about soft drinks.
Better yet, hack their APs and reduce their signal strength to something more agreeable. Change their channel too if necessary. If you're going to be evil, be evil constructively. (Hey, is that Google's new motto? j/k)
Reduce your own AP's radio output too while you're at it, if you can. You're in a frickin' condo, there's no need for every AP to shout.
And it can be used for Combined Heat and Power which would be exceptionally useful here in Michigan. But that's a 65Kw model which would be a wee bit excessive for your average residence. Efficiency and power output goes way down at ambient temps above 70F, which isn't a problem most of the year in Michigan (11F outside now, and this is southern Michigan). A Combined Cooling Heat and Power setup might be neat further south. They look to be louder and way heavier than the Guardian standby gennies too and I probably don't want to know what they cost. They're all poor substitutes for nuclear batteries of course...
innovation that Detroit is, unionize! Because obviously what we need is another layer of bureaucracy to feed.
Resigning from your nitwit employer and starting your own company or working for a startup is scary. Just have your union jack up your wages and benefits. You'll have more money to spend at the bar to dull the pain of working there. What could go wrong?
BTW, anyone wanna buy some Michigan real estate?
BTW2: despite it all, American cars are much better than their reputations suggest. Just don't drive the stripped-down "fleet" cars that the rental agencies buy. Notice how many old Buicks are still on the road. They're a lot cheaper to fix when they do break than foreign brand cars too.
Dark fiber networks, not full-blown ISPs
on
Houses With Tails
·
· Score: 1
TFA wants to build dark fiber networks using the condominium model, not full-blown ISPs. Homeowners pay to have dark fiber run from their homes to a central carrier-neutral point (underground utility vault, etc), competing carriers plug their electronics and fiber uplink into the customer-owned dark fiber, and the Last Mile problem goes bye-bye. The same idea works for a municipal run dark fiber net or even a privately run dark fiber net. The electric company could run it. I don't really care who runs it so long as it gets built!
Four strands per home should provide plenty of options. Internet from company A on one strand, HDTV from company B on another, landline phone service from dinosaur telco C on another, dedicated line from your home office to company WAN using 10GB Ethernet... not that many people will do that but since fiber optic cable should last for many decades it makes sense to overbuild.
Read the articles TFA links to. They provide much more detail.
How about the 2 months per year that laborer is paying in Social Security and Medicare taxes that he may not live long enough to collect on? Some people WANT them to be kept weak and dependent but it's not businessmen.
The best thing we could do is to make it easier to start new (small) businesses. That means simplified tax and regulatory paperwork, low marginal tax rates (small businesses mostly use "pass through" taxation, paying business taxes on their owners personal returns, so "tax cuts for the rich" is mostly tax cuts for small businesses) and a stable dollar (good for everyone). Think of which political party is more agreeable to those things and vote accordingly.
A growing economy increases competition for labor and thus the price of labor. If you merely decree that Other People will pay a "living wage" you hurt growth and the ability to pay that wage. High immigration of unskilled labor suppresses labor costs.
Who gets a higher return on capital: small businessmen or Congress? If you want high growth...
I much prefer the McCain plan. This article does the math: Almost Everywould Would Do Better Under the McCain Plan In short: McCain's plan provides a $2500 refundable tax credit for individuals and $5000 for families to pay for health insurance. If (credit / marginal_tax_rate) > insurance_cost, you come out ahead. If your tax rate is high and you like bloated, expensive full-coverage insurance you might take a hit but for lower tax brackets and especially the working poor it's a huge win. I pay a bit over $1200/year for catastrophic insurance so the $2500 credit would pay for that with money left over to fund a Health Savings Account for my routine expenses. With individuals and families paying for health insurance rather than employers, the portability issue is solved and you're not stuck with whatever your employer decided on. If you buy catastrophic insurance like I do instead of spending $thousands more for full-coverage that pretends to pay your routine bills, you'll be the one deciding which expenses are worthwhile rather than insurance company bureaucrats and there's a LOT less paperwork to deal with. (I'll vouch for Assurant Health, they've been very good about paying my covered expenses.)
Obama has run TV ads slamming the McCain plan as taxing your health insurance while failing to mention the refundable tax credit. It's a very dirty trick, much like how Democrats slam the Flat Income Tax without mentioning the personal and dependent deductions that would shelter the first $50K or so of a family of 4's income.
Of course, the Educational Industrial Complex will never allow it to happen. Yes, a good university education is a good way to pass many of those certifications (including the CPA) but pretending that EVERYONE must go to college is cruel.
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I had Convergence Insufficiency and poor eye tracking, which made concentrating on reading extremely difficult. Maddeningly few optometrists bother to check for it. The website directs you to docs who do. Eye fatigue can present in really non-obvious ways.
Sitting further away from your monitor helps. Close to 3 feet if your eyes allow. Look away now and then. Take breaks. Keeping your eyes fixed at a 2 foot distance for hours is bad.
Anything with synthetic food additives is Bad News for your brain. Most are petroleum derivatives (toxic). Yellow #5 in Mountain Dew is a big one. Add aspartame, which is nasty stuff, and extreme acidity that wipes out your bicarbonate stores, and you've got a really nasty chemical cocktail. Regular Dew just substitutes liver-stressing and obesity-causing HFCS for brain-damaging aspartame.
Getting all synthetics out of my diet was one of the best things I've done. Drink water, cut out processed foods, ease up on refined sugar. Some people have even cured their ADHD this way. THEN work on exercise.
the National Security Agency is 'a secretive, hidebound culture incapable of keeping up with innovation,
Yeah, right. That's why the NSA-proprietary software actually works and the rest of the DoD is "innovating" by wasting billions of dollars on contractor-developed software that doesn't work. Maybe he thinks innovation means cutting off USB ports like the Army has done?
And Lee just happens to work (or have worked) for such contractors. Gee, what a coincidink...
to diagnose Convergence Insufficiency. It's an incredibly simple eye problem, should have been caught in grade school but wasn't. Anyone who's having trouble keeping their mind focused while reading should get tested. I drove myself crazy, thinking I had ADD (that catch-all for "brain no work good"), until I stumbled across this. It might have been tolerable to ignore CI before we all started staring at computer screens all day and could easily get high paying jobs that didn't require serious reading, but now it's not and it's worth the cost of an optometrist's exam that you're likely overdue for anyhow. The CI website will direct you to doctors who know what to check.
The Kindle DX reads .pdf's natively, which was enough to get me to order one. I have a lot of eBook .pdf's purchased from Pragmatic, Manning, Packt, etc. who long ago figured out that the most effective DRM is simply embedding the purchaser's name in the files.
A quick Google search shows that there are .chm to .pdf converters available. I have some old Microsoft eBook's in that format, now that you mention it.
Now that I'm acutely aware of eye strain problems, Kindle's e-ink screen looks like a really good idea. So the voices in my head agreed to call the Kindle DX a medical and educational device and authorized the purchase.
Convergence Insufficiency is often misdiagnosed as ADD and you're 3x as likely to have it if you have ADD/ADHD. It's a very common eye disorder that makes reading and other "near work" difficult, causes the mind to tire quickly from visual stress, etc. Most people with CI go undiagnosed because people didn't used to sit in front of computers all day and for some reason the average optometrist only cares about moving you towards 20/20 vision and doesn't take 2 minutes to check whether your eye muscles are working correctly.
CI usually presents in the mid teens, around 15 for me. It really messes with your head. The CI website can direct you to a clueful optometrist. If you think you have ADD and have trouble with reading in particular, get tested for CI. A few months of vision therapy fixes it.
Getting petrochemical additives out of your diet is a Good Thing too. So's exercise. Both helped me. Most artificial food coloring, preservatives and flavoring are petroleum based and thus toxic. Britain is in the process of banning the stuff. Food allergies and intolerances should be attended to too.
AFTER you've done all that, if you still need help THEN try meds. You may have abnormally low dopamine, etc that stimulants tweak. If you take serious doses of stims and it calms you down, you have geniune ADHD. Most people don't but stims will "help" just about anyone if they can handle the side effects. I wouldn't give stims to children but for adults with decent cardiovascular health, as a last resort, go for it.
So to discourage the development of NSA-proof networks the Obama administration should announce that the RIAA and MPAA have been told that they will no longer be able to sue free P2P sites and users? Or that the definition of "fair use" has been redefined into something more agreeable?
It's so crazy it just might work!
(j/k, I think...)
Once I got my ADD sorted out, video games became much less addictive. In my case all I needed to do is remove artificials from my diet:
The Lancet: Food additives and hyperactive behaviour
For many people it's more complicated but it's a great place to start.
Comcast is rolling out DOCSIS 3, just like the "$20 per house" Japanese company, because they can reuse their existing coax cable. They may have to move the fiber nodes in their fiber/coax hybrid network a little closer to their customers but hey, no big deal. Eventually they'll have to go FTTH but they can get by for now.
Verizon's old telephone copper wire pairs are woefully inadequate for high speed Internet, much less video, so going straight to FTTH and reaping the operational cost savings from their state-of-the-art FiOS network (reliability of fiber, more automated diagnostics, fewer maintenance truck rolls required) makes sense. Fiber optic cable is expensive but it'll last for decades, just like the copper it replaced did. They can own the high-end of the market easily.
AT&T, unfortunately, decided to shoehorn Internet and TV into their existing copper pairs, call it U-verse, and trust that the average stock market analyst and NYT journalist is too ignorant to know what a joke it is. But at least they can reuse their new fiber nodes and settop boxes in the unlikely event that they finish the job and build FTTH.
Somebody smart could build dark FTTH networks and lease them to competing carriers, setting up the company as an old-fashioned dividend paying utility (which would work better were it not for the double taxing of dividends that's killed many a capital intensive American company but I digress). Separating the dumb dark fiber that lasts for decades from service providers' rapidly evolving electronics makes a lot of sense. Municipalities could build them, if they could refrain from the control-freakishness that helped kill UTopia. So could the power companies who already have rights-of-way, or new companies could emerge. But the incumbent carriers seem more interested in suing anyone new than engaging in rational cooperation.
Playing video games and otherwise stressing your near vision can aggravate convergence insufficiency, which causes headaches, makes it hard to stay focused while reading, etc, and can be mistaken for ADD. In fact ADD and CI correlate strongly. You can have "perfect" vision and still have CI. I'm getting my eyes checked soon.
FTA: "It showed aggregated rates of above 0.5Gbps at 500 metres, bonding six lines."
So if you happen to have six unused lines lying around and happen to be within half a kilometer of the fiber node and nothing else goes wrong you could get 500Mbps. Realistically you won't be that close to the node, you won't have that many spare lines, and for the sake of a "consistent user experience" (hi AT&T!) you'll get the same craptastic service that someone at least 1km out with at most two pairs would get.
But some PHB will decide to deploy it because his spreadsheet says that FTTH is too expensive, even if it is a one-time expense, and marketing swears that most people can't tell that their upstream is slow and their HDTV channels have been recompressed into mush. The only people who would notice are the ones who'd buy high-end service tiers if they didn't suck...
I restarted my Netflix subscription a couple months ago so I'd have some Blu-ray discs for my LG BD-ROM drive. Unfortunately, out of the last 8 discs only 1 arrived. I only received a few discs in total, nearly all of them late. Twice Netflix received discs back marked "undeliverable" despite my living in the same condo for 12+ years and having no such trouble with Netflix delivery before. Complaints to US Mail didn't change anything. Returns to Netflix were reliable though. I gave up and shut down the subscription.
THAT'S the reason to build a decent online delivery option. But it'll require decent FTTH networks and lots of regional video servers directly connected to the various ISP networks to do it right. Streaming 40Mbps Blu-ray video is doable under those conditions. DOCSIS 3 might work. Of course, the ISPs would probably try to do everything in-house and screw it up, in the unlikely event they'd build proper networks in the first place (AT&T, grrrr).
for many tasks and that's a problem in much of the world, America especially (unless you live in Verizon FiOS territory, which I don't).
One shade of blue in particular.
Plenty of bacteria, yes, but some strains are better than others and some are outright harmful. Plus there are yeasts, molds, parasites, etc. that good bacteria help to crowd out. All I can tell you is that the first few days on a good probiotic are not pleasant (die off) but afterwards you'll have less gut trouble. You'll want to stop consuming sugar (including fruit) about a week before starting probiotics and keep it up for a week afterwards, maybe two. Right now your balance of good to bad gut flora is decidedly bad.
Splenda is bad too. There are natural no calorie sweetners like Stevia that are OK but the synthetic ones are all evil. They mess with your brain. If there's a Whole Foods Market near you, shop there, it makes it much easier to avoid synthetic crap in your food. Soft drinks irritate your gut and most give you a pretty nasty dose of petrochemicals (artificial colors and flavors) and/or HFCS.
Try one of the better probiotic supplements. Align is the one doctors usually recommend, if they've heard about probiotics at all, but Jigsaw's is more complete. The probiotics sold at most chain stores are worthless.
Go easy on wheat and dairy. Gluten and casein (wheat and dairy proteins) are very hard to digest. Digestive enzyme supplements can help.
Go easy on refined sugar. That feeds all sorts of bad things. Fake sugar (Aspartame) is bad too. Forget about soft drinks.
Steel cut oats help.
I like InSSIDer.
If you're going to do that, set up a Meraki mesh network and use one or two business class cable and/or DSL Internet feeds.
Better yet, hack their APs and reduce their signal strength to something more agreeable. Change their channel too if necessary. If you're going to be evil, be evil constructively. (Hey, is that Google's new motto? j/k)
Reduce your own AP's radio output too while you're at it, if you can. You're in a frickin' condo, there's no need for every AP to shout.
Or just use Ethernet. Cables are your friend.
And it can be used for Combined Heat and Power which would be exceptionally useful here in Michigan. But that's a 65Kw model which would be a wee bit excessive for your average residence. Efficiency and power output goes way down at ambient temps above 70F, which isn't a problem most of the year in Michigan (11F outside now, and this is southern Michigan). A Combined Cooling Heat and Power setup might be neat further south. They look to be louder and way heavier than the Guardian standby gennies too and I probably don't want to know what they cost. They're all poor substitutes for nuclear batteries of course...
innovation that Detroit is, unionize! Because obviously what we need is another layer of bureaucracy to feed.
Resigning from your nitwit employer and starting your own company or working for a startup is scary. Just have your union jack up your wages and benefits. You'll have more money to spend at the bar to dull the pain of working there. What could go wrong?
BTW, anyone wanna buy some Michigan real estate?
BTW2: despite it all, American cars are much better than their reputations suggest. Just don't drive the stripped-down "fleet" cars that the rental agencies buy. Notice how many old Buicks are still on the road. They're a lot cheaper to fix when they do break than foreign brand cars too.
TFA wants to build dark fiber networks using the condominium model, not full-blown ISPs. Homeowners pay to have dark fiber run from their homes to a central carrier-neutral point (underground utility vault, etc), competing carriers plug their electronics and fiber uplink into the customer-owned dark fiber, and the Last Mile problem goes bye-bye. The same idea works for a municipal run dark fiber net or even a privately run dark fiber net. The electric company could run it. I don't really care who runs it so long as it gets built!
Four strands per home should provide plenty of options. Internet from company A on one strand, HDTV from company B on another, landline phone service from dinosaur telco C on another, dedicated line from your home office to company WAN using 10GB Ethernet... not that many people will do that but since fiber optic cable should last for many decades it makes sense to overbuild.
Read the articles TFA links to. They provide much more detail.
How about the 2 months per year that laborer is paying in Social Security and Medicare taxes that he may not live long enough to collect on? Some people WANT them to be kept weak and dependent but it's not businessmen.
The best thing we could do is to make it easier to start new (small) businesses. That means simplified tax and regulatory paperwork, low marginal tax rates (small businesses mostly use "pass through" taxation, paying business taxes on their owners personal returns, so "tax cuts for the rich" is mostly tax cuts for small businesses) and a stable dollar (good for everyone). Think of which political party is more agreeable to those things and vote accordingly.
A growing economy increases competition for labor and thus the price of labor. If you merely decree that Other People will pay a "living wage" you hurt growth and the ability to pay that wage. High immigration of unskilled labor suppresses labor costs.
Who gets a higher return on capital: small businessmen or Congress? If you want high growth...
I much prefer the McCain plan. This article does the math:
Almost Everywould Would Do Better Under the McCain Plan
In short: McCain's plan provides a $2500 refundable tax credit for individuals and $5000 for families to pay for health insurance. If (credit / marginal_tax_rate) > insurance_cost, you come out ahead. If your tax rate is high and you like bloated, expensive full-coverage insurance you might take a hit but for lower tax brackets and especially the working poor it's a huge win. I pay a bit over $1200/year for catastrophic insurance so the $2500 credit would pay for that with money left over to fund a Health Savings Account for my routine expenses. With individuals and families paying for health insurance rather than employers, the portability issue is solved and you're not stuck with whatever your employer decided on. If you buy catastrophic insurance like I do instead of spending $thousands more for full-coverage that pretends to pay your routine bills, you'll be the one deciding which expenses are worthwhile rather than insurance company bureaucrats and there's a LOT less paperwork to deal with. (I'll vouch for Assurant Health, they've been very good about paying my covered expenses.)
Obama has run TV ads slamming the McCain plan as taxing your health insurance while failing to mention the refundable tax credit. It's a very dirty trick, much like how Democrats slam the Flat Income Tax without mentioning the personal and dependent deductions that would shelter the first $50K or so of a family of 4's income.
as a solution:
For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time
Of course, the Educational Industrial Complex will never allow it to happen. Yes, a good university education is a good way to pass many of those certifications (including the CPA) but pretending that EVERYONE must go to college is cruel.