"The Hustler's MBA" is a modest proposal for a four-year alternative to university for recent high-school grads. Its proponent and originator, Tynan, suggests that four years spent learning to play poker, travelling, reading books for pleasure, writing daily, learning to program, socializing, eating well, chasing your curiosity, and starting a business is a "modern curriculum" that will provide you with useful skills, an inflation-proof income source, and "produce people better prepared for real life than college."
Apart from playing poker and eating well, that more or less describes the four years I spent after high-school (once I'd dropped out of several universities, that is), and it did serve me very well indeed.
2. Travel a lot. For the first year, learn a foreign language that interests you. Start with three months of Pimsleur tapes, then get a local tutor. That should cost about $1000 for the first year, and will yield results FAR greater than a class in school. After the first year your self-education will be paid for by poker, so start traveling for three months every year. That should cost around $8k at the most, probably more like $5-6k. When traveling, education comes to you in the form of perspective. You understand other cultures and other people, and will get to practice your foreign language in its native setting. I would also combine travel with watching documentaries about the history of that place. I learned a lot about Rome after visiting, and now I'm kicking myself for not educating myself first.
3. Read every single day for at least an hour. Books get lumped in with other reading like magazines and blogs, but they're actually far more valuable. The amount of value an author compresses into a book is often astounding. There are books I've paid $10 for that have completely changed my life. If you read for 1-2 hours on average, you'll read around a hundred books per year. I do this now and find it to be one of the most valuable uses of my time. Read at least 50% non-fiction, but fiction is good, too. In school you would probably read 12 books a year at most.
My guest this week is Ned Vizzini, an award winning author and television writer with a new young adult novel called 
The Other Normals
Be More Chill
Stranger Magic: Charmed States & The Arabian Nights
Last Resort
Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
Like to smoke a little of what's in "BOB's" Pipe? Membership in the Church as an ordained SubGenius Minister makes you eligible to be on the waiting list for VAST SHIPMENTS of the LEGAL IMMORTALITY HERB, HABAFROPZIPULOPS (or "FROP" for short) -- the mind-inverting flower which grows only by moonlight on the graves and droppings of dead Tibetan holymen and fullblood Yetis. 'FROP is not only safer than your cheap Conspiracy street drugs -- it's PERMANENT, TOO. No more "coming down!" No matter how much 'Frop you ingest, YOU CAN NEVER AGAIN GET LESS HIGH. Interested? 
Good people, would you know the reason
Who is this handsome bunch? Just four of the greatest living cartoonists on Earth: Jaime Hernandez, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Gilbert Hernandez. They were interviewed simultaneously by Sean T. Collins in Rolling Stone. (Photo by Meredith Rizzo)
FORM1 is a new 3D printer that's taking pre-orders via Kickstarter. It was invented by MIT Media Lab students and brought to product stage through private investment, including some investment from friends of mine whose judgment I trust, like Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Software. I've met with some of the founders a few times, and handled the printer's output, and they really do produce of the most amazing 3D printed objects I've ever seen, in a wide variety of low-cost consumable materials. The starting price to get your own is $2300.
Boing Boing reader 
