--- --- # Five Best Ideas of the Day: November 17 by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Nov 17, 2014 5:01 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Nov 17, 2014 5:01 PM UTC **1\.** [**America needs a national service year: “Citizenship is like a muscle that can atrophy from too little use; if we want to strengthen it, we need to exercise it.”**](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mcchrystal-americans-face-a-gap-of-shared-experience-and-common-purpose/2014/11/14/a51ad4fa-6b6a-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc%5Fstory.html) By Stan McChrystal in the Washington Post **2\.** [**It’s time to pay college athletes.**](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/11/college-athletes-of-the-world-unite/) By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Jacobin **3\.** [**So-called ‘conversion therapy’ to change someone’s sexual orientation is discredited, dangerous and should be classified as torture.**](http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/11/10/op-ed-why-were-telling-un-conversion-therapy-torture) By Samantha Ames in The Advocate **4\.** [**Wikipedia searches are the next frontier on monitoring and predicting disease outbreaks.**](http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003892) By Nicholas Generous, Geoffrey Fairchild, Alina Deshpande, Sara Y. Del Valle and Reid Priedhorsky at PLOS Computational Biology **5\.** [**Many kids lack an adult connection to spur success in school and life. A program linking them to retired adults with much to offer can solve that problem.**](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-d-eisner/generational-warfare-is-a%5Fb%5F6160694.html) By Michael Eisner and Marc Freedman in the Huffington Post  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ Five Best Ideas of the Day: November 17 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3589202/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-november-17/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3589202/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-november-17/"},"headline":"Five Best Ideas of the Day: November 17","datePublished":"2014-11-17T17:01:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:07:03.012Z","description":"Creating national purpose through service, paying college athletes, predicting outbreaks with Wikipedia, ending ex-gay conversion therapy, and more.","url":"https://time.com/3589202/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-november-17/","keywords":["Innovation","Athletes","School","College","torture","Disease","Surveillance","LGBT","America","teen","UN","Therapy","NCAA","Cleveland","Wikipedia","seniors"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/innovation/","name":"Innovation"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3589202/five-best-ideas-of-the-day-november-17/","name":"Five Best Ideas of the Day: November 17"}}]}] ```