Turning this patent around a bit, it sounds like just profiling someone, and predicting purchases based on that profile. Isn't this pretty much what all the "you might also be interested in..." pop-ups do, to some extent or other?

In 11 years men's room stalls will have vending machines that offer to sell you condoms that fit you EXACTLY.

If you don't have a thick bundle of cables weighing several pounds, those rolls of light-duty velcro for tying plants to stakes work great for cables. A few bucks per several yards instead of several bucks for a few feet.

We'll never know who the worst president was, with apparently unprovable, but circumstantially supported, stuff like this: http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-12-05/news/17131315_1_lbj-library-nixon-s-associates-peace-talks

Only if you didn't pay attention to your skill ups. If you were careful to have a full 10 skill ups among all 3 related skills, you could easily max out all of your stats to 100. Granted, having to keep careful track of each skill up was a hassle.

Might not a better understanding of how a culture uses metaphors make it easier to create NEW metaphors to push a particular idea?

No, the democrats had a large number of republicrats (AKA "blue dogs") who tried to woo the republican base in the red states that elected them. This, plus mistakenly believing that republicans would not filibuster any more than the democrats did in their position, basically screwed them. Had they known how dishonorable the republicans would be, they could have changed the filibuster rules at the start of congress (the only time you CAN change the rules with just a majority vote).

Not a law, a resolution - basically, congress saying "this would be nice" without actually going to the extra effort of passing a law.
If there is a way to get a permalink to a bill there, I can't find it; all queries time out and become invalid searches.
So:
thomas.loc.gov
advanced search --> 111 congress
pull-down "word/phrase" to "Bill number"
search: h.con.res.298

Gimp's crop tool only has width, height, or size as crop aspect ratio choices. GThumb, in contrast, offers choices such as square, image, screen (your own current screen), book or DVD, postcard, and a few others. If I'm cropping a WoW screenshot for use as a screen backdrop, that makes the job that much quicker & easier.

That county had a resolution to have their own fire department; it would have cost a few bucks more property taxes per person. The Republicans controlling the county decided it was much better to keep it privatized, and make everyone pay for firefighting services directly, one way or the other.

Reagan build up the military tremendously; in particular, he reversed Carter's decision to cancel the B-1 bomber. At the time, Carter told us that he was canceling the B-1 because it would be obsoleted by stealth technology in development. Note how no B-1 missions have been flown except when the US had absolute control of the air -- hardly a vote of confidence as to how they might have performed the original design mission of bombing the Soviet Union.

Actually, just wait a few years. Twenty foot pythons are breeding in Florida and slowly working their way north as the climate warms. All they need is 40 degrees - for example in the sewers of New York.

Mega-corps ARE run by bots, in the sense that they are only free to do that which increases their profits, for the most part. No CEO or board of directors would ever choose public good over corporate profit beyond a token showing for PR purposes. Only the threat of monetary costs exceeding profits to be made by screwing the public over affect the behavior of these entities.

While I was at a struggling cell phone carrier, they were constantly whining about the cost of "churn" - the constant loss of customers who then needed to be replaced by running expensive advertising. If they really cared, it would be easy to pick a test market, set a serious "customer first" service policy, and see if the cost of "churn" dropped more than the revenues lost by not screwing the customers.