So, what you really want is range, not MPG? If that's the case, then you'd be indifferent between a car with the identical performance specs that gets 20MPG and has a 20 gallon tank, and one that gets 40MPG and has a 10 gallon tank. 400 mile range in both cases.

Because it's optically deceptive when talking about absolute numbers. Going from 30 to 35MPG is a 5MPG increase. Going from 10 to 15MPG is also a 5MPG increase. In the first case, your fuel bill will drop by 14%. In the second, by 33%. So, a 5MPG improvement in fuel economy means very different things depending on your starting position.

In contrast, if we use gallons per 100 miles, an absolute change of X means the same change in your bill, regardless of where you start.

Fundamentally, we're not interested in how far we can go on X gallons of gas, we're interested in how much gas it will take us to drive to our destination. GPM lets us compare that directly, while MPG doesn't.

The rationale for taxing fuel is to capture the externalities (pollution, climate, military costs) of using that fuel. The point about the regressiveness of the gas tax is valid, so we should raise the gas tax, but add a refundable credit to income taxes for it, to remove the regressiveness.

As I said, the numbers would vary based on drivers, but get a large enough sample, and you'd be able to iron out some of that, so that the results would be "here's what the model XYZ's typical buyer is getting." Would be a bit problematic for someone buying outside of a model's typical demographic (leadfoot buying a minivan, granny buying a Porsche), but would still be more useful than what we have now.

It's true, though. For most cars, fuel economy declines as speeds climb past 55-60mph (wind resistance being non-linear). You're trading off fuel for time - get there faster, but use more fuel. We should let people make that tradeoff for themselves, however. Just price fuel appropriately (including the externalities of climate, military expenditures, etc.), and let drivers decide.

Practically every card on the road today has a feature which calculates MPG (or L/100KM) historically. Just add a data field in the car's computer that keeps the historical number, even if the one on the dash is reset, and download it from a % of cars at their annual inspection. Won't help for new models, but will, over a couple of years, develop a very robust data set saying "the Ford Model XYZ tested at X MPG, but real world MPG are Y." Not flawless, naturally, since a different set of drivers for each vehicle will mean that the results aren't entirely because of the car (take the drivers of Buicks, and put them in Porsches, and they'll probably get better MPG than the average Porsche driver will), but will give a good indication to a person buying the Porsche (who's probably in the "Porsche driver" bucket anyway) of what he/she can actually expect.

If you're making $2/day (pretty typical for a small Indian farmer), then the difference between a $35 phone and a $100 phone is a month's wages.

Correct. Tower-based location became mandatory (minimum 95% of operating devices supporting it) in 2005, but GPS in phones won't be mandatory until 2018.

"Comcast and Time Warner together control most of the Internet services in the country."

Only for values of "most" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Actually, you can hotspot, but only on Android. One of Verizon's 700MHz licenses came with the stipulation that VZ has to allow any application to run. So, they can't ban the PDA Net application, which lets you run a hotspot on your Android phone. There presumably could be a comparable app for iPhone, but Apple hasn't allowed it through the app store. Don't know if there's a similar app for jailbroken iPhones, though.

Bottom line, you can definitely have a hotspot (for no extra charge) as part of your Verizon unlimited data plan, but only (AFAIK) if you have an Android phone. App costs $5 if I remember correctly.

Oh, I get it now. Perhaps I should have said "US households have a mean of just below 3 televisions." The median, if I recall correctly, is three.

I'm very familiar with the Judgment of Solomon. Can you explain what it has to do with a family's choice about how many TV's to own?

Huh? You were the one who made the judgment that families don't need more than one television. I merely pointed out that, your opinion aside, the average family has three.

Families don't need televisions at all. That said, the average US home has just shy of three TVs.

That assumes you have a HTPC. Many people don't. Also, it lets you put the content on any TV in the house, rather than just the one next to the HTPC (assuming you have one). Finally, it's very straightforward to use - pull up what you want on your iPad/iPhone/Android phone/Android tablet, tap the cast icon, and you're up and running.