Which is why you secure it via a credit card and an agreement. Otherwise why would anyone return rental cars without (noticeable) damage?

And with an automated car you wouldn't have to worry about them driving over speed bumps at 50MPH like my high school friends did to their leased cars.

1) With sensors in the front bumper, your car could "see" far better than you could from the drivers seat and help make that dangerous situation much safer. And with any even decent AI it would recognize this is a tough way to exit and see if there might be a better way.

2) I'm very certain the car could react FAR quicker than you could. And that it would have seen that car running the red light way before you even realized it (as you admit). You're looking just forward and to the left to make your turn. An autonomous car is looking everywhere, at all times, and calculating the speed of that red-light runner to see that it's not stopping, and can apply the brakes before you even realize what is happening.

I've talked with some of the people working on these autonomous cars, and it's pretty amazing what they can do even just today.

THIS! My cable card install with Time Warner was a nightmare. No one knew anything at all about Cable Cards, the techs who installed the cable card were clueless but yet TWC required a visit to plug it into the back of the Tivo (they refused to let me install it myself), but then had no idea how to activate it, and neither did any of the tech support people. And it took 4 calls to figure out that I needed a Tuning Adapter as well.

Only when I did enough Googling to find their Tier 3 Cable Card only tech support phone number on a Tivo forum did everything finally start working. It only took about 30 seconds once I got the right people on the phone.

It's actually against FCC rules to make it so incredibly difficult to use a CableCard, so I ended up writing up a complaint to them, and then TWC got really nice to me and gave me a few months of free cable. And at least I haven't had any issues since.

Do they even make travelers checks anymore? I've never heard of anyone using them in the last 10 years, and me and my friends go all over the world.

But to add to the other good advice on your list, I found that having a chip+pin credit card is becoming essential in Europe. They're pretty hard to find from US credit card companies, but Flyer Talk made a list. There's also a few chip+signature cards available too, but those aren't near as useful apparently as chip+pin. So make sure you get one of those.

While I believe (as a "leftist") that being rich is not evil, I do recognize that over the last 30 years it has become far harder to break out of the class that they're born into. While at one point in US history economic classes may have been fluid, that's no longer the case for the most part. And that is why I think our current system is so farked up.

It's a lot easier to get the time and attention of a parent if they're not working two crappy minimum wage jobs to try and make ends meet. Privilege is incredibly relevant.

I left T-Mobile at the end of last year when my contract expired, and have been using the MVNOs that use the T-Mobile airwaves on pre-paid (PTel specifically) to save money. It's been working well, and was much cheaper than T-Mobile's previous pre-paid offerings for what I needed. However I discovered there's some missing features that pre-paid doesn't give you and no one really points out until you already switched:
* no call forwarding (for google voice voicemail)
* no visual voicemail
* no short code sms texting (except often they'll allow Twitter and Facebook)

Now that T-Mobile's prices are more in line with their MVNOs (and cheaper if you have multiple lines) and they don't even offer contracts, does this mean all those features that you lost going pre-paid would be available again? While none of those features would have been worth the extra cost of a contract, it would be a great reason to pick T-Mobile over the other smaller pre-paid operators. I'll have to call them and see if their CSRs even know the answers to these questions (I doubt it yet, someone will have to be the guinea pig), but it does make me want to switch back if that's the case.

I actually still use one of those keychains today. Got it in my pocket as I type this.

That and my giant Itsakey metal USB stick gets peoples attention when I hand them my keys.

They did respond to the marijuana one. They just didn't give the answer the people who signed it wanted.

I'm kind of baffled why people were shocked they got a response that said they weren't interested in legalizing marijuana, when that was ALWAYS his point of view. It's not like they didn't already know some good percentage of people want it legal, but a petition of 25,000 people isn't going to automatically change policy all of the sudden if they don't want to do that.

I always saw the petition site as a way to force a response from the administration on some topic, not a way to force them to change their minds on that stance.

Especially after I got it for the $140 re-furb sale they had a few weeks ago, and threw Ice Cream Sandwich on it. Wish it had a camera sometimes, but otherwise I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap tablet.

It's called crossing the street in Vietnam

Just keep slow and steady.

It's the latest talking point to people who mention Romney sticking their dog on their roof as it crapped all over himself.

He did actually mention eating dog in his biography. When he was 6. In Indonesia.

How do you figure this? A Dem sponsored it, while no Republican are on board, while a bill explicitly prohibiting this has 27 Republican sponsors.

Obama actually campaigned on doing exactly that, but Republicans think it's a tax conspiracy and refuse to do anything useful. ::sigh::

I've never noticed ads for gift cards, but there are "groupon" type ads which claim 50% off massages, cupcakes, destination vacations, etc (typing this, I wonder if my Kindle thinks I'm female...).

So they're not as worthless as a TV ad, but on the other hand, there hasn't been anything interesting enough for me to bother clicking on. I don't regret saving the money though, the ads don't bother me at all.