I've yet to meet a socialist (yourself included) who acknowledges that there is little to no choice about driving on interstates (or public roads for that matter) and minimal choices for many about sending your kid to public school. I do like this new emerging 'in for a penny, in for a pound' thing being espoused by the socialists. I like to counter it by pointing out how much of their daily lives they effectively owe to large, multinational corporations and use this is as justification for more corporate power.

Roads are paid for by their users via taxes on fuel, tires, vehicle registration. There is little to no ability to get a 'free ride' on public roads. It's not socialism to use something you paid for.
The government has a near complete monopoly on roads. They don't have the overhead of taxes like private company would, they have the power of eminent domain to claim the property necessary for the roads, and finally they have the power of sovereign immunity to protect them from lawsuits when some moron crashes on their road and decides to blame the road's 'owner' instead of himself. This near complete lack of choice means that you can't legitimately criticize, nor can you read too much into a person's decision to use the public roads.

Public schools are funded by the state and local governments via property taxes, bonds, sales tax, income tax, etc. and without choice. You can't choose to to pay for the local school district. If you have kids, they MUST go to school. If you can't afford to pay double for each kid's education, then you'll probably send them to public schools. Again, not much room for choice for most people.

Last time I checked, nearly EVERYONE must pay for social security and medicare. Why is it wrong for me to demand to receive what I paid for?

What about all the electronics that are not cell phones? My laptop, ereader,music player, etc. still have to be turned off until the captain says so

I also don't see why airplanes can't set up little pico cells that all the phones can connect to.

Whenever anything carries with it legal penalties, especially the heavy ones that violating air travel rules can, it's open for debate, even if the rule is supposedly only a minor inconvenience

Not once in 24 years of flying have I heard a peep about window shades. That's a couple hundred flights on numerous airlines.

You can still wear earplugs and sleep masks at all phases of the flight.

Only when I had an old blackberry. My last 3 phones make no such noises.

Those people weren't at 15000 feet, much less the more typical 27-35000 feet.

This is pathetically stupid, and a significant overreach. Basically, the position of the CPSC is that it's not OK for 13 year olds to have Buckyballs anymore.
14 year olds? Yes. 13 year olds? No.

How many died?

It's not his fault if a 6 year old dies. It's the fault of the parents for letting their 6 year old play with them.

Then they should have a talk with that child's parents.

Not really. My power company gives me 15 minute snapshots and I've been able to determine all sorts of stuff. That hour long spike there-that's when I was cooking an early dinner.

That 20 minute spike-THAT's right around the time I heard that noise and went outside to see what it was, leaving the damn door open and causing the AC to kick on.
Some of that only means something to me.

BUT, a person looking at my snapshots can EASILY figure out when I get up, when I go to sleep, my days off, etc. My house has a fairly consistent 'idle' when I'm asleep or at work.

Just look for a 1 hour period of activity following 6-10 hours of idle, which precedes another idle period. You've got about what time I get up and when I leave for the day.
Look for a few hours or activity following a period of inactivity and you have when I get home. Yes, depending on how similar the periods are, you might have trouble figuring out which is me getting up and ready for work vs which is me getting home. Some more observing might help figure out what the idle period is.
If you can average my kwh usage, you can get close to figuring out if I'm single or not.

You can work out when there's guests. Higher power spikes might indicate water heater usage which implies additional laundry or (more likely) shower usage. Now you can start to get closer to figuring out if I'm less single then before.

Yes, the data ia a bit vague, but that's nothing that can't be cleaned up with more granular info and some better data on appliance usage. Just do some searches of who built my house and you can figure out whether it's likely I have gas or electric appliances.

The best part is all of this can be mined and viewed right from someone's desk. No need to stalk me to figure all of this out.

I see huge privacy implications in all of this.

Instead of having a monthly snapshot, they can now get snapshots every 15 minutes (or more if the meter is capable).

A LOT of things can be learned form the 15 minute snapshots of your power usage. A TON could be learned if they did got more granular.

If your house (like mine) normally goes fairly idle during the day, it can be assumed that no one is home. With some averaging across households, they might be able to figure out if your single. If your house shows more daytime usage - you might have guests or that's your day off.

An hour long spike after a period of inactivity-person just got up and is getting ready. Spike settles down and house levels off for period of 8 hours-person is gone for the day, presumably at work. Actvity picks up for a few hours before levelling off-person is home and doing things before going to sleep.

Now a house guest can show some secondary spikes. You may see two spikes in the morning OR a higher overall usage for that getting-ready-for-work period.

Get ready for this data to be subpenaed in court. Well, Mr Johnson, you claim you were home alone yet your 5 minute power snapshots for the day in question show higher than normal power usage, as much as might be required to cook for two people instead of one or run two hair dryers. Your power usage during the day in question didn't settle down like the other days, who was at your house during that time?

Did you tell them about 9/11?

Assuming all parts could handle the 100 degree air and the pressure that would be required. The room would be hell on earth with insane wind speeds, definitely a convection oven.