I would definitely be opposed to retrofitting neighborhoods to those cluster type mailboxes. My neighborhood has houses fairly far apart (large yards mostly), and that's not at all uncommon in Oregon. Plus there's a lot of traffic on my street, no sidewalks, and little to no room to walk along the street in many places. Making people walk up and down our street without first putting in sidewalks would be a prescription for injuries. I would think there's a lot of places in the US that are similar. Mostly it's just moving the boxes from the sides of houses to the street I don't see a problem with. But even that might not make sense everywhere.

But like others have said, the real issue here is the mandate that the USPS pre-fund 75 years of health insurance costs, meaning they're putting aside money for benefits for workers that aren't even born yet. Change that to a much more reasonable 10 years or so, and the USPS's money problems would pretty much clear up overnight. Not that a certain amount of consolidation and efficiency wouldn't be valuable, because the internet has reduced the amount of mail delivery needed quite a bit. I don't have a problem with getting rid of Saturday delivery. But making them pre-fund 75 years of benefits is just a sneaky way to get rid of or privatize the USPS, which I think would be a big mistake.

That is full sized. I meant US standard mailbox size, meaning 5-ish x 6-ish x 19-ish ... one of the two smaller ones on this page.

http://www.medfordmailboxshop.com/merchant/pages/guide/mailbox-sizes.htm

It's different all over, depending on when your subdivision was built. I also lived in Phoenix (agreed, it is a crappy city, that's why I only lived there 5 years and couldn't wait to move away) - our subdivision was built in 1969, and all the mailboxes were on the sides of our houses, by the front door. Drove my dogs crazy every day by the way. :)

Now that I'm back in Hillsboro, Oregon, our mailboxes are of the "cluster" type - but they're all full sized mailboxes on posts, not those little stacked boxes that have keys. (Our house was built in 1951.) My mailbox is directly at the end of my driveway, but a couple of our neighbors' mailboxes are right next to it, on my property but on an easement. A little ways down our property (we live along the main access road in the neighborhood) is a cluster of full sized mailboxes on posts that serve most of the houses within view of our house, from both sides of the street.

There's plenty of older residents on our street who walk out to get their mail every day, so I don't really think the argument about not making older residents walk to the street instead of picking up mail from the front of their house is that strong of an argument. It's good for older people to get out of the house and have a little activity every day - and when they get to the age where they can't even get to the street, I'm sure they can ask a neighbor, friend, or family member get their mail every couple days.

I don't see any problem with switching from front-of-house to out at the street. The only unanswered question: who's going to pay for putting up mailboxes at the street? It would probably be unfair to ask senior citizens on fixed incomes to pay for having a mailbox put in. Any proposals for changing mail delivery should include the cost of retrofitting mailboxes for people in them. It would still save the post office money in the long run.

You're arguing that insurance companies shouldn't be able to have all this patient information. They already have it! Even without any changes to how we do things currently. You generally sign a waver before any doctor treats you, that says that they can share all the info from your visit for purposes of paying the claim and etc.

One of the major provisions of Obamacare/ACA is getting rid of preexisting conditions, so insurance companies can't deny care based on the fact that you've had some disease in the past. So why would you then care if an insurance company has information about you?

Besides, there are strict rules about who can access a patient's private health care information. A company who wished to hire someone would not have access to the patient's past medical history unless they specifically had the applicant sign a waiver stating they could access that. I wouldn't sign such a thing as a condition of employment, I dunno about you. And if the laws currently don't prohibit employers asking for such a waiver, I'd support such a law.

It seems to me that you have this idea that because there will be electronic medical records shared more easily between medical entities, that means that everyone, everywhere will now have access to your private medical records. You apparently have no idea about the HIPAA laws. They are very specific about exactly who can have access to a patient's information, and the main thing that controls where a patients' data can go is the patient themselves. I'm assuming you didn't read the article either - there are several examples in there where they discuss exactly this - private information about mental health, and not even allowing your general practitioner to see that you're taking certain drugs for mental disorders.

DMV worker: "I see as of 2009 your record says you have epilepsy. I can't give you a driver's license."
Anonymous Coward: "See that notation from my doctor in 2010? Where it says that was a misdiagnosis and I never had epilepsy?"
DMV worker: "Oh yes, you're right. Here's your license Mr Coward."

That was hard.

Nope, I'm just opposed to health insurance (in its current form.) Auto/fire/theft insurance is one of those "just in case" things. If you are careful, you may never need to use that insurance, and therefore your insurance costs will be lower, and that's a great thing.

Health insurance is a different thing altogether, because everyone is going to need to get health care throughout their life. Even if you're careful, exercise all the time, eat well, you could still have a incredibly costly genetic disease that will bankrupt you even with good insurance. If you avoid getting health care throughout your life, you're going to tend to be less healthy...and then eventually you'll need costly care, and in the end you haven't saved any money at all.

I agree we should extend the benefits of Medicare. In fact, let's extend it to cover everyone in the US, i.e. Medicare Part E (for everyone.) Great idea, I'm glad you recommended it. You do realize Medicare is a single payer system right?

Cato Institute? Puh-lease. Why don't you just link directly to redstate.com or huffingtonpost.com? It would be just as fair and balanced as anything from the Cato Institute, a well-known libertarian think tank that is opposed to the government being in charge of anything.

The free market has had plenty of time to demonstrate to us exactly how they handle healthcare insurance. If the free market worked, healthcare in the US wouldn't be in the state it is today. Instead what we get with free market healthcare is preexisting conditions, yearly and lifetime benefit limits, insurance companies that spend all their time figuring out how to not pay claims, insurance companies that will cancel your coverage if you have an expensive claim and forgot to mention on your insurance application that you had acne treatment when you were 17, etc.

I've worked in the healthcare industry for over 10 years, and I've been on both ends: I worked for an insurance company, and I work now for a healthcare clinic. Please don't try to tell me that insurance companies' hands are tied by the government, and that's why costs are high and coverage is bad. Insurance companies are in the business to make as much money as they can, and they do that by paying as little as they can, and charging as much money as they can get away with. Any savings they pass on to shareholders, they don't cut costs to their customers. They also raise costs to providers by each one having their own highly specific rules about how claims must be submitted and formatted, what information needs to be sent with each claim, etc. If the insurance companies would get together and decide on a set of common rules, we could reduce complexity and cost for providers and patients. But instead we have a Business Office with around 20 employees, processing claims for 30 physicians. It's sure great for providing a lot of jobs, but increases the prices for everyone.

Not sure where you got the part about "everyone who disagrees with you is an inhuman monster who just wants poor people to suffer and die". Was that directed at me, or just at some caricature Democrat/liberal/socialist that you are assuming I am?

We can only hope. That would be the best possible outcome. Tell me again what the point of insurance companies is?

So what you're saying is, if you have epilepsy, you want the ability to hide that from the DMV, so that you can still drive your car while having a potentially very dangerous condition to have while driving? You want the "freedom" to continue to endanger the lives of others so that you're not inconvenienced by having to take public transportation. Gee, thanks for your concern for your fellow man.

Not really that convincing an argument for keeping your medical diagnoses secret.

Don't know what to tell you about the Gmail app - I don't have a Priority Inbox anywhere in mine. I have the Jelly Bean 4.2.2 version of the app if that makes any difference.

On the web page, go into your Settings, Labels, and tell it to Hide any labels you don't want to see, like the Important label.

The Priority Inbox has been around for several years now - but you can easily turn it off in both the web view and Android app. I don't see the problem.

You're actually wrong on both counts:

To get rid of the "Important" mailbox in the web interface: Go to your Gmail settings, Inbox tab, and set your Inbox to "Classic".

In the Android Gmail app, go into the settings for your Gmail account, and uncheck "Priority Inbox".

Interesting. Good thing then, that last I looked 4.2 wasn't available for my Transformer then (the original TF101.) Mines still on a Cyanogen version of 4.1.2. I'll definitely wait to upgrade to 4.2 until the Wiimote Controller dev figures out how to work around the issue and updates it for 4.2. Thanks for the info!

But where an Android tablet really shines for gaming might be surprising: emulators. Just about every classic gaming console has multiple emulators available, and Wii console controllers, including the Classic Controller with dual analog sticks, can be easily connected via bluetooth if you install a free app from the Play store. No need for rooting or any special access. The app simply translates the Wii controller as a keyboard, so any app that supports custom keyboard mappings, i.e. "w" for up, "x" for down, etc. will work. Open the battery case of the Wii controller, click the button so it attempts to connect, click the discovery button in the app, set the Wii Remote as your current keyboard, and you're ready to go. You just need to go into the settings for each emulator app, and teach it to recognize your Wii controller. Do it once and it's saved in the app forever. I've been playing a bunch of NES, Super Nintendo, and Genesis games lately, including playing through Phantasy Star II, one of the best ever RPGs, for Sega Genesis. I previously played through Super Mario Land and I'm starting on Yoshi's Island.

There are some good platformers on Android, but it's true that a lot of games don't get the touch controls right. (Platformers and racing games are my two favorite types of games.) The best platformer I've played on Android so far is Cordy 2:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silvertree.cordy2&hl=en

Racing games are pretty easy to get right: most use either touch zones (i.e. touch the right side of the screen to turn right, touch the left side of the screen to turn left, gesture or touch onscreen buttons for brakes and nitro), or use tilt-to-steer using the accelerometer/gyroscope sensors. Tilt-to-steer works pretty good on a smartphone, but is terrible on a tablet (your hand/wrist muscles get sore very quickly tilting something the size of a tablet.) I prefer the touch zones usually. The Asphalt racing series is the best IMO - they've got the controls down pretty nicely, and they're fairly long games with good variety of tracks.

All of the issues you've raised about using a mouse on a touch UI have already been answered on Android. I have an Asus Transformer tablet with keyboard dock. It has a built in touchpad, and also supports USB or bluetooth mice. By default, when the touchpad is turned on, it shows a circle on screen as your cursor - about the size of a finger tip. Move your finger on the touchpad, the cursor moves around. Click the left touchpad button or tap on the touchpad, it acts like a finger tap. Click the button and hold, it acts like a finger held down. Click the button and hold, and swipe to the side, and it acts like a finger swipe to the side. Click the button and hold and swipe up, and the web page or document scrolls up - no need for a scroll bar. It's very intuitive if you already know how to use Android. (Side note: There ARE scroll bars in some apps on Android, but it's app-dependent. It depends on if the developer decides the app needs them.)

In addition, it supports some multi-touch gestures. For example swipe two fingers up, and it scrolls down in the document or web page. Swipe two fingers left or right on the touchpad while on your home screens, it changes home screens like you've done a finger swipe on the screen. I'm sure there are other multi-touch gestures it supports.

With all that said...I rarely use the touchpad on my Transformer, and I never use a mouse on it. I find it's much more intuitive and easy to simply use the touchscreen as my navigation - it's already there 6 inches away from my fingers, and is not a strain since the docked tablet is usually on my lap. Type on the keyboard, use the screen for navigating. The only time I use the touchpad is when I'm using Logmein to log into a Windows computer, when a touchpad is more usable than a touch screen.