Oral history is an essential start, but it must be verified using written documentation. My grandmother gave me exact names and dates of arrival of our ancestors, but my subsequent research revealed her memory to be quite flawed... :/

There is another important aspect to this that you missed: audio bandwidth.

Cellphones are designed with a high level of compression (so that a single tower can handle numerous calls simultaneously); to accomplish this, the audio is seriously degraded (massive loss of highs and lows). As a result, your brain is working much harder (although it's subconscious, so you don't notice) to pick out what is being said, rendering your ability to concentrate on other tasks far more difficult than you realize. It doesn't matter whether or not you're using a hands-free set; it is significantly more distracting than listening to a higher fidelity source, like someone sitting ne

If FaceBook was up front about its privacy policy, i'd be fine with them sharing information...but the fact is, they pulled a bait-and-switch by first promising privacy, then significantly altering the terms of the agreement under which i'd signed up to allow for wholesale sharing of my information. It's this underhandedness that i, and many others, abhor.

They're also blatantly dishonest. I've been getting notices that say "your friend X recommends you befriend Y", but i've confirmed that these messages are generated by a FaceBook algorithm, NOT submitted by the person whom they say.

If it weren't the only way to know what my family members are up to, i'd swear off FaceBook in a heartbeat...come to think of it, i might anyway...

I learned electronics starting as a young kid when i obtained one of those "150-in-1" (or 100-in-one or 200-in-1) kits with an assortment of components on a board with spring connectors, to which you run wires according to directions in the manual. The one i had (probably Radio Shack) had cartoon characters of electron characters that explained the theory behind the circuitry you were wiring up. No need to solder, no need to dig through parts bins, but great for learning the theory behind a variety of circuit types (alarms, radios, high voltage generators, etc.).

There are tons of these type kits out there - as well as kits to build individual devices (also great learning experiences, and you wind up with a useful piece of equipment) - check the links at http://www.lutins.org/lists/electronics.html If you *are* thinking of building a single-device kit, i highly recommend the Midnight Science Ultra-RX1, an ultrasonic listening device available from http://www.midnightscience.com/ultra-kits.html. The kit is built in three sections, with instructions on how to do some troubleshooting-type testing after each section. When you're done, you'll have a device that allows you to listen in on ultrasonic emanations (bugs, bats, etc.) - mine works *way* better than i ever expected!

...let me guess, it's April 1st on the other side of the dateline, right?

I'd install wireless :P

Lots of coax lines to an attic sounds more like a ham radio setup to me, rather than a cable TV setup, in which case those lines *are* 50 ohms.

Who said it's 75 ohm coax? A bunch of coax lines running to an attic sounds like it could have been a ham radio setup, in which case 50 ohm cabling would have been used.

What the heck does the ability to "prescribe anything short of controlled substances" mean when only controlled substances require prescriptions in the first place??!!??

The "people that speak something that descends from the mayan language" are in fact Maya, being the direct descendants of the ancient Maya - and knowledge of modern Mayan languages has indeed proven quite helpful in deciphering the ancient Mayan script.

Bluetooth (at 2.4 GHz) and WiFi (at 2.4 GHz and up) do indeed utilize the microwave spectrum (300 MHz - 300 GHz), but not AM radio (0.5 - 1.8 MHz) nor FM radio (88 - 108 MHz).

E = P/I
Volts = 25,000 / 100
  = 250 Volts!

Remind me not to plug any of my devices into your outlets!