I thought we'd been testing them in other nations' skies for a while now -- what more needs to be done?

I'm pretty sure this guy passes me every day on the way to the office.

Most 50- and 60-somethings I know think it's OK, too.

Well, actually, he's only ticketing people who use the phone to text, or send or receive Internet data traffic. Making phone calls? No problem.

I wonder what happens under Georgia law if one is making a cell phone call over VOIP, while stopped at a red light. Is that a voice call, or the use of Internet data?

Or what happens when one is on a conventional cell phone call, but has to enter additional data, like a password or to respond to an automatic answering system. Is that a move from voice to data?

What a poorly edited article. One never knows which Bell -- Genevieve or Mike -- is speaking.

This.

I well remember the first advertisement I saw for a device that "lets my friends know what I'm listening to!" I turned to my coworker and we shrugged at each other. Why would anyone want to do that? That's my business! If they're curious, they can ask; if I want them to know, I'll tell them. But geez, I would never give up my privacy like that.

We both shook our heads at the thought of the fools that would try to market such an obvious failure, and walked away. From the future, of course. But now that my coworker and I realize the error of our ways, do we now have such devices? No. Our privacy feelings haven't changed; only the world around us has (we went from agreeing with the majority to agreeing with a minority).

What color is he now?

Why do you say that? Everyone on your list is young.

Let me put it this way: Mr. Whitlock became an expert in a technology he learned in his teens, and rejected a technology that developed around him in his sixties. How receptive will you be to the state-of-the-art, game-changing technology of say, the year 2050, that makes the computer technology you have worked with your whole life, obsolete?

Indeed.

In the early 1960s I lived in a very small town -- but a town that had a library. Wandering through it one summer day (it was air conditioned!), I discovered the Science Fiction shelf. It was organized by author's last name. I decided to start on the right, and go to the left -- I was a contrarian even then -- and was unimpressed with the first selection of books I read (by authors the names of whom I have forgotten -- apparently the library didn't have any John Wyndham books). I decided to reverse my field, and start from the left.

Shazam! Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, . . . I was hooked for life. Heinlein and Pohl were glorious discoveries along the way. Later on, when I could afford subscriptions to Galaxy and Amazing Science Fiction, Pohl became a real favorite.

One of the very last of the greats from the Golden Era.

While I have no doubt that TFA describes a fine public service built by those of the highest integrity, I must confess that my first thought was quite the opposite, given recent history.

Or, even,
populous != populace

I don't want to think about it.

A little-known example of negative differential resistance is the common electric arc. In an arc, as the current increases the arc gets "fatter" (wider), and so the voltage across the arc decreases. Increasing current with decreasing voltage is negative differential resistance. This enables oscillations, which were first encountered as audio noise in electric arc lighting in the mid-1800s. These led to William Duddell's "Singing Arc", in which Duddell added a tuned circuit to the negative resistance, creating a stable audio tone. The next step was obvious; he wired a keyboard to the arc and made the first electronic music.

Danish physicist Valdemar Poulsen took Duddell's audio oscillator and, by placing the arc in a transverse magnetic field, and in a hydrogen atmosphere (and somehow not getting blown up in the process), moved the frequency of oscillation up into the low radio range, around 500 kHz or so. This was the arc radio transmitter. It differed from the more common spark transmitter in that the arc's output oscillation was continuous, while that of the spark transmitter was a damped (decaying) oscillation.

The arc transmitter caught the attention of Cyril Elwell, of Palo Alto, California, who arranged to obtain the rights to the arc from Poulsen, and started commercial production of it with his company, the Federal Telegraph Company. The arc transmitter became a big success in World War One, when transmitters as large as 1 MW (one million watts) output were installed by 1918.

Much as the Fairchild Semiconductor Company spawned several successful companies in Silicon Valley in the 1960s, Federal did so, too, 50 years earlier; refugees from Federal formed well-known companies like Magnavox and Litton Industries.

You got marmalade at a diner in St. Louis? As in, jam with fruit peel in it? That must be a first. Are you sure it wasn't just jam? While I'm sure it can be done, finding marmalade at a diner in the American Midwest is still quite a feat.

Don't worry about feeling bad for wasting food. It's a common sentiment among those visiting the US. After one spends enough time shopping in a Costco or other bulk food warehouse, the feeling passes.