Don't forget the health-care costs associated with long-term processed-food eating. They more than outstrip the savings you realize in food purchases.

Yes, depending how you source your food, obviously cooking can be more expensive. But it does not have to be - even fine cooking.

You can make a batch of home-made tomato sauce that will last a week, and that will cost you under $2. At Whole Foods, you can buy very good meat; for instance, $8 will get you enough chicken to last (me) four meals. With a few vegetables and noodles or rice, you have a stir fry.Some tortillas, you have a burrito. Of course, all these things require pantry items, but they can be purchased in bulk and amortized over many meals. You can bake up a week's worth of cupcakes with ingredients you control, and that'll set you back - actually, I don't know how much, since they too are based on bulk ingredients you can use in many meals.

We need to stop looking at fresh food as an expense, but rather as an investment, especially when we spend so much money on gadgets and subscriptions. Eating well - not extravagantly - is essential for health in the long run. Eating all the sodium and additives your proposed cheap diet offers strikes me as unwise.

That's complete bullshit. Everyone has time to cook.

You just don't want to.

And I note that every meal you mention is extremely unhealthy.

You may not be so happy in the long run with all the time you saved.

And you're doing it wrong if you really think cooking is more expensive.

It's not the same thing at all. A safety interlock is there to stop you from interfering with a process underway, or from being damaged by an accident (your toaster case).

In neither case did it prevent you from doing what you want.

A better example would be a microwave door handle that would detect your BMI and then decide whether or not you could open it.

In the case of the car, a decision would be made to stop you from initiating a process (a decision that could be deeply flawed, or even a malfunction).

It's an invasion of privacy because IT"S MAKING A DECISION FOR YOU (excuse the shouting). It would be as if your car would not start if the seat belt was not done up.

Free agents prefer to make their own - even wrong - decisions.

Agreed: the white space is daunting, the

<h4>

text is far too small, and the top-left slashdot graphic is tiny.

Everything looks shrunken.

You may be right.

But I too catch cheaters, and let me tell you my emotions start with nervousness at explaining to the student (individually), and then run to subdued anger.

Indeed. I use an unlocked tri-band GSM phone about half the year in Europe, and the same phone about half the year in the States. Also T-Mobile in the States, and strictly prepaid on either continent.

Could not be simpler. I tape the SIM card not being used on the back of my passport.