Well, the point that Keynesians make is that during a demand slump, spending on something, anything will be a net benefit, they don't say that it will ALWAYS be a net benefit. In the current economy, where consumers can't spend because they are debt-constrained, and industry won't spend because there are no customers buying, then government should step in and spend to fill the demand gap and cut taxes to give consumers and industry more spare cash to spend. The corollary to this is during good times, you raise taxes and pay off the debts accrued during the bad times which we were actually doing a great job of until the Bush tax cuts. Since we went into this recession with very low tax rates, further tax cuts have little benefit and it would be, under these specific economic conditions, a net benefit for the government to spend money to put people to work doing almost anything, since they will turn around and spend that money and create further economic activity.

You do realize that the countries you mention at the beginning of you post (Sweden, Japan, and Uraguay) all have socialized medicine and provide food-stamp like programs for the poor? Nobody wants to be fat and sick. If I told you that if you moved into the projects and quit your job, you could eat Twinkies until you went into a diabetic coma, would you? If you want to look at government causes for obesity look at subsides for grain and sugar farmers, not the fact that now some poor people will get the same medical care as the rich.

Hard to beat this: http://www.vintageking.com/Prism-Sound-Orpheus?sc=18&category=388

There are tons of sound input devices marketed for music recording, and pretty much every price point you'd care to hit. The Prism is pretty top-of-the-line, but I'm sure there is something that would fit your needs if you just want to back up LPs here:

http://www.sweetwater.com/c695--USB_Audio_Interfaces

The problem is that if you bring your own phone to a US carrier, you don't get a discounted rate. Effectively, any wireless plan you buy will include a 2-year lock-in and the extra cost for a phone subsidy, wether you use the subsidy or not. There are a few small carriers that don't have long term contracts with built in subsidies, but there is no cost benefit to bringing your own phone to any of the national carriers.

You posted links to two stories of people who claim to be Buddhists being assholes. The asshole monk was defrocked, the article about the asshole businessmen points out repeatedly that their assholeness was extremely un-Buddhist. How does either of those examples even begin to prove your assertion that 'Buddhism is just as exploitative as any other religious cult'?

The DS does have this feature. You can just close the DS and it goes into standby mode at any time and in any game. It's not exactly "powering off", but I've had a battery charge last a week in standby (the game I was playing last Wednesday was still up and waiting for me when I went back to work yesterday).

However, neither situation will fix having to start over if you die in a dungeon that disallows saving.