Don't be silly, the legal regime in America has become a major issue for corporations. Mostly, it figures in the decision about where in the USA to locate, but it's absolutely an issue in overseas expansions. Take the new US banking disclosure regulations that demand that they change their operations even outside the US if they're to operate at all in the US. In response, many foreign banks are just closing down their US operations: the cost of implementing the changes isn't worth the revenue they get from American customers.

One of the biggest problems in US law is its sheer capriciousness. You can be sued for things that other companies did (it's called strict liability). There's any number of overlapping and sometimes contradictory regulations whose enforcement is totally up to the whims of the regulators in place at the time (and if a new party takes power, they can retroactively go after you for something that the previous regulators had allowed). The laws are constantly changing, so you can't plan your business.

With contingency fees, your customers can sue you for free, as you endure millions in legal bills. Punitive damages can go as high as a jury cares to pump it. Plaintiffs can go "jurisdiction shopping" to sue you in the area with the most favorable laws and to cherry pick the most plaintiff-friendly judge. Meanwhile, your executives spend weeks and months producing documents and affidavits, or cooling their heels in the courtroom instead of doing their jobs. It's often easier to settle, and how many times can you afford that?

If cars are this susceptible to microwave energy, then Iran will shortly have the ability to shut down much of our country, in an instant.

Exo-atmospheric nuclear EMP is easy to generate if you have a nuke (even a small one, although the area affected would be somewhat less) and can put it in a low orbit satellite. Iran has the latter (and is about to launch a couple more) and will soon have the former. Their nukes can be small (they have implosion technology).

They have also been testing an alternate delivery system - a SCUD launch with the warhead detected at the top of the trajectory - EMP is the only explanation for such tests.

So, if they are nutty enough (and do you want to bet your survival on the sanity of President ImANutJob?), they can kill tens of millions of Americans, with no warning at all. They can orbit a nuke in a satellite, to be detonated on command. Or, they could launch a few SCUDs from merchant ships hundreds of miles off our shores.

Imagine a US where a large area (say, 1000mi in diameter) suddenly has a destroyed electrical transmissions system,almost all telecoms down, and almost all vehicles unusable. It's not a pretty thought.

See US Gov report at http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf (pdf)

"Just out of curiousity, do you have pre-arranged meeting areas if there IS a big emergency? Do you have 72 hours of food and water at your house?"

No ... But our meeting place was gonna be at your house, so it sounds like we should be all set!

You are probably hearing aliasing. If your 19kHz has harmonic content (which can be introduced several ways), it will mix with the 44.1Khz sampling frequency, producing sounds at the sum and difference frequencies (for example 44.1 - 38 = 6.1).

That being said, ye olde Dan, of dansdata.com has a good (great?) article on the memory effect.

And an unfortunate title as well, but alas.