Most of the non-bottom-of-the-barrel airlines offer this, for United at least it's called economy plus.

I've flown US->Brazil 6 times in the last year. I've kept an eye open for business class at an affordable price each time, but the difference tends to be $1400 vs $6000 (sometimes 8). Economy plus is an extra ~$115 each way, and gets you 'up to' 5" extra legroom. As an added bonus, you generally get to board early, so the overhead bins will be nice and empty.

Still, I feel your pain. Try to shop around and see if you can find a similar-priced flight on an airline with this option. For me at least, the difference between having that metal bar from the top of the magazine rack (WHY do you need to put a damn metal bar in there! my knees protest verily!) and suffering for days, vs paying the extra $115 or so and getting room to shift my legs freely, is making flying tolerable again.

Best of luck.

One of my favorites was the time when, after getting through security in Zurich on a flight to the US (and mind you, having my ovomaltine crunchy cream (think nutella consistency), a gift for my wife, confiscated; because it's a "liquid"!), being able to buy cask-strength whisky and lighters *in the same shop*, dozens of feet from the gate to my plane.

...(also, yes spellcheck, whisky is the right spelling of that word, considering my heritage).

...your first point may be valid (but really? *this* is what the laws spend time protecting?)... but your second point is handled already by the GP's HS math teacher reference. Or, your own post, which points out that in order to break the average speed >= speed limit rule, your speed must either always equal the speed limit, or have exceeded it at some point.

If you need an in-depth lesson (sans actual math), I recommend the first few lectures from http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/Courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=1413 .

Indeed, re-purposed weapons-grade material is a great source of enriched uranium. In general it's enriched *way* beyond what's needed to run a plant, so can in fact be diluted before being used.

http://www.cfr.org/energy/global-uranium-supply-demand/p14705

...the fun part is that, for a while, this led to mining/processing companies not actually supplying the amounts needed per year. As the flow of HEU from established stockpiles was slowing down, this led the market price to spike - I'm still kicking myself for not investing in uranium-linked financial instruments (for some silly reason they don't just let people buy uranium hexafluoride like many other commodities ;-) ) over the last few decades. Note that recently, due to less-than-expected new reactor building, and a ramp-up in mining/processing, the price has stabilized a bit, but for a while there was a small fortune to be made if you read the supply/demands right.

I did, and unless I'm off today I think you miscalculated. If they had a 15% share, and dropped to 5%, that's a 66.6% loss; if they went from 20% to 2% that's a 90% loss.

Ding ding. I couldn't possibly drive to work. My VP used to, it cost him ~$350/mo for a parking space nearby our office. That's double my monthly train ticket.

I do also consume 5 cups/day of coffee (K-cups, not terribly cheap), with fresh milk. I don't bring my own batteries to work to power my computer. I flush probably 5 toilets/day without paying for the water. I'm typing this post on a computer I didn't pay for...

I'm not saying that taxing services/benefits/freebies/comps/whatever isn't legitimate, but I'd like to see a strict formal definition before deciding whether it's rational.

Ding ding ding. Well, I can't conclude that the danger is effectively nil, but it's definitely not something they're very worried about.

I fly very often. Most of the times the reminder to turn off the devices will come just before takeoff, and basic compliance checks even for the devices which the attendants saw out and being used tend not to be done. Often you could ignore the request and not have it asked again, since they'll finish their run up the aisle, then prepare for takeoff.

A few times, I've fallen asleep before takeoff (a good special power for a consultant to have) with the bright red light on my noise-cancelling headphones (connected to my phone for music) beaming towards the aisle, and not been awoken by the crew to turn it off. At least twice, my computer has refused to properly standby/hibernate before takeoff, so effectively was still running the whole time in my backpack. As you mention, this was never checked, nor questioned.

Not sure where you're going here with your primate in a cage example. There's no real reason why a primate could knowingly be in a situation where they'd like to gather data on their Xing habits over time, to estimate an upper bound for how many X's they may commit in light of a potential (and now (over)-estimated) punishment.

Let's turn this around. I like the idea of micro-transaction pay-per-read articles. I tend to read ~0-100/day. I'd like to know, roughly, what the most is I'd spend in a month *if I were paying honestly for value I received*. Note the "honestly" and "most" there.

If, in playing with these free buttons, I read an article I like, why do you seem to assume that I'd hit "0" (well you know what I mean) or "1" in that case? I THOUGHT THE ARTICLE WAS GOOD. Here's a fake $.03. Yes, I realize this didn't cost me anything, but now I have a record of one article I would have read, which (were I being honest that day) would have cost me $.03. If I didn't like the article? *Then* they get 0.

Not all information needs to meet 100% rigorous data-quality-real-world standards to be useful. With a month of this tool, I can determine whether I'd be ballparking $5 or $50 **in a world where this existed, and I was being honest with myself**. That's it. It doesn't tell *you* anything about me, and it doesn't necessarily tell the system designer anything about my "real world" payments. But it sure does tell me about me.

TL,DR: This is an easier way to estimate a ceiling amount for how much you may spend in such a system than recording your month's browsing in an excel workbook would have been.

I'd imagine the fact that it has a detectable odor implies that the flavor cannot be indefinitely maintained...

The thing is, you didn't *mention* it, you made an unverified probabilistic claim. Directly.

Your use of the word "probably" implies that *the most likely cause of death among people in England 2700 years ago was anti-semite persecution*. Logically following from here, if that's the most likely cause of death (which would qualify your "probably"), then a fairly large percent of 2700-year-back Yorkshire population would have had to be Jewish.

That's news to me.

Perhaps, just perhaps, people were modding you a Troll not because they believe Jews weren't persecuted... but more for the fact that you're making blanket, untrue statements, then following these up with ad-hominem attacks for anyone who doesn't chime in in agreement or downmods your terrible math.