Also, I try to use social networking really with three categories of activities in mind:

1) Self-promotion: This stuff always goes on the social networking media. That';s what the media is there for!

2) Public thoughts: This is sort of like a mini-blog service. Things can go there if audience-appropriate.

3) Private activities and thoughts: No way in hell am I putting those on a social networking site!

There is a great deal to learn from history. We might not always be able to avoid the hard lessons, but the easy lessons (i.e. what has worked) is far more productive anyway. And I think technology changes things less than you might think.... The technology is different but the human needs are the same, and the human flaws too.....

Well, there are actually two uses for the yellow dots.

The first is tracking fake documents back to their source. There your idea has some merit.

The other is noting that a document was printed on a laser printer anyway. For example, TSA agents look at all id's with a blue light, presumably looking for these dots. A magnifying glass, looking at microprint on, say, passports would get further than the yellow light, and would not be more expensive or time consuming. Indeed the same magnifying glass might even show these yellow dots. The current scheme only catches cheap fakes. Someone mounting a major counterfeiting operation for things like visas and passports would use better technology than that though.

The issue that this is a cheap way to identify fakes is very dangerous because it is fairly easy to circumvent.

Interesting how mortgages also tie people to jobs. They reduce geographic mobility and make it so if you cannot work for someone else, you cannot effectively buy a house without a guarantor who does.....

One thing our society has been amazingly good at doing is making people dependent on corporations for jobs.....

It is *hard* to be self-employed in the US, but it is the only way to be free.

About twenty percent of US adults now live in multigenerational households so evidently it isnt that big of an issue.

Better yet, move into an apartment and rent your house out. That protects your ability to pay your mortgage while protecting your interest in your house.

The next thing to do is to figure out how to eat during that time. I suspect the minimum monthly budget is probably something like 250/person if you aren't in practice, and around $100/person if you are (and if you want to be happy with this food you had better be a good and creative cook! Yes, there are a million and a half ways to cook beans with a little meat and onions!).

Or, if that fails, and your only issue is explaining the issues to those who don't get it, work with someone who doesn't mind doing the explaining. In fact I would be happy to take over this part of your projects, for a fee of course ;-)

Presumably the bonds would be sold to third parties....

Then eventually banks would own them but when it would be time to collect.... oops, not valid.....

The better idea would be for the counties to use eminent domain to take over the lines and phone switches and rent them back to the telcos!

Actually, this is not a bad idea. The telco's could then rent out the services to competing providers meaning an end to the monopoly and a need for such price controls. The original telco's could use their settlements to buy additional switches to stay in business, leasing the lines back from the counties.

Monopolies are not free markets. One can create a free market by nationalizing the natural monopoly portion and then renting out access on a RAND basis to all potential competitors on a per-subscriber basis.

All kids need bacon cheeseburgers from time to time too.....

Especially Jewish and Muslim ones.