However: this Saturday is "National Free Comic Book Day" in the US and parts of the world. Be sure to visit a local comic book store. Or a library - some have special events. One year, our local library actually had some of the Top Shelf authors/artists on-site. They made recommendations based on interests and age, and even signed the issues they were handing out.

That is true, however politicians and bureaucrats really like having a way to receive bribes that don't leave a paper trail. Which impulse will win out in the end?

I think the "yes, paper trail" will win. The fact is, the laws don't apply to them anyway, and this will be another one. If the former minority leader (current majority leader) of US Congress can hand out checks from tobacco companies to members right there on the floor before a vote, then a little thing like a "bribe trail" won't matter.

But: up against the wall for you if you decide to barter a little computer repair work to get your lawn mowed.

Personally, I love the sound of my V8 revving up. But I also hate how much it costs to do that :)

I foresee a market it downloadable "engine-tunes". Make your car sound like a V8, an I4, or even a Harley.

Personally, I'd still go for "silent", but I DID get a kick out of the roar of the engine in the Taurus that RoboCop drove.

Mankind was always a bunch of horny perverts, it's just you were a blind fool before. The internet makes us better people, in part by showing moralistic fools that they are wrong about what most people do.

The contrary to that argument that I've heard is that the internet has led to an INCREASE in whack-a-doodles, for a similar reason.

In days of old, if you were a nutter who believed that the President of the US was a radical Christian-Muslim-Socialist, or that he wasn't born in this country contrary to every shred of evidence to the contrary (or any other crazy, conspiracy theory out there in general), you were often alone in your town in those beliefs. You may have held those thoughts, but usually kept them to yourself as nobody shared them with you.

But, with the advent of everyone getting a soap box, you can find like-minded folks everywhere in the world. You are no longer alone in your beliefs and you are suddenly validated. You may even find a gang of crazies in a basement (or compound) not too far from your house. Meetings on Tuesdays!

Yes, the fact that we now have this nearly instant, world-wide communication means we can see the extremes that are happening around us and shun them, whereas they were previously in the 'dark corners', but it also cuts both ways.

Really - it's hard to tell with all of those vertical lines. I once worked for a company that had "illlinois" in the letterhead. Everyone ignored the spell-check alert because it was trendy to do it all in lower-case and they figured that the error was just the first letter missing the cap.

3.[this is the neat one] when writing the budget, the community is absolutely forbidden to write in a single penny of expected revenue from speed camera, and any revenue must be written in at the year end as general proportional tax credit for the citizens, and by citizens I mean the ones who paid the taxes to build the road in question; in the case of an Interstate, all the money goes to the federal government.

I believe on of our eastern states (Virginia? not sure) recently had put in a bunch of cameras with the plan to split the collections 50/50 with the camera company and the police. It later turned out that the state already had an existing rule in place that all such money was supposed to go 50/50 to the schools.

The cameras were quickly removed.

...but these days you can buy consumer LED bulbs in about any color temperature you like, including the "warm" light indistinguishable from incandescents.

Even slicker: Sharp makes an LED bulb which will display any color temperature you like, complete with a remote control.

If the country is producing enough to feed everyone and you have too few jobs and too many workers why not: a) work shorter hours?

In the US, as long as benefits - esp. health care - are connected to "full-time" employment as a binary relationship, this won't happen. It's in the interest of the employer to have as few people as possible at "full-time", and low-wage jobs are notorious for cutting off workers at 34.5 hours, or whatever the threshold is for the state.

I would GLADLY work 3/4 the hours for 3/4s the pay and 3/4s the health insurance, but it doesn't work like that.

If we had "single-payer" health insurance, you'd see a LOT more variety in working schedules, and we'd have fuller employment; the same number of hours would be worked (disallowing any network effects from single-payer insurance) but more people would be busy working them.

3) "Unauthorized devices" were disallowed from connecting to the network, killing competition and innovation and probably setting back the development of things like fax machines and modems (and all the services built upon them) by a few decades.

THIS. When I was growing up, our family had plenty of 'extra' phones, as well as little devices which the phone company didn't approve of, like forwarders (for the home business) and answering machines. The few times we had the phone company in to take care of something, it was a frantic game of unplugging everything and hiding it in the closet or a box. One time, a cord was left hanging out of a closet door and the phone guy saw it - the jig was up and he confiscated all of it. AND IT WAS OUR STUFF.

Yeah, the stuff was indestructible, but the one thing it wasn't allowed to ever be was YOURS.

The current subsidized model is actually the worst of both worlds. You BARELY own the phone, and if anything goes wrong with it the carrier will claim "abused" and disavow any responsibility. My phone has never gotten wet, but the water indicator is "on" because of placing the phone in the bathroom in the morning on a shelf while I take a shower.

...paying for text messaging (which literally costs carriers nothing)...

You are using that word and I literally do not think you know what it means.

I think the Oatmeal explained it best. Bring out the GayRoller!