Maybe I'm not your standard issue human, but I sincerely hope I don't live anywhere close to 114.

It's not that you don't want to live to be 114, it's that you don't want the health problems associated with such an advanced age. Most of the people reading this site won't be 114 for 70 or 80 years, and a lot of medical advances can happen in that time period. Between replacement parts and cybernetics, you may be in better shape at 114 than you are today.

It's already happening. I have Comcast. They charge the same for basic cable + internet as they do for internet alone, so I have basic cable which I never watch. Everything I do watch is streamed over my Roku. The "high" speed internet, as you call it, is perfectly adequate for this purpose.

That's not going to work for sports fans, but most people don't watch sports.

One of the lessons of Fukushima should be that you don't want to store decades worth of spent rods on site. If they had actually lost control of the reactors, the radiation would have forced everyone away from the site. They would have lost control of the short term spent fuel pools above the reactors in pretty short order, and they would also have eventually lost control of the long term storage pool, which contains a hell of a lot of spent fuel.

I wouldn't mind seeing spent fuel moved away from reactor sites in the US, on the theory that "the worst that can happen" would end up being a little less "worst".

"First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out."

Someone in my family works in public safety. His city got brand new digital radios a few years back, and department policy is they get used for all official communications, since everything is recorded. But they do end up using their cell phones for official business. Not to hide things from the public, though. The problem is they can't talk to HQ on the new radios because the coverage is too spotty - it's the only way they have to communicate in certain parts of the city.

The radio system provider charged a mint, too.

And yet press shield laws have been written to exclude people who don't work for newspapers or electronic media.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of litigious bastards.

With this book Bacigalupi managed to rekindle my ten-years-dorman love for science fiction. Rich characters and wonderful prose.

I still don't see the point of reviewing it now, though. By this time everyone interested in reading it has probably already read it.

I'm not sure what you're asking. The most efficient way to control the air is from the air.

Nobody has air-to-air drones yet. You can't buy what isn't available, and it's going to be at least 15 years or so before anybody has one in production.