What? Sorry, I was too busy watching Jack Bauer kick the crap out of terrorists on TV.

Ooooh, IDeals. Is Apple going into the coupon business?

I helped one of the Amish pull electronic reports off his laptop. They guy used Quickbooks for all his finances, and would print out invoices from his truck for customers of his building business. Amish != Luddite. It is often quite surprising how much they know about current technology and events. A more accurate description is that they are selective and deliberate about what they adopt into their lifestyle, rather than soak up whatever bits of pop culture are put in front of them.

Woosh!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo

Yeah, but then she'll just demand another one.

Not to mention you also sacrifice flexibility. If the job market tanks bad in your location it is FAR more difficult to up-root yourself to another area where the suck isn't so bad. If you think it is tough finding a job in a dying community, try selling a house in one! The job market is always asymmetrical in it's ups and downs - some areas will fail first, and others will recover first.

I've always thought it is mostly venting frustrations at an unfulfilled desire for the deviant behavior. These repressed wants drive the need to punish any who would actually experience the object or action secretly desired. It's over-compensation and the guilty need to punish themselves by proxy - the more guilt, the more rabid foam.

Since the cellphones all connect to local towers and infrastructure, AT&T should actually see a rolling traffic spike as each tower and (possibly) it's back-haul connections are overwhelmed. I'm no wireless engineer, but I'd suspect the current congestion issues are mostly tower resource related.

I'd be inclined to agree with you, but unfortunately those taxes very rarely, if ever, go towards covering the costs society bears for that activity. Take smoking taxes. Here in Wisconsin there is a $1 per pack extra tax on the stuff. If your theory held true, that extra money the state collects on behalf of society should go to fund hospitals and prevention programs. Instead it is a bait and switch - tax something unpopular to make an attempt to close a very large budget hole. That is the real reason for all these new exotic taxing schemes, and the politicos know which buttons to hit to bring the useful idiots out in droves to support it.

I live out in the sticks where Internet is either satellite or dial-up, and actually priced out a balloon to get line of site for the local wireless provider since neither choice was appealing. I looked at advertising balloons, as they were generally large enough to hoist a payload and a bit more durable. For the balloon, cable tether, anchor, a supply of helium, solar panels, strobe (for aircraft), battery, etc. was something like $1500 at the time. It was a bit more for the UFO shaped one to fsck with the neighbors. ;-)

The part you are forgetting is that once the information is collected you have no way of knowing how long it is kept. Once you become a person of interest (suspect, political target, etc), they will be looking at historical information to see where you have been, tie it to the transaction at the bank, surveillance cams in Walmart and McD's, etc. You don't really need to have someone under full time surveillance - all the pieces are already there recorded and stored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth#Pest_control

Too true. I'm was in a temp office without windows due to a remodel. One day it snowed 16 inches from no snow cover while I was inside. I put in a webcam in an out of the way window the next day.

Makes you wonder how many voted for screw, but only got a wedg-e

That would be the monkeysphere at work. Did they do anything to raise their "value" in the eyes of the decision makers above cardboard cutout?

A job is about more than pure output. There are many ways to have face time, and not all of them require face-to-face time.