The ISPs are claiming that the consumers will foot the bill if the likes of Netflix and Google aren't made to pay. But, who believes that if the big content providers are charged more, they won't immediately pass that increase on to their content consuming customers? Consumers pay for their data consumption one way or the other.

From the dates that the blood samples were taken, 1988-1994, I would say that most people at that time had elevated lead levels from breathing all the leaded gas fumes for years previous. The mandate for catalytic converters went through in 1975 but, as I remember, it was into the 80's before all the leaded gas had stopped being available. I would bet that if that sampling were done now the levels would be much lower for most of the people sampled; at least the younger ones who were born after the switch to unleaded gas.

There's good news and bad news, as always. The good news is that with the price dropping on technology, you can find fantastic scopes that are quite inexpensive and will find just about anything you'd want to look at with the touch of a couple of buttons. Most will even interface with a laptop right out of the box. The bad news is, if astrophotography is what you're after, your budget is going to have to expand a bit or your going to have to find a good deal on a used setup. The problem with taking pictures is tracking, tracking, tracking. You need a scope mount that's able to track with very little vibration or drift and you also need one that can handle having the weight of a heavy camera body clamped onto it. CCDs have come down quite a bit in price and they are much lighter in weight but, again, they ain't cheap. A good place to get an idea of pricing would be Orion Telescopes http://www.telescope.com/. They sell just about everything and have a "wizard" that you can use to get you in the ball park on prices. If you weren't so interested in photography, I'd suggest one of the Dobsonian style setups; they are inexpensive, portable, easy to set-up and take down and give excellent view/price.