You would think that every marketing graduate would know that scare tactics turned PSA deliver some of the best unintentional satire created by man. I'll wait until it's in Netflix and do a double feature with "The Day After Tomorrow."

Absolutely. I used to have a 45-minute commute to work when I lived in New Jersey and I honestly can't remember the number of times that I was almost run into by someone in a 3-ton SUV that was talking or texting instead of driving.

Japanese taxi drivers frequently have the TV playing on their nav units while driving, but they are among the safest drivers I've ever ridden with. I think two way communication is far more taxing to a driver's attention than a receive-only medium.

The TV/Nav units in Japan (and other parts of Asia) have no such restriction and it's only a problem for lazy stupid Americans.*


*Disclaimer: JaxTJ is an American that is motivated by laziness and sometimes does stupid things.

...an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. My wife and I considered that before our daughter was born, and we couldn't not do it. We had all the risk factor screening that is typical now, and our daughter doesn't have any problems, but if her umbilical blood could someday help her or someone else's child, it seems like a no-brainer.

But here's the problem with your logic:

I would venture to say that 99% of all those now in default were at one time told by a parent, other family member, or teacher the simple maxim, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." The other age-old standby of "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" also applies here. Many of the people who signed mortgages with introductory rates below the published federal rate now all of a sudden want to claim that they didn't know any better, and that the broker told them they could sell their house for more money. As Gregg Easterbrook, economist and writer of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for ESPN pointed out several months ago, if they were told by their broker they could find a brick of gold on the street, would they have believed that as well?

The main cause of the current problems in this country is an immeasurable sense of entitlement on all parts. The CEOs that believe they are entitled to golden parachutes, ego-stroking private jets, and million dollar salaries all while running their companies into the ground. The consumers believe that because they work "hard" they "deserve" a McMansion in the 'burbs and two SUVs in the driveway.

In the US Declaration of Independance, there is a reference to certain rights such as "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happines." Many Americans misconstrue this and take its meaning to be that they have some mystical right to hapiness and therefore if they have to chase it instead of already having it, someone else must be doing them harm.

The only way out of this crisis is through hard times and harder work.

"I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." - Benjamin Franklin

and if he were to choose the iPod Touch/iPhone it would be great if someone would develop a nice application or webapp that could integrate with linuxmce so we could do cool home automation stuff too.