Time Machine will delete the oldest backups when its disk is full, so if you're systematically deleting photos from your main HD, hoping that TM will indefinitely preserve them as they were when first backed up, this will eventually backfire.

I believe TM was designed as an emergency solution / nice surprise for people who wouldn't go to the trouble of backing up anyway.

TextWrangler. Free, and full-featured. Join the herd. A clipboard manager is also useful for roll-your-own keyboard shortcuts for stripping formatting. I use PTHPasteboard PRO. Not free (it will let you use a limited feature set for free), but worth it.

Hide your kids, hide your wife.

Eh?

I'd imagine it's possible that the only thing that might cause any of these civilizations to be labelled "more advanced" could be something as simple as Apple on their planet rolling out new notebooks with a matte screen option and Firewire on the consumer models. Hey, I'd migrate.