Tin foil coat?

Well, I live in the UK, so see them so often that they barely get noticed any more. Having seen this jogged a realisation that on the bus I took to work this morning was a screen cycling through feeds of the 6-7 cameras on board the bus, just to - you know, remind you.

Is that *really* what you think is happening? I'm a Brit and haven't been to the US for a while now so may well be talking out of my 'bum' ... but for that to be the case it suggests that someone, somewhere in the upper echelons of your government has taken an explicit decision that that is what they are trying to do.

I accept that the results make it feel more and more like a police state when you fly, but don't think the cause can be attributed to anything more than incompetence and laziness. As in: 'Hey, we need to make people feel more secure after a few hijackings. Screw it, we'll just hire a bunch of drop-outs in uniform to grope them every time they fly.'

The difference is important, because the way that you deal with an incompetent politician will probably be very different to the way that you deal with an 'evil' one, the latter being what I suspect you are alluding to. We may well be sleepwalking into a police state (the UK certainly has been over the past two decades) but my argument would be that the problem is the political apathy that allows it.

TL;DR: don't portray government as an evil genius when what's much more likely is a lazy idiot.

The most populous European countries have no national service: the UK's ended in 1960, France's in 2001, Germany's national service ended in 2011, and the Netherlands in 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_service

I tried this approach with my wife, though she didn't seem keen to go for it... ...admittedly it wasn't in relation to coffee.

...I can attach it to some frikkin' sharks?

These types of device admittedly aren't designed for lower spenders, but in the UK it's fairly common to have short or nonexistent contract periods, where data usage can incur quite hefty fees. On my 'pay-as-you-go' tariff the notional cost of data is £4/MB*, which would put something like this at £20 ($30) an HOUR... By comparison I could get a contract for a new HTC Wildfire for £15/mo. Surely half the idea (of lower-end smartphones at least) is function creep: to try and get more limited users gradually using more and more data so both manufacturers and carriers win. Maybe this is a case of too much, too soon? - * Of course, I would never use this for anything except -very- occasionally checking emails.

I wish *your* car had 3-5x stricter licensing requirements.

Seriously, as a cyclist and a moderate environmentalist, it seems that there are far too many people on the roads, making travelling more dangerous and time consuming for everyone, whose justification for driving a private car is rougly 'I can't take the bus, that's for poor people'. The right to drive needs to be balanced with the rights of local populations to safe and efficient roads and the rights of the global population to a clean planet.

By imposing far stricter driving tests and regular re-tests, it would still allow those with a legitimate business need (on-call nurses, tradespeople, etc.) access to a vehicle without prohibitive extra cost. Public transport, walking and cycling can easily fill the gap for the rest of us - in some places it already does.

I wish *your* car, and indeed most cars, had 3-5x stricter licensing requirements.

Seriously, as a cyclist and moderate environmentalist it seems obvious to me that in many regions there are just too many cars on the roads, causing huge tailbacks and dangerous road conditions for those who actually have a reason to be using the road other than 'I can't use the bus, that's for poor people'. The right to drive a vehicle needs to be balanced against the rights of the local population to safe roads and the global population to a clean planet.

Tougher driving tests and regular re-tests would mean that people would actually consider other options and would not prohibit those that have a legitimate business need (on-call nurses, tradespeople, etc.) on cost grounds. Not everyone needs a car.

What do the Romans make of that?