>routine dental checkups (every 6 months) cost $50 without insurance, and each cavity costs $250 to repair

Adult cleaning and exam are more like $250 bucks in my neck of the woods. Small town, not close to Mexico...

Other expenses higher in proportion...

>don't know where you get your dental insurance, but on my health insurance dental for the whole family costs $12/month more.

I suspect this is a "vary by state" thing, or perhaps you are enough younger than I am to qualify for significantly cheaper insurance. Or perhaps you are fortunately enough to have your insurance paid by your employer. I'm older, but comparatively healthy, so my individual rate for insurance is a bit under $400 per month. Dental add-on is $50 per month, and I turned it down because the maximum payable benefit is $1000 annually. That is right: the dental plan offered wants $600 a year for $1,000 maximum in benefits. I double checked. No, that does not exclude preventative care, not even routine exams. Third party dental is even wores.

I'm not saying any of this is impossible. But at the same time, I wonder if a theater manager has found a way to not have to go through the hassle of returning a defective copy... Tell the audience they are all like that. Or maybe a way to blame an equipment glitch on Paramount. Sadly the film industry is idiotic enough that I cannot rule the manager telling the truth.

Are you sure as an old-time political , Rosen really epitomises "the wing of the Democratic party that has progressive politics on every issue except the Internet".

I mean I seem to remember the old time political hack wing being:

1) Pro-war, including the latest Iraq fiasco

2) Pro-corporate deregulation

3) Pro-corporate tax cut, and rich guy tax cut - maybe not as large as the Republicans favor but big

4) Pro-nuclear

5) pro-mandatory sentences and pro war-on-some-drugs

And so on and so forth. Maybe Rosen has been an exception. You know if she really is good on all those and is only lousy on the internet, that would be quite an exception. Only didn't she go and take part in drafting Iraq's constitutions, thus supporting the occupation? Which would seem to put her on the wrong side of the whole Iraq thing at least.

I just have to raise my eyebrows a bit at the idea that it is common enough for someone to be bad on internet issue, and good on almost everything else for that to constitute a type. Harlan Ellison maybe, but "hack" or "type" are not words I'd really apply to him.

Don't think the rail systems really count as "honor systems". The Portland light rail uses a similar system or at least did some years ago. They don't check for tickets/passes every trip, but they spot check - and anyone caught cheating gets tossed off and pays a really hefty fine. The fine is both a deterrent and a source of revenue to make up for uncaught cheaters. I'm guessing they come out ahead, especially when you count labor savings in spot checking rather than checking every ticket.

The story by no means sounds impossible to me. But I know that there is no way in hell I'd be a good enough person to do anything along those lines in the same situation.

You know, now that I think of it, "Neil Gaiman, the first taste is free." might not be a bad slogan for the promotion once they pick the book.

I voted for American Gods, not because it was my favorite, but because I genuinely think it is the most accessible of the choices that shows off a lot of Gaiman's range. Yes, the short story collection win hands down for range; but I'd be afraid the sheer variety would also make it likely to hit stories not to a reader's taste. AG is a compromise, the mostly likely (IMO) to hook the largest number net. It is my guess as the right commercial choice, the right flavor to use for a "First taste is free" promotion.

Half of the grocery coupons in my newspaper have a one week expiration date.

If you want a driverless system that would be less expensive and might work better than a driverless monorail consider CyberTran: http://www.cybertran.com/

A variation on PRT, where trains are small automated, and calculate schedules on the fly based on demand -- 24 hour availability, reasonably direct routes no waiting. Because most of the cost of rail is in track, and these use lighter tracks overall cost is lower. So more convenient and less expensive. The downside: only prototypes have been built. Until a beta version, a live test version, is built we won't know that these will work in the real world. They have been tested with extensive simulations, quarter scale models, and even a quarter mile run of working prototypes. So a real world test would be the next step.