What's amazing is the SMS data takes no extra communication to send--it's sent via the tower-to-phone pinging.

Hey John--you should measure yourself sometime. On average, the legs are usually about half a person's height. The distance between the bottom of the feet to the knee is generally the same as between the knee and the hip, and the hip to to the shoulders. So Mr. Scrawny is really Mr. Normal.

What I don't understand is in Chicago you put your ballot into a device that checks if there are any errors (like missing a contest or failure to fully mark the gap). If the device generates an error, they are supposed to ask the voter if they want to recheck their ballot. None of these people did that?

When the Taser was first introduced, we heard it was only to be used in a case where deadly force was the only alternative. This was also the excuse for when the Taser killed someone--well we would have had to used deadly force, they would say, wringing their hands. Now the Taser is used for behaviorial modification in places that deadly force would never be used: ordering a student out of a library, making a protestor not ask a question at a political forum. (I have no sympathy for a protestor being arrested for disrupting a political event, but there is no excuse for being tased), or silencing an unruly defendant. Bouncers at clubs are without such devices and yet can maintain order, merely by threat and menance of force: why aren't the police doing this? Have we lost the ability to defuse without escalation and torture?