The notion that technology is the reason the murder rate has fallen by half.

"If cellphone companies don’t want to take reasonable steps to ensure reliability..."

"... then they should be liable to customers who suffer injury from failed service."

Don't people kind of know cell phones don't work reliably? Isn't that the reason you're supposed to keep your land line? I've spent something like $30 a month for years maintaining a land line that mostly only collects commercial calls and wrong numbers because it just might happen that there will be an emergency and only the land line will work.

I finally cut of my land line, driven to it by a particular screw up. And I'd like to think the cell phone will fill the gap, performing like the old technology. But I think we know the risks and we've chosen them. What other predictable disappointments should be converted into lawsuits?

"I’m not traumatized by the storm; I’m traumatized by the indifference."

A Tale of Two Cities: New York above 40th Street and New York below 40th Street.

Some people said they had been turned away from hotel lobbies, other banks and cafes near 40th Street when asked if they could charge their phones. It was as if, said Gabriella Sonam, a massage therapist who had biked up from the East Village, they did not even know a national emergency was going on just across the street.

"I just biked down from Hell’s Kitchen, and it is like a Friday night up there."

"And then you get down here and it is like entering a zombie movie."

The dividing line in Manhattan is 25th Street.

What is the main thing people miss when the power is out? I think it's the capacity to recharge the cell phone. People waited in line for an hour to get to a power strip running from a CNN truck that was parked outside that building that lost its facade in the storm.

By mutual agreement, the people there had somehow decided that when someone filled up to 50 percent, it was time to unplug and let the next person go.

It's heartening the way people pull together in a tragedy and interesting to see it happening over the new core necessity, the cell phone.

"Why drive? Why own a car? Why ‘go’ anywhere?"

Generation Y doesn't see why.

Facebook pays $1 billion for Instagram.

Do you understand why?

It seems as though the main gauge of Instagram is the number of times the app has been downloaded. I've downloaded the app, but I've never used it. I got hung up at the phase where you establish an account and connect it to Facebook so it can feed off my Facebook account. I just don't feel that good about that. Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, is Facebook just capturing a predator so its competitors won't use it to undercut Facebook? What's really going on?

"The government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone..."

"... in the UK under new legislation set to be announced soon. Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time."

But Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary David Davis said... "What this is talking about doing is not focusing on terrorists or criminals, it's absolutely everybody's emails, phone calls, web access...

"All that's got to be recorded for two years and the government will be able to get at it with no by or leave from anybody."

Do you enjoy paying other people's cell phone bills?

You are doing that, you know.

Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts....

The program came to be after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, and the FCC created the Universal Service Fund to help "to promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates," among other things. All telecommunications carriers must pay into the fund, and many do so by tacking on a fee to each of their customers' bills. It's probably added into your monthly wireless bill and your landline bill, if you still have one.

"In USA Magnited States of America, where you are FREE to TEXT in a THE-A-TER!"

Funny, but bad language....

"Fluoridated water. Artificial sweeteners. Genetically modified foods. Power lines. Vaccines"

"Now cellphones have officially been served with their own baseless indictment, by no less than the World Health Organization."

Those who pollute science with politics, emotion, and other things that are not science deserve our contempt. Expose them. Criticize them. They are great malefactors.

"Through... cellphone research projects, scientists are able to pinpoint 'influencers,' the people most likely to make others change their minds."

"The data can predict with uncanny accuracy where people are likely to be at any given time in the future...."

[A]t MIT, scientists who tracked student cellphones during the latest presidential election were able to deduce that two people were talking about politics, even though the researchers didn't know the content of the conversation. By analyzing changes in movement and communication patterns, researchers could also detect flu symptoms before the students themselves realized they were getting sick.

"Will.i.am said his attempt to tweet during the performance was thwarted after he discovered his cell phone had no service."

"His Twitter handle was silent until after the game, when he sent out a series of tweets beginning with: 'Att crashed ... ahhhh!!!! The worse.'"

Blame AT&T. AT&T is to blame for everything. Why not blame AT&T for how bad the Black Eyed Peas were?

The choice of the Black Eyed Peas was intended to bring some youthful vigor back to the halftime show after the NFL — feeling burned by the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" of Janet Jackson with the aid of Justin Timberlake in 2004 — chose a string of safe, near-geriatric icons for the halftime for the next six years, ending on a low note with a much-maligned concert by The Who last year.

You did "Sweet Child O' Mine" and near-geriatric icon Slash appeared. Then you did "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." Did near-geriatric icon Jennifer Grey back out at the last moment?

"It's troubling that he had a cellphone since he's a person who got other people to murder on his behalf."

Charles Manson had a cell phone.

Walk with me, while you see and hear everything that I see and hear...

... as I walk around talking to you on my cell phone using an earpiece with a camera stuck on it.

Why did it take police 4 days to gain access to this man's phone records....

... which turned out to be the way to locate him and save his life?

Thomas Wopat-Moreau, 22, lost control of his BMW sport wagon along the Taconic State Parkway, 40 miles south of Albany, after storming out of a party in East Fishkill early Sunday morning, state police said.

The vehicle flipped over, went airborne and soared down an embankment - finally coming to rest in heavy vegetation about 480 feet from the highway....

Lacking feeling in his legs and suffering from internal injuries, Wopat-Moreau crawled away from the wrecked BMW... beat his way through waist-high marsh grasses, but could only make it 150 feet away from the BMW.

For four days, as dehydration set in and insects swarmed, Wopat-Moreau survived on swamp water and a gritty determination to live. 

"The movie ends with a poisonous jellyfish in an icy bathtub. Don’t ask."

Line in a Maureen Dowd column about the dangers of driving while telephoning that sent me straight to The Movie Spoiler because, in fact, I wanted to ask...

... oh... okay... wow...

Did anyone go to that movie?