I know I am young (24) so my generation definitely knows what a cell phone is and how much money it can save if we just have a cellphone and not a landline. So many people I talked to no longer have landlines these days; or either they do, but never use them. Why? I think one reason cell phones win over landlines is the simple fact that they are portable. You can get a call anywhere. No longer do you have to be tethered to a phone jack to receive a call.

It is said, “for nearly three in 10 households, people do not even bother trying to call them on a landline phone.” Most figures show they either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.  Most figures also show that dependence on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. “In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.”

It is far no surprise that these nifty, cool, little gadgets are growing, and growing quickly. Another reason why I think cell phone usage is growing is because solicitors. Cell phone users get freedom from those annoying solicitors. Families often either have their landline hooked exclusively to a computer or rely so heavily on their cells that they ignore landline calls because they are probably from telephone solicitors.

However, leaving out the poor landline can have some problems too. “The trends have an important impact on polling organizations, which rely primarily on calls to random landline phone numbers.” Calling cell phone users can be more costly for pollsters, in part because federal law forbids unsolicited calls to cell phones made by computerized dialing systems used heavily by pollsters. That is a joy to some people. I am definitely happy that I cannot get unsolicited calls to my cell.

But there is another problem — Also affected are the telephone industry and emergency service providers, who can find it harder to locate people calling from a cell phone. This can be crucial. My parents made the decision of switching to an unlimited cell phone plan and ditching the landline because they were not home. Before, they had their home phone forwarding calls to their cell phones anyway, so I could see their reasoning. More and more companies allow cell phones so it wasn’t a problem for their jobs. However, a situation that involved emergency help was delayed by the simple fact that they had nothing but a cell phone.

I searched and looked at the National Center for Health Statistics and found that out of the 13,000+ individuals they interviewed, they found some interesting findings:

-Low-income people are likelier than the more affluent to have only cell phones.

-About a third of those under age 30 only have cell phones.

-About 2 percent of households reported having no telephones

-Households with both cell and landline phones who rarely or never get calls on their landlines tend to be better educated and have higher incomes.

-Those with only cells tend to be living with unrelated roommates, renters rather than homeowners, and Hispanics and blacks rather than whites.

Of course, these finding do not apply for everyone,everywhere, and living situations, so you should not get offended, but their findings are interesting to see. I feel that, as time progresses and the sheer volume of people grow, landline may be the thing of the past, leaving us vulnerable to those polls and unsolicited phone calls. Kids these days are practically given cell phones after birth and the child grows up with the mindset that they don’t need a landline and that, my friends, is the start of a “landlineless” world.

Okay I admit that todays throwback tech subject is not quite as throwback as most of my subjects, however I felt that this was a wonderful object for discussion given the season.  I learned recently that gift returns are down all across the united states and it is a trend that is continuing.  Why?  Because more and more people are giving out gift cards as presents.  What ever happened to the old fashioned idea of putting some thought into the gift you were getting a person?  Or the minutes of preparation as you removed the price tag so they didn’t know how cheap you were? Also  what are all themakers of wrapping paper supposed to do if everyone starts giving out giftcards.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I think gift cards are a great idea when used wisely, such as with the pain in the butt in law who never seems to be happy with the gift you get them.  Or for the friend who seems to change their mind all the time. However what really drives me insane is getting a gift card instead of plain old use it anywhere cash.  Why can’t people just give cash if they don’t want to buy me a present?  Do they want me to buy something from a particualr store?  Also its damn near impossilbe to use the whole thing, so X-Mart gets to keep a portion of my “gift” which really sucks, or at best I have to spend some of my own money (both of which are the idea).  So why on earth do people give these things out instead of cash?

I can tell you.  Marketing. Yep it all comes down to marketing.  See most people were brought up with the idea that you don’t give cash to people for a gift because it shows a lack of thought.  So Mix in a commercial and bang now  you have a quilt free way to buy a person a gift card without really having to think about them.  Well why the heck is this any different?  Can anyone explain this to me?  Please!  So please if you are getting me a present this year and don’t know what to get me, simply give me some money, I don’t want a gift card.

I have given a lot of thought to this post, mainly about exactly how does Santa’s Sleigh actually work. I mean really the thing has to be either A: highly technologically advanced, or B: supernaturally powered. Either of which may actually disqualify it as actually belonging to the throwback tech files. However the idea of Santa and his sleigh are actually fairly old, so I figure what the heck.

Now if we assume that choice A is the correct answer (and why not, after all Santa creates all those toys each year so why not a super futuristic sleigh?) then there are some amazing physical accomplishments we have to consider. The total area of landmass that covers the planet is some 148.94 million square Kilometers and on that landmass live over 6.6 billion people. Now somehow not only does Santa deliver presents to everyone on the planet he also does it at the exact stroke of midnight! Delving into this further another question comes to mind that if assuming the population were to be evenly spread out across the worlds time zones (which it isn’t) then he would actually have to deliver presents to 27.5 million people in the space of sixty seconds! This is a feat that I am not sure that is possible. So I seriously doubt that Santa can use any means of technology to accomplish this task.

So that leads us to the second answer of Santa having some supernatural means of delivering presents. The first concept I thought of was that maybe he can stop time. However even if Santa could stop time, the amount of time it would take to actually deliver the presents would be so massive that its almost not worth calculating. So a much better present delivery method has to be being employed. Perhaps its teleportation? I mean this could actually work. People simply wrap a box that is the approximate size of the gift they wish to receive and on Christmas eve Santa pushes his magic button and bang! everyone wakes up to their Christmas presents. Now this magic must not be perfect because I remember many a year where I got a present meant for my brother and vice versa.

Whatever the case Santas sleigh is awesome and if Santa is listening I would really like a ride. And here is a fun little video for you all to enjoy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRW2poUfJ34[/youtube]

Ah yes, where would we be without the spoon? Our hands would be dirtier, our food colder in our mouths, and most of all we would have to drink our soup rather than slurp it. What inspired this great and noble invetnion? What great mind looked at his food and said to themselves a stick with a round end would be a great way to get that to my mouth? Was this invention a necessity? Was there some reason why our fingers were not up to the task of grabbing food? To tell the truth I really don’t know, but I still thank that first spoon user with all my heart. Yes I indeed believe that the spoon is one of our most noble inventions.

Imagine if you would a world without the spoon. Shaking another persons hands would be and excercise in bacterial exchange, you couldn’t ever eat anything but lukewarm food. Why without the spoon you couldn’t even stir cream and sugar into your coffee! Oh the horror! This is the reason we should all look back to those fabled ancestors who thought it wise to find a stick, attach a round end to it and use it to help themselves eat. I shudder to think of life without the spoon.

But not only has the spoon served its use at the dinner table, my grand mother would of often been short of an instrument to punish me for my transgressions. I would of been short of a fabulous digging tool, and what would all those psychics use to amaze us with their skills without the spoon? Well I for one am glad to have grown up in a culture, nay in a world where the spoon is not only used but appreciated for all that it provides us. Long live the spoon I say! Long live this oft overlooked implement found at dinner tables across the western world!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O11PE-NrXSM&feature=related[/youtube]

It’s kind of strange really when you think about it. Our ability to talk is actually a by product of several other functions. In fact the very function of speech is almost entirely accidental. It begins with the contraction of the diaphragm in order to draw air into our lungs, the purpose, to bring oxygen into our blood stream. Next we exhale, the purpose to expel used up gas from our blood back into the atmosphere. This air once released travels over the larynx causing several chords to vibrate which causes sound to be produced. However the actual purpose of the larynx is to stop the wrong stuff from going into the lung channels (i.e. prevent drowning). Now this sound would be nothing without the tongue (designed so we can taste and determine the benefit of food) which moves and makes all the vowels and constants that we use possible. Finally this air and now shaped sound exits past our lips an produces distinguishable sounds that we now refer to as speech.

While I can’t say exactly how our ability to speak in complex sounds was first discovered it probably went a little something like this. One day George was standing next to a warm fire, holding his stick and his rock. Now George was fairly new to fire and he was standing a bit to close to the fire on this particular day and his clothes caught on fire. Suddenly George began hoping around as his clothes started burning shouting out in pain “owt, owt, owt”. Well as luck would have it, other members of George’s village where there that day and they put the poor man out, and after that whenever another one of their number caught fire they would shout “owt, owt, owt” and thus was born the first word.

Since the time of the first word our languages have grown, spread, changed and still we have yet to make a word for every experience, item, or creature in our world. Indeed some would say that we have made more useless words than useful words. I don’t know about you, but I love the fact I can speak. I can hold my kid and whisper in her ear that she is a wonderful person. I can shout across my yard at my dog to tell her to quit chasing a cat. I can tell a funny joke to a friend and most of all I can tell those I care about that I love them. While I admit being able to speak has brought its share of bad into the world, it has brought a lot of good as well. And without words I couldn’t bring you this great song by Pink Floyd “Speak to Me”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DTBRku48uw&feature=related[/youtube]