Does the AT&T Network have a dress code?

In the sober Midwest, where this writer grew up, one is apt to encounter many businesses, mainly restaurants, with a sign at the door, saying "No shoes, no shirt, no service". In a far from complete traversal of the contiguous 48 states, carrying an IPhone 3, the writer has been often been disappointed to see the notation at the upper left corner of the screen saying "No service".After long experience, I have given up checking the adequacy of my wardrobe: with tender feet, I am always wearing shoes; being sheepish about the non-sheep nature of my chest(No hair),I am always wearing a shirt. No, one has to doubt the completeness of the AT&T coverage.

The author spent the first ten years of his professional life working on projects related to the interception of missiles coming over the horizon. It was related to this that the GPS system was developed; there should be no place on earth that is not "seen" at any time by four GPS orbiting satellites. However,several days ago, the author and his spouse were approaching a collection of houses named Copperopolis, CA and the question was, "How far are we from our sleeping place?" The message on the IPhone's screen was "Unable to determine your present location" Thus, a sobering rhetorical question arises, to wit,"Suppose Copperopolis os being attacked by mussiles fired by terrists (giving it the pronunciation common to the speakers on the Fox network}from the former Soviet Union or the Moorish Kingdom, how are the citizens of Copperopolis to defend themselves from missile attack?"

What hath facebook wrought?!

In a more pious age, Samuel F.B. Morse invented telegraphy and the first message he sent was "What hath God wrought?" In 166 years since then, your writer's forebears and then his colleagues invented wire less transmission, then commercial radio, then the first television, then radar, then in 1948, the transistor, followed by the integrated circuit, large scale computers, global position systems and now vast amounts of trivial communication on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and so on. He was thus nonplussed today to find his speaking to colleagues and children on the same Facebook page as Sarah Palin's familiar face. I knew it was Ms Palin because it looked like the spitting image of Tina Fey, who, I am compelled to say, has much better writers. Those million monkeys seated at keyboards are going to write down the complete works of Shakespeare any day now; either that or the entire production of Johann Sebastian Bach. One must hope for the best.