"The only faith required by science is the faith in the statistics of experimental evidence."

Ah, no.

Science takes a lot of things as true-without-proof. As "givens" that are self-apparent, and either cannot be tested or which are considered not worth testing.

For example, it is considered a given that the laws of nature are the same everywhere in the universe, and are time-invariant. IOW they are omnipresent and eternal. (Guess who else is often described as omnipresent and eternal?)

Science takes this and much more as a given because there's no evidence to disprove it. Not yet, anyway. Point is, working on such premises is a matter of faith. Conditional faith, always open to revision by new data. Which happens sometimes...

Science used to believe that time was the same for all observers - everybody's clock was the same. And Newtonian mechanics explained motion, inertia, etc.

Then about 100 years ago new data and new thinking showed that the old-time faith in invariant time was simply wrong when things start moving at high speeds. We'd never noticed this before because we didn't know where and how to look for the evidence.

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But the big issue is that science explains how, religion explains why. Or at least that's how it should be. When religion tries to explain how, it's bound to go wrong (such as giving an estimate of the earth's age that is about 1,000,000 times younger than the real age). When science tries to explain why...

I don't think anyone has a "right" to an anonymous phone that even law enforcement can't trace.

However, I don't think forcing ID for prepaid buyers will work the way it is intended.

As others have mentioned, all it will take for a bad person to get one is a cellphone-buying-agent with a fake ID. Or stealing a legitimate phone. Two entry-level crime opportunities created.

IMHO a better answer is to have all activity from prepaid phones automatically recorded. That way, if one is used for criminal activities, the conversations and location are already available to law enforcement.

It's just not the same as real barbeque.

The problem is that Northeasterners who don't know any better think "barbecue" is a verb, while Southerners and many others know it is a noun. (Thanks GK)

The result is that *anything* cooked directly over a fire is referred to as "barbecue" by those who don't know any better.

However, excellent barbeque can be had in the Northeast if one knows where to look. The best I have found is Dinosaur Barbeque, with places in Rochester and Syracuse NY. (Who'd a thunk it?)

The reason for the rise in bridezilla behavior is the loss of the old checks-and-balances systems of the past. What control-systems engineers would call a "feedback loop" has been cut, without a modern-day replacement.

In the bad old days the checks and balances took two forms:

The first was Reality, as in a lot of things simply weren't available at all, or were prohibitively expensive for most people.

The second was Family, in that wedding planning was largely done by immediate and extended family, who collectively knew very well how to say NO to a budding bridezilla. A professional wedding planner isn't going to say no!

Add to this the fact that a lot of brides today are older than in preceding generations, have more of their own money, and most of all are not lacking in assertiveness (if not downright aggression) and "NO" isn't so easy.

Something is needed to replace that old system, but as the horror-story letters show, there's not yet much to replace it. Aunt Ethel knew how to say NO and make it stick, because she wasn't worried about what the bride might do. For best-friend-and-college-roommate, it's a different game.

I find it interesting that as the divorce rate hovers at 50%, this overemphasis on ceremony increases. Even more interesting is that the whole spiral-out-of-control wedding (although not exactly bridezilla behavior) was a central part of the recent "Sex And The City" movie.