I capitalized all the words in my title because it is, of course, a play on the title of the well-known British stage farce, No Sex, Please--We're British.

But by "Democrats" I intend both the capital-D and the small-D senses of the word.  The United States, you see, still functions, at least electorally, as a democracy.  And both as democrats and as Democrats--and, I don't doubt, even as Republicans, and certainly as independents--we voters don't like being told in advance that so-and-so's candidacy is "inevitable."  We especially don't like it when the soothsayers are wrong.  As they inevitably--well, as they almost inevitably--are!

"Forget how far the nation is falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in the percentage of households with high-speed Internet access," writes the Los Angeles Times' James S. Granelli;  a study released by the Communications Workers of America on Monday, June 25, shows that "both California and the United States are taking an even bigger thumping" from the rest of the world in the actual speed of "high speed."  

As someone who has spent untold hours of frustration waiting for web pages to load and fill, or even for already loaded screens to scroll up or down, using my supposedly super-duper "high-speed" DSL connection, my first reaction was, "Why am I not finding this surprising?"

This was rported in the business section of the Times and elsewhere a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't seen it diaried here, so I thought I'd leap into the breach!  Or at least try to crawl into the breach on my hands and knees.  Crank up your tin Lizzies, Americans, and meet me below the fold for the depressing details.

"Gold is the corpse of value," says Goto Dengo.  . . .  "Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead.  It rots and stinks.  True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work.  By schoolchildren doing their lessons, improving their minds."  -- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

I think what Goto Dengo says about gold could be said just as well about oil, or many another modern MacGuffin of imperial world domination.  Corpses of value.  Come treasure hunting with me, below the fold, and who knows?  We may also find ourselves digging up a few more corpses.