I suppose if there wasn't a toll bridge at the turnpike, Sonny - a character in the "Godfather" - would never have been ambushed and murdered in brutal gangland style.
New Yorkers feel they are being ambushed in another way.
On the horizon?
City-dwellers in the Big Apple can expect to be squeezed for tolls on mid-Manhattan streets during peak traffic hours.
"It's another scheme for them to milk the middle class," said one irate driver.
Another quipped that, "It's for rich people like Bloomberg."
Backers argue that "congestion pricing" will ultimately save money because companies won't have to pay workers to sit in traffic.
After all, there are stunning claims that gridlock currently saps about $13 billion dollars out of the economy each year.
In jolly old England, commuters pay hefty fees daily for the privilege of careening around the downtown core of London's quaint city streets.
Of course, their system is so much more ominous than the one proposed in the U of SA.
Imagine that, a device affixed to the lower carriage of the vehicle actually tracks the drivers as they cruise through the cityscape.
Geez, that sounds a lot like Orwell's 1984, to me!
Out of spite - a defiant few are parking their old caddies and new-fangled hybrids - to hop on a scooter, take a morning jaunt to work, or ride public transport.
People must be getting desperate, eh?
I'm waiting for the days when we can use a particle device to transport our sentient beings through space without any dependence on Detroit or the automakers in Japan.
Not such a far-fetched idea.
In fact, in the December issue of Nature Magazine, a group of researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, reported an account of the first experiment to verify quantum teleportation.
Another team in Rome ( headed by Francesco De Martini) submitted similar evidence for publication in the Physical Review.
Neither group sent a colleague to Katmandu or a car to the moon.
But, what they did prove is still pretty startling.
Anton Zeilinger, De Martini and their colleagues - demonstrated independently of each other - that it is wholly possible to transfer the properties of one quantum particle (such as a photon) to another.
Even if the two photons are at opposite ends of the galaxy.
I just hope my body reconfigures correctly at the other end when they transport me!
