NJ E-ZPass hasn't sold Tony Soprano a tag

A TV drama aficionado writes: "The Sopranos Season Six Part Two. The visceral, thumping bass beat kicks in, Tony takes his ticket for the New Jersey Turnpike and we are off and running for the second half of the final season of the Sopranos, the finest television drama ever written."

The Sopranos explain their use of the Turnpike as the opening stage for the series with these words from Jeffrey Page of the Bergen Record:

"The New Jersey Turnpike, at least the northern part, is an adventure.

"Its abstract expressionist shapes, strange lines and angles, concentration of various transport, kinetic energy and tumult, wildlife and history, the things you see from it, its concrete and iron and rubber, its noise and smells and speed, make it a thing of gritty beauty."

The Sopranos fan provides this YouTube:

http://dermotrathbone.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!DEDF6643EBE18955!3456.entry

Sure enough it shows Tony snatching a ticket out of the old ticket dispensing machine.

We guess it's understandable that the Sopranos are attached to cash and don't want their movements too readily documented via subpoenas of the E-ZPass service center.

But then that's true of about 30% of the population of the state of New Jersey. West Virginia is even higher!

One for the social scientists

The propensity to pay cash is clearly an important proxy measure of the proportion of the population of a state that engages in a variety of shady practices. The demand for privacy after all comes from those with something to hide.

Maybe a social scientist could use transponder penetration on the tollroads to produce a ranking of states by personal virtue?

TOLLROADSnews 2007-09-04