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As long as you believe all that matters is engineering, people will fail to utilize the technology that engineering can bring.

Nicely done. You just lumped Steve Jobs in with Arnold "the Knife" Morris.

The Pitchman

The last of the Morrises to be active in the pitching business is Arnold "the Knife" Morris, so named because of his extraordinary skill with the Sharpcut, the forerunner of the Ginsu. He is in his early seventies, a cheerful, impish man with a round face and a few wisps of white hair, and a trademark move whereby, after cutting a tomato into neat, regular slices, he deftly lines the pieces up in an even row against the flat edge of the blade.

Sure, sharpened steel is a great technology, but will people actually use it unless first impressed by a delightfully manicured tomato? ... But wait, there's more!

The turn requires the management of expectation. That's why Arnold always kept a pineapple tantalizingly perched on his stand. "For forty years, I've been promising to show people how to cut the pineapple, and I've never cut it once," he says.

Steve's legendary pineapple was his insistence that RISC would blow CISC out of the water. That pineapple never danced (excluding, for a while, one or two hand-picked Photoshop effects). Miraculously, it still hasn't danced.

Why Linus Torvalds Prefers x86 Over ARM

How could this be? Let's dissect.

The Underappreciated True Story of 48-Year-Old Boxer Bernard Hopkins

In 1982, after racking up nine felonies, he was sent to Graterford Prison for 18 years.

That sure sounds like the 8088 I knew and loved.

Over the next two years he scored 21 victories in 21 fights, 16 by KO and 12 of those in the first round.

Ditto.

"Younger guys would think that an old boxer must be an easy target," Sugar said, "Only to find out when they stood in front of him they couldn't hit him with a handful of stones."

To it's credit, The DEC Alpha actually landed a punch. Others, not so much.

At 41, Hopkins finally seemed washed up. But he adapted, deciding to put on a few pounds and move up in weight class. "It was a new life for me," he said. "I could finally eat pasta and not worry about going over the weight limit."

It was AMD that finally provided the magic milkshake.

At 46 years, four months and 10 days he broke George Foreman's record to become the oldest fighter ever to win a world championship.

Ye olde 8088 has sure come a long way.

Where x86 went up in weight class, Jobs ultimately—not with the once-franchise iMac, but the iPhone—successfully went down in weight class. That much-vaunted 10" chef knife went nowhere fast after decades of trying, but he stuck with it—full marks—and finally made a freaking fortune on pastel-coloured paring knives.

Meanwhile, Ritchie improved steel. Advantage: Ritchie.

So Believers are like boys and Atheists are like girls? Not that I necessarily agree with the content of the linked article, but I found it interesting.

> I recall Apple trying to steal the Xerox PARC GUI and patent it and claim is as their own.

You recall wrong.

In 1999, Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article defending the explosion of ADHD amphetamine prescriptions to children against criticism from media and public figures. Gladwell's response: "...are too many children taking the drug--or too few?"

Later that same year, Gladwell published a New Yorker piece that blamed skyrocketing prescription drug prices on users of prescription drugs, not on pharmaceutical companies. New Yorker readers responded angrily, tipping off Slate.com columnist Jack Schafer that Gladwell took "speaking fees from corporations and trade associations" that he covered in print, forcing Gladwell to publicly admit that he had had indeed taken money from the pharmaceutical industry: "Have I given paid speeches to companies or industries mentioned or affected by that article? Yes I have."

By ignoring the slander and actually following the links (including Gladwell's article about drug prices), I find myself admiring Gladwell almost as much as I did before reading TFA. Okay, so he makes some mistakes sometimes, but a corporate shill? No.

In 1999, Gladwell wrote a New Yorker article defending the explosion of ADHD amphetamine prescriptions to children against criticism from media and public figures. Gladwell's response: "...are too many children taking the drug--or too few?"

Later that same year, Gladwell published a New Yorker piece that blamed skyrocketing prescription drug prices on users of prescription drugs, not on pharmaceutical companies. New Yorker readers responded angrily, tipping off Slate.com columnist Jack Schafer that Gladwell took "speaking fees from corporations and trade associations" that he covered in print, forcing Gladwell to publicly admit that he had had indeed taken money from the pharmaceutical industry: "Have I given paid speeches to companies or industries mentioned or affected by that article? Yes I have."

By ignoring the slander and actually following the links (including Gladwell's article about drug prices), I find myself admiring Gladwell almost as much as I did before reading TFA. Okay, so he makes some mistakes sometimes, but a corporate shill? No.

I ducked out of a STEM degree myself exactly because it was too much work and because science classes turned out to be a huge drag on my grades. However, this wasn't because the content itself was "hard," it was because at the university level all the math and science classes I took were graded competitively on a curve, and this system gave a tremendous advantage to all the students from Korea and China who were brought up spending every waking hour in study.

Ultimately, I changed to a liberal arts degree. This wasn't the only reason I switched away from STEM, but it certainly made my decision easier.

So you gave up because you couldn't be bothered to work as hard as people from China and Korea living in the US? If that is true that is pretty pathetic on your part and may explain much of why the US needs so many H-1B visas.

There are other possible reasons though why chinese and korean students do better at Maths. I remember reading this a few years ago in Outliers by Malcom Gladwell: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html

Its a good book and I would recommend reading it if you can be bothered.

In the Air
Far from critical but gives some insight into how IV does what it does.
Basically, Myhrvold gathers some of his rich and smart buddies in a room where they brainstorm furiously. Then the notes are passed onto his team of PhDs and lawyers to work the ideas up into patents. Occasionally they might build a prototype of something but it's mostly just very lucrative breeze shooting.

It's a reckless, amoral organization, that doesn't care who it hurts, doesn't care if it gets blood on its hand, and could care less about the fate of the people who supply its documents. What the world needs, and still has plenty of, are people of good moral character, who will fight for what's right, who will take stands, and who will take risks. I have way more respect for the three young women of Pussy Riot and what they have accomplished than anything Wikileaks has done.

These comments (and many others - I've been keeping track) have me wondering if Slashdot is infected with astroturfers.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point" he dissects the way in which public opinion arises - why certain memes "go viral" and become popular, while other apparently equally valid ideas do not.

In his model, certain people are "connectors". The best example of this is "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", where Kevin is a connector because so many people are related to him by movie acting.

Along with connectors, there are mavens (people who are expert in a particular subject, usually a hobby or pastime - not job related) and salesmen (people who can convince others to try something). The other 97% of us are just regular people.

Slashdot is a magnet for mavens, and it's wide appeal (200,000 people per day?) would put it in front of many salesmen and connectors in society. Indeed, with all its viewers it probably eliminates the need for connectors outright.

The comment above is such a blatant example of propaganda, it makes me wonder whether special interest groups are paying people to post them. Controlling Slashdot would be instrumental in preventing the revolution of ideas which would disrupt the status-quo.

At the very least, certain ideas which are known to be false seem to rise up all the time and provide distractions to the discussion at large. The US can't have broadband because the land is thinly populated (belies other countries with similar density, and ignores lack of coverage in US population centers), the victim is to blame (it's his fault for wearing that T-shirt on a plane), and many others. Someone always posts one of these and the discussion goes careening off into a non-sequitur discussion of some tangential issue.

Are we being manipulated? Are people being paid to distract us from discussing the core issues?

Posts like this sometimes make me wonder.

My wife worked for a pediatrician in a well to do area a couple of years ago and if it looked like their kid was going to be under 6 foot, they would ask for a referral to an endocrinologist for hormones to get the kid to grow a bit more. The pediatrician didn't think it was necessary in most cases, but they are his patients so he complied. The parents wanted the best for their kids and wanted to insure that they could get any advantage that they could possibly get for them.

James Watson, co-discover of DNA, was on the National Press Club a few years ago, and this question was asked (can't find the archive right now - heard on NPR). Anyway to paraphrase,

90% of CEOs are over 6 foot. A 5 foot 2 inch tall man and a five foot tall woman may want to better the opportunities for their child.

Of course, what he meant was that up to a point, height matters in all sorts of endeavors and not only sports: politics, finding a mate, work, etc ... There is a strong correlation between height and success. Yes, I know - queue up all the exceptions but keep in mind, many of those were extraordinary people; such as Einstein - 5' 5".

Malcolm Gladwell pointed out this exact phenomenon in his book Blink , which he calls the Warren Harding effect.

While searching for the presiden't name (I'd forgotten it, but I loved reading the book) I also ran across this: Malcolm Gladwell Explains Why Underdogs Win An 'Astonishing' Amount Of The Time. Ha! Take that You expert in practical ethics!

What the hell is an expert in practical ethics, anyway?

Response to your boss:

Coding is like chess. it's easy to learn, but takes a lifetime to master.

You can learn the rules of chess in a day, and you can play your first three matches on that same day. It takes a lifetime of study to be any good at chess, to be better than others at chess, or to compete in any way at chess.

Another way to put it is like guitar, or piano.

How long does it take to earn money playing guitar? Basic guitar takes about a week of practice, but how long will it take to earn money from playing it?

As with anything, there are basics as well as subtle, underlying principles. Coding, chess, guitar, piano, or any other refined action takes years of practice, experimentation, and learning to master. About 10,000 hours all told.

Then ask: "How many hours does it take to become a manager?"

Here's where the quote came from:
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

The rest of the article is good reading for why people buy SUVs (to look down on others) and why SUVs are not safe.

Unsafe

Citation needed. In fact, how about I will just post one to the contrary: http://www.iihs.org/ratings/summary.aspx?class=50 http://www.iihs.org/ratings/summary.aspx?class=55 http://www.iihs.org/ratings/summary.aspx?class=110

Turns out it's better to avoid a crash than to get in one. Try this: http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

Now as to practicality - you fit 5 family members, 3 tents, inflatable boat, cooler and 3 days worth of food and water for a camping trip, or bring an Ikea dining room set from the store in your sedan, I dare you.

Already brought the Ikea dining room set home in my compact sedan, thanks. 8 person table with 6 chairs. Need more room? Buy a minivan.

If anyone wants to read a good analysis of the *original* six-degrees-of-separation study, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it in The New Yorker about ten years ago. (You may wish to skip ahead to part 3.) The researchers -- and this was Stanley Milgram, of the infamous Milgram Experiment involving people's willingness to torture other people -- gave people envelopes addressed to a specific person, and told them to write their names on the envelopes then give them to someone they thought might know the addressee. When all the envelopes came through, they analyzed both the number of hops and the route. (The average was somewhere between 5 and 6 hops, with some being higher. There is no assurance this is the shortest route, but their initial estimates were 100 hops, not five.) The most interesting part was that of the envelopes that reached their destination, more than half came through just three people. It's the discussion of those people, the ones who know people in various different close-knit communities, that matters: they're the connection points.

Exactly. Much of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, is devoted to explaining this principle. I put an article about it on my blog a while ago, but far more importantly, it's been on Cracked.com.

This book includes a reference to a study wherein subjects were shown a photo of a human before taking a test. Those subjects who were shown a photo of a white man outperformed those who were shown a photo of a black man, regardless of their own race.

I am inclined to accept this as an indication that American culture is prejudiced against black intellectualism. I don't know what the root cause is, and therefore have no idea how to approach this issue, but its existence seems to be arguably doubtless.

Actually, some of the studies on the prostate cancer are not saying "you are diagnosed too late", they are saying that "you are diagnosed too early to tell if it's a real cancer" and that detecting one risk factor and starting treatment based on just that is probably going to have more nasty consequences than doing nothing for most of them.

Men are "pretreated" for their cancer and thus, men that maybe would never have a cancer (because a bigger percentage of men are treated than the average of prostate cancer incidence) are going through all the side effects of the drugs, which include impotence, among others. Does it seem like a good trade-off? Well yes, if you do have cancer! The problem is these screenings are not saying this person has a cancer, they say due to these factors this person *may* have cancer and that should not be enough to start cancer treatment.
While not focusing just on this subject, Malcolm Gladwell had a text on this a few years back. (Worth reading and if you are in a hurry just search for "cancer").

The false assumption here is that just passive safety counts (aka protection in a crash).
Active safety (avoiding the collision in the first place) actually plays a huge roll in vehicle safety.

This article is simply non-sense.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great essay debunking this myth with HARD facts (deaths per million vehicles)

Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety.
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

I encourage those you that don't know any better to read it.

Worth Reading:

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm

SUVs aren't even particularly more safe for the occupents, at least as of this 2004 article:
http://gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

because you never make mistakes, right?

There's a difference between making a mistake and doing something that anyone with more than a room temperature IQ should immediatley understand to be an insanely stupid idea.

And I'm talking room temperature in Celcius, not Kelvin.

I thought it was a great idea. Though it's apparently controversial.

There was a great article in "What the Dog Saw" about Ketchup. In it, he describes the fact that there's basically only one ketchup. That's because it's a perfect flavour. Anyone who tries anything else might say "yeah that's good... but it's not ketchup".

Mustard on the other hand, has many flavours, whole grian, dijon, french's ... and so on. That's because a certain portion of the population likes the texture of the grain, or the heat of the dijon. In fact they prefer that choice over the other possible choices. There's room for more than one mustard.

Similarly, there's room for more than one answer to the question of "Should Blizzard Forums Use Real Names"

Yeah, just like there is no spaghetti sauce that appeals to everyone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIiAAhUeR6Y

But see also:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html

So long as we're just making up numbers, smaller, more maneuverable cars will lead to perhaps one trillion fewer deaths per year.

It's been argued that the ability of small, maneuverable small vehicles to avoid accidents outweighs the increased risk of dying upon a major collision. Gladwell provides numbers to back up his claim--deaths per driver are much more relevant than deaths per accident. Per driver hour or driver mile would be better, of course, and he doesn't normalize against different populations of drivers* (Do bad drivers simply prefer SUVs?), but so long as you note the caveats, actual data beats the mental random number generator any day.

*Disclaimer: I haven't read the article in years.

Mensa and testing agencies have been making it clear for a couple decades now that IQ only measures your ability to take tests.

Some people have even argued that IQ tests are to some degree cultural. But yeah, for one thing, taking tests is a skill in itself. There's usually a certain logic to the answers in multiple choice tests, for example, and knowing that logic can allow you to make good guesses even if you have no idea what the answer is. Essay questions are harder to fake, but a lot of times it boils down to giving the answer that the person who's evaluating the answer wants to hear. If you give a very intelligent answer that the teacher or TA hates, it's going to get marked wrong.

So there's such a thing as general test-taking ability, and then individual tests have their own skills. You can study for the SATs, and you can even study for a given model of IQ test.

But let's even assume you've successfully tested a person's "intelligence" in the sense of their memory, spacial sense, raw ability to crunch numbers, etc. That still doesn't account for their experience in a given situation, their moral judgement, or any number of other cognitive skills. You might have the highest IQ in the world and be great at understanding a math proof, but if my car breaks down I'm still going to trust a mechanic's judgement on what's broken before I trust yours. The mechanic will have more knowledge and experience about the particular subject matter. Likewise, I might not trust some half-autistic genius's advice on interpersonal relationships even if he's a brilliant physicist.

This seems like a troll to me. But maybe not.

I just read this article about this history of the SUV:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

I wonder if they did a similar study on Prius owners what the feedback would be.

I've been mildly considering a Prius, and my though was: it would be an efficient and responsible purchase (and buying an SUV would be an irresponsible purchase).

I suspect this is what people think. I was following a car the other day with this license frame: "Your SUV Sucks" "My hybrid sips"

So maybe the Prius is the SUV backlash.

Or maybe it's the first (practical) step towards really efficient cars.

Absolutely. I just finished reading Blink, and although it is not the central idea in the book, Gladwell does touch on, and reference some studies that examine a connection between expressions made consciously on the face, and their influences on mood. If you're interested in more information, look for some of the work by Tomkins, Ekman, Friesan, and Levenson. Also, Gladwell has a website where he has some of the material from his New Yorker column that he put in Blink. In one quote about their experience when teaching themselves to make the micro-expressions they were trying to study, Ekman says "What we discovered is that that expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system. When this first occurred, we were stunned." Now, I'm not convinced that a smile alone is enough to cure depression, but I think it's interesting research, and I wouldn't be surprised if one's expression could help contribute to a positive mood.

Absolutely. I just finished reading Blink, and although it is not the central idea in the book, Gladwell does touch on, and reference some studies that examine a connection between expressions made consciously on the face, and their influences on mood. If you're interested in more information, look for some of the work by Tomkins, Ekman, Friesan, and Levenson. Also, Gladwell has a website where he has some of the material from his New Yorker column that he put in Blink. In one quote about their experience when teaching themselves to make the micro-expressions they were trying to study, Ekman says "What we discovered is that that expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system. When this first occurred, we were stunned." Now, I'm not convinced that a smile alone is enough to cure depression, but I think it's interesting research, and I wouldn't be surprised if one's expression could help contribute to a positive mood.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article on just that topic, with some obligatory Doug Lenat computer science content: http://www.gladwell.com/2009/2009_05_11_a_david.html

safe is the biggest marketing scam in western society. SUVs were born to market safe vehicles for hockey moms, desire for safety got Bush re-elected.

Too bad SUVs are anything but safe. http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

For another perspective on Bill's success, and a deeply interesting look at success in general, check out Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers .

In a excellent essay called How The SUV Ran Over Automotive Safety. If you don't want to read the article -- which is a shame, because it's excellent -- he basically distinguishes between active and passive safety. Active safety is learning to drive well, and that reduces crashes. Passive safety is airbags and crumple zones, and that increases crashes because people drive more recklessly, knowing that they're safer. People keep their (perceived) risk constant, so if someone acts to reduce their risk, they use up the safety margin and go right back to where they were.
Much of the popularity of SUV's and large trucks is precisely because people think that they, individually, are safer driving them, so then they drive more stupidly, meaning that not only are they *not* safer, other people are also less safe.

The lesson being: many people are really stupid and probably shouldn't be allowed to operate power toothbrushes, much less automobiles.

(When I last looked, there were 6 fatal toothbrush accidents in the US per year. Alcohol was almost always involved...)

In particular, how SUVs separate the driver's experience from the road in a dangerous way. And on the shopping habits of American car buyers in general. It's a favorite article of mine.

Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety

"In the Jetta, the engine is clearly audible. The steering is light and precise. The brakes are crisp. The wheelbase is short enough that the car picks up the undulations of the road. The car is so small and close to the ground, and so dwarfed by other cars on the road, that an intelligent driver is constantly reminded of the necessity of driving safely and defensively. An S.U.V. embodies the opposite logic. The driver is seated as high and far from the road as possible. The vehicle is designed to overcome its environment, not to respond to it. Even four-wheel drive, seemingly the most beneficial feature of the S.U.V., serves to reinforce this isolation. Having the engine provide power to all four wheels, safety experts point out, does nothing to improve braking, although many S.U.V. owners erroneously believe this to be the case. Nor does the feature necessarily make it safer to turn across a slippery surface: that is largely a function of how much friction is generated by the vehicle's tires. All it really does is improve what engineers call trackingâ"that is, the ability to accelerate without slipping in perilous conditions or in deep snow or mud. Champion says that one of the occasions when he came closest to death was a snowy day, many years ago, just after he had bought a new Range Rover. "Everyone around me was slipping, and I was thinking, Yeahhh. And I came to a stop sign on a major road, and I was driving probably twice as fast as I should have been, because I could. I had traction. But I also weighed probably twice as much as most cars. And I still had only four brakes and four tires on the road. I slid right across a four-lane road. " Four-wheel drive robs the driver of feedback. "The car driver whose wheels spin once or twice while backing out of the driveway knows that the road is slippery," Bradsher writes. "The SUV driver who navigates the driveway and street without difficulty until she tries to brake may not find out that the road is slippery until it is too late. " Jettas are safe because they make their drivers feel unsafe. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn't the solution; it's the problem."

>>>Malcolm Gladwell's "Blowing up" - http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm

I just finished reading this article. You know what it reminds me of? Farming. Day-after-day you have to go through the pain of tilling the soil, spreading the seed, fertilizing, sometimes watering. You put in the sweat and labor in the hopes that you will get several acres worth of leafy vegetables. And if you don't - if the crop fails - then you try again during the second year. And the third year. And so on.

Empirica's strategy seems to follow the same pattern: lots of daily pain and loss, in the hopes of someday having a good harvest. How many years can a farmer... er, stock investor continue in that fashion until he bankrupts himself? It's a great strategy so long as the "harvest" comes in and saves your butt.

For an EXCELLENT article about this, read Malcolm Gladwell's "Blowing up", which you can find online for free:

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_04_29_a_blowingup.htm

There's a great Malcolm Gladwell article on exactly this: how the American public accepts a certain amount of risk in driving subconsciously, so every advance in automotive safety is then matched by changes in driving habits to maximize driving speed, rather than minimizing risk.

As per real world testing, the safest car is one that doesn't crash in the first place, and if you drive an SUV, accept the fact that if you get into a sticky situation, you're probably not going to be able to outdrive it.

Women could care less about your car. Insight follows. If a woman is with a guy that does the verbal equivalent of putting "I own an SUV." in front of everything, as you did above, then she'd make sure he knew how much his SUV meant to her, too. Even if it was a 3000 mile per year grocery-getter, she'd still let him know how sexy it was.

Now you are pissing me off SUV apologist, here is the data from the article:

"Make/Model Type Driver
Deaths Other
Deaths Total

Toyota Avalon large 40 20 60

Chrysler Town & Country minivan 31 36 67

Toyota Camry mid-size 41 29 70

Volkswagen Jetta subcompact 47 23 70

Ford Windstar minivan 37 35 72

Nissan Maxima mid-size 53 26 79

Honda Accord mid-size 54 27 82

Chevrolet Venture minivan 51 34 85

Buick Century mid-size 70 23 93

Subaru Legacy/Outback compact 74 24 98

Mazda 626 compact 70 29 99

Chevrolet Malibu mid-size 71 34 105

Chevrolet Suburban S.U.V. 46 59 105

Jeep Grand CherokeeS.U.V. 61 44 106

Honda Civic subcompact 84 25 109

Toyota Corolla subcompact 81 29 110

Ford Expedition S.U.V. 55 57 112

GMC Jimmy S.U.V. 76 39 114

Ford Taurus mid-size 78 39 117

Nissan Altima compact 72 49 121

Mercury Marquis large 80 43 123

Nissan Sentra subcompact 95 34 129

Toyota 4Runner S.U.V. 94 43 137

Chevrolet Tahoe S.U.V. 68 74 141

Dodge Stratus mid-size 103 40 143

Lincoln Town Car large 100 47 147

Ford Explorer S.U.V. 88 60 148

Pontiac Grand Am compact 118 39 157

Toyota Tacoma pickup 111 59 171

Chevrolet Cavalier subcompact 146 41 186

Dodge Neon subcompact 161 39 199

Pontiac Sunfire subcompact 158 44 202

Ford F-Series pickup 110 128 238"

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

(safety statistics compiled by Tom Wenzel, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, and Marc Ross, a physicist at the University of Michigan. ) See article linked above for a better formated table of this data.

Malcolm Gladwell the author of the article:

"Honors

In 2005, Time named Malcolm Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people. He is the author of three New York Times #1 best sellers.[12]
In 2007, he received the American Sociological Associationâ(TM)s first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues.[13]
Also in 2007, Gladwell received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Waterloo.[14][15]
[edit]Works"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Gladwell

And you? Just some jerk who is defensive about his love of big wasteful cars. Like I said my well documented data from Gladwell's article v.s. more scattered anecdotes. The ball sir is in your court.

"It's just that I also happen to see trucks as being much better built and ultimately safer to drive."

Except in the rational world of facts you'd be wrong, people drive SUVs too fast in wet and icy conditions leading to these top top heavy vehicles rollin over or not stopping in time. SUVs also suck at accident avoidance which is half the battle due to inertia and poor steering compared to smaller more precise cars. For empirical substation of this see Malcom Gladwell's excellent article on SUVs:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

And as for better built I'd say the average American V8 is very, very lucky to make it to 175,000 miles where as OHC Japanese 4 bangers OFTEN make it to 250,000 and Mercedes diesels and Volvos to 350,000. A heavier car wears out faster due to simply physics even if built to the same build quality standards which American trucks aren't.

In the long run I hope we do have the social will to switch our auto plants here in the U.S. to making hybrids, small diesels, trains, buses, and windmill parts but I am NOT holding my breath. :(

Just read Outliers. After examining education system and Why Asians are good at math? in last few chapters, Gladwell concludes that we are looking at education problem backwards. How good the student is has everything to do with family and ethnic background, and opportunities. We don't need bigger better schools with high-tech equipment and better books.

Use of computers/calculators before HS should be "banned" from math and science classes. We've started to evolve into stupider people! I learned math and science in HS (not in US) without ever touching a Calculator. This was back in mid-to-late-90s. I'm engineer now, and after working with computers everyday, I feel like I've become stupider (in math and science)... I rely on calculator to do simple math.

Apparently there is - just look at Gladwell!

Yeah, look at gladwell. Far more to the book than the summary & article mention.

Flip comment = (Score:5, Insightful). Only on /.

>There's no reason to support freeloading for those who could work.

Yes, there is.

To sum up a long article, "Social benefits are supposed to have some kind of moral justification. We give them to widows and disabled veterans and poor mothers with small children. Giving the homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk an apartment has a different rationale. It's simply about efficiency."

If you want to live in a society where we don't let people die in the streets, it is far more cost-effective for society as a whole to provide handouts for people who choose not to work.

while i think this technology may have some useful purposes in the future, i'm a little disturbed at the type of applications it's already being marketed towards:

NeuroSky's products offer opportunities for its exclusive partners and developers to create next generation applications in markets as diverse as consumer electronics, health & wellness, education & training, transportation, market research and others.

i'm honestly afraid that this technology will be used by marketing/advertising firms to develop even more insidious ways of manipulating consumers. with marketing/advertising permeating all aspects of popular culture, even being used by politicians to frame political issues in ways that will win them public approval, we're increasingly living in a society of mass manipulation. we don't need to give the persuaders an even greater degree of control over us by letting them have unprecedented access to the thoughts and mental processes of consumers.

though i'm sure they'll probably start handing these out at focus groups so that they can tap directly into the subconscious desires of the individual as the ultimate form marketing research. marketing gurus are already helping major corporations appeal to the primitive reptilian minds of consumers to exploit people's subconscious associations. unfortunately, this results in consumers making irrational purchase decisions, which is at least partly responsible for the family SUV phenomena in the U.S.

Thanking you for saying something sensible and sane with a systems view when many Americans instead think like this:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

Of course that IS changing with high has prices and a bad economy now, which is a silver lining to the U.S.'s otherwise dire position in the world.

I feel as safe on my bike as I do driving a car... if not safer due to the added awareness and fewer distractions riding a motorcycle gives you.

And people feel safer in SUVs than in sedans, and safer in cars than in airplanes. One source I found claims that driving a motorcycle for the same number of miles as a in a car exposes one to 40 times the risk of death. Not saying you shouldn't use a motorcycle, just noting that feeling safe doesn't imply being safe.

You're focusing on passive safety rather than active safety, which is primarily a North American way of thinking.

Here, read this.

Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you're also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can't get out of the way in time. In the parlance of the automobile world, the TrailBlazer is better at "passive safety. " The Boxster is better when it comes to "active safety," which is every bit as important.

The safest cars are the ones that can dodge an accident, rather than plow through some obstacle and hope to survive due to sheer mass.

Just reply to her that (according to internal industry market research): "S.U.V.s tend to be bought by people who are insecure, vain, self-centered, and self-absorbed, who are frequently nervous about their marriages, and who lack confidence in their driving skills.". She will argue back, tell her it's because she is nervous about the relationship. Then either she stops arguing -- you win, you get your small car. Or she leaves you -- you win too, you won't have to buy an SUV. Easy!

Because, often, being able to avoid an accident is just as important as being able to survive one. This article from the New Yorker is a pretty enlightening read.

There is book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Blink" that explores something along the same lines, what the author called "the power of thinking without thinking". A quick skim of its wikipedia page should give a good summary. It is a good read.

I am far more concerned about the people doing 50 in a 25 school zone. I often notice that these people are in giant SUVs with "support the troops" bumper stickers. This indicates two things to me:

1. There big SUV means they are insecure and overcompensating by driving like dicks in a big top heavy vehicle that doesn't brake well:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

2. As Bush supporters they probably support 4th amendment destroying domestic spying by using a "save the children" rational. News flash if you want to save actual living children don't drive 50 in a school zone like a douchebag.

If we all slowed down a bit not only would we save money both in increased MPG leading to less cash outlay directly, and reduced fuel demand lowering fuel prices, it would help the environment, lead to less road rage, and save lives to boot due to fewer accidents. If you do the math driving 20 mph above the speed limit in a city situation where you are at most going 15 miles at most saves 5 minutes. Here's a clue leave 5 minutes earlier and save us all a lot of grief. Thanks!

This is a pet peeve of mine. set rant=off whew!

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

It shows that the rate of driver deaths in a Ford Explorer is twice that of a Volkwagen Jetta. However, it also shows that the Dodge Neon is the most dangerous car on the road for the driver, so we really can't make too many generalizations just according to body type. I imagine (and so does the above article) that maneuverability is a huge component in avoiding or mitigating the damage in accidents. The difference is between "active safety" and "passive safety". It's almost like people buying SUVs assume that they will get into a serious accidents, and therefore plan for that contingency, whereas people who buy small, agile cars like the Jetta want to do everything they can to avoid the accident.