Tesla Model 3 Achieves NHTSA's 'Lowest Probability' of Injury Ever (thedrive.com)

In a blog post on Monday, Tesla said that the Model 3 has been deemed to have the lowest probability of occupant injury than any vehicle ever tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Drive reports: Since 1979, the regulatory body has implemented the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) which, through a series of tests, ultimately produces a rating for a new-to-market vehicle based on how well it performs in a variety of safety-related tests. Over time the test has evolved to assess the injury to occupants based on data gathered for front, side, and rollover crashes. During the NHTSA's previous tests of Tesla vehicles, the Model S and Model X, respectively, became the two vehicles with the lowest probability for injury, outpacing all other automakers. The Model 3 has now widened that gap as it takes the new number-one position on the leaderboard for the safest overall vehicle for occupants.

The California-based auto manufacturer acknowledges the car's low center of gravity as a major factor in its gracious performance in rollover tests. Similar to The Model 3 places its heaviest component, the battery pack, into the floor, so this helps improve the overall stability and rigidity of the car, making it perform excellently in rollover crashes. Additionally, the automaker gives a subtle nod to its engineering team for their design of the vehicle's crumple zones. Working in conjunction with airbags placed in the front of the vehicle and at the occupant's knees, the Model 3 was able to safely control the deceleration of passengers in frontal crash tests. The NHTSA's assessment involved the Model 3 Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive variant, however, Tesla states that it believes other trims will receive similar results when tested.

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Stephen King, author, dead at 71

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

finally Safe at Any Speed

[epine]

Meanwhile, however, we've obtained the government we deserve:

Powell Memorandum

On 23 August 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the US Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System."

This memo was to be an anti-Communist, anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America for the chamber.

It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 expose on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement.

Powell saw it as an undermining of Americans' faith in enterprise and another step in the slippery slope of socialism.

His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths.

He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry. That was the point where Powell began to focus on the media as biased agents of socialism.

The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US.

It sparked wealthy heirs of earlier American Industrialists like Richard Mellon Scaife; the Earhart Foundation, money which came from an oil fortune; and the Smith Richardson Foundation, from the cough medicine dynasty to use their private charitable foundations, which did not have to report their political activities to join the Carthage Foundation, founded by Scaife in 1964 to fund Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimalist government-regulated America as it had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Powell Memorandum thus became the blueprint of the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as:
* The Heritage Foundation
* American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
as well as inspiring the US Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.

Marxist academic David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo.

Other sources trace the rise of Newt Gingrich to Richard Mellon Scaife, but this is all of a piece.

Whatever your political slant, it's interesting to revisit the original anti-government hot-buttons that infused the first-wave neoliberal movement: those MSM bastards who won't print our claims that badly designed cars and cigarettes don't kill people.

* Victory (in principle): Ralph Nader.
* Victory (on the ground): the appellation "fake news".

Where would America now be if an Elon Musk had answered Nader back in the early 1970s (with an engineering response), instead of this asshole (with a memo response)?

Intended effect: safer cars forty years sooner.

Unintended effect: Nader's head would have expanded, and the Russians would now be actively interfering in our elections to diminish our peculiar brand of Godless social democratic communism.

[*] For all I know, first-wave neoliberals:third-wave neoliberals::first-wave feminists:third-wave feminists. By no means do I visit on the son the sins of the father. Except for you, Eric.

"This is the EXACT reason they viciously attack our family!" Eric wrote, enthusiastically, echoing his father's literary cadence. "They can't stand that we are extremely close and will A