So you never had the urge to talk to or check on your kids, even though you rationally knew they were perfectly safe? And you're calling the other guy a bad parent? Innteresting...
If there was a reasonable fear of being attacked, then the only way he could defend himself is with a gun.
Oh come on, now you're just playing dumb! Other options include:
(1) Get away. "Stand your ground" be damned - it's the first thing any "reasonable person" in the world will do when faced with a (real or imaginary) threat of bodily harm. It's not that the victim had a lot of opportunity to go after him, in a theater with other moviegoers and with his wife restraining him.
(2) Nothing indeed. At 71 years old, most people are not that frail yet. The guy has
* police training, which includes a minimal amount of hand-to-hand and restraining skills
* the higher ground (the victim was sitting before him in a movie theater)
* environmental obstacles that can be used as an advantage (rows of seats)
* awareness of the danger of getting hit. Most people who die after taking one hit do so because they were caught by surprise; even without any martial training, an alert person will instinctively block to minimize damage to critical areas.
With all these advantages stacked up, waiting for the other guy to try something more serious than throwing pop corn does not seem to be a deadly risk. Especially since most men are less likely to get physical in the presence of their wife in the first place. And even *if* the guy takes a swing and you, you block as good as you can, cry for help and the other theatergoers will quickly restrain him. It's not that it's just the two of them in a dark alley... which makes your "take a beating" option sound exaggerated at best.
(3) Declare you have a gun, or even pull it and threaten the other party. Very safe to do at the distance of a row of theater chairs. Staring into a barrel will definitely cool their eagerness to fight, something a retired police captain ought to be very familiar with. People get mugged at gunpoint every day in the US city I currently live in, and most of them don't get physically harmed in the process. Aren't ex-cops supposed to have better judgment in these things than the average junkie mugger?
Especially with option (3) on the table, and with cops being trained to try to subdue people at gunpoint without shooting if the situation is sufficiently serious and other options have failed, it seems clear that the perp must have lost his temper and shot the victim out of rage, not fear. And I bet you he'll be put away for it.
If he actually needs to check his daughter is OK then he's a bad parent for leaving her in a situation where she might not be, and he should at least go outside to text, if not go home to care for her properly.
I can't wait for you to become a parent. Not holding my breath, though, as you'll first need to get out of you mom's basement and find a girl who puts up with your intolerance.:-P
He has been charged with second-degree murder; if law enforcement believed he left to get his gun, the prosecutor would likely go for first degree (though we may never know). So GP indeed may be jumping to conclusions on that account. As for the rest of your argumentation, yes, one punch from a strong guy could kill a 71-year-old (and yes, it has happened more than once) but the chance of it happening is very small compared to the chance of 1 bullet of killing a young father. So that's disproportionate force. In my home country, disproportionate force automatically rules out self-defense, though things may be different in Florida. Either way, willfully shooting an unarmed man in this kind of setting will always be murder to me. And in my book, murdering someone makes one a bigger jerk than jumping to conclusions on an Internet message board. Your moral values are very alien to me.
English is not as expressive a language as German, by a very large margin. One needs to form phrases very carefully lest they be parsed incorrectly. In a sentence like yours, the relatively pronoun "which" forcefully must to follow a comma, and English speakers will tend to automatically assume the writer accidentally omitted it, reading: "Good luck with that at any speed, which would have the potential to kill you." No "intentional misquoting" there, Francis. It is now clear to me that you didn't intend to have the comma, but then you should have written: "Good luck with that at any speed that would have the potential to kill you." ("that", when used as a relative pronoun, forcefully must not follow a comma). However, this would still have been a bit of an ambiguous sentence. The really good solution would be to word the sentence differently, maybe like: "Good luck doing so while driving fast enough to get killed." or "At any speed that would have the potential to kill you, that would be difficult to accomplish." English is full of these silly parsing ambiguities that force a writer to reword their sentence; I understand they are far less common in German because the grammar allows one to better express the relationship between words.
Let's go back to where this started, shall we? An AC claiming to be Ethanol-fueled stated that a manual transmission is safer when your brakes get hacked because you can still engine break. He did this by giving the unfortunate example of shifting into 1st. He didn't explicitly state he would shift directly into first(*), and I took it to mean shifting into 1st after passing through all the other gears (yes, he still should have written 2nd). You took it as shifting directly into 1st, but even if that was his intention, it was simply an invalid example of a largely valid principle: you can slow down a manual transmission by engine braking. Anyhow, I took your ambiguous statement as pertaining to engine braking (which, if dangerous, would refute his argument) rather than to switching directly into 1st gear (which is dangerous but missing the point). And now you're accusing me of "intentionally misquoting" because I didn't automatically assume you missed the point (which, as it turns out, you did).
(*) which would indeed be a very stupid thing to try at highway speeds though it won't kill you at any speed; at around 40 km/h or less, assuming you succeed to do it, it might deal some damage to the gearbox, but it's unlikely to kill you.
...and the way you keep talking about "mastership of the pedals" makes me suspect that this is a skill you very recently acquired. Otherwise you would kind of realize it's no big deal, and fairly easy to master.
Nice. As I stated in my previous post, that was a joke. You lured me into explaining the joke by claiming you couldn't make sense out of it, and now you're concluding something from me using the term a second time for the purpose of explaining it. Well trolled, sir. Guess that serves me well for falling into the trap of explaining a joke.
With some practice, you can time the gas and the clutch just right so that the wheels will lose traction ("spin") when starting yet the engine doesn't go to insanely high RPM ("revving").
That does not work with lower-hp engines. Please find out at what revs you get the highest torque out of common gasoline engines.
Well, it obviously won't work at idle RPM, but when people talk about "revving" the engine, they usually mean momentarily going over 5000 RPM or so (for an average petrol engine; it depends on engine size and type), making that characteristic "woom" sound. While this would give you the very highest torque your engine can output, you don't need to go nearly that high in RPM to make the tires skid a bit in low gear; somewhere in the 2000-3000RPM range still produces high enough torque (again for some arbitrary average petrol engine) without being considered "revving".
And this can even be done with a very modest engine
No.
I know this is degenerating into an "is not / is too" argument, but I can assure you I did this many times (mostly by accident) with my parents' car in the few years after I learned to drive, by trying to start quickly and "overdoing" it a bit. That was just an average car with an average engine. It may have been a rear-wheel-drive, though, and it may be very difficult to do with the now-ubiquitous FF cars, with all that engine weight on the drive wheels. I'm a bit hazy on the exact details because it's so long ago, and I can't easily reproduce it now because I don't currently own a car with manual transmission.
My thought is that it would just be easier and quicker to clean up a bunch of rods than it would a molten blob.
Except that that fresh-out-of-the-reactor fuel rods (in the hypothetical case that they don't melt or produce hydrogen explosions in contact with water) are so insanely radioactive that you need special radiation-hardened robots to even get close to them. Of course, this also goes for the molten blob, but that one is resting "safely" on a specially designed concrete structure at the bottom of the reactor building. For very cynical definitions of "safely".
I actually was going for "Funny" by continuing the "If you..." line. But my post does incidentally also make some sense, even if you fail to see it. With some practice (the same kind of practice that is required for starting on a slope without using the hand brake), you can time the gas and the clutch just right so that the wheels will lose traction ("spin") when starting yet the engine doesn't go to insanely high RPM ("revving"). And this can even be done with a very modest engine - all that's needed is mastership of the pedals... If you can't do this, then I also wouldn't want to be close behind you when you attempt to start on a slope.
At this point i'd like to recommend you practicing basic reading comprehension. No, pretty sure i don't confuse engine braking with the handbrake. Me not mentioning handbrakes at all gives a slight clue regarding this matter. My point is, you won't even be able to get the 1st gear engaged at any considerable speed (and if your do manage it, you destroy the engine (as you point out, supporting my point), likely destroying whatever was dissipating the energy before.
And that will kill you... how?
So, you agree with me on the door matter.
Nope. The other guy had a point that mechanical windows offer a theoretical advantage over electrical ones when submerged in water, which you failed to refute. (Even more so when talking about hypothetically hackable electrical windows.)
Uh, i was under the impression that i'm confusing engine braking with hand braking, now i'm not to know engine braking at all? You're not making much sense here, my dear friend. If you're representative for people in ``your home country'' then i'd much rather not drive there, thanks. I can go faster and safer here, anyway.
Since you stated that "[engine braking] at any speed [emphais added] (...) would have the potential to kill you", I surmised that you never heard of the term "engine braking" and therefore assumed that the other guy was talking about hand braking, which is the only other form of braking available and which does happen to be unsafe at any (significant) speed. Reasonable assumption, no? FYI, engine braking is an integral part of everyday manual driving skills and (when practiced properly) makes your driving safer, not less safe; that's exactly why our driving exams require it. At this point, I still think that you either (A) do not know the first thing about engine braking (in which case my ridicule was justified) or (B) were mistakenly thinking about handbraking when making that "at any speed" statement and are now trying to cover up your mistake (in which case your current outrage is not justified).
Damn you are even confused about what was 'bitten' here. Protip: not people.
Lighten up Francis. Just a play on words. The bait bites back.
It is mostly accepted that none of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accidents were runaway reactions. That is because those skwewy nucwear engineews came up with an invention called control rods: rods that absorb neutrons and can be lowered into the reactor so that it can no longer sustain a chain reaction. Commercial reactors have several mechanisms to ensure all the rods are lowered fully at the first sign of impending trouble, and this happened immediately after the earthquake. The problem is that the "radioactive stuff" is still activated by neutrons it captured before the rods were lowered, and still produces heat by the Megawatts. Even if not a single neutron is passed around between the remaining "radioactive stuff", this residual heat is enough to melt the thing down for weeks to come, whether you pull the stuff apart or not. The only option is to keep on cooling it. If you can't do that, you get a molten mix of radioactive stuff, control rod material and other reactor material, which typically cannot sustain a chain reaction either, but is hot enough to melt through things for a while. That is what happened in the reactors.
At Fukushima Daiichi, there were also "spent fuel" pools containing radioactive stuff that was removed from the reactors (and somewhat pulled apart) weeks before the accident, and that was not undergoing chain reactions but still needed to be cooled. When the cooling failed, that stuff got too hot as well, and in Unit 3, it produced hydrogen, which exploded. A little bit like what you proposed to do deliberately. Incidentally, it turns out that "radioactive stuff" coming out of a reactor is much, much more radioactive than what went in, which is why a large area around Fukushima Daiichi is now uninhabitable, and a large swathe of Japan up to and including Tokyo is measurably contaminated. The authorities claim the contamination is below levels that could produce a measurable increase in cancer, but some experts say this claim is based on inappropriate measurements (radioactivity in the air vs. radioactive dust that settled to the ground).
TL;DR version: blowing up stuff that comes out of a reactor is a very very bad idea. So bad that the US government fears terrorists might try it some day (see "dirty bomb").
If you can't do it in a humble compact car or sedan without having to rev up and clutch in quickly, then you clearly haven't achieved mastership of the pedals yet.
Government takes out my brakes? No problem, shift into first and engine-brake going 10 mph down the hill.
Good luck with that at any speed which would have the potential to kill you
Any chance you're confusing engine braking (using the air that is pumped through the motor to dissipate energy) with applying the handbrake? Now, engine braking in first gear at high speed is likely to destroy your engine in addition to not being very effective, but I wouldn't think the chances of it killing you outright are that high.
Get caught in a storm or drive into a lake? I can simply unlock the door or roll down my windows and swim out, no power components to sieze up or go inactive.
Car doors can usually be opened from the inside even when locked.
Disclaimer: i drive manual transmission too, but for none of the reasons you mention. My reasons are: a) simpler/more robust design (i.e. one less part which can fail fail), b) more control, c) avoid ridicule
You're driving manual and don't know how to engine brake? I got some ridicule for you right here. In my home country, you can't even pass the on-road driving exam if you don't demonstrate routine use of engine braking.
Dear moderator, don't you think it's a bit harsh to moderate parent "Troll"? All they are saying is that it seems a tad hypocrite for a multi-million dollar CEO to claim to be doing this "to fight the machine" while it's clearly more "to improve the bottom line" (and the free publicity doesn't hurt either). I know, it barely rises above the daily noise of hypocrite ad campaigns and politicians, and you might be so desensitized that you didn't even notice it (particularly if you're living in the US), but still, I don't think parent is particularly inflammatory. Surely there are posts more worthy of your "-1 Troll" point on this site.
I presume that people would believe cancer is effectively cured once the risk of death via cancer metastasis/cerebral failure from tumor is lower than the risk of death via peacetime accidents/violence.
Yes, that's what I meant with "more serious definitions". As I said, I'm pessimistic about the prospects of this happening in the foreseeable future. One would need technologies that are currently in the realm of science fiction.
Cut the guy some slack. Someone probably should come up with a corollary to Hanlon's razor somewhere in the lines of "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by reading too fast".
Slashdot Mirror
So you never had the urge to talk to or check on your kids, even though you rationally knew they were perfectly safe? And you're calling the other guy a bad parent? Innteresting...
If there was a reasonable fear of being attacked, then the only way he could defend himself is with a gun.
Oh come on, now you're just playing dumb! Other options include:
(1) Get away. "Stand your ground" be damned - it's the first thing any "reasonable person" in the world will do when faced with a (real or imaginary) threat of bodily harm. It's not that the victim had a lot of opportunity to go after him, in a theater with other moviegoers and with his wife restraining him.
(2) Nothing indeed. At 71 years old, most people are not that frail yet. The guy has
* police training, which includes a minimal amount of hand-to-hand and restraining skills
* the higher ground (the victim was sitting before him in a movie theater)
* environmental obstacles that can be used as an advantage (rows of seats)
* awareness of the danger of getting hit. Most people who die after taking one hit do so because they were caught by surprise; even without any martial training, an alert person will instinctively block to minimize damage to critical areas.
With all these advantages stacked up, waiting for the other guy to try something more serious than throwing pop corn does not seem to be a deadly risk. Especially since most men are less likely to get physical in the presence of their wife in the first place. And even *if* the guy takes a swing and you, you block as good as you can, cry for help and the other theatergoers will quickly restrain him. It's not that it's just the two of them in a dark alley... which makes your "take a beating" option sound exaggerated at best.
(3) Declare you have a gun, or even pull it and threaten the other party. Very safe to do at the distance of a row of theater chairs. Staring into a barrel will definitely cool their eagerness to fight, something a retired police captain ought to be very familiar with. People get mugged at gunpoint every day in the US city I currently live in, and most of them don't get physically harmed in the process. Aren't ex-cops supposed to have better judgment in these things than the average junkie mugger?
Especially with option (3) on the table, and with cops being trained to try to subdue people at gunpoint without shooting if the situation is sufficiently serious and other options have failed, it seems clear that the perp must have lost his temper and shot the victim out of rage, not fear. And I bet you he'll be put away for it.
If he actually needs to check his daughter is OK then he's a bad parent for leaving her in a situation where she might not be, and he should at least go outside to text, if not go home to care for her properly.
I can't wait for you to become a parent. Not holding my breath, though, as you'll first need to get out of you mom's basement and find a girl who puts up with your intolerance. :-P
He has been charged with second-degree murder; if law enforcement believed he left to get his gun, the prosecutor would likely go for first degree (though we may never know). So GP indeed may be jumping to conclusions on that account. As for the rest of your argumentation, yes, one punch from a strong guy could kill a 71-year-old (and yes, it has happened more than once) but the chance of it happening is very small compared to the chance of 1 bullet of killing a young father. So that's disproportionate force. In my home country, disproportionate force automatically rules out self-defense, though things may be different in Florida. Either way, willfully shooting an unarmed man in this kind of setting will always be murder to me. And in my book, murdering someone makes one a bigger jerk than jumping to conclusions on an Internet message board. Your moral values are very alien to me.
Same thing here - no problem. Compared to "cleaner" languages like Latin, German, Spanish or even French, English grammar is pure voodoo. According to the grammar sites I googled up, the subtle difference between "which" and "that" (which I didn't explain very well above) is a very common source of confusion:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-versus-that-0
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that
English is not as expressive a language as German, by a very large margin. One needs to form phrases very carefully lest they be parsed incorrectly. In a sentence like yours, the relatively pronoun "which" forcefully must to follow a comma, and English speakers will tend to automatically assume the writer accidentally omitted it, reading: "Good luck with that at any speed, which would have the potential to kill you." No "intentional misquoting" there, Francis. It is now clear to me that you didn't intend to have the comma, but then you should have written: "Good luck with that at any speed that would have the potential to kill you." ("that", when used as a relative pronoun, forcefully must not follow a comma). However, this would still have been a bit of an ambiguous sentence. The really good solution would be to word the sentence differently, maybe like: "Good luck doing so while driving fast enough to get killed." or "At any speed that would have the potential to kill you, that would be difficult to accomplish." English is full of these silly parsing ambiguities that force a writer to reword their sentence; I understand they are far less common in German because the grammar allows one to better express the relationship between words.
Let's go back to where this started, shall we? An AC claiming to be Ethanol-fueled stated that a manual transmission is safer when your brakes get hacked because you can still engine break. He did this by giving the unfortunate example of shifting into 1st. He didn't explicitly state he would shift directly into first(*), and I took it to mean shifting into 1st after passing through all the other gears (yes, he still should have written 2nd). You took it as shifting directly into 1st, but even if that was his intention, it was simply an invalid example of a largely valid principle: you can slow down a manual transmission by engine braking. Anyhow, I took your ambiguous statement as pertaining to engine braking (which, if dangerous, would refute his argument) rather than to switching directly into 1st gear (which is dangerous but missing the point). And now you're accusing me of "intentionally misquoting" because I didn't automatically assume you missed the point (which, as it turns out, you did).
(*) which would indeed be a very stupid thing to try at highway speeds though it won't kill you at any speed; at around 40 km/h or less, assuming you succeed to do it, it might deal some damage to the gearbox, but it's unlikely to kill you.
...and the way you keep talking about "mastership of the pedals" makes me suspect that this is a skill you very recently acquired. Otherwise you would kind of realize it's no big deal, and fairly easy to master.
Nice. As I stated in my previous post, that was a joke. You lured me into explaining the joke by claiming you couldn't make sense out of it, and now you're concluding something from me using the term a second time for the purpose of explaining it. Well trolled, sir. Guess that serves me well for falling into the trap of explaining a joke.
having done nearly 200,000 km on the Autobahn
Let me check.. nope, not impressed.
With some practice, you can time the gas and the clutch just right so that the wheels will lose traction ("spin") when starting yet the engine doesn't go to insanely high RPM ("revving").
That does not work with lower-hp engines. Please find out at what revs you get the highest torque out of common gasoline engines.
Well, it obviously won't work at idle RPM, but when people talk about "revving" the engine, they usually mean momentarily going over 5000 RPM or so (for an average petrol engine; it depends on engine size and type), making that characteristic "woom" sound. While this would give you the very highest torque your engine can output, you don't need to go nearly that high in RPM to make the tires skid a bit in low gear; somewhere in the 2000-3000RPM range still produces high enough torque (again for some arbitrary average petrol engine) without being considered "revving".
And this can even be done with a very modest engine
No.
I know this is degenerating into an "is not / is too" argument, but I can assure you I did this many times (mostly by accident) with my parents' car in the few years after I learned to drive, by trying to start quickly and "overdoing" it a bit. That was just an average car with an average engine. It may have been a rear-wheel-drive, though, and it may be very difficult to do with the now-ubiquitous FF cars, with all that engine weight on the drive wheels. I'm a bit hazy on the exact details because it's so long ago, and I can't easily reproduce it now because I don't currently own a car with manual transmission.
The defense rests.
My thought is that it would just be easier and quicker to clean up a bunch of rods than it would a molten blob.
Except that that fresh-out-of-the-reactor fuel rods (in the hypothetical case that they don't melt or produce hydrogen explosions in contact with water) are so insanely radioactive that you need special radiation-hardened robots to even get close to them. Of course, this also goes for the molten blob, but that one is resting "safely" on a specially designed concrete structure at the bottom of the reactor building. For very cynical definitions of "safely".
I actually was going for "Funny" by continuing the "If you..." line. But my post does incidentally also make some sense, even if you fail to see it. With some practice (the same kind of practice that is required for starting on a slope without using the hand brake), you can time the gas and the clutch just right so that the wheels will lose traction ("spin") when starting yet the engine doesn't go to insanely high RPM ("revving"). And this can even be done with a very modest engine - all that's needed is mastership of the pedals... If you can't do this, then I also wouldn't want to be close behind you when you attempt to start on a slope.
At this point i'd like to recommend you practicing basic reading comprehension. No, pretty sure i don't confuse engine braking with the handbrake. Me not mentioning handbrakes at all gives a slight clue regarding this matter. My point is, you won't even be able to get the 1st gear engaged at any considerable speed (and if your do manage it, you destroy the engine (as you point out, supporting my point), likely destroying whatever was dissipating the energy before.
And that will kill you... how?
So, you agree with me on the door matter.
Nope. The other guy had a point that mechanical windows offer a theoretical advantage over electrical ones when submerged in water, which you failed to refute. (Even more so when talking about hypothetically hackable electrical windows.)
Uh, i was under the impression that i'm confusing engine braking with hand braking, now i'm not to know engine braking at all? You're not making much sense here, my dear friend. If you're representative for people in ``your home country'' then i'd much rather not drive there, thanks. I can go faster and safer here, anyway.
Since you stated that "[engine braking] at any speed [emphais added] (...) would have the potential to kill you", I surmised that you never heard of the term "engine braking" and therefore assumed that the other guy was talking about hand braking, which is the only other form of braking available and which does happen to be unsafe at any (significant) speed. Reasonable assumption, no? FYI, engine braking is an integral part of everyday manual driving skills and (when practiced properly) makes your driving safer, not less safe; that's exactly why our driving exams require it. At this point, I still think that you either (A) do not know the first thing about engine braking (in which case my ridicule was justified) or (B) were mistakenly thinking about handbraking when making that "at any speed" statement and are now trying to cover up your mistake (in which case your current outrage is not justified).
Damn you are even confused about what was 'bitten' here. Protip: not people.
Lighten up Francis. Just a play on words. The bait bites back.
It is mostly accepted that none of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accidents were runaway reactions. That is because those skwewy nucwear engineews came up with an invention called control rods: rods that absorb neutrons and can be lowered into the reactor so that it can no longer sustain a chain reaction. Commercial reactors have several mechanisms to ensure all the rods are lowered fully at the first sign of impending trouble, and this happened immediately after the earthquake. The problem is that the "radioactive stuff" is still activated by neutrons it captured before the rods were lowered, and still produces heat by the Megawatts. Even if not a single neutron is passed around between the remaining "radioactive stuff", this residual heat is enough to melt the thing down for weeks to come, whether you pull the stuff apart or not. The only option is to keep on cooling it. If you can't do that, you get a molten mix of radioactive stuff, control rod material and other reactor material, which typically cannot sustain a chain reaction either, but is hot enough to melt through things for a while. That is what happened in the reactors.
At Fukushima Daiichi, there were also "spent fuel" pools containing radioactive stuff that was removed from the reactors (and somewhat pulled apart) weeks before the accident, and that was not undergoing chain reactions but still needed to be cooled. When the cooling failed, that stuff got too hot as well, and in Unit 3, it produced hydrogen, which exploded. A little bit like what you proposed to do deliberately. Incidentally, it turns out that "radioactive stuff" coming out of a reactor is much, much more radioactive than what went in, which is why a large area around Fukushima Daiichi is now uninhabitable, and a large swathe of Japan up to and including Tokyo is measurably contaminated. The authorities claim the contamination is below levels that could produce a measurable increase in cancer, but some experts say this claim is based on inappropriate measurements (radioactivity in the air vs. radioactive dust that settled to the ground).
TL;DR version: blowing up stuff that comes out of a reactor is a very very bad idea. So bad that the US government fears terrorists might try it some day (see "dirty bomb").
We're not dumb. At least provide a link that has a description or diagram of how they're planning to do this.
Better than Istanbul traffic.
Say, what does the "A" in AI stand for again?
If you can't do it in a humble compact car or sedan without having to rev up and clutch in quickly, then you clearly haven't achieved mastership of the pedals yet.
Government takes out my brakes? No problem, shift into first and engine-brake going 10 mph down the hill.
Good luck with that at any speed which would have the potential to kill you
Any chance you're confusing engine braking (using the air that is pumped through the motor to dissipate energy) with applying the handbrake? Now, engine braking in first gear at high speed is likely to destroy your engine in addition to not being very effective, but I wouldn't think the chances of it killing you outright are that high.
Get caught in a storm or drive into a lake? I can simply unlock the door or roll down my windows and swim out, no power components to sieze up or go inactive.
Car doors can usually be opened from the inside even when locked.
...except when opening them against a significant pressure gradient. Car doors often cannot be opened in a sinking car, whether they are locked or not. And even if they can be opened, leaving them alone and going for the windows gives a better survival chance.
Disclaimer: i drive manual transmission too, but for none of the reasons you mention. My reasons are: a) simpler/more robust design (i.e. one less part which can fail fail), b) more control, c) avoid ridicule
You're driving manual and don't know how to engine brake? I got some ridicule for you right here. In my home country, you can't even pass the on-road driving exam if you don't demonstrate routine use of engine braking.
So Michael Hastings was killed by fuel inefficiency?
Dear moderator, don't you think it's a bit harsh to moderate parent "Troll"? All they are saying is that it seems a tad hypocrite for a multi-million dollar CEO to claim to be doing this "to fight the machine" while it's clearly more "to improve the bottom line" (and the free publicity doesn't hurt either). I know, it barely rises above the daily noise of hypocrite ad campaigns and politicians, and you might be so desensitized that you didn't even notice it (particularly if you're living in the US), but still, I don't think parent is particularly inflammatory. Surely there are posts more worthy of your "-1 Troll" point on this site.
Yay it's tin foil hat time! So, the World Bank hates Euros as much as gold?
I presume that people would believe cancer is effectively cured once the risk of death via cancer metastasis/cerebral failure from tumor is lower than the risk of death via peacetime accidents/violence.
Yes, that's what I meant with "more serious definitions". As I said, I'm pessimistic about the prospects of this happening in the foreseeable future. One would need technologies that are currently in the realm of science fiction.
Cut the guy some slack. Someone probably should come up with a corollary to Hanlon's razor somewhere in the lines of "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by reading too fast".
As for not wearing at all, I don't think anyone in their right mind would think we'd ever stop stuff from wearing out.
In that case, I'm not sure everyone here is in their right mind.