Could you please source your numbers? Because I'm seeing very different ones.... USA: 4.8 vs UK: 1.2. I think you cited the firearm homicide rates, which is somewhat understandable, but if you don't specify that the rates are for firearms only you're distorting the presentation.
BTW, one trivia fact: The USA non-firearm homicide rate is STILL higher than the UK's total homicide rate. Of course,.04 out of 1.2 per 100k is 'insignificant'.
Another: Something like 3/4 of the difference in total homicides could be eliminated if we could get the 'black male' murder rate(killer AND victim) down to the average of the rest of the country.
Lastly: Your odds of being murdered go way, way down if you don't act like a criminal. Don't hang around in gangs, etc... There are spots in the USA where if you associate with certain gangs your life expectancy is under 30, and the primary cause of death is murder.
Sheesh... Just had to hit one of my hot buttons, didn't you?
Gun laws in Britain make no difference because you chaps are less violent than the USA PERIOD. Seriously, we still kill more of each other with non-firearms(4.8*32.3%=1.6) than you do total(1.2).
For that matter, if you go back in history, you'll find that we've actually closed much of the gap over the years since you guys effectively banned handguns. Heck, if we could end the spike in black malemurder, we'd be a lot closer to you still.
I maintain that, if we really want to reduce the murder rate, we need to end the 'war on drugs', go in and provide effective education and job opportunities in the ghettos, and other systems to fight the current system of mostly-broken families in the ghettos.
Sure, some kids will only 'vote' for the easy teachers, but that can be addressed by using a combined metric - the students have to perform as well as like the teacher for maximum results.
I had a few, sadly only a few, who truly made the material interesting and it be a joy to be in class. And I say this as a kid who would read the whole textbook in the first week of class. I loved learning.
Even kids can generally tell the difference between a good/effective teacher and a bad one. Even kids generally appreciate not wasting their time. The trick is figuring out a survey system that gets them to tell you which teachers are effective.
Are children so disenfranchised and utterly unconcerned about their future that they habitually skip class?
In many cases, yes. They're too 'busy' running with a street gang selling drugs, or perhaps working 'under the table'. Sometimes they just want to hang out somewhere to do drugs.
What they heck is going on in Texas?
Texas is far from the only one to suffer from this problem. Heck, it's unlikely to be a problem at even 'most' Texas schools. It tends to be at it's worst in inner-city schools around ghettos, where education isn't seen as important.
How do you define 'need'? One of the points I keep hearing about is that the various laptops/tablets schools issue out are actually cheaper than the textbooks they would otherwise have to provide.
Now, I don't know about the specifics on how it works out, but if it works out that a physical textbook of the quality you need for primary education - hardbound, quality binding, full color pages, and such averages out to $200, times 5 classes, that's $1000. Depends on how long a school can keep it's books. My old school system often kept them for a decade. Anyways, if you can get a sweetheart ebook licensing deal, you buy a $400 device to read the books on and pay $50 per book, that's only $650, a substantial cost savings that gives you things like electronic searching and notetaking, ability to write reports right on the device(though if you only have a single monitor it'll suck for referencing what you're writing), etc...
I'd argue that, aside from storing grade information, teachers should have the least need for a computer in a classroom.
If it's like the online classes I've looked at, they might be 'cheap' but that's compared to the multiple hundreds most classes cost. It might 'only' be a couple hundred or so.
You can't even take most CLEP tests for less than $100 unless somebody else is paying for it.
If they drop out of high school, all the classes for that year would be 'incomplete'. That's a bit different of a standard than pass/fail, but I can understand the mistake. Most of the time 'complete' = 'pass', but for these courses most completed the course(didn't drop out), but still failed it.
Well duh, but seeing as how in many areas an 83% completion rate for a high school grade would be considered excellent, I can see why they consider it a positive sign.
The 20-44% pass rates though, are pretty bad. For any cost-benefit analysis I'd want to know: 1. How much the courses cost per course per student 2. Where the students started knowledge wise, and where they ended, on average. Were they barely falling short? 3. How much time the students had to invest in the course(another expense).
Still I like the article, it mentions that their trial, while not particularly successful, did give them many areas to investigate for improvement.
Think of a planet like a giant centrifuge. Smash the two planets together and you'll create enough heat that you'd end up with a massive molten mass. Have the hit be 'off center' and you'll impart a huge amount of kinetic motion. Between gravity and centrifugal forces the heavier elements like iron will tend to end up towards the center while spinning, thus creating your magnetic field.
Acceleration - not much, electric motors are actually MORE efficient closer to max load.
Granted, that's for the Roadster, but we can assume a similar cost in the S for discussion's sake.
Actually the $12k swap is for the Model S, as the Roadster isn't being sold anymore.
Which is nice, if those superchargers are ubiquitous where you live.
If you're lucky you might be able to charge up at work or something. Tesla uses propitiatory chargers, but there are adapters for common electric charging stations.
Jump to 240v and the charging time drops to less than 2 hours (really? double the power and take 75% off the time? How does that work?)
Never heard of a 'road warrior,' have they? Seriously, who takes an hour to eat lunch at a roadside fuel station (where I presume the supercharger they refer to would be located... assuming there's a supercharger. Otherwise, plan on adding a day to your trip for every 250-300 miles traveled)
You don't need an hour. You need 40 minutes. And I do stop for a while, I'm not a 'road warrior' I just don't think driving that long is safe or worth it. Given that my work lost a new employee and his family when they tried driving up this way(he fell asleep, wandered into the oncoming lane in front of a semi), I'm particularly adamant about it.
Still not fast enough for you? That's why they're building battery swap stations. 2 minutes, new fully charged battery.
Really don't want to stop? Haul a trailer with a generator that has a huge gas tank in it.
If we're going to terraform mars, I say we should go big.
Collide Mars and Venus together, that gets you a planet that's 92% of the mass of the Earth. Maybe add Mercury in there as well, that gets you 98%.
Move to an appropriate orbit and wait for it to cool...;)
With the violence of the impact, you should be able to get a magnetic field going. I figure that the collision that created the earth & moon is what kickstarted ours.
If the truck is driving back empty, they should fire their logistics guy.
The problem with this is that because it's a hazardous flammable and fairly poisonous liquid substance you're transporting it in a tanker designed for hydrocarbon fuel, not a general transport vehicle. You still need to get the trailer back to the refinery/distribution point to move more gasoline, but the selection of items that can go into the trailer is extremely limited - can't put food products in there, can't put potable water or drinking alcohol, etc... That's assuming any of this is produced at your distribution point.
Longer ranges it's piped or transported by railroad, but for ~100 mile final transport, they are stuck driving back with an empty trailer.
How do you define "Rich" though? Something like 90% of Americans define themselves as middle class, so it really covers a wide amount of territory.
So what's your definition? $1M+ in assets? $5M+? $100k in income/year? $250k? More?
Let's look at the basic 85 kWh model, which comes with free charging and such. $72,400. That works out to $1,207/month over 5 years. Ouch, no kidding. Let's say that our theoretical 'middle class' person is: A: Car focused; they're going to be driving the 'best' car they can get no matter what, even if it impacts their savings/housing. Nobody ever said everybody 'middle class' is 100% financially logical/responsible. B: Has access to free electricity for charging(work, supercharger stations, whatever) C: Itemizes on taxes already. D: Drives an average amount of distance per year, but no trips outside of a Tesla's range.
Please note that I'm trying to be favorable to Tesla in this case, in order to see how low it could realistically go. 1. $72,400 minus the federal rebate of 7,500 becomes $64,900 2. 15k miles/year@20mpg(nasty city driver, best case for electric, worst for gasoline), 750 gallons@$4 = $3k/year. $15k in fuel savings. $49.9k left
Picking on GM, the Cadillac CTS-V Sedan is more expensive(3.9 v 4.2 for 0-60), and the XTS and CTS Sport are close. BMW 7 Series are uniformly $25k+ more expensive. You need to drop to the 5 series to reach that price point.
It's not even to middle-middle class yet, but I'd say it's moved from 'rich' people to 'upper-middle'.
Wouldn't that bias the system against legitimate small inventors whose invention was ripped off by a giant corporation?
Perhaps, but as the AC notes, there's not actually a lot of small inventors anymore, and I guess it becomes what you consider a larger problem at this time - patent trolls or patent violators?
One more complicated option would be to require you to sue* where the corporation has a 'business presence'. It would indeed be very complicated, but would avoid some problems - if Amazon has no real presence in 'East Texas' other than mailing stuff people order there, then you can't sue them there. Walmart has stores there, so you could sue them in those courts.
Roughly speaking, while it does give the company some limited advantages in 'home court' advantage, it's mostly advantageous to people - who 95% of the time only have 'presence' in one state & county. If you don't have a presence - IE do you own property there? Are you physically there? It might not be the most favorable, but at least it's close. I think it sucks that I could theoretically be sued in Maryland while I'm living in Alaska.
The actual rules would end up even more complicated if you have some sort of rule where if the incident was of a physical non-interstate nature(and mailing something to them wouldn't count), you could sue there even if neither party normally has a physical presence there.
*Remember, suing somebody is the initiating act; I believe it fair to treat it a bit like a duel. Sure, you can challenge somebody to a duel, but they then get to set at least some of the duels. One of them is that if you're suing somebody outside of your own local area I think it's reasonable that you be the one forced to travel.
I think the AC was talking about making the suing company sue the business in the business's home county.
IE let's say the patent troll wants to sue Bobcat. Given that, as best as I can tell they're incorporated in West Fargo in North Dakota, that would mean that the troll would have to sue them in West Fargo, ND not East Texas.
It means that the patent trolls can't judge shop anywhere as well.
I find the idea extremely 'icky', to say the least, but it depends where you are. While Canada has different rules and limitations, if I remember right the supreme court shot down banning 'artificial' CP. Rules can be different on possession if you've been convicted, are out on parole, and the restriction is part of your parole terms.
The practical point of these detectors is probably a cover for racial and ethnic profiling, not anything the actual detectors actually do.
That's an interesting theory, and I think it probably has some merit. That exposes another possible theory as well - much like dowsers, it might enable the person to get over any hangups and let their 'subconcious' point out anything suspicious?
Note: I still think a functioning bomb detector would be better; A properly trained dog is still the best explosives detector, but a lot of Middle Eastern types think dogs are unclean and won't work with them.
One would, of course, have to go on the basis of averages. Seat belts normally save lives. Once in a blue moon they might cost a life in an accident. You're still vastly safer with it on.
Now, if there's any placebo effect, I figure that it would be a lot less clear than seat belts. Thus the "I wonder" part; IE I'm posing a theory, not any fact.
In any case, they become worse than ineffective if the opposition figures out that they're fake, and manages to convince their people of that.
Now, while they're technologically incapable of their purpose, I wonder if they might actually be somewhat effective in real life? IE a different type of placebo?
It says that they're being used at a number of checkpoints. Now, one of the things I know about is that the insurgents/terrorists tend to observe such places before they target them. Often at some distance, but eh.
The ones doing the observing are often no more educated than those working the checkpoint, often less. So they see the operators using their 'bomb detector' in all seriousness. They think 'crap! They'd find our bomb, time to figure out a different plan!' and either delay or go elsewhere. So the end result is that they still have fewer attacks against that checkpoint.
Actually, you should only need to bribe the stevedore at that point - Remember how I said 'bribe the paperwork collector'?
On average you'd only need to bribe those operating the scale(s) with the idea that it's not worth it for the rest to follow up and recheck potentially thousands of containers to catch the one overweight one.
In especially corrupt areas you'd simply bribe one contact in the area who'd handle the bribes to everyone else.
Of course, once more than a few are overweight, the economics of doing a re-weigh shifts in favor of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe in Texas they can afford to waste taxpayer megabucks...
I would certainly hope that it was a pilot program, basically research. The results failed to live up to expectations, thus the project ends.
Harold Shipman? 250+ verified murders? Non-censored words fail me...
Yeah, in a country with a murder rate as low as the UK's that might actually shift it a point...
By the way, have you heard of the leaded gasoline hypothesis for the violent crime rates?
Could you please source your numbers? Because I'm seeing very different ones.... USA: 4.8 vs UK: 1.2. I think you cited the firearm homicide rates, which is somewhat understandable, but if you don't specify that the rates are for firearms only you're distorting the presentation.
BTW, one trivia fact: The USA non-firearm homicide rate is STILL higher than the UK's total homicide rate. Of course, .04 out of 1.2 per 100k is 'insignificant'.
Another: Something like 3/4 of the difference in total homicides could be eliminated if we could get the 'black male' murder rate(killer AND victim) down to the average of the rest of the country.
Lastly: Your odds of being murdered go way, way down if you don't act like a criminal. Don't hang around in gangs, etc... There are spots in the USA where if you associate with certain gangs your life expectancy is under 30, and the primary cause of death is murder.
Sheesh... Just had to hit one of my hot buttons, didn't you?
Gun laws in Britain make no difference because you chaps are less violent than the USA PERIOD. Seriously, we still kill more of each other with non-firearms(4.8*32.3%=1.6) than you do total(1.2).
For that matter, if you go back in history, you'll find that we've actually closed much of the gap over the years since you guys effectively banned handguns. Heck, if we could end the spike in black male murder, we'd be a lot closer to you still.
I maintain that, if we really want to reduce the murder rate, we need to end the 'war on drugs', go in and provide effective education and job opportunities in the ghettos, and other systems to fight the current system of mostly-broken families in the ghettos.
Sure, some kids will only 'vote' for the easy teachers, but that can be addressed by using a combined metric - the students have to perform as well as like the teacher for maximum results.
I had a few, sadly only a few, who truly made the material interesting and it be a joy to be in class. And I say this as a kid who would read the whole textbook in the first week of class. I loved learning.
Even kids can generally tell the difference between a good/effective teacher and a bad one. Even kids generally appreciate not wasting their time. The trick is figuring out a survey system that gets them to tell you which teachers are effective.
Problem with this is that they're talking about a Jr High and High school. So you're generally looking at 10+, not 8. Still you make a good point.
Are children so disenfranchised and utterly unconcerned about their future that they habitually skip class?
In many cases, yes. They're too 'busy' running with a street gang selling drugs, or perhaps working 'under the table'. Sometimes they just want to hang out somewhere to do drugs.
What they heck is going on in Texas?
Texas is far from the only one to suffer from this problem. Heck, it's unlikely to be a problem at even 'most' Texas schools. It tends to be at it's worst in inner-city schools around ghettos, where education isn't seen as important.
How do you define 'need'? One of the points I keep hearing about is that the various laptops/tablets schools issue out are actually cheaper than the textbooks they would otherwise have to provide.
Now, I don't know about the specifics on how it works out, but if it works out that a physical textbook of the quality you need for primary education - hardbound, quality binding, full color pages, and such averages out to $200, times 5 classes, that's $1000. Depends on how long a school can keep it's books. My old school system often kept them for a decade. Anyways, if you can get a sweetheart ebook licensing deal, you buy a $400 device to read the books on and pay $50 per book, that's only $650, a substantial cost savings that gives you things like electronic searching and notetaking, ability to write reports right on the device(though if you only have a single monitor it'll suck for referencing what you're writing), etc...
I'd argue that, aside from storing grade information, teachers should have the least need for a computer in a classroom.
If it's like the online classes I've looked at, they might be 'cheap' but that's compared to the multiple hundreds most classes cost. It might 'only' be a couple hundred or so.
You can't even take most CLEP tests for less than $100 unless somebody else is paying for it.
Depends on how they figure 'completed' I guess. I'd use 'did the final' as a measure for 'completed'.
No final done = didn't complete.
If they drop out of high school, all the classes for that year would be 'incomplete'. That's a bit different of a standard than pass/fail, but I can understand the mistake. Most of the time 'complete' = 'pass', but for these courses most completed the course(didn't drop out), but still failed it.
Well duh, but seeing as how in many areas an 83% completion rate for a high school grade would be considered excellent, I can see why they consider it a positive sign.
The 20-44% pass rates though, are pretty bad. For any cost-benefit analysis I'd want to know:
1. How much the courses cost per course per student
2. Where the students started knowledge wise, and where they ended, on average. Were they barely falling short?
3. How much time the students had to invest in the course(another expense).
Still I like the article, it mentions that their trial, while not particularly successful, did give them many areas to investigate for improvement.
Think of a planet like a giant centrifuge. Smash the two planets together and you'll create enough heat that you'd end up with a massive molten mass. Have the hit be 'off center' and you'll impart a huge amount of kinetic motion. Between gravity and centrifugal forces the heavier elements like iron will tend to end up towards the center while spinning, thus creating your magnetic field.
Acceleration - not much, electric motors are actually MORE efficient closer to max load.
Granted, that's for the Roadster, but we can assume a similar cost in the S for discussion's sake.
Actually the $12k swap is for the Model S, as the Roadster isn't being sold anymore.
Which is nice, if those superchargers are ubiquitous where you live.
If you're lucky you might be able to charge up at work or something. Tesla uses propitiatory chargers, but there are adapters for common electric charging stations.
Jump to 240v and the charging time drops to less than 2 hours (really? double the power and take 75% off the time? How does that work?)
120V@15A breaker = 1,800 watts. 240V@30A = 7,200 watts max.
Never heard of a 'road warrior,' have they? Seriously, who takes an hour to eat lunch at a roadside fuel station (where I presume the supercharger they refer to would be located... assuming there's a supercharger. Otherwise, plan on adding a day to your trip for every 250-300 miles traveled)
You don't need an hour. You need 40 minutes. And I do stop for a while, I'm not a 'road warrior' I just don't think driving that long is safe or worth it. Given that my work lost a new employee and his family when they tried driving up this way(he fell asleep, wandered into the oncoming lane in front of a semi), I'm particularly adamant about it.
Still not fast enough for you? That's why they're building battery swap stations. 2 minutes, new fully charged battery.
Really don't want to stop? Haul a trailer with a generator that has a huge gas tank in it.
If we're going to terraform mars, I say we should go big.
Collide Mars and Venus together, that gets you a planet that's 92% of the mass of the Earth. Maybe add Mercury in there as well, that gets you 98%.
Move to an appropriate orbit and wait for it to cool... ;)
With the violence of the impact, you should be able to get a magnetic field going. I figure that the collision that created the earth & moon is what kickstarted ours.
If the truck is driving back empty, they should fire their logistics guy.
The problem with this is that because it's a hazardous flammable and fairly poisonous liquid substance you're transporting it in a tanker designed for hydrocarbon fuel, not a general transport vehicle. You still need to get the trailer back to the refinery/distribution point to move more gasoline, but the selection of items that can go into the trailer is extremely limited - can't put food products in there, can't put potable water or drinking alcohol, etc... That's assuming any of this is produced at your distribution point.
Longer ranges it's piped or transported by railroad, but for ~100 mile final transport, they are stuck driving back with an empty trailer.
How do you define "Rich" though? Something like 90% of Americans define themselves as middle class, so it really covers a wide amount of territory.
So what's your definition? $1M+ in assets? $5M+? $100k in income/year? $250k? More?
Let's look at the basic 85 kWh model, which comes with free charging and such. $72,400. That works out to $1,207/month over 5 years. Ouch, no kidding. Let's say that our theoretical 'middle class' person is:
A: Car focused; they're going to be driving the 'best' car they can get no matter what, even if it impacts their savings/housing. Nobody ever said everybody 'middle class' is 100% financially logical/responsible.
B: Has access to free electricity for charging(work, supercharger stations, whatever)
C: Itemizes on taxes already.
D: Drives an average amount of distance per year, but no trips outside of a Tesla's range.
Please note that I'm trying to be favorable to Tesla in this case, in order to see how low it could realistically go.
1. $72,400 minus the federal rebate of 7,500 becomes $64,900
2. 15k miles/year@20mpg(nasty city driver, best case for electric, worst for gasoline), 750 gallons@$4 = $3k/year. $15k in fuel savings. $49.9k left
Picking on GM, the Cadillac CTS-V Sedan is more expensive(3.9 v 4.2 for 0-60), and the XTS and CTS Sport are close. BMW 7 Series are uniformly $25k+ more expensive. You need to drop to the 5 series to reach that price point.
It's not even to middle-middle class yet, but I'd say it's moved from 'rich' people to 'upper-middle'.
Wouldn't that bias the system against legitimate small inventors whose invention was ripped off by a giant corporation?
Perhaps, but as the AC notes, there's not actually a lot of small inventors anymore, and I guess it becomes what you consider a larger problem at this time - patent trolls or patent violators?
One more complicated option would be to require you to sue* where the corporation has a 'business presence'. It would indeed be very complicated, but would avoid some problems - if Amazon has no real presence in 'East Texas' other than mailing stuff people order there, then you can't sue them there. Walmart has stores there, so you could sue them in those courts.
Roughly speaking, while it does give the company some limited advantages in 'home court' advantage, it's mostly advantageous to people - who 95% of the time only have 'presence' in one state & county. If you don't have a presence - IE do you own property there? Are you physically there? It might not be the most favorable, but at least it's close. I think it sucks that I could theoretically be sued in Maryland while I'm living in Alaska.
The actual rules would end up even more complicated if you have some sort of rule where if the incident was of a physical non-interstate nature(and mailing something to them wouldn't count), you could sue there even if neither party normally has a physical presence there.
*Remember, suing somebody is the initiating act; I believe it fair to treat it a bit like a duel. Sure, you can challenge somebody to a duel, but they then get to set at least some of the duels. One of them is that if you're suing somebody outside of your own local area I think it's reasonable that you be the one forced to travel.
I think the AC was talking about making the suing company sue the business in the business's home county.
IE let's say the patent troll wants to sue Bobcat. Given that, as best as I can tell they're incorporated in West Fargo in North Dakota, that would mean that the troll would have to sue them in West Fargo, ND not East Texas.
It means that the patent trolls can't judge shop anywhere as well.
I find the idea extremely 'icky', to say the least, but it depends where you are. While Canada has different rules and limitations, if I remember right the supreme court shot down banning 'artificial' CP. Rules can be different on possession if you've been convicted, are out on parole, and the restriction is part of your parole terms.
The practical point of these detectors is probably a cover for racial and ethnic profiling, not anything the actual detectors actually do.
That's an interesting theory, and I think it probably has some merit. That exposes another possible theory as well - much like dowsers, it might enable the person to get over any hangups and let their 'subconcious' point out anything suspicious?
Note: I still think a functioning bomb detector would be better; A properly trained dog is still the best explosives detector, but a lot of Middle Eastern types think dogs are unclean and won't work with them.
One would, of course, have to go on the basis of averages. Seat belts normally save lives. Once in a blue moon they might cost a life in an accident. You're still vastly safer with it on.
Now, if there's any placebo effect, I figure that it would be a lot less clear than seat belts. Thus the "I wonder" part; IE I'm posing a theory, not any fact.
In any case, they become worse than ineffective if the opposition figures out that they're fake, and manages to convince their people of that.
Still, placement is critical with bombs. Less the larger they are, but that costs more resources.
What if they're trying to get something beyond the point? What if they want to hit the center of the point?
If they figure they're going to be caught early they'll most likely change their plans.
Now, while they're technologically incapable of their purpose, I wonder if they might actually be somewhat effective in real life? IE a different type of placebo?
It says that they're being used at a number of checkpoints. Now, one of the things I know about is that the insurgents/terrorists tend to observe such places before they target them. Often at some distance, but eh.
The ones doing the observing are often no more educated than those working the checkpoint, often less. So they see the operators using their 'bomb detector' in all seriousness. They think 'crap! They'd find our bomb, time to figure out a different plan!' and either delay or go elsewhere. So the end result is that they still have fewer attacks against that checkpoint.
Actually, you should only need to bribe the stevedore at that point - Remember how I said 'bribe the paperwork collector'?
On average you'd only need to bribe those operating the scale(s) with the idea that it's not worth it for the rest to follow up and recheck potentially thousands of containers to catch the one overweight one.
In especially corrupt areas you'd simply bribe one contact in the area who'd handle the bribes to everyone else.
Of course, once more than a few are overweight, the economics of doing a re-weigh shifts in favor of it.