Personally, I'm a fan of the properly installed gun safe, or at least a gun locker. They aren't hard, and work well at preventing accidental shootings. The rules should be that if the gun isn't ON the parent, then it's in the safe. Thieves might be able to get into a gun safe, but they'll generally leave a bolted down one alone; it takes power tools to get into a good one quickly.
Quick-open safes and locks also exist which can allow you access to your weapons in seconds.
Anyone who disagrees is just wrong and seriously needs mental help.
You're making an ad hominem attack here. I don't object to tossing the parents or whoever gave the child unmonitored access to the firearm, much less while loaded, but I've known many children with firearms, where said firearm lived in the parent's safe when not on the range.
In one case I remember a Short Barreled Rifle(SBR) that required NFA approval being used by a pre-teen - it was a perfectly proportioned single-shot rifle in.22lr. The child never had it out of his parent's site, and it was provided to him at the range, and removed at the range(into the case to go back in the safe back home).
The other question is how you define child - I remember some anti-gun propaganda that defined 'child' as 'under 25'. Are you still a child at 13? That's about when I earned my shooting merit badge in Scouts.
Would a S&W 686 count? I'll have to double check when I get home, but I think that one locks up the cylinder as well when cocked. After all, last thing you want when the hammer is dropping is the cylinders moving.
As for making it safe, well, I'd hope I was at the range and/or armory. Procedure: 1. MAKE SURE THE WEAPON IS POINTED IN A SAFE DIRECTION. Preferably stuck in a clearing barrel or pointed at a berm. 2. insert key into lock, place finger between hammer and gun, keep pointing in a safe direction. 3. Turn key, keeping gun pointed in safe direction and finger interfering with hammer 4. work the trigger lock off with one hand, keeping it pointed in safe direction. If barrel so much as twitches, pause and think about actions before starting again 5. Once off, make safe as per normal procedures. While pointing it in a safe direction.
Did I mention keeping it pointed in a safe direction the entire time?
I remember Consumer Reports looking into trigger locks and failing 99% of them, specially noting one particularly unsafe one that tripped the trigger on a 10/22 with a slight jar when installed per directions.
The technology is technically possible. However, I have a few points to make: 1. Guns are currently purely mechanical. Adding ANYTHING electronic into the firing system is going to lower reliability. Remember, the most common police weapon(Glock) doesn't even have a manual safety switch. The recognition system would have to work 99.999999% of the time in a fraction of a second. 2. When fired, the firearm itself suffers a large shock. One 9mm handgun weighs 770 grams, fires a 7.45 gram projectile at 390 m/s. Laws of physics means that every time the handgun is fired it suffers a shock sufficient to move it back at 3.8 m/s, or 14 km/hour. That is NASTY to electronics, it's roughly equivalent to being hit with a hammer. It's mean to mechanical parts as well, but at least we've had hundreds of years of engineering to fix the issues. 3. Perhaps most critical, police officers are much more likely to be killed by their own weapon after it's been taken from them. 26 officers over 10 years. (or have others killed with their weapon if taken from them). Despite this, police organizations(departments, unions, professional) will campaign hard and long to exempt themselves from any such gun legislation. I believe that New Jersey already has a smart gun requirement on the books - but no gun manufacturer makes a firearm that meets the standard. 4. The common figuring is a lot like that of DRM - a 'smart gun' will stop a non-authorized person only on a tactical, immediate basis. Criminals will be able to bypass any protections on a long term scale(IE days) if they successfully steal the weapon, making any 'smart guns' of limited protection.
I think the dubious part is really that it discourages people from seeking preventative care since the upfront costs are so high, even though preventative care is far cheaper than trying to treat an undiagnosed problem when it's too late.
My understanding of HD plans is that there's nothing preventing insurance companies from incentivising(IE paying for before the deductible is exhausted) preventative treatment, especially if said treatment saves them money in the long run.
As for the $700 to go to the doctor, my father and brother have found that they can generally save oodles of money by shopping around and asking a few questions. Dad's on a high deductible plan, brother's uninsured, but generally has money to pay up front.
Because it was part of the deal when they hired me. If you want to remove benefits I want a new deal.
It's perfectly fine for there to be a new deal. Personally, I think that healthcare should be more of a personal thing, and move with you between jobs as opposed to the mess that can leave people without healthcare for extended periods of time even if they never have a real interruption in employment, merely by moving between jobs.
You don't expect your work to provide your car insurance, why something so much more personal as healthcare? Of course, the system as set up now would be unsuitable, but there are comprehensive plans for the shift to personally obtained healthcare insurance out there.
I've known quite a few people 'trapped' in their current job because they had disabled children and/or illnesses that essentially chained them to their job because they couldn't afford any interruption in healthcare coverage.
Do you mean a 'real healthcare program'? Because a proper 'high deductible' plan is closer to actually being insurance(IE something you're not supposed to use all the time) than most health care plans offered today.
For example, my dad's HDIP* actually saved him oodles of money when he got cancer. Why? Once he hit the deductible he was covered 100%, and not responsible for $40 copays, $40 per visit, etc... A traditional 'low' deductible plan would have bled him more financially over the course of that.
Plus, it gave dad predictability - keep at least the deductible in his HSP, and he knows precisely the maximum his healthcare could cost him that year.
here are theories that he simply files the objections himself under a family member's name, and then proceeds to represent them.
You know, this makes me wonder what goes on with these types of lawyer. I mean, as I've aged I've realized that not all lawyers are scummy, it's a bit like bad cops - one scummy lawyer slimes an awful lot of other lawyers. Thing is, they always seem to be experienced lawyers, and generally get smacked by the 'disbarment' stick sooner or later, normally fairly quickly(within a couple years, out of a possible 40 year career).
So is it a case of where they start out following the ethics guidelines the classes taught them, but end up pushing the edge and pushing the edge until they go too far, with the process generally taking years, as they slowly become disillusioned and greedy?
It's the fundies who like to picket funerals saying that the soldiers are dying because the USA supports gays too much. And by 'supports gays too much' I mean 'fails to burn them at the stake or something'.
Most of the family are apparently lawyers and there are rumors they finance their protests by suing anybody who violates their 'rights'.
Shareholders, as they are otherwise uninvolved in the operation of the corporation other than the selection of executives, get to enjoy the limited liability. Executives, as actual decision makers, don't get to enjoy that protection if they decide that dumping toxic waste right into the river is a good money-saving idea.
I'm outright mean when it comes to this, taking a downright military view of responsibility - IE the idea that 'constructive ignorance' is no excuse. If you WOULD have been aware of the activities if you'd been exercising proper command and oversight, you're still guilty even if you hid in the executive offices snorting coke off of prostitute asses.
I thought silver was also a thing, but it looks like you're right.
I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't eventually generate tests for copper infused working surfaces.
One interesting thing was that wood handles can harbor bacteria in any grooving, but I also remember studies about wood vs plastic for cutting boards saying that while wood will harbor bacteria more than plastic, unlike plastic the bacteria tend to stick to the wood better - meaning it gets onto your food less.
Indeed, it is libertarians all the way down in corporate thinking,
Your view on libertarian belief systems is extremely distorted. Some counterpoints: 1. Libertarians typically don't believe in the 'personhood' of corporations. Ergo a 'corporation' can't misbehave. It might create liability for itself, but for actual misbehavior you should always be able to determine a *PERSON* who made said bad decision. If executives have to worry about prison... 2. "Government testing and standards" - Do you realize that the largest testing organizations are private? UL, Underwriters Laboratories, is independent. 3. Not all companies are publicly traded such that you can purchase stock in them./Mild libertarian; more because I'm pissed at both the democrat and republican parties than because I toe the libertarian line 100%.
The trick with this is that while studies have found that triclosan is mostly ineffective at improving the efficiency of soaps, the reports I've read is that there is normally a very measurable cut in the cleaning effectiveness of detergents where the phosphates are removed.
It's taken a bit for people to get used to the new, lesser effectiveness and/or for companies to develop detergents that are effective despite their lack.
When it comes to operations though, they can spend over 2 minutes washing, easy. While 'plain old soap' is very much a step, to my knowledge they also use a anti-microbial soap that's NOT based on triclosan in favor of some prescription level compound.
But from what I'm seeing from my searches, common anti-microbial soaps are no better than regular soap, and even when it is 'better', the difference borders on 'insignificant'.
The point of soap is not to kill the bacteria, but to make it easier to wash things off the skin that would not wash off with water alone.
Yes, but when serious studies show that antibacterial soap is no more effective than non-antibacterial, why use the one with a chemical that potentially screws with your hormones?
In addition, it seems that nanoscopic metals can be used for antibacterial purposes as well.
Let's do some figures: 1. I'm assuming 2 hours is round trip, and average speed is 30 mph. That's 60 miles. At 30 mpg, that's $8 for fuel 2. Maintenance, accident risk, depreciation, etc... : $4 3. I value my time at around $10/hour for avoiding driving, so there's another $20, actually the single largest expense.
Total cost to drive to your store: $32. If they can get you your meat products for less than that, have it shipped.
If you can afford to buy the stuff in the first place, you probably value your time at more than $10.
Maybe it's my cynical nature, but I tend more towards 'Bath Salts? Really? You're a millionaire, get the good stuff!'
The difference between a lawyer and a stocker is that the lawyer is expected to keep a handle on his coke habit.
Meth, 'Incense', and 'Bath Salts' are for poor people. Rich people should be able to afford the real stuff with fewer side effects.:( (sad for the poor people, everybody should be able to get decent drugs if they're going to do it)
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
Hate to say this, but going by teen pregnancy studies parents who make statements like this are the one's who's kids are most at risk.
Also, what sort of creditable study do you have that the risks are higher than what the manufacturer claims? If so, wouldn't the CDC be shutting them down?
I don't have a landline. I said that they have a legal monopoly on landlines. There's a difference. I'm also not in the area.
Still, some reasons: 1. Comes effectively for free with bundles. The only reason I don't have one is to avoid the various taxes and fees, which actually end up being more than the basic charge for one. From memory: $2.50 for local 911, $1.50 for state 911*, USF charge of $5, sales tax, regulatory fee, etc... 2. Remote monitoring. Living in an area where freezing is a real problem and you can have a very tight timeline for having your heat restored before the pipes freeze, lots of people have monitoring boxes that hook into the phone line and call your cell phone(or whatever number you assign) if the temperature dips. Right now systems that hook into a standard phone line are substantially cheaper than those that hook into cellular networks or signal by other means.
While they're slowly losing to cell phone companies and such, the Bell company in question DOES have a legal monopoly on the land line system in the area. Given that things like the 'touch tone' fee are known to piss people off, it's probably because they're regulated on what they can charge as part of the 'basic fee', having to go before a board or whatever to get that increased. Meanwhile, with sufficient justification they can add a fee, but no regulatory structure to REMOVE said fees, thus the continuation of them long past when it made sense.
Sort of like how we had a tax here in the USA meant to pay for the last spanish-american war* that was finally ended less than a decade ago. Or how tolls will go up to 'pay for the construction' of some road or bridge, but never get taken down, even after all the construction costs have been recouped several times over.
*Which a lot of US history student don't even know about.
Did you even check, or did you assume? What sort of Americans are you dealing with when they're 'shocked' by 100 km to the next gas station? That's only 60 miles. I've seen signs that say 125 miles to the next, or 200 km. Must be East-coasters who think the mid-west is 'flyover country'.
Let's check your work: You guys average 15530 km per year Americans average 12k-15k miles per year, this site says 13,476 miles. Which works out to 21,696 km/year. Or 40% more than Aussies, which I'd qualify as 'heck of a lot more'.
Let's verify a bit: Population of Australia: 22.7M. KM driven: 232,453M km. KM per man, woman, and child: 10,240 km. Population of the USA: 313M. Distance driven: 3M million miles., or 3,000 Billion miles. 9,413 miles per year, or 15,154 km per person. 48% more than Australians.
but if you blow 0.06 an Aussie cop would just tell you to sit down for half an hour and test you again if your BAC reduces he lets you go as long as you pass the personality test).
Personality test? Oh, institutional corruption, got it.
Once again, Australia has already solved this problem. If you cant pay your fines in Australia, a sheriff starts repossessing your property (starting with your car). As for people who drive on a suspended license, they risk years in jail here in Australia.
You mean the totaled car that was wrapped around a tree? Or do you kick people out of their homes in Australia? Oh, and we do it in the USA as well. Problem being that, especially for multiple DUI offenders they generally drive such crappy cars that it costs more to have the sheriff confiscate it then they get at auction. Oops...
You'd be surprised how many offenders are white collar.
You really think this? The problem is twofold: 1. The poor people can't pay the fines. It costs somewhere around $22k/year to keep them in jail/prison. 2. The rich people can pay the fines, then carry on more or less like nothing happened. 3. Both parties will often obtain a $500-1000 car to drive that they register under somebody else's name so no breathalyzer equipment is installed.
A first time DUI in the USA can run you over $15k. It's not cheap.
You're going to have to face it: There isn't some 'magic bullet' policy difference between the USA and Australia. It's a lot of little ones, and the difference between.05 and.08 for DUI isn't really one of them.
This is why blood tests will reduce the number of people going to court.
With the really sleazy lawyers they'll still go to court, especially the rich types, because all they have to do is convince the jury something is in doubt, that he doesn't deserve the conviction, get some piece of evidence like the blood test tossed out on some technicality, etc... Heck, get some sympathetic drink-drivers on the jury. Lots of options.
Stop locking up pot heads and concentrate on removing actual dangers from society.
Indeed. For that matter, the official designation of 'alcohol related' per the NHTSA is 'either a driver or a non-motorist had a measurable or estimated BAC of.01 g/dl or above".
A MUCH better figure would be the one that found that, in 2001, 12.8% of all drivers involved in a fatal accident were legally intoxicated per the laws of their state, though I'll note that the Wikipedia article is unsourced, and my google search is mostly finding other non-reliable sites.
However, this still means that most fatal accidents don't involve alcohol at all, and I've NEVER seen a figure that estimates the number of miles driven by drunk drivers, or whether the times they often drive(late at night) make a difference. Roughly speaking, we need to figure out, on a basis of per mile risk, what the lethal/non-lethal accident rates would be if everybody was sober in order to figure out how dangerous, real-world, drunk driving is.
Personally, I'd almost rather just put the effort towards developing self-driving cars.
Expecting a driver to maintain an exact speed to the MPH, much less the km/h, is stupid.
Except that isn't the expectation. It's called a speed limit for a reason. You're expected to not exceed it. You can drive as far under it as you want unless a minimum speed limit is posted(such as 40mph on a lot of freeways).
Here in the states we have so many artificially low speed limits that people pay little attention to them, and as a result the cops generally don't bother people unless they're going faster than 5 to 10 over*, or otherwise driving stupidly.
I think I've heard about Victoria. They say the best way to get a bad law changed is to enforce it strictly - then the average people will rise up and force it's change. But in any case I've heard that Victoria has the highest rate of speed compliance, but they've paid in having the highest rate of gridlock and such. Turns out that you need a certain percentage of speeders in order to maintain good traffic flow.
Part of the problem here in the USA is that traffic departments don't follow DOT rules. For example, there's the speed limit rule - the speed limit should be: Take the 90th percentile speed(IE 90% of drivers drive at this speed or less) with NO speed limits, and round up to the nearest 5 mph. IE if the 90th percentile works out to be 53.7 mph, it would be a 55 mph zone. Many areas disregard this, some completely, with the most common being that they round down instead. They shorten the yellow to get more camera fees, etc...
*I'm in an area where they'll start stopping you at 6+ over
We reduced the BAC limit to 0.05 in the 90's and this is why Australia has 5.7 deaths per 100,000 people (8 per 100,000 vehicles) and the US has 12.7 deaths per 100,000 people (15 per 100,000 vehicles). Because it sure as shit isn't because Australian's can drive.
Actually, the USA is at 10.4 as of 2011, and 1.1 per 100 million vmt, which works out to 6.8 per billion km. Your death toll of 5.71 per 100k (2011 data), and 5.8 per billion km.
Results: You're still safer than we are even by distance driven, but we drive a HECK of a lot more per person. In addition, given that the proposal is, high end, expected to save ~8% of alcohol related deaths, which is in turn only 1/3rd of total deaths - that's about a 3% cut in death rate. That would drop us from 10.4 to 10.1 per 100k, and from 6.8 to 6.6 per billion km. Better, but still far short of your own.
For that matter, let's assume we ELIMINATE all alcohol related fatalities. That's 1/3rd of our deaths gone. That would get us down to about 6.9 per 100k people, still above your figure, and 4.5 per billion km, finally below your own. You're 15% safer per km driven, btw.
Conclusion: We have problems, and it's not all attributable to alcohol. Reducing the BAC allowed would help a little, perhaps. But it's edging into territory where treating driving as a privilege, and not a right, and getting marginal people out of the driver's seat would be beneficial. For that matter, getting tougher with driver's ed would help.
The answer to this is simple.
1. Offering a blood test doesn't alter the odds they will attempt to contest it in court. 2. Increasing 'fines and suspensions' doesn't cut it. Already you have the problem where we end up tossing convicts in jail because they can't pay their fines, and suspensions often don't do a thing here because the main result is they simply drive on a suspended/revoked license. Or get a waiver for 'work purposes'. Or they lose their job, making it even more unlikely that they'll be able to pay your increased fines. 3. Same problem as #2. They often simply don't have the money, and we already have your 'loser pays' system, more so than MOST countries. You think the lawyer to contest your DUI is free? Paid for by the defendant. Remember plea bargains? The USA is king of those. 90% of people end up pleading out for reduced sentences. But, raise the fines - oops, they're MORE likely to fight, because, well, they're bankrupt anyway if they plead! If you arrange such a generous plea bargain, then the legal hawks sit there and say you're suppressing justice because you're making it cheaper to simply plead guilty.
In recent years, Australian courts have ordered the installation of Alcohol (Ignition) Interlock Devices into cars driven by people with multiple high range DUI convictions. Personally I'd rather these people have their licenses torn up for life and their cars auctioned off, but that's just me.
That's fine. In my state you get one for the first DUI, no matter the range. Were you aware that many US States have required them for decades, even for the first? From what I'm seeing, in all the states I've checked you're getting it period for the 2nd, no 'high range' required.
I'm not saying that we don't have problems. What I'm saying is that reducing the BAC level isn't going to help much, which I backed up with some math and 3 citations. We need to do more to stop the HIGH BAC drivers - when they're driving at.24 and up, triple the current legal limit, making it so they're 5X the legal limit isn't going to change much.
Heck, given that the human psyche is often more affected by the certainty of punishment over the severity of it, a hand slap and $50 fine would probably be sufficient to stop 99% of drunk dri
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Personally, I'm a fan of the properly installed gun safe, or at least a gun locker. They aren't hard, and work well at preventing accidental shootings. The rules should be that if the gun isn't ON the parent, then it's in the safe. Thieves might be able to get into a gun safe, but they'll generally leave a bolted down one alone; it takes power tools to get into a good one quickly.
Quick-open safes and locks also exist which can allow you access to your weapons in seconds.
Anyone who disagrees is just wrong and seriously needs mental help.
You're making an ad hominem attack here. I don't object to tossing the parents or whoever gave the child unmonitored access to the firearm, much less while loaded, but I've known many children with firearms, where said firearm lived in the parent's safe when not on the range.
In one case I remember a Short Barreled Rifle(SBR) that required NFA approval being used by a pre-teen - it was a perfectly proportioned single-shot rifle in .22lr. The child never had it out of his parent's site, and it was provided to him at the range, and removed at the range(into the case to go back in the safe back home).
The other question is how you define child - I remember some anti-gun propaganda that defined 'child' as 'under 25'. Are you still a child at 13? That's about when I earned my shooting merit badge in Scouts.
Haven't owned a modern revolver for a few years
Would a S&W 686 count? I'll have to double check when I get home, but I think that one locks up the cylinder as well when cocked. After all, last thing you want when the hammer is dropping is the cylinders moving.
As for making it safe, well, I'd hope I was at the range and/or armory. Procedure:
1. MAKE SURE THE WEAPON IS POINTED IN A SAFE DIRECTION. Preferably stuck in a clearing barrel or pointed at a berm.
2. insert key into lock, place finger between hammer and gun, keep pointing in a safe direction.
3. Turn key, keeping gun pointed in safe direction and finger interfering with hammer
4. work the trigger lock off with one hand, keeping it pointed in safe direction. If barrel so much as twitches, pause and think about actions before starting again
5. Once off, make safe as per normal procedures. While pointing it in a safe direction.
Did I mention keeping it pointed in a safe direction the entire time?
I remember Consumer Reports looking into trigger locks and failing 99% of them, specially noting one particularly unsafe one that tripped the trigger on a 10/22 with a slight jar when installed per directions.
The technology is technically possible. However, I have a few points to make:
1. Guns are currently purely mechanical. Adding ANYTHING electronic into the firing system is going to lower reliability. Remember, the most common police weapon(Glock) doesn't even have a manual safety switch. The recognition system would have to work 99.999999% of the time in a fraction of a second.
2. When fired, the firearm itself suffers a large shock. One 9mm handgun weighs 770 grams, fires a 7.45 gram projectile at 390 m/s. Laws of physics means that every time the handgun is fired it suffers a shock sufficient to move it back at 3.8 m/s, or 14 km/hour. That is NASTY to electronics, it's roughly equivalent to being hit with a hammer. It's mean to mechanical parts as well, but at least we've had hundreds of years of engineering to fix the issues.
3. Perhaps most critical, police officers are much more likely to be killed by their own weapon after it's been taken from them. 26 officers over 10 years. (or have others killed with their weapon if taken from them). Despite this, police organizations(departments, unions, professional) will campaign hard and long to exempt themselves from any such gun legislation. I believe that New Jersey already has a smart gun requirement on the books - but no gun manufacturer makes a firearm that meets the standard.
4. The common figuring is a lot like that of DRM - a 'smart gun' will stop a non-authorized person only on a tactical, immediate basis. Criminals will be able to bypass any protections on a long term scale(IE days) if they successfully steal the weapon, making any 'smart guns' of limited protection.
I think the dubious part is really that it discourages people from seeking preventative care since the upfront costs are so high, even though preventative care is far cheaper than trying to treat an undiagnosed problem when it's too late.
My understanding of HD plans is that there's nothing preventing insurance companies from incentivising(IE paying for before the deductible is exhausted) preventative treatment, especially if said treatment saves them money in the long run.
As for the $700 to go to the doctor, my father and brother have found that they can generally save oodles of money by shopping around and asking a few questions. Dad's on a high deductible plan, brother's uninsured, but generally has money to pay up front.
Because it was part of the deal when they hired me.
If you want to remove benefits I want a new deal.
It's perfectly fine for there to be a new deal. Personally, I think that healthcare should be more of a personal thing, and move with you between jobs as opposed to the mess that can leave people without healthcare for extended periods of time even if they never have a real interruption in employment, merely by moving between jobs.
You don't expect your work to provide your car insurance, why something so much more personal as healthcare? Of course, the system as set up now would be unsuitable, but there are comprehensive plans for the shift to personally obtained healthcare insurance out there.
I've known quite a few people 'trapped' in their current job because they had disabled children and/or illnesses that essentially chained them to their job because they couldn't afford any interruption in healthcare coverage.
get some real health insurance
Do you mean a 'real healthcare program'? Because a proper 'high deductible' plan is closer to actually being insurance(IE something you're not supposed to use all the time) than most health care plans offered today.
For example, my dad's HDIP* actually saved him oodles of money when he got cancer. Why? Once he hit the deductible he was covered 100%, and not responsible for $40 copays, $40 per visit, etc... A traditional 'low' deductible plan would have bled him more financially over the course of that.
Plus, it gave dad predictability - keep at least the deductible in his HSP, and he knows precisely the maximum his healthcare could cost him that year.
*High Deductible Insurance Plan
here are theories that he simply files the objections himself under a family member's name, and then proceeds to represent them.
You know, this makes me wonder what goes on with these types of lawyer. I mean, as I've aged I've realized that not all lawyers are scummy, it's a bit like bad cops - one scummy lawyer slimes an awful lot of other lawyers. Thing is, they always seem to be experienced lawyers, and generally get smacked by the 'disbarment' stick sooner or later, normally fairly quickly(within a couple years, out of a possible 40 year career).
So is it a case of where they start out following the ethics guidelines the classes taught them, but end up pushing the edge and pushing the edge until they go too far, with the process generally taking years, as they slowly become disillusioned and greedy?
Westborough Baptist Church
It's the fundies who like to picket funerals saying that the soldiers are dying because the USA supports gays too much. And by 'supports gays too much' I mean 'fails to burn them at the stake or something'.
Most of the family are apparently lawyers and there are rumors they finance their protests by suing anybody who violates their 'rights'.
Shareholders, as they are otherwise uninvolved in the operation of the corporation other than the selection of executives, get to enjoy the limited liability. Executives, as actual decision makers, don't get to enjoy that protection if they decide that dumping toxic waste right into the river is a good money-saving idea.
I'm outright mean when it comes to this, taking a downright military view of responsibility - IE the idea that 'constructive ignorance' is no excuse. If you WOULD have been aware of the activities if you'd been exercising proper command and oversight, you're still guilty even if you hid in the executive offices snorting coke off of prostitute asses.
I thought silver was also a thing, but it looks like you're right.
I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't eventually generate tests for copper infused working surfaces.
One interesting thing was that wood handles can harbor bacteria in any grooving, but I also remember studies about wood vs plastic for cutting boards saying that while wood will harbor bacteria more than plastic, unlike plastic the bacteria tend to stick to the wood better - meaning it gets onto your food less.
I guess their logistics weren't all that good and he had to do with what they supplied him with.
Then they weren't a very good gang, now were they? I'm surprised he couldn't arrange something better via the silk road and whatnot. Idiot(drug user).
Indeed, it is libertarians all the way down in corporate thinking,
Your view on libertarian belief systems is extremely distorted. Some counterpoints: /Mild libertarian; more because I'm pissed at both the democrat and republican parties than because I toe the libertarian line 100%.
1. Libertarians typically don't believe in the 'personhood' of corporations. Ergo a 'corporation' can't misbehave. It might create liability for itself, but for actual misbehavior you should always be able to determine a *PERSON* who made said bad decision. If executives have to worry about prison...
2. "Government testing and standards" - Do you realize that the largest testing organizations are private? UL, Underwriters Laboratories, is independent.
3. Not all companies are publicly traded such that you can purchase stock in them.
The trick with this is that while studies have found that triclosan is mostly ineffective at improving the efficiency of soaps, the reports I've read is that there is normally a very measurable cut in the cleaning effectiveness of detergents where the phosphates are removed.
It's taken a bit for people to get used to the new, lesser effectiveness and/or for companies to develop detergents that are effective despite their lack.
When it comes to operations though, they can spend over 2 minutes washing, easy. While 'plain old soap' is very much a step, to my knowledge they also use a anti-microbial soap that's NOT based on triclosan in favor of some prescription level compound.
But from what I'm seeing from my searches, common anti-microbial soaps are no better than regular soap, and even when it is 'better', the difference borders on 'insignificant'.
The point of soap is not to kill the bacteria, but to make it easier to wash things off the skin that would not wash off with water alone.
Yes, but when serious studies show that antibacterial soap is no more effective than non-antibacterial, why use the one with a chemical that potentially screws with your hormones?
In addition, it seems that nanoscopic metals can be used for antibacterial purposes as well.
Let's do some figures:
1. I'm assuming 2 hours is round trip, and average speed is 30 mph. That's 60 miles. At 30 mpg, that's $8 for fuel
2. Maintenance, accident risk, depreciation, etc... : $4
3. I value my time at around $10/hour for avoiding driving, so there's another $20, actually the single largest expense.
Total cost to drive to your store: $32. If they can get you your meat products for less than that, have it shipped.
If you can afford to buy the stuff in the first place, you probably value your time at more than $10.
And they won't ship to you?
Fedex/UPS/USPS and a little dry ice.
Forgive me, but psychoactive suppositories?
Maybe it's my cynical nature, but I tend more towards 'Bath Salts? Really? You're a millionaire, get the good stuff!'
The difference between a lawyer and a stocker is that the lawyer is expected to keep a handle on his coke habit.
Meth, 'Incense', and 'Bath Salts' are for poor people. Rich people should be able to afford the real stuff with fewer side effects. :( (sad for the poor people, everybody should be able to get decent drugs if they're going to do it)
OTOH, my daughter will NOT get the cervical cancer vaccine, because HPV is preventable in behavior and the real side-effect rate to the vaccine is a lot higher than the manufacturer is reporting.
Hate to say this, but going by teen pregnancy studies parents who make statements like this are the one's who's kids are most at risk.
Also, what sort of creditable study do you have that the risks are higher than what the manufacturer claims? If so, wouldn't the CDC be shutting them down?
I cant understand your remaining with a landline.
I don't have a landline. I said that they have a legal monopoly on landlines. There's a difference. I'm also not in the area.
Still, some reasons:
1. Comes effectively for free with bundles. The only reason I don't have one is to avoid the various taxes and fees, which actually end up being more than the basic charge for one. From memory: $2.50 for local 911, $1.50 for state 911*, USF charge of $5, sales tax, regulatory fee, etc...
2. Remote monitoring. Living in an area where freezing is a real problem and you can have a very tight timeline for having your heat restored before the pipes freeze, lots of people have monitoring boxes that hook into the phone line and call your cell phone(or whatever number you assign) if the temperature dips. Right now systems that hook into a standard phone line are substantially cheaper than those that hook into cellular networks or signal by other means.
*Subsidizes the remote regions
While they're slowly losing to cell phone companies and such, the Bell company in question DOES have a legal monopoly on the land line system in the area. Given that things like the 'touch tone' fee are known to piss people off, it's probably because they're regulated on what they can charge as part of the 'basic fee', having to go before a board or whatever to get that increased. Meanwhile, with sufficient justification they can add a fee, but no regulatory structure to REMOVE said fees, thus the continuation of them long past when it made sense.
Sort of like how we had a tax here in the USA meant to pay for the last spanish-american war* that was finally ended less than a decade ago. Or how tolls will go up to 'pay for the construction' of some road or bridge, but never get taken down, even after all the construction costs have been recouped several times over.
*Which a lot of US history student don't even know about.
No, you dont.
Did you even check, or did you assume? What sort of Americans are you dealing with when they're 'shocked' by 100 km to the next gas station? That's only 60 miles. I've seen signs that say 125 miles to the next, or 200 km. Must be East-coasters who think the mid-west is 'flyover country'.
Let's check your work: You guys average 15530 km per year
Americans average 12k-15k miles per year, this site says 13,476 miles. Which works out to 21,696 km/year. Or 40% more than Aussies, which I'd qualify as 'heck of a lot more'.
Let's verify a bit: Population of Australia: 22.7M. KM driven: 232,453M km. KM per man, woman, and child: 10,240 km.
Population of the USA: 313M. Distance driven: 3M million miles., or 3,000 Billion miles. 9,413 miles per year, or 15,154 km per person. 48% more than Australians.
but if you blow 0.06 an Aussie cop would just tell you to sit down for half an hour and test you again if your BAC reduces he lets you go as long as you pass the personality test).
Personality test? Oh, institutional corruption, got it.
Once again, Australia has already solved this problem. If you cant pay your fines in Australia, a sheriff starts repossessing your property (starting with your car). As for people who drive on a suspended license, they risk years in jail here in Australia.
You mean the totaled car that was wrapped around a tree? Or do you kick people out of their homes in Australia?
Oh, and we do it in the USA as well. Problem being that, especially for multiple DUI offenders they generally drive such crappy cars that it costs more to have the sheriff confiscate it then they get at auction. Oops...
You'd be surprised how many offenders are white collar.
You really think this? The problem is twofold:
1. The poor people can't pay the fines. It costs somewhere around $22k/year to keep them in jail/prison.
2. The rich people can pay the fines, then carry on more or less like nothing happened.
3. Both parties will often obtain a $500-1000 car to drive that they register under somebody else's name so no breathalyzer equipment is installed.
A first time DUI in the USA can run you over $15k. It's not cheap.
You're going to have to face it: There isn't some 'magic bullet' policy difference between the USA and Australia. It's a lot of little ones, and the difference between .05 and .08 for DUI isn't really one of them.
This is why blood tests will reduce the number of people going to court.
With the really sleazy lawyers they'll still go to court, especially the rich types, because all they have to do is convince the jury something is in doubt, that he doesn't deserve the conviction, get some piece of evidence like the blood test tossed out on some technicality, etc... Heck, get some sympathetic drink-drivers on the jury. Lots of options.
Stop locking up pot heads and concentrate on removing actual dangers from society.
Agreed.
Indeed. For that matter, the official designation of 'alcohol related' per the NHTSA is 'either a driver or a non-motorist had a measurable or estimated BAC of .01 g/dl or above".
A MUCH better figure would be the one that found that, in 2001, 12.8% of all drivers involved in a fatal accident were legally intoxicated per the laws of their state, though I'll note that the Wikipedia article is unsourced, and my google search is mostly finding other non-reliable sites.
However, this still means that most fatal accidents don't involve alcohol at all, and I've NEVER seen a figure that estimates the number of miles driven by drunk drivers, or whether the times they often drive(late at night) make a difference. Roughly speaking, we need to figure out, on a basis of per mile risk, what the lethal/non-lethal accident rates would be if everybody was sober in order to figure out how dangerous, real-world, drunk driving is.
Personally, I'd almost rather just put the effort towards developing self-driving cars.
Expecting a driver to maintain an exact speed to the MPH, much less the km/h, is stupid.
Except that isn't the expectation. It's called a speed limit for a reason. You're expected to not exceed it. You can drive as far under it as you want unless a minimum speed limit is posted(such as 40mph on a lot of freeways).
Here in the states we have so many artificially low speed limits that people pay little attention to them, and as a result the cops generally don't bother people unless they're going faster than 5 to 10 over*, or otherwise driving stupidly.
I think I've heard about Victoria. They say the best way to get a bad law changed is to enforce it strictly - then the average people will rise up and force it's change. But in any case I've heard that Victoria has the highest rate of speed compliance, but they've paid in having the highest rate of gridlock and such. Turns out that you need a certain percentage of speeders in order to maintain good traffic flow.
Part of the problem here in the USA is that traffic departments don't follow DOT rules. For example, there's the speed limit rule - the speed limit should be: Take the 90th percentile speed(IE 90% of drivers drive at this speed or less) with NO speed limits, and round up to the nearest 5 mph. IE if the 90th percentile works out to be 53.7 mph, it would be a 55 mph zone. Many areas disregard this, some completely, with the most common being that they round down instead. They shorten the yellow to get more camera fees, etc...
*I'm in an area where they'll start stopping you at 6+ over
We reduced the BAC limit to 0.05 in the 90's and this is why Australia has 5.7 deaths per 100,000 people (8 per 100,000 vehicles) and the US has 12.7 deaths per 100,000 people (15 per 100,000 vehicles). Because it sure as shit isn't because Australian's can drive.
Actually, the USA is at 10.4 as of 2011, and 1.1 per 100 million vmt, which works out to 6.8 per billion km.
Your death toll of 5.71 per 100k (2011 data), and 5.8 per billion km.
Results: You're still safer than we are even by distance driven, but we drive a HECK of a lot more per person. In addition, given that the proposal is, high end, expected to save ~8% of alcohol related deaths, which is in turn only 1/3rd of total deaths - that's about a 3% cut in death rate. That would drop us from 10.4 to 10.1 per 100k, and from 6.8 to 6.6 per billion km. Better, but still far short of your own.
For that matter, let's assume we ELIMINATE all alcohol related fatalities. That's 1/3rd of our deaths gone. That would get us down to about 6.9 per 100k people, still above your figure, and 4.5 per billion km, finally below your own. You're 15% safer per km driven, btw.
Conclusion: We have problems, and it's not all attributable to alcohol. Reducing the BAC allowed would help a little, perhaps. But it's edging into territory where treating driving as a privilege, and not a right, and getting marginal people out of the driver's seat would be beneficial. For that matter, getting tougher with driver's ed would help.
The answer to this is simple.
1. Offering a blood test doesn't alter the odds they will attempt to contest it in court.
2. Increasing 'fines and suspensions' doesn't cut it. Already you have the problem where we end up tossing convicts in jail because they can't pay their fines, and suspensions often don't do a thing here because the main result is they simply drive on a suspended/revoked license. Or get a waiver for 'work purposes'. Or they lose their job, making it even more unlikely that they'll be able to pay your increased fines.
3. Same problem as #2. They often simply don't have the money, and we already have your 'loser pays' system, more so than MOST countries. You think the lawyer to contest your DUI is free? Paid for by the defendant. Remember plea bargains? The USA is king of those. 90% of people end up pleading out for reduced sentences. But, raise the fines - oops, they're MORE likely to fight, because, well, they're bankrupt anyway if they plead! If you arrange such a generous plea bargain, then the legal hawks sit there and say you're suppressing justice because you're making it cheaper to simply plead guilty.
In recent years, Australian courts have ordered the installation of Alcohol (Ignition) Interlock Devices into cars driven by people with multiple high range DUI convictions. Personally I'd rather these people have their licenses torn up for life and their cars auctioned off, but that's just me.
That's fine. In my state you get one for the first DUI, no matter the range. Were you aware that many US States have required them for decades, even for the first? From what I'm seeing, in all the states I've checked you're getting it period for the 2nd, no 'high range' required.
I'm not saying that we don't have problems. What I'm saying is that reducing the BAC level isn't going to help much, which I backed up with some math and 3 citations. We need to do more to stop the HIGH BAC drivers - when they're driving at .24 and up, triple the current legal limit, making it so they're 5X the legal limit isn't going to change much.
Heck, given that the human psyche is often more affected by the certainty of punishment over the severity of it, a hand slap and $50 fine would probably be sufficient to stop 99% of drunk dri