Ah, but you didn't actually SAY that earlier, so I didn't have a clue what you were talking about. My ORIGINAL post specified air pollution and accidents as well as 'fly ash', after all. I refer back to the second paragraph in my first post - "you SHOULD include more factors, such as the pollution, accidents, and such."
Second, in my initial response to you I simply addressed your assertions - I didn't really move beyond disproving your claim that 'fly ash is essentially sand', pointing out it's toxicity(with sources!), then moving on to your claim that the mercury was 'easily caught', showing a cite from the EPA that measures not specifically targeted at capturing mercury, including the pollution controls you mentioned, caught only about a third of it. Then I restated my original claim - with admittedly more focus on mining accidents, because fly ash was #1, air(mercury) pollution #2, and thus #3 became accidents.
THEN you called me a "poorly informed alarmist". I'll be honest, I really stopped reading after that and just went to make coal sound as scary as possible. I didn't even really read the part about mining deaths being "off topic" until today. To which I'll disagree. When you're looking at the cost of a power source in human life, accidents during it's extraction are fair game. Like I said earlier, I feel I backed away from 'alarmist' techniques by breaking out China, which has an absolutely horrible record when it comes to coal power, from both safety and pollution standpoints.
Historically nuclear radiation has led to more financial loss than loss of life. I'm going modify my original statement from doing more research though - it's not just fly ash that's the problem, it's coal ash in general. Due to concerns about long term effects, a coal ash spill can end up a bit like a nuclear spill; people moving away from the site long term. While smaller in scope, there are also more ash spills, plus it's a major concern for landfill and such.
It's complicated, of course. You've seriously focused on the 'fly ash', which was originally almost a throw away in my mind - I remembered hearing about multiple spills of fly ash and the toxic concerns and stuck it in there. I should probably have flipped the two - putting the 'up the smoke stack', IE air pollution, as the bigger concern, first. Eh, it's a internet posting, I don't exactly edit these much.
but there are clearly not enough of those given the current trade and account deficits.
That's mostly a result of China continuously devaluing it's economy. Like I said, it's starting to even itself out.
The rest of the people who are not working, working part time, getting various subsidies are not productive, their productivity is very low given that there is so little investment capital applied to their work (for your productivity to grow you have to apply capital, you have to acquire/build tools that make you more productive by allowing you to do more with less effort).
I agree, just didn't think it was within context, and I didn't want to write a book. Same with the Capital/labor ratios - as labor cost rises, capital investment to conserve expensive labor.
Instead their purchasing power is transferred to the Americans and the rest, who are engaged in this vendor financed consumption binge.
There is very little manufacturing without the blue collar manufacturing jobs. All that is done somewhere else, so what is this 'manufacturing that is doing fine' exactly?
US manufacturing hasn't actually dropped, what's happened is that labor intensive products have been exported to be made elsewhere, but where said production can be sufficiently automated, it's still here, just made by robots - with workers only used to maintain the robots. As a result, productivity has been increasing along the lines of the revolutions in farming during the industrial revolution. You walk into a Chinese factory you will see thousands of workers. You walk into a modern US factory you might see half a dozen people, with 99.99% of the work done by robots. So while a Chinese worker might create $1k worth of product per shift, a US worker keeps the robots running that produce $1M worth of product during the same time.
We've been seeing work coming back to the USA in a number of cases - Chinese labor rates have risen, as has the cost of shipping from China to the USA, to the point that making some products here now makes sense again. It's gradual, of course, and when they do so it's normally only for a couple hundred jobs once set up here because the factory to produce the widget is so automated.
Design areas to better serve pedestrians: Agree Loosen Zoning restrictions: Agree, somewhat, but question whether the activity could be done economically, much less whether chickens grown in such conditions can really be considered 'organic' or even 'healthy' until we get a better handle on urban pollution. Open air markets: In the end, not particularly efficient Under-utilized commercial buildings: Certainly. Of course, if it's under-utilized the rents should be dropping, eventually somebody will be able to afford to have their business there. Elevators: Actually, they're about the most energy efficient movement in existence. They're counter weighted such that you only really need to spend energy to move the contents of the elevator, not the elevator itself. 2-4 story buildings: Not dense enough to really support pedestrians. I'd prefer to see more stories, but half of every building dedicated to housing. Architecture: Over a certain size you're not going to be able to get away from HVAC, but I agree that you could really cut the need for HVAC with proper design. Another idea is liquid metal thorium reactors providing enough heat energy to run absorption chillers in a trigeneration setup(electricity, heating, and cooling). Permitting, local sourcing: Good ideas. Sustainable building: I agree. We currently have an excess of labor that could be working to help 'green up' the USA. More insulation, better materials, solar water heaters, etc...
Interesting. I'm an 'alarmist' for pointing out that the statistics are 15 deaths per TWh from coal power, vs less than 1 for a number of other sources? I'm an alarmist for breaking out US deaths, since the situation is far worse than it has to be in China, skewing world standards?
I'm a 'poorly informed alarmist' because I check your statements up against publicly available sources and find them misleading?
You want alarmist? Fine. 13.2k deaths in the USA from fine particle pollution. $100B in adverse health impacts. India is much, much worse: 115k/year, costing $4.6B China has really cut it's accidents - down to ~2k/year, vs a high of nearly 7k in 2002. Still, COPD linked to fine particulate pollution was 26% of all deaths in China. Their death figure is 750k/year from pollution.
Links aren't included just for you, but for the benefit of others.
Hmm... When I bother to post a source and actual statistics, you might want to reference those, or at least dig up references of your own.
Still: 1. Fly ash accidents still happen, and it's NOT nice stuff, bearing substantial amounts of contamination from various heavy metals. Contaminants include "arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, hexavalent chromium, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds." 2. Existing pollution measures not directly targeted at mercury only caught about a third of it. 3. I wasn't talking just about mercury. Heck, not even just heavy metals, NOx, SOx, and such. You addressed a tiny proportion of pollution, when I specified pollution, accidents, and 'other'. All mining is dangerous, and coal mining is on such a scale that you can expect deaths from it each year even in the USA, while in China, THOUSANDS of coal miners die each year in accidents, just as tens or even hundreds of thousands a year die from the pollution coming out of their largely unregulated smokestacks.
I'm reading this line of comments and feel the need to point out that the radioactivity of coal power plant waste is merely a 'jee wiz' talking point. The various OTHER contaminants in coal that end up in the fly ash or up the smoke stack are of far greater concern.
If you're going to make a serious argument as to the hazard of nuclear vs coal, you SHOULD include more factors, such as the pollution, accidents, and such. Deaths per TWh by energy source.
I don't think anyone is saying "there could never be biological organisms on a meteorite". Rather, they're saying that this specific claim is bad science.
This. A scientific theory and evidence gains credence through surviving stringent attempts to discredit it. Bad science is still Bad science even if it's technically correct in it's conclusion: The goal is to develop iron-clad theories and evidence that can't be trivially disproven.
Meteor(asteroid/comet) life evidence (either live or fossilized) would indeed be a game changer, but the best form of evidence in this case would be a properly isolated sample being collected while still in space and analyzed. Even then, a single sample wouldn't be able to prove 'no', though a 'yea' would certainly generate lots and lots of news. If 1% of sampled objects have signs of life, scientists on earth would be going through a frenzy to come up with explanations, the sources of the objects would be tracked/determined, etc...
It wouldn't really touch the core evolutionary theory, but it'd have major consequences on the current theories on the origin of life*.
*Yes, creationists, evolutionary theory doesn't actually touch the origin of life. It's more a statement of current conditions.
The military was committing crimes, got exposed, and they're crucifying this guy with a conscious.
That does not excuse: 1. His NOT using the chain of command and alternative reporting channels. They exist, I know, I've used them and it worked. 2. Indiscriminate release of information that actually had nothing to do with said crimes(and it wasn't just stuff done by the military, just stuff the military knew about). 3. Not using proper whistle-blower legislation that provides outside military channels to report this stuff.
Thinking logically, I think that some of the issues that would preclude a 'blind dump' include: 1. Making sure it's paid attention to - places like the NYT probably get tinfoil and conspiracy stuff all the time. How do you even make sure they pay attention to the packet? 2. Confidentiality - If you want your identity protected, you probably want to make contact, otherwise if they can figure out who you are they are under no obligation to protect your identity. If you make some sort of contract, they can be. Though it gets complicated.... Illegal agreements are unenforceable, but if a news agency gets a reputation for NOT protecting their sources, they may not get that scoop in the future... 3. Use of information - If you just do a blind drop, the paper has full control. If you meet, you can work out specifics of presentation. You're going to have to let the paper get it's story, and a place like the NYT isn't going to anger it's readers by publishing details that will harm US troops and such, but there's some room for negotiation. What form said negotiations would take I don't know; I'm not an ideologically or revenge driven informant. 4. Payment. Of whatever form. Cash to the informant. Donation to the informant's pet charity. A billboard somewhere. Attribution. I don't know.
The State law required 90% of fines to go to schools, not to the city or the company operating the cameras (which is, as usual where most of the profits were ending up).
90% to somewhere, anywhere, other than the operating company is what kills them. Otherwise you simply have the 'displacement' effect. IE I set up my traffic camera that I expect to clear $500k/year. 90% needs to go to the school, so I cut the school budget by $450k/year and put that money to my pet causes, while school funding is kept stable by the traffic camera.
Of course, if anybody suggests removing said camera or doing anything to reduce fines, we're suddenly at 'WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!'.
You're assuming a lot then. In my experience when a town wants speeding ticket revenue, right behind the sign is indeed where they put the officer.
Though if the sign isn't maintained per standards you 'might' be able to fight the ticket in court - traffic standards actually require that the sign be easily visible from the road - but they depend on the idea that you don't want to drive to the local court that's who knows how many miles away from you to contest it, with a locally sympathetic/hostile to you judge.
Crossing red lines (which often means going int the pedestrian crossing) is a douchebag move and certainly should be illegal.
Perhaps, but should it be of equal weight to running a red light? If running the red is $100 and 3 points to your license, should 'interfering with a cross walk' be $25 and 1 point?
I'd love to see your reaction if a driver stopped in the middle of a junction, causing you to have to carefully weave past him.
Slippery slope. Cars are faster and less maneuverable than pedestrians(on average). In addition, I hate to say this, but at this point I have to dodge more pedestrians in the middle of the road than I see even near crosswalks.
They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore?
No. They've found it increases accidents and reduces traffic capacity. The objective is that you continue at full speed until the light changes color and you decide you have enough room to stop, maximizing the throughput.
Per their formula, 4.5 second yellow would be for a level red light at ~35 mph. Assuming 40 mph, level slope, that the intersection is 40 feet wide(2 vehicle lengths of 20 feet), and using the 'usual' figure everywhere else, you get a recommended yellow of 5.2 seconds. Assuming a 10% slope(pretty steep), it increases to 6.8 seconds. I'll note that even 25 mph gives you a yellow recommendation of about 4 seconds, depending on the width of the intersection.
The formula gives people 1 second to decide whether to stop or continue through, and enough time to either stop at a comfortable speed or clear the intersection. Even if you go with the more aggressive ASHTO handbook 11.2 ft/s stopping speed vs the ITE 10 ft/s only drops the recommended change time to 5.5 seconds. Though if you use the more aggressive stopping speed AND ignore slope you do get 4.5 seconds for the change. Going by how common semis are quoted as being, I tried adding another 10 feet to vehicle length, but that was only.1 seconds additional time.
Playing with the formula, given what's been stated they need to add a second to the change interval.
Just as a note - it's a recommendation for 'change interval', not 'yellow period'. If they implement a 'all red' period, it counts in the formula towards the duration. So they could have a 4.5 second yellow, 1 second all red, totaling 5.5 seconds for a safe intersection. Though it might be unkind to give somebody a red light running ticket if the ass end of their car was still in the intersection when it went all red.
Crosswalks - Don't you have button types in your area? What cross walks there are in my area are all sensor based - they remain red unless somebody hit the button, in which case it'll give a longer green to give the person extra time to cross. So normally no help there.
If you're trying to 'paint' an area with anti-personnel weapons, why use metalstorm? Just use a conventional cluster bomb. What added benefit would metalstorm give in that case?
That's why the 'max' is ~20k, vs a more realistic 2.4k. Basically, if they run them all out to reach that ~20k, they'd also be obliterated wholesale by US and SK responses.
I'll note that MOABs are probably about the only bomb that's harder to move/deploy than it is to create. For all it's size, a MOAB is a very simple bomb to construct.
To put it more simply, we could probably make them faster than we can ship them over to the AOR.
Oh, and we wouldn't just be restricted to Thermobarics - the USA hasn't signed cluster-bomb restrictions for a reason, large masses of infantry are perfect targets for cluster bombs.
Drones are also much cheaper than manned bombers, and they can be flown mostly automatically. One pilot can, in theory, operate ten drones that feed imagery to a bunch of computers.
However, bombers are 'cheap enough', especially on our own soil. We could drop several thousand of them without noticeably affecting anybody's budget, just have it come out of training funds.
The 'real' problem with 1 operator running 10 drones is, as you say, the tracking element. Though again, we have lots and lots of options for tracking our own people, typically with far more granularity and less expense than drone surveillance.
Basically, what I'm trying to get at is that the use of force is authorized or not. Once use of force is authorized, the next step is selecting the most appropriate type of force - sniper, SWAT insertion team, artillery, aircraft, etc...
That "strictest scrutiny" is worth nothing if anyone who questions the edict of the dictator is immediately - and lawfully - killed. Stalin's NKVD also operated under the strictest scrutiny; for example, they were strictly forbidden from arresting fewer victims than planned.
I doubt the POTUS is going to go that far off the hook, and if he(and his command) are that crazy, his access to drones is going to be one of the lesser concerns, you know? Drones are only one of a multitude of ways to kill people, as you mention with the NKVD.
The difference between a civil war and an insurrection is indeed pretty much only a question of scale. We've had numerous of the latter through history, though only 1 or 2 'civil wars'.
As for the side I'd be on, well, that depends, you know?
But if you don't join their side, then you will have to join the bombed side - and be bombed yourself.
Every bomb dropped in a civil war is destroying the country's own infrastructure and such. It's generally to be avoided. Besides, speaking solely of drones in such a case is a bit of a misnomer. It's not like the US Government doesn't have a selection of a dozen or so different plane types capable of dropping bombs, even more numerous variations of artillery, etc...
That it was a police sniper instead of a drone strike will be a great comfort to the families of those wrongly killed...
Heck, the families of the soldiers who die in putting down a heavily armed insurrection instead of simply hitting it with a drone will be greatly comforted...
Like I said, I can't really envision a drone strike being the best option, but I'm not willing to rule it out. If it's going to happen, the authorization should come from the mouth of the POTUS.
I agree. The constitution applies to EVERYONE, not just citizens.
HOWEVER, I'm going to get a bit pedantic and argue that 'held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime' is DIFFERENT than the government moving to kill you. The government is also charged with "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;"
IF you have a group of citizens in the position of being part of an Insurrection, the government isn't holding them to answer for a crime. It's treating them as enemy combatants. In which case no trial is necessary, and killing them isn't even really supposed to be a punishment.
That's why I sort of agree with Holder. My position at the moment is "While I cannot currently envision a scenario where a drone strike would be the best option against US Citizens on US Soil, I cannot rule out such a scenario occurring. The authorization for such action would have to come from the highest levels and be subject to the strictest scrutiny'.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but you didn't actually SAY that earlier, so I didn't have a clue what you were talking about. My ORIGINAL post specified air pollution and accidents as well as 'fly ash', after all. I refer back to the second paragraph in my first post - "you SHOULD include more factors, such as the pollution, accidents, and such."
Second, in my initial response to you I simply addressed your assertions - I didn't really move beyond disproving your claim that 'fly ash is essentially sand', pointing out it's toxicity(with sources!), then moving on to your claim that the mercury was 'easily caught', showing a cite from the EPA that measures not specifically targeted at capturing mercury, including the pollution controls you mentioned, caught only about a third of it. Then I restated my original claim - with admittedly more focus on mining accidents, because fly ash was #1, air(mercury) pollution #2, and thus #3 became accidents.
THEN you called me a "poorly informed alarmist". I'll be honest, I really stopped reading after that and just went to make coal sound as scary as possible. I didn't even really read the part about mining deaths being "off topic" until today. To which I'll disagree. When you're looking at the cost of a power source in human life, accidents during it's extraction are fair game. Like I said earlier, I feel I backed away from 'alarmist' techniques by breaking out China, which has an absolutely horrible record when it comes to coal power, from both safety and pollution standpoints.
Historically nuclear radiation has led to more financial loss than loss of life. I'm going modify my original statement from doing more research though - it's not just fly ash that's the problem, it's coal ash in general. Due to concerns about long term effects, a coal ash spill can end up a bit like a nuclear spill; people moving away from the site long term. While smaller in scope, there are also more ash spills, plus it's a major concern for landfill and such.
It's complicated, of course. You've seriously focused on the 'fly ash', which was originally almost a throw away in my mind - I remembered hearing about multiple spills of fly ash and the toxic concerns and stuck it in there. I should probably have flipped the two - putting the 'up the smoke stack', IE air pollution, as the bigger concern, first. Eh, it's a internet posting, I don't exactly edit these much.
but there are clearly not enough of those given the current trade and account deficits.
That's mostly a result of China continuously devaluing it's economy. Like I said, it's starting to even itself out.
The rest of the people who are not working, working part time, getting various subsidies are not productive, their productivity is very low given that there is so little investment capital applied to their work (for your productivity to grow you have to apply capital, you have to acquire/build tools that make you more productive by allowing you to do more with less effort).
I agree, just didn't think it was within context, and I didn't want to write a book. Same with the Capital/labor ratios - as labor cost rises, capital investment to conserve expensive labor.
Instead their purchasing power is transferred to the Americans and the rest, who are engaged in this vendor financed consumption binge.
Yup, it's going to be expensive eventually.
There is very little manufacturing without the blue collar manufacturing jobs. All that is done somewhere else, so what is this 'manufacturing that is doing fine' exactly?
US manufacturing hasn't actually dropped, what's happened is that labor intensive products have been exported to be made elsewhere, but where said production can be sufficiently automated, it's still here, just made by robots - with workers only used to maintain the robots. As a result, productivity has been increasing along the lines of the revolutions in farming during the industrial revolution. You walk into a Chinese factory you will see thousands of workers. You walk into a modern US factory you might see half a dozen people, with 99.99% of the work done by robots. So while a Chinese worker might create $1k worth of product per shift, a US worker keeps the robots running that produce $1M worth of product during the same time.
We've been seeing work coming back to the USA in a number of cases - Chinese labor rates have risen, as has the cost of shipping from China to the USA, to the point that making some products here now makes sense again. It's gradual, of course, and when they do so it's normally only for a couple hundred jobs once set up here because the factory to produce the widget is so automated.
Design areas to better serve pedestrians: Agree
Loosen Zoning restrictions: Agree, somewhat, but question whether the activity could be done economically, much less whether chickens grown in such conditions can really be considered 'organic' or even 'healthy' until we get a better handle on urban pollution.
Open air markets: In the end, not particularly efficient
Under-utilized commercial buildings: Certainly. Of course, if it's under-utilized the rents should be dropping, eventually somebody will be able to afford to have their business there.
Elevators: Actually, they're about the most energy efficient movement in existence. They're counter weighted such that you only really need to spend energy to move the contents of the elevator, not the elevator itself.
2-4 story buildings: Not dense enough to really support pedestrians. I'd prefer to see more stories, but half of every building dedicated to housing.
Architecture: Over a certain size you're not going to be able to get away from HVAC, but I agree that you could really cut the need for HVAC with proper design. Another idea is liquid metal thorium reactors providing enough heat energy to run absorption chillers in a trigeneration setup(electricity, heating, and cooling).
Permitting, local sourcing: Good ideas.
Sustainable building: I agree. We currently have an excess of labor that could be working to help 'green up' the USA. More insulation, better materials, solar water heaters, etc...
Interesting. I'm an 'alarmist' for pointing out that the statistics are 15 deaths per TWh from coal power, vs less than 1 for a number of other sources? I'm an alarmist for breaking out US deaths, since the situation is far worse than it has to be in China, skewing world standards?
I'm a 'poorly informed alarmist' because I check your statements up against publicly available sources and find them misleading?
You want alarmist? Fine.
13.2k deaths in the USA from fine particle pollution. $100B in adverse health impacts.
India is much, much worse: 115k/year, costing $4.6B
China has really cut it's accidents - down to ~2k/year, vs a high of nearly 7k in 2002. Still, COPD linked to fine particulate pollution was 26% of all deaths in China. Their death figure is 750k/year from pollution.
Links aren't included just for you, but for the benefit of others.
Hmm... When I bother to post a source and actual statistics, you might want to reference those, or at least dig up references of your own.
Still:
1. Fly ash accidents still happen, and it's NOT nice stuff, bearing substantial amounts of contamination from various heavy metals. Contaminants include "arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, hexavalent chromium, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds."
2. Existing pollution measures not directly targeted at mercury only caught about a third of it.
3. I wasn't talking just about mercury. Heck, not even just heavy metals, NOx, SOx, and such. You addressed a tiny proportion of pollution, when I specified pollution, accidents, and 'other'. All mining is dangerous, and coal mining is on such a scale that you can expect deaths from it each year even in the USA, while in China, THOUSANDS of coal miners die each year in accidents, just as tens or even hundreds of thousands a year die from the pollution coming out of their largely unregulated smokestacks.
I'm reading this line of comments and feel the need to point out that the radioactivity of coal power plant waste is merely a 'jee wiz' talking point. The various OTHER contaminants in coal that end up in the fly ash or up the smoke stack are of far greater concern.
If you're going to make a serious argument as to the hazard of nuclear vs coal, you SHOULD include more factors, such as the pollution, accidents, and such.
Deaths per TWh by energy source.
Nuclear: .04 .1 (1.4 world, including Banqiao) .44 .15
Coal, USA: 15
Coal, Electricity, World: 60
Coal, Electricity, China: 90
Hydro:
Solar, rooftop:
Wind:
Informants have been paid in the past, which is a bit wider of a category than somebody trying for whistleblower protection.
Like I said, it can get complicated, and note that I listed 3 methods that don't result in any money in the informant's pocket.
Manning released way too much documentation for it to solely be 'whistleblower'.
I don't think anyone is saying "there could never be biological organisms on a meteorite". Rather, they're saying that this specific claim is bad science.
This. A scientific theory and evidence gains credence through surviving stringent attempts to discredit it. Bad science is still Bad science even if it's technically correct in it's conclusion: The goal is to develop iron-clad theories and evidence that can't be trivially disproven.
Meteor(asteroid/comet) life evidence (either live or fossilized) would indeed be a game changer, but the best form of evidence in this case would be a properly isolated sample being collected while still in space and analyzed. Even then, a single sample wouldn't be able to prove 'no', though a 'yea' would certainly generate lots and lots of news. If 1% of sampled objects have signs of life, scientists on earth would be going through a frenzy to come up with explanations, the sources of the objects would be tracked/determined, etc...
It wouldn't really touch the core evolutionary theory, but it'd have major consequences on the current theories on the origin of life*.
*Yes, creationists, evolutionary theory doesn't actually touch the origin of life. It's more a statement of current conditions.
The military was committing crimes, got exposed, and they're crucifying this guy with a conscious.
That does not excuse:
1. His NOT using the chain of command and alternative reporting channels. They exist, I know, I've used them and it worked.
2. Indiscriminate release of information that actually had nothing to do with said crimes(and it wasn't just stuff done by the military, just stuff the military knew about).
3. Not using proper whistle-blower legislation that provides outside military channels to report this stuff.
Thinking logically, I think that some of the issues that would preclude a 'blind dump' include:
1. Making sure it's paid attention to - places like the NYT probably get tinfoil and conspiracy stuff all the time. How do you even make sure they pay attention to the packet?
2. Confidentiality - If you want your identity protected, you probably want to make contact, otherwise if they can figure out who you are they are under no obligation to protect your identity. If you make some sort of contract, they can be. Though it gets complicated.... Illegal agreements are unenforceable, but if a news agency gets a reputation for NOT protecting their sources, they may not get that scoop in the future...
3. Use of information - If you just do a blind drop, the paper has full control. If you meet, you can work out specifics of presentation. You're going to have to let the paper get it's story, and a place like the NYT isn't going to anger it's readers by publishing details that will harm US troops and such, but there's some room for negotiation. What form said negotiations would take I don't know; I'm not an ideologically or revenge driven informant.
4. Payment. Of whatever form. Cash to the informant. Donation to the informant's pet charity. A billboard somewhere. Attribution. I don't know.
I have a spreadsheet, so it's pretty much instant for me -
40 ft intersection, 6% negative grade -
10 ft/s decel - 5.7 seconds
11.2 ft/s - 5.2 s
If there's lots of trucks, assuming 10 ft/s is probably closer to the truth...
The State law required 90% of fines to go to schools, not to the city or the company operating the cameras (which is, as usual where most of the profits were ending up).
90% to somewhere, anywhere, other than the operating company is what kills them. Otherwise you simply have the 'displacement' effect. IE I set up my traffic camera that I expect to clear $500k/year. 90% needs to go to the school, so I cut the school budget by $450k/year and put that money to my pet causes, while school funding is kept stable by the traffic camera.
Of course, if anybody suggests removing said camera or doing anything to reduce fines, we're suddenly at 'WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!'.
You're assuming a lot then. In my experience when a town wants speeding ticket revenue, right behind the sign is indeed where they put the officer.
Though if the sign isn't maintained per standards you 'might' be able to fight the ticket in court - traffic standards actually require that the sign be easily visible from the road - but they depend on the idea that you don't want to drive to the local court that's who knows how many miles away from you to contest it, with a locally sympathetic/hostile to you judge.
Crossing red lines (which often means going int the pedestrian crossing) is a douchebag move and certainly should be illegal.
Perhaps, but should it be of equal weight to running a red light? If running the red is $100 and 3 points to your license, should 'interfering with a cross walk' be $25 and 1 point?
I'd love to see your reaction if a driver stopped in the middle of a junction, causing you to have to carefully weave past him.
Slippery slope. Cars are faster and less maneuverable than pedestrians(on average). In addition, I hate to say this, but at this point I have to dodge more pedestrians in the middle of the road than I see even near crosswalks.
They don't teach slowing down for "stale" greens anymore?
No. They've found it increases accidents and reduces traffic capacity. The objective is that you continue at full speed until the light changes color and you decide you have enough room to stop, maximizing the throughput.
4.5 second yellow - FHWA recommendation.
Per their formula, 4.5 second yellow would be for a level red light at ~35 mph. Assuming 40 mph, level slope, that the intersection is 40 feet wide(2 vehicle lengths of 20 feet), and using the 'usual' figure everywhere else, you get a recommended yellow of 5.2 seconds. Assuming a 10% slope(pretty steep), it increases to 6.8 seconds. I'll note that even 25 mph gives you a yellow recommendation of about 4 seconds, depending on the width of the intersection.
The formula gives people 1 second to decide whether to stop or continue through, and enough time to either stop at a comfortable speed or clear the intersection. Even if you go with the more aggressive ASHTO handbook 11.2 ft/s stopping speed vs the ITE 10 ft/s only drops the recommended change time to 5.5 seconds. Though if you use the more aggressive stopping speed AND ignore slope you do get 4.5 seconds for the change. Going by how common semis are quoted as being, I tried adding another 10 feet to vehicle length, but that was only .1 seconds additional time.
Playing with the formula, given what's been stated they need to add a second to the change interval.
Just as a note - it's a recommendation for 'change interval', not 'yellow period'. If they implement a 'all red' period, it counts in the formula towards the duration. So they could have a 4.5 second yellow, 1 second all red, totaling 5.5 seconds for a safe intersection. Though it might be unkind to give somebody a red light running ticket if the ass end of their car was still in the intersection when it went all red.
Crosswalks - Don't you have button types in your area? What cross walks there are in my area are all sensor based - they remain red unless somebody hit the button, in which case it'll give a longer green to give the person extra time to cross. So normally no help there.
If you're trying to 'paint' an area with anti-personnel weapons, why use metalstorm? Just use a conventional cluster bomb. What added benefit would metalstorm give in that case?
That's why the 'max' is ~20k, vs a more realistic 2.4k. Basically, if they run them all out to reach that ~20k, they'd also be obliterated wholesale by US and SK responses.
I'll note that MOABs are probably about the only bomb that's harder to move/deploy than it is to create. For all it's size, a MOAB is a very simple bomb to construct.
To put it more simply, we could probably make them faster than we can ship them over to the AOR.
Oh, and we wouldn't just be restricted to Thermobarics - the USA hasn't signed cluster-bomb restrictions for a reason, large masses of infantry are perfect targets for cluster bombs.
Drones are also much cheaper than manned bombers, and they can be flown mostly automatically. One pilot can, in theory, operate ten drones that feed imagery to a bunch of computers.
However, bombers are 'cheap enough', especially on our own soil. We could drop several thousand of them without noticeably affecting anybody's budget, just have it come out of training funds.
The 'real' problem with 1 operator running 10 drones is, as you say, the tracking element. Though again, we have lots and lots of options for tracking our own people, typically with far more granularity and less expense than drone surveillance.
Basically, what I'm trying to get at is that the use of force is authorized or not. Once use of force is authorized, the next step is selecting the most appropriate type of force - sniper, SWAT insertion team, artillery, aircraft, etc...
99.9999% of the time it shouldn't get past SWAT.
That "strictest scrutiny" is worth nothing if anyone who questions the edict of the dictator is immediately - and lawfully - killed. Stalin's NKVD also operated under the strictest scrutiny; for example, they were strictly forbidden from arresting fewer victims than planned.
I doubt the POTUS is going to go that far off the hook, and if he(and his command) are that crazy, his access to drones is going to be one of the lesser concerns, you know? Drones are only one of a multitude of ways to kill people, as you mention with the NKVD.
The difference between a civil war and an insurrection is indeed pretty much only a question of scale. We've had numerous of the latter through history, though only 1 or 2 'civil wars'.
As for the side I'd be on, well, that depends, you know?
But if you don't join their side, then you will have to join the bombed side - and be bombed yourself.
Every bomb dropped in a civil war is destroying the country's own infrastructure and such. It's generally to be avoided. Besides, speaking solely of drones in such a case is a bit of a misnomer. It's not like the US Government doesn't have a selection of a dozen or so different plane types capable of dropping bombs, even more numerous variations of artillery, etc...
Drones are for surgical strikes, if anything.
Actually, I'd say that 'strictest scrutiny' would be the Supreme Court, with 'highest authority' being the POTUS.
That it was a police sniper instead of a drone strike will be a great comfort to the families of those wrongly killed...
Heck, the families of the soldiers who die in putting down a heavily armed insurrection instead of simply hitting it with a drone will be greatly comforted...
Like I said, I can't really envision a drone strike being the best option, but I'm not willing to rule it out. If it's going to happen, the authorization should come from the mouth of the POTUS.
I agree. The constitution applies to EVERYONE, not just citizens.
HOWEVER, I'm going to get a bit pedantic and argue that 'held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime' is DIFFERENT than the government moving to kill you. The government is also charged with "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;"
IF you have a group of citizens in the position of being part of an Insurrection, the government isn't holding them to answer for a crime. It's treating them as enemy combatants. In which case no trial is necessary, and killing them isn't even really supposed to be a punishment.
That's why I sort of agree with Holder. My position at the moment is "While I cannot currently envision a scenario where a drone strike would be the best option against US Citizens on US Soil, I cannot rule out such a scenario occurring. The authorization for such action would have to come from the highest levels and be subject to the strictest scrutiny'.