It's also chemically transformed via a methanol or ethanol catalyst/regeant.
I've read up on it(planning to buy a diesel), and what this guy was using would be referred to as SVO - Straight Vegetable Oil.
Biodiesel can, 99% of the time, be run in an unmodified diesel engine. SVO can't. Substantial fuel system modifications are required in order to run the stuff.
Sure, there are plenty of wealthy folks who drive urban assault vehicles and less affluent who still drive Geo sardine cans. Just because these numbers balance out in the final total doesn't make it fair.
Thing is, the cost to make it fair would end up costing more than under the current unfair system. For example, if you switch to a GPS system, the cost of monitoring the system, making it tamper proof, etc... Runs up to the point that you'd have to double the effective tax rate in order to get the same amount of money out of it for the roads.
Tell that to the farmers who buy fuel for their tractors or the landscaping companies who pay gas taxes for the fuel in their lawnmowers, chainsaws, and weed eaters.
They usually don't pay the road taxes on that fuel. Farmers simply get their own tank somewhere on their property and pay to have untaxed(and dyed) diesel delivered. I've seen a number of trucks with a seperate fuel tank and pump in the bed for refueling the tractor in the field. The landscaping company can do the same thing. There are even forms to get the taxes reimbursed. If you're a user who uses 10 gallons a year on your yard, it's not worth the effort to get the $4 back. Otherwise there are methods.
I also note that you completely ignored the parent's question about electric cars.
Just like people who buy a hybrid or convert their vehicles to propane, veg. oil, or other alternative fuel of the week, it's currently not enough to statistically matter to the state. Nebraska charged one guy extra vehicle taxes to cover the reduced fuel usage, but that got shot down. Right now you could consider their reduced road tax charges as a subsidy for practical exploration into alternative fuels.
I'd guess that 99.9% of vehicles on the road today use either gasoline or diesel. It's generally not worth the money to go after the last.1%.
minimum wage worker lost his ability to get to work
Now, I might be a bit off here, but in my experience most businesses that employed minimum wage earners end up making compromises in this area, even to the point of sending a manager to pick the worker up if necessary.
Heh, you could almost make an arguement for the workers to quit and go on welfare for a while. Wages would end up rising, as the work still needs to be done*.
*Areas teeming with other unemployed or illegals willing to work for minimum aside.
She calls shenanigans on all of the car companies that can manufacture cars in Canada, Australia, Europe, Asia and even Africa that get 35 or more mpg, and are making them right now, but claim they can't do it here. She's right.
Sorry, but she's mostly wrong. Yes, they could produce a 35mpg car. However, it becomes difficult when you consider our stringent safety and pollution standards, and mostly impossible when you add in consumer demand for acceleration, cargo & passenger capacity, and cost.
You can go to a dealer lot in my area right now and purchase a new vehicle that makes a combined 32mpg(Ford Focus). The Honda Civic Coupe is 34mpg. Problem is, they don't sell well when compared to SUVs and trucks.
If Feinstein gets the legislation she wants, it's most likely effect would be to drive even more people to SUVs and trucks. Do we really want that?
New problem: This encourages cheap cars, which tend to be older and therefore less safe, less fuel efficient, etc...
4.4% of $3k extra for a hybrid would be an extra $132/year. Along with increased insurance costs it's one more obstacle for them to overcome to be economical, and therefore truly widespread.
I happen to like the gas tax, I agree that it's one of the fairer ones out there. Lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles damage the roads less, so there's less tax there. It encourages fuel efficiency a bit, punishes less efficient more polluting cars a bit, etc...
It's also simple and while occasionally 'unfair' if you're crossing borders or not using the roads(lawnmowers?), it also doesn't invade privacy much.
You're forgetting that Richard eats out while Paul eats at home*. That Richard spends $100k on clothes a year while Paul pays $300/year for his clothing. That Richard goes to the dealership for his maintenance while Paul does his own for the most part. And wtf is Paul doing buying a car costing a whole year's income?
Using just the car is a bad example. First - it's not an annual purchase.
We have the issue where 'rich' is more a statement of assets available more than it's a statement of income. Sure, if you make a million bucks a year you're 'rich' - But we still have 'millionaires' declaring bankruptcy. A large income helps, but it's not a guarantee. Just look at comparative debt loads.
Now, by the arguement that Richard is likely NOT spending all of his money while John is, would be an arguement that the sales tax is regressive. Still, if Richard goes hog wild while John is a careful spender, Richard can still end up paying a higher percentage of income as sales tax vs John.
Look at it as an encouragement to save. Which is a good thing.
*Restaurant food is generally subject to sales tax, while food from a market generally isn't.
That is a problem; one I wish they'd fixed with the new N standard.
As written, N can be applied to either frequency band, I just wish they'd limited it to the 5 ghz range. As is 90% of the pre-N devices are 2.4Ghz only, which exasperates the problem.
Running a A+G setup isn't difficult, 99% of the APs that support 802.11a also do G, via a different transmitter. This can help, because even if you still have to have some G devices, you can still put things like your computer on the 5Ghz range and free up bandwidth for the remaining devices.
I was referring to some 'real world' tests that found A had a very slight advantage, even through walls, mainly because of the lower noise floor. The fact that it doesn't have to worry about playing with B devices, thus has a lower overhead also gives it a slight boost in speed also helps.
From my understanding, 5Ghz devices, while they penetrate less, also bounce better.
I'll just use my parents as an example: In the time it's taken for them to go through a computer they've also replaced the dishwasher, hot water heater, television, and sofa. My grandparents went through two televisions.
Some people replace quicker, but many don't.
While the others aren't replaced as quickly, I'd guess that a single refridgerator replacement would still outweigh a dozen computers*. Figure an average of 3 years between computers, you'd still be throwing away more refridgerator if you only replace that once every 30 years. Similar things for a washer/dryer set. Also, it's not like the fridge doesn't have enviromentally nasty materials in it either. A computer is actually fairly inert compared to some things.
*Some research found the average weight of computers to be around 8 kilos and the average refridgerators at 106.
To an extent, I'd hope that the EITC was invovled in the drafting of a bill that would affect it directly. Otherwise you get legislatures passing stupid stuff that'll cripple business.
It's when the business writes the entire draft that you have to be concerned. This sounds scary, at least to me.
I figure that Dell&HP think that they can handle the recycling costs cheaper than other manufacturers and that this will give them an advantage over other companies.
That, or that by getting this passed they won't get something more onerous.
I mean, what about all the other appliances that tend to hit landfills, such as refridgerators, dishwashers, washers&dryers, televisions, radios, etc...?
With the newer controls and electronics many of these contain, I would tend to argue that there aren't any materials found in computers that aren't in these.
I think that Dell's got a cheap recycling program figured out(ship them to china?), and is trying to use this to muscle out the competition, which can't arrange disposal of old machines as easily.
Then there's the whole issue of what happens if the retailer is out of business when the customer goes to recycle his or her computer...
Or even just spend the extra money and get 802.11a/5Ghz stuff.
There's hardly anything in the spectrum up there. Given the reduction in interference, 802.11a is likely going to have both a longer range and faster speeds than even 802.11n
From my limited review, the site does make it's information available, thought the alogorithm is probably both somewhat confidential(like credit ratings), and currently under modification. I ended up punching in 90210, none of the zip codes I've actually lived in worked. For the heck of it I checked out the bankruptcy lawyers.
Since you compare it to those: Independent reviews tend to go on at length as to what problems they found to base that grade on. And in fact that's the actual information in that review, not the score. You can't base a purchase 100% on the score, unless you have absolutely no personality of your own, or you already know that your taste and preferences 100% match those of the reviewer. The way a sane person peruses them is to look at the pros and cons in a reviews, and draw their own conclusion, based on their own list of priorities.
Like somebody else said - it looks like you start at a 5, then years of practice increase your score, plus any recognitions/awards, minus a hefty amount for disciplinary actions. For example, Terrence Leroy Butler gets a 4 despite 23 years of practice(disp action). Jenny Ahn gets a 5.8 for 3 years of practice. One guy gets a 10 despite only 10 years of practice - but his record has awards left and right.
I can see them keeping the exact details of the rating system confidential because then you'd have people gaming the system even more - look at the trouble google has.
Then there's the problem that the site hasn't been up long enough to get client/peer reviews going good, though I'd take those with a grain of salt for a while - too easy for a lawyer to call his buddies up and get good reviews.
The guy can hardly expect a 10 - he DID have a disciplinary action taken against him. It says it right on Avvo's site. As for records correction - I'm pretty sure Avvo pulled their info from public records, which means that anybody finding incorrect information might find a call to the bar association more urgent.
I still think that the guy has a very weak case - Everybody's entitled to their opinion, which the alogorithm expresses in a non-personal way. Whining about 'I don't think that a disp. action should affect their opinion that bad' doesn't help. They're allowed to distrust lawyers with disp. actions. Heck, they're allowed to distrust lawyers in general.
As long as they aren't publishing lies, it's not libel. Opinions and facts can be published far and wide with no repercussions. Even a falsehood is ok, as long as at the time of publishing it they believed it to be true. IE I did a data pull from state records. Upon intensive review, some errors were reveiled, but they came from state data. I didn't deliberately finger John Doe - the records were incorrect.
I agree, just as with credit ratings, errors should be fixed when correct information is receieved and verified to a trust level higher than original source(otherwise you'd have incorrect 'corrections' pouring in).
"And he questioned why Supreme Court justices and prominent lawyers score so low."
Well, it could be the whole '1' is the best, '10' is the worst type scale, but I figure that any SC justice is probably going to score low because he or she hasn't operated as an attorney for quite a while.
As for the prominent lawyers- I can't be sure. I don't know how they rank stuff.
Thinks I'd figure on: Years in Practice Number of cases Success rate Appeal rate Charge Rate Any malpractice/suits against the lawyer/bar judgements.
I'm sure there'd be many factors. I'm also sure the company is still trying to tweak their ratings. For example, how would you handle rating a bargain priced lawyer that only takes easy cases? How would you rate the hugely expensive lawyer that only takes the most difficult cases(OJ Simpson), thus only has a 50% success rate?
I should be allowed to say that 'I think X is a horrible lawyer', even if everybody else disagrees with me. I'll simply get a reputation as not a good judge of lawyers.
The fact that it is a complex tool does not excuse you if you libel someone.
But is it libel? I see very little difference between this and consumer reports - Both take data and attempt to draw a simple rating/conclusion from it. If the lawer wins his case it undermines the whole independent review and ratings system - because anybody giving a negative rating would be open to a lawsuit.
How they weigh their ratings is up to them, just as it's my choice as to how heavily I weigh their ratings (anywhere from not bothering to read them to simply attempting to get the highest rated).
Errors in the data is one thing - for it to be true libel it would probably have to be deliberate. As they get more data into the system, improve accuracy, etc... The ratings should become more accurate.
Joe Schmoe is playing online poker. He's loosing* $100/month on average. That money goes, through the banking system, to the online casino, located somewhere else in the world. It's no longer circulating in the US system, thus no longer taxed, thus a 'loss' for the USA and it's Government.
You know, I wrote out a whole long essay type response, but at the end I realized I can summarize it pretty effectively so I decided to do that instead. All this pro-drug crap (no offense) seems to ignore a huge glaring issue, and that issue is that most people are simply not of the quality it would take to live in an environment with fully legalized drugs along the lines of coke, meth, etc.
Meanwhile, pro-legalization people are quoting studies and historical examples that you're wrong. Alcohol use went up during prohibition, along with non-drug crime*. People switched to more dangerous versions of alchohol, going from beer/wine to hard liquers, many distilled in unsafe manners, resulting in poisonous products. Some countries legalize drugs - and see a reduction in crime**, and, oddly enough, a reduction in usage. Studying history as shown that a fairly constant portion of the population used drugs to the point of addiction - and prohibitions have very little effect on this.
We spend how much on the 'War on Drugs'? We've spent billions, and the local highschool still rates MJ and other drugs as 'easy to get', out in the middle of North Dakota!
Education can work - look at smoking. Personally, I think that we should drop the drinking age - I want kids to get their first taste of alcohol under their parent's supervision, not at college with a bunch of party happy peers.
Meth is scary stuff, yes. But much of the danger is due to the fact that the stuff is being made in basements using cooking equipment. Professionally made meth is orders of magnitude safer. Still, I think that, if legalized, it's usage would tend to die down as people used safer drugs such as cocaine and heroine.
We could setup free treatment centers for any addict and still come out ahead compared to what we spend on law enforcement, judicial, and incarceration for the WoD.
I say legalize it, tax it, and regulate it. We'll drop usage, turn a cash black hole into a revenue source, lower crime in other ways, and regain(eventually) some of our trust in law enforcement.
*IE stuff that would still be considered crimes even if the drugs were legal. Such as murder, theft, assault, etc... **geographically based legalization(IE amsterdam) will still mess up the area picked. For one thing, not everybody can bring their job with them when they emigrate their in order to get their fix legally.
Like I noted - even with the enviromental damage, it's still likely better than living inside/around areas inhabited by humans.
how many rattlesnakes are you willing to tolerate in the backyard where your children play? Or wolves, bears, alligators, pumas, or any other predators?
Don't have any rattlesnakes or alligators, too far north. Have a few garden snakes though. I haven't seen any large predators.
But you're darn right, I'd do my darn best to keep predators away from my kids.
Or what about animals other than predators? How many mice, rats, deers, gazelles, bison, bighorn sheep do you have in your backyard?
I've seen a dozen or so mice, though it's death for them to be found inside my house. I've seen a half dozen deer no a hundred yards away. They've probably been closer, but they tend to wander around at night, and are still skittish as compared to some deer.
I'd say that, unfortunately, for 99% of the Earth's wildlife a 99% rate of lethal cancer is better than the presence of humans...
I'd say more 80%, but you're pretty much right. Many of us are getting smarter about it, but unfortuantly that's mostly restricted to 1st world countries, and most of our diversity is located in 3rd world ones.
Yes, many bird species will do something like lay three eggs, then the nestlings, at some point, push the others out of the nest to monopolize their parent's attentions(and food).
3 nestlings, strength 1.1, 1.0,.9.9 gets pushed out first on average, then, some time later either 1.1 or 1.0 gets pushed out, mostly 1.0.
With the higher deformation rate, it'd be more like 1.1, 1.0, and.5, or 1.0,.9, and.7. The weakest still tend to get pushed out, eliminating it from further competition. The strongest still tend to survive. Sure, a.9 might be more likely to survive, but there's still plenty of evolutionary pressure to eliminate them before they're old enough to breed themselves.
Believe it or not, she's not that unusual. There are actually hundreds of people still living there, who refused to leave after the disaster.
Their numbers have dwindled, mostly because all those of childbearing age and under left and haven't returned. Natural causes take their toll each year.
One thing I do remember is that they haven't shown as much of an increase in cancer rate as expected. Sorry, no source. Hmm.. Interesting read about marginal radiation doses... They may actually be helpfull.
Another point would be that even if radiation levels were such that a lethal cancer would be 50% likely after 30 years, it wouldn't really matter to 99% of wildlife.
Mice and rodents generally have a lifespan measured in months, not years. A deer that makes it to adulthood has a maximum natural lifespan of around 15, if they make it to five they're doing good*. Large predators might live for a decade in the wild.
Most of the time, the continued existance of their races are predicated on the females having large numbers of young.
From my chernobyl research(done more than a decade ago), there has ALWAYS been a presense of plants and animals there. You have to remember, it was an actual small city, so in many cases large animal life was restricted to those that humans approved of. It takes time for concrete to crack and allow large trees such as are seen in the pictures to grow.
Then we have Baker and Mousseau argueing. I'll note that it appears that Baker appeared to concentrate on mammals(specifically rodents) while Mousseau concentrated on birds. Could it simply be that birds are more affected by radiation? That they have a tendency to wander more into the highest contamination areas? The very article notes that they've been found nesting in the sarcophagus.
While the article notes that a third of the nestlings showed abnormalities - I'd have to ask what the normal rate is. I'm aware that even normal barn swallow nestlings don't exactly have the highest survival rate.
To answer the questions, I think that the best solution would be one of radio tagging. We know average survival rates and such for outside the zone. Tag some animals, such as birds and deer, then track their survival and migration habits.
I think that we'd find that even if it's suboptimal, it's still a better area than many places activly occupied by humans.
*Does tend to live longer than bucks, as the bucks take more chances.
Oh, but they did concentrate in the past, sometimes in the hundreds. Now they only do it when they figure we won't be willing to just blow up the area, like when they hole up in a historical mosque.
Forgot about the whole 'hold territory' argument: With an airplane you can go from having to have a platoon of hundreds of soldiers to one spotter.
Well, I exaggerate, but having air superiority and air support prevents the enemy from concentrating, allowing us to bring superior forces to any engagement. If they know that bringing even a couple dozen men together means that we'll drop a bomb on their head; they can't congregate, whereas we can, even if we choose not to use the planes in that engagement.
I've heard that B52's scare the crap out of many over there; they never hear or see the plane(it flies too high), and stuff just blows up.
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It's also chemically transformed via a methanol or ethanol catalyst/regeant.
I've read up on it(planning to buy a diesel), and what this guy was using would be referred to as SVO - Straight Vegetable Oil.
Biodiesel can, 99% of the time, be run in an unmodified diesel engine. SVO can't. Substantial fuel system modifications are required in order to run the stuff.
It does end up being lawyer territory though.
Sure, there are plenty of wealthy folks who drive urban assault vehicles and less affluent who still drive Geo sardine cans. Just because these numbers balance out in the final total doesn't make it fair.
.1%.
Thing is, the cost to make it fair would end up costing more than under the current unfair system. For example, if you switch to a GPS system, the cost of monitoring the system, making it tamper proof, etc... Runs up to the point that you'd have to double the effective tax rate in order to get the same amount of money out of it for the roads.
Tell that to the farmers who buy fuel for their tractors or the landscaping companies who pay gas taxes for the fuel in their lawnmowers, chainsaws, and weed eaters.
They usually don't pay the road taxes on that fuel. Farmers simply get their own tank somewhere on their property and pay to have untaxed(and dyed) diesel delivered. I've seen a number of trucks with a seperate fuel tank and pump in the bed for refueling the tractor in the field. The landscaping company can do the same thing. There are even forms to get the taxes reimbursed. If you're a user who uses 10 gallons a year on your yard, it's not worth the effort to get the $4 back. Otherwise there are methods.
I also note that you completely ignored the parent's question about electric cars.
Just like people who buy a hybrid or convert their vehicles to propane, veg. oil, or other alternative fuel of the week, it's currently not enough to statistically matter to the state. Nebraska charged one guy extra vehicle taxes to cover the reduced fuel usage, but that got shot down. Right now you could consider their reduced road tax charges as a subsidy for practical exploration into alternative fuels.
I'd guess that 99.9% of vehicles on the road today use either gasoline or diesel. It's generally not worth the money to go after the last
minimum wage worker lost his ability to get to work
Now, I might be a bit off here, but in my experience most businesses that employed minimum wage earners end up making compromises in this area, even to the point of sending a manager to pick the worker up if necessary.
Heh, you could almost make an arguement for the workers to quit and go on welfare for a while. Wages would end up rising, as the work still needs to be done*.
*Areas teeming with other unemployed or illegals willing to work for minimum aside.
She calls shenanigans on all of the car companies that can manufacture cars in Canada, Australia, Europe, Asia and even Africa that get 35 or more mpg, and are making them right now, but claim they can't do it here. She's right.
Sorry, but she's mostly wrong. Yes, they could produce a 35mpg car. However, it becomes difficult when you consider our stringent safety and pollution standards, and mostly impossible when you add in consumer demand for acceleration, cargo & passenger capacity, and cost.
You can go to a dealer lot in my area right now and purchase a new vehicle that makes a combined 32mpg(Ford Focus). The Honda Civic Coupe is 34mpg. Problem is, they don't sell well when compared to SUVs and trucks.
If Feinstein gets the legislation she wants, it's most likely effect would be to drive even more people to SUVs and trucks. Do we really want that?
New problem: This encourages cheap cars, which tend to be older and therefore less safe, less fuel efficient, etc...
4.4% of $3k extra for a hybrid would be an extra $132/year. Along with increased insurance costs it's one more obstacle for them to overcome to be economical, and therefore truly widespread.
I happen to like the gas tax, I agree that it's one of the fairer ones out there. Lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles damage the roads less, so there's less tax there. It encourages fuel efficiency a bit, punishes less efficient more polluting cars a bit, etc...
It's also simple and while occasionally 'unfair' if you're crossing borders or not using the roads(lawnmowers?), it also doesn't invade privacy much.
You're forgetting that Richard eats out while Paul eats at home*. That Richard spends $100k on clothes a year while Paul pays $300/year for his clothing. That Richard goes to the dealership for his maintenance while Paul does his own for the most part. And wtf is Paul doing buying a car costing a whole year's income?
Using just the car is a bad example. First - it's not an annual purchase.
We have the issue where 'rich' is more a statement of assets available more than it's a statement of income. Sure, if you make a million bucks a year you're 'rich' - But we still have 'millionaires' declaring bankruptcy. A large income helps, but it's not a guarantee. Just look at comparative debt loads.
Now, by the arguement that Richard is likely NOT spending all of his money while John is, would be an arguement that the sales tax is regressive. Still, if Richard goes hog wild while John is a careful spender, Richard can still end up paying a higher percentage of income as sales tax vs John.
Look at it as an encouragement to save. Which is a good thing.
*Restaurant food is generally subject to sales tax, while food from a market generally isn't.
That is a problem; one I wish they'd fixed with the new N standard.
As written, N can be applied to either frequency band, I just wish they'd limited it to the 5 ghz range. As is 90% of the pre-N devices are 2.4Ghz only, which exasperates the problem.
Running a A+G setup isn't difficult, 99% of the APs that support 802.11a also do G, via a different transmitter. This can help, because even if you still have to have some G devices, you can still put things like your computer on the 5Ghz range and free up bandwidth for the remaining devices.
I was referring to some 'real world' tests that found A had a very slight advantage, even through walls, mainly because of the lower noise floor. The fact that it doesn't have to worry about playing with B devices, thus has a lower overhead also gives it a slight boost in speed also helps.
From my understanding, 5Ghz devices, while they penetrate less, also bounce better.
I'll just use my parents as an example: In the time it's taken for them to go through a computer they've also replaced the dishwasher, hot water heater, television, and sofa. My grandparents went through two televisions.
Some people replace quicker, but many don't.
While the others aren't replaced as quickly, I'd guess that a single refridgerator replacement would still outweigh a dozen computers*. Figure an average of 3 years between computers, you'd still be throwing away more refridgerator if you only replace that once every 30 years. Similar things for a washer/dryer set. Also, it's not like the fridge doesn't have enviromentally nasty materials in it either. A computer is actually fairly inert compared to some things.
*Some research found the average weight of computers to be around 8 kilos and the average refridgerators at 106.
To an extent, I'd hope that the EITC was invovled in the drafting of a bill that would affect it directly. Otherwise you get legislatures passing stupid stuff that'll cripple business.
It's when the business writes the entire draft that you have to be concerned. This sounds scary, at least to me.
I figure that Dell&HP think that they can handle the recycling costs cheaper than other manufacturers and that this will give them an advantage over other companies.
That, or that by getting this passed they won't get something more onerous.
Why single out computers?
I mean, what about all the other appliances that tend to hit landfills, such as refridgerators, dishwashers, washers&dryers, televisions, radios, etc...?
With the newer controls and electronics many of these contain, I would tend to argue that there aren't any materials found in computers that aren't in these.
I think that Dell's got a cheap recycling program figured out(ship them to china?), and is trying to use this to muscle out the competition, which can't arrange disposal of old machines as easily.
Then there's the whole issue of what happens if the retailer is out of business when the customer goes to recycle his or her computer...
Or even just spend the extra money and get 802.11a/5Ghz stuff.
There's hardly anything in the spectrum up there. Given the reduction in interference, 802.11a is likely going to have both a longer range and faster speeds than even 802.11n
From my limited review, the site does make it's information available, thought the alogorithm is probably both somewhat confidential(like credit ratings), and currently under modification. I ended up punching in 90210, none of the zip codes I've actually lived in worked. For the heck of it I checked out the bankruptcy lawyers.
Since you compare it to those: Independent reviews tend to go on at length as to what problems they found to base that grade on. And in fact that's the actual information in that review, not the score. You can't base a purchase 100% on the score, unless you have absolutely no personality of your own, or you already know that your taste and preferences 100% match those of the reviewer. The way a sane person peruses them is to look at the pros and cons in a reviews, and draw their own conclusion, based on their own list of priorities.
Like somebody else said - it looks like you start at a 5, then years of practice increase your score, plus any recognitions/awards, minus a hefty amount for disciplinary actions. For example, Terrence Leroy Butler gets a 4 despite 23 years of practice(disp action). Jenny Ahn gets a 5.8 for 3 years of practice. One guy gets a 10 despite only 10 years of practice - but his record has awards left and right.
I can see them keeping the exact details of the rating system confidential because then you'd have people gaming the system even more - look at the trouble google has.
Then there's the problem that the site hasn't been up long enough to get client/peer reviews going good, though I'd take those with a grain of salt for a while - too easy for a lawyer to call his buddies up and get good reviews.
The guy can hardly expect a 10 - he DID have a disciplinary action taken against him. It says it right on Avvo's site. As for records correction - I'm pretty sure Avvo pulled their info from public records, which means that anybody finding incorrect information might find a call to the bar association more urgent.
I still think that the guy has a very weak case - Everybody's entitled to their opinion, which the alogorithm expresses in a non-personal way. Whining about 'I don't think that a disp. action should affect their opinion that bad' doesn't help. They're allowed to distrust lawyers with disp. actions. Heck, they're allowed to distrust lawyers in general.
As long as they aren't publishing lies, it's not libel. Opinions and facts can be published far and wide with no repercussions. Even a falsehood is ok, as long as at the time of publishing it they believed it to be true. IE I did a data pull from state records. Upon intensive review, some errors were reveiled, but they came from state data. I didn't deliberately finger John Doe - the records were incorrect.
I agree, just as with credit ratings, errors should be fixed when correct information is receieved and verified to a trust level higher than original source(otherwise you'd have incorrect 'corrections' pouring in).
"And he questioned why Supreme Court justices and prominent lawyers score so low."
Well, it could be the whole '1' is the best, '10' is the worst type scale, but I figure that any SC justice is probably going to score low because he or she hasn't operated as an attorney for quite a while.
As for the prominent lawyers- I can't be sure. I don't know how they rank stuff.
Thinks I'd figure on:
Years in Practice
Number of cases
Success rate
Appeal rate
Charge Rate
Any malpractice/suits against the lawyer/bar judgements.
I'm sure there'd be many factors. I'm also sure the company is still trying to tweak their ratings. For example, how would you handle rating a bargain priced lawyer that only takes easy cases? How would you rate the hugely expensive lawyer that only takes the most difficult cases(OJ Simpson), thus only has a 50% success rate?
I should be allowed to say that 'I think X is a horrible lawyer', even if everybody else disagrees with me. I'll simply get a reputation as not a good judge of lawyers.
The fact that it is a complex tool does not excuse you if you libel someone.
But is it libel? I see very little difference between this and consumer reports - Both take data and attempt to draw a simple rating/conclusion from it. If the lawer wins his case it undermines the whole independent review and ratings system - because anybody giving a negative rating would be open to a lawsuit.
How they weigh their ratings is up to them, just as it's my choice as to how heavily I weigh their ratings (anywhere from not bothering to read them to simply attempting to get the highest rated).
Errors in the data is one thing - for it to be true libel it would probably have to be deliberate. As they get more data into the system, improve accuracy, etc... The ratings should become more accurate.
More direct.
Joe Schmoe is playing online poker. He's loosing* $100/month on average. That money goes, through the banking system, to the online casino, located somewhere else in the world. It's no longer circulating in the US system, thus no longer taxed, thus a 'loss' for the USA and it's Government.
*Because that's the way gambling works
You know, I wrote out a whole long essay type response, but at the end I realized I can summarize it pretty effectively so I decided to do that instead. All this pro-drug crap (no offense) seems to ignore a huge glaring issue, and that issue is that most people are simply not of the quality it would take to live in an environment with fully legalized drugs along the lines of coke, meth, etc.
Meanwhile, pro-legalization people are quoting studies and historical examples that you're wrong. Alcohol use went up during prohibition, along with non-drug crime*. People switched to more dangerous versions of alchohol, going from beer/wine to hard liquers, many distilled in unsafe manners, resulting in poisonous products. Some countries legalize drugs - and see a reduction in crime**, and, oddly enough, a reduction in usage. Studying history as shown that a fairly constant portion of the population used drugs to the point of addiction - and prohibitions have very little effect on this.
We spend how much on the 'War on Drugs'? We've spent billions, and the local highschool still rates MJ and other drugs as 'easy to get', out in the middle of North Dakota!
Education can work - look at smoking. Personally, I think that we should drop the drinking age - I want kids to get their first taste of alcohol under their parent's supervision, not at college with a bunch of party happy peers.
Meth is scary stuff, yes. But much of the danger is due to the fact that the stuff is being made in basements using cooking equipment. Professionally made meth is orders of magnitude safer. Still, I think that, if legalized, it's usage would tend to die down as people used safer drugs such as cocaine and heroine.
We could setup free treatment centers for any addict and still come out ahead compared to what we spend on law enforcement, judicial, and incarceration for the WoD.
I say legalize it, tax it, and regulate it. We'll drop usage, turn a cash black hole into a revenue source, lower crime in other ways, and regain(eventually) some of our trust in law enforcement.
*IE stuff that would still be considered crimes even if the drugs were legal. Such as murder, theft, assault, etc...
**geographically based legalization(IE amsterdam) will still mess up the area picked. For one thing, not everybody can bring their job with them when they emigrate their in order to get their fix legally.
And, perhaps more importantly, it's been going overseas. IE we're loosing money because of it. At least US gambling joints would be paying US taxes.
Like I noted - even with the enviromental damage, it's still likely better than living inside/around areas inhabited by humans.
how many rattlesnakes are you willing to tolerate in the backyard where your children play? Or wolves, bears, alligators, pumas, or any other predators?
Don't have any rattlesnakes or alligators, too far north. Have a few garden snakes though. I haven't seen any large predators.
But you're darn right, I'd do my darn best to keep predators away from my kids.
Or what about animals other than predators? How many mice, rats, deers, gazelles, bison, bighorn sheep do you have in your backyard?
I've seen a dozen or so mice, though it's death for them to be found inside my house. I've seen a half dozen deer no a hundred yards away. They've probably been closer, but they tend to wander around at night, and are still skittish as compared to some deer.
I'd say that, unfortunately, for 99% of the Earth's wildlife a 99% rate of lethal cancer is better than the presence of humans...
I'd say more 80%, but you're pretty much right. Many of us are getting smarter about it, but unfortuantly that's mostly restricted to 1st world countries, and most of our diversity is located in 3rd world ones.
Yes, many bird species will do something like lay three eggs, then the nestlings, at some point, push the others out of the nest to monopolize their parent's attentions(and food).
.9 .9 gets pushed out first on average, then, some time later either 1.1 or 1.0 gets pushed out, mostly 1.0.
.5, or 1.0, .9, and .7. The weakest still tend to get pushed out, eliminating it from further competition. The strongest still tend to survive. Sure, a .9 might be more likely to survive, but there's still plenty of evolutionary pressure to eliminate them before they're old enough to breed themselves.
3 nestlings, strength 1.1, 1.0,
With the higher deformation rate, it'd be more like 1.1, 1.0, and
Believe it or not, she's not that unusual. There are actually hundreds of people still living there, who refused to leave after the disaster.
Their numbers have dwindled, mostly because all those of childbearing age and under left and haven't returned. Natural causes take their toll each year.
One thing I do remember is that they haven't shown as much of an increase in cancer rate as expected. Sorry, no source. Hmm.. Interesting read about marginal radiation doses... They may actually be helpfull.
Another point would be that even if radiation levels were such that a lethal cancer would be 50% likely after 30 years, it wouldn't really matter to 99% of wildlife.
Mice and rodents generally have a lifespan measured in months, not years. A deer that makes it to adulthood has a maximum natural lifespan of around 15, if they make it to five they're doing good*. Large predators might live for a decade in the wild.
Most of the time, the continued existance of their races are predicated on the females having large numbers of young.
From my chernobyl research(done more than a decade ago), there has ALWAYS been a presense of plants and animals there. You have to remember, it was an actual small city, so in many cases large animal life was restricted to those that humans approved of. It takes time for concrete to crack and allow large trees such as are seen in the pictures to grow.
Then we have Baker and Mousseau argueing. I'll note that it appears that Baker appeared to concentrate on mammals(specifically rodents) while Mousseau concentrated on birds. Could it simply be that birds are more affected by radiation? That they have a tendency to wander more into the highest contamination areas? The very article notes that they've been found nesting in the sarcophagus.
While the article notes that a third of the nestlings showed abnormalities - I'd have to ask what the normal rate is. I'm aware that even normal barn swallow nestlings don't exactly have the highest survival rate.
To answer the questions, I think that the best solution would be one of radio tagging. We know average survival rates and such for outside the zone. Tag some animals, such as birds and deer, then track their survival and migration habits.
I think that we'd find that even if it's suboptimal, it's still a better area than many places activly occupied by humans.
*Does tend to live longer than bucks, as the bucks take more chances.
Oh, but they did concentrate in the past, sometimes in the hundreds. Now they only do it when they figure we won't be willing to just blow up the area, like when they hole up in a historical mosque.
Hot swap is part of the specifications for SATA. Whether any given motherboard or operating system actually supports it...
Forgot about the whole 'hold territory' argument: With an airplane you can go from having to have a platoon of hundreds of soldiers to one spotter.
Well, I exaggerate, but having air superiority and air support prevents the enemy from concentrating, allowing us to bring superior forces to any engagement. If they know that bringing even a couple dozen men together means that we'll drop a bomb on their head; they can't congregate, whereas we can, even if we choose not to use the planes in that engagement.
I've heard that B52's scare the crap out of many over there; they never hear or see the plane(it flies too high), and stuff just blows up.