It's not a legislative arm. It has broad legislated enforcement mandates from Congress, going back to the early-mid 1930s on communications policy and enforcement.
Yes, exactly. Enforcement. Not legislative. We agree.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access.
And then, frustratingly, you turn right around and are happy(!) that they go power drunk and implement network neutrality in direct violation of THE LAW. Do you not see the problem with this? Do you think your local police should be able to create new laws and ignore others?
That you like the new law they created out of nothing should be irrelevant. Think about the fact they think they can do anything they want.
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
Yes, I've heard that theory, but it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation. I don't like what Comcast did, but I also don't like using abusing unrelated laws.
Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal. The FCC is overstepping its bounds by acting like NN is already law. You might like this particular decision, but it sets a bad precedent for the FCC doing whatever it wants without regard for what the law actually is. You might not like the next decision.
The FCC should be an enforcement arm of the government, not a legislative arm.
I thought maybe different languages might explain things, but I'd say English is by far the most popular languages. I might even buy English is not the majority of pages anymore (though, I'm skeptical), but only 1 in 25 pages is English?
Hmm. This probably means something statistically, but I'm not sure what... I started adding digits to a number until I hit one result. I had to get to nine digits:
123512553
215323703
684354537
I also found a few with 0 to 3 results. Interestingly, I couldn't find any eight digit numbers that scored zero hits.
I know these numbers aren't exact, but you'd think one of them would be over 100B if Google is really indexing a trillion pages. What's on them? Anyone find any keywords that produce more?
this "woman researcher" NO FUCKING LESS just shot your entire belief structure down in flames. You talk about creationism, all you've got supporting your theories here is faith. ZERO proof. ZEEE ROHHHH.
Wow... just... wow. You've actually managed to stun me. I shouldn't be surprised, but... the level of denial, and reading what you want to see, rather than what it actually says, is just breathtaking.
I'll just end with quoting the article again, which pretty much says it all:
"What is astonishing to me," Witelson said, "is that it is so obvious that there are sex differences in the brain and these are likely to be translated into some cognitive differences, because the brain helps us think and feel and move and act.
"Yet there is a large segment of the population that wants to pretend this is not true."
Lol! Really, that's all I got, you really can't distinguish between micro and macro.
You know, this actually (frustratingly) reminds me of debating creationism. Yes, I understand the difference between micro and macro, but you don't seem to. "Micro" and "Macro" are not quantities. The difference between them is relative, which is the point I was trying to make with using the term "high level".
Some differences between males and females are great, and some are subtle, but there is no denying that there are very fundamental differences. And subtle differences can be very significant. And yes, there are STRUCTURAL, PHYSICAL differences between men and women's brains. Here is but one article on the subject, from a woman researcher, no less. I quote:
"What is astonishing to me," Witelson said, "is that it is so obvious that there are sex differences in the brain and these are likely to be translated into some cognitive differences, because the brain helps us think and feel and move and act.
"Yet there is a large segment of the population that wants to pretend this is not true."
So you agree with me. Yes I took your quote out of context, but your context is all about a point that doesn't matter - low-level differences.
No, I don't agree with you. "From a high level," humans and chimpanzees look very similar. Not that the difference between males and females is the same as the difference between humans and chimps, but the point is that cumulative low-level differences add up to significant differences.
Actually, I'm not even sure what your point is at this point. Are you claiming that men and women are physically identical, except for the sex organs?
Could be... One of the biggest factors in tennis is arm span.
I'm sorry. This has gone beyond absurdity into outright delusional insanity, assuming you're not just trolling. And I just can't bring myself to fix your logic flaws (on so many levels) regarding comparing averages. I think I'll just back away slowly at this point.
How exactly do you arrive at "physically different in nearly every way?"
Why do you think testing of new drugs is broken out by male and female? Because drugs affect males and females differently. Sure, from a high level, men and women work very similarly, but the differences are there, and they are important. And "minor" hormone differences? Uh, no.
when you standardize by scale, disparities frequently disappear.
This is the most absurd thing I've read this week. So, by your theory, Venus Williams and Roger Federer, who are both 6' 1", world-class, and in their prime, should be equally matched?
Then take a look at men and women body builders, both dedicated to being as large as possible. Do you see a bit of difference in how big each one can get?
Then take a look at women's basketball. There are plenty of tall women there, yet there are two (maybe three) dunks performed in the HISTORY of the league. And the two women who can do them can barely do them.
To claim that men and women have identical bodies beyond the sex organs is just plain delusional.
Sweeping generalizations like yours are usually wrong...
Did you actually read that article? The margin in ultramarathons is smaller than usual, but the men are typically 5% faster. That she won a single race by five hours tells us that she wasn't running against the best men in the world.
Note that I didn't say that a woman can never win any race, anytime, against men (that is, of course, ridiculous). I said that the best women in the world never beat the best men in the world.
And anyway, what's your point? That it's a myth that world-class men are athletically superior to world-class women? Even if you managed to find a single sport where world-class women might edge the world-class men, it hardly invalidates the point, when thousands of other sports prove that it's clearly true.
I don't know if you're just trying to be funny or not, but just in case, you'll note that Bobby Riggs was 55 years old and hardly the best male tennis player in the world, but gave Billie Jean King an actual competitive match. She only won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Of course, earlier Riggs had humiliated Margaret Court, age 30 and the best female player in the world, 6-2, 6-1.
Sometime in the 80s, Martina Navratilova was asked about this generally, and she was quoted as saying she would lose to the 100th ranked male player.
Anyone who has dated a geek girl knows that misogyny is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem that girls geared toward science and math face from other girls who will be absolutely VICIOUS in putting them down.
All that proves is that girls have tribal behavior just like boys, and will ostracize anyone who is different. That says nothing about the *average* intrinsic abilities of men and women.
Personally, I don't understand why there is even any debate that men and women are different. Somehow we're supposed to believe that men and women are physically different in nearly every way -- except for the brain. Evolution clearly decided to make the brains identical for political reasons.
People need to lighten up. We're talking about averages. Women can have traditionally male traits, and men can have traditionally female traits.
On the other hand, consider this, just to introduce some controversy (:D) -- there is no case where the world's best female athlete can beat the world's best male athlete at any physical sport. Could this truth also apply to certain narrow cases of neurology? [either male or female].
Transportation is a much simpler problem than dusting and cleaning the house. You have standards and easily quantifiable data all over the road.
Not true. Most of accident avoidance is anticipation -- seeing a child losing a ball on the side of the road, watching a car pulling out of a driveway, watching the eyes of someone who is turning to make sure they are seeing you, etc.
Then we could talk about looking for road debris and pot holes, which is *not* a simple problem.
In a perfectly predictable world, yes, an autonomous car would be easy. In the real, very unpredictable world, it's not.
From what I understand (since I don't seem to be of the mindset) part of the reason why Americans drive the cars they do is status symbol/machismo/style.
I'm sure some do, but that's a very, very small reason. The reason people own cars is for the freedom of travel. With certain exceptions (very dense cities with subways and slow traffic), cars are almost always more efficient for getting around. And they're also nearly always the cheapest way to travel long-distance, even with gas prices what they are, and you get all the freedom to stop and travel where you want to.
The question isn't why Americans love cars, the question is why Europe doesn't.
Talk about a pipe dream. This guy acts as though no one ever thought of autonomous robots before. Let me give the guy a hint: there's a reason we don't have robot butlers yet that clean the house, cook the food, etc, etc. It's because we don't have a science of Artificial Intelligence yet, and don't have a clue how to do it. (And Roomba isn't even in the same universe).
Given that we don't even have autonomous servants that can slowly do our bidding, this guy wants to strap a computer into multi-thousand pound death machine travelling at 40/50/60 miles an hour (calculate that kinetic energy on that), give it a kick in the rear-end and let it fly? On normal, public roads? Yeah, right.
This guy is so in the dark about how far we are away from this that it's funny. Yeah, just ask the geeks to crank this out in their spare time. And then they can pick up their Nobel Prize in Computer Science that'll be invented just for them.
Just those things that have significant cost to the planet, with nearly no gain. For example, an air conditioner is probably not decadent waste.
But you just know there are plenty of people out there who *do* consider air conditioning a decadent waste that's "killing the planet".
But running an air conditioner at 68 degrees on a 110 degree day is decadent waste.
I disagree this is decadent waste -- this is a lifestyle choice. I would say that decadent waste is when you have gross inefficiency. For example, let's say I have a swimming treadmill, and the way I design it is that I add water in one end, and let the other end go into the sewer system. *That's* decadent waste, because I could just as easily have a pump and a pipe, as well as a filtration system. Choosing 68 degrees is simply desiring a comfortable lifestyle, which is achieved in a reasonably efficient way.
Playing the game of "I can tolerate more discomfort than thou" just reduces us all to nothing. There's always someone who can criticize your lifestyle choices as wasteful. Heck, there are people who criticize the entire Western lifestyle as decadent. Anything beyond an African tribesman's lifestyle is decadent.
Personally my pet peeve with SUVs (or for that mater any tall car which is not meant for work) is that they make driving more dangerous for everybody else. Mostly the problem is that they block the forward view to anybody behind them in a car where the driver is lower:
See, this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about -- the irrationality. I also happen to have a minivan (both happen to be Hondas), not usually seen as one of the works of the devil like SUVs. My SUV is *one inch* higher than my minivan (I just measured them). It just happens to have about four inches more ground clearance than the minivan, which makes it *look* like it's bigger. And I like the fact that I'm riding higher and can see around me better, which actually increases my safety margin for everyone else, at least from the standpoint of being able to see.
So you're worried about a vehicle that isn't even that big in the scheme of things -- but you think it is. I worry way more about huge shipping trucks blocking my vision than any passenger car, but you know what? You have to be careful. Cars are incredibly dangerous, and you have to treat them that way.
Of course, heavier cars are more dangerous for smaller cars in a collision. But then, smaller cars are more dangerous for motorcycles in a collision (and you can certainly see around motorcycles easier than a car). Should we frown on everyone who doesn't drive a motorcycle? And it's not fair that motorcycles are heavier than bicycles. Who wins in that collision? And it's not fair that bicycles are dangerous to skateboarders, that are more dangerous to runners, that are more dangerous to walkers, etc, etc.
Cars are dangerous, no doubt about it. But to play the game of "my smaller vehicle is better than your larger vehicle" just reduces us all to walking, in order to minimize risk. Life is risky.
Go try living somewhere with chronic unemployment, and try working yourself out of that hole (perhaps one of the inner cities in your own country) by dint of your 'capability to create money'.
This is actually an amazing sentence. Think about what you're saying. The reason a place has chronic unemployment is because not enough wealth is being created to have a healthy enough economy for full employment.
If you're not willing to try that, ask yourself why, if your credo of 'the poor are poor because they're stupid and lazy' is true.
Wow. Way to miss the point. Go back and read my carefully chosen words.
As to your SUV, the rising price of fuel will teach you lessons that apparently 'rationality' can not.
Actually, this is the first rational thing you've said that actually skirts near an economic principle.
The things you consider civilization are the most worthless parts of it. Clean water is going to be worth much more in one hundred years than your rusted SUV. Clean air will be worth more than your house that was built out of cheap wood and sheetrock, which will likely be demolished sixty years after it was built. The ability to grow food will be worth more than the electronics that will end up in the rubbish pile.
LOL. Nice false dichotomy. Just because I like to live outside of caves doesn't mean I don't value clean water, air, and other necessities.
Because of our lifestyle decisions, we are now unable to meet the needs of our own infrastructure. Maybe you like living at the end of the leash held by the world's oil companies and nationalized dictatorships, but I think it's incredibly short sighted.
You have a fundamental, though painfully common, misunderstanding of how resources are created and allocated. That you quote Chomsky in your signature explains a lot, he is one of the most deluded people in the history of published political literature.
That I own an SUV has nothing to do with the poor African on the other side of the planet. If everyone gave up every luxury and transferred everything to the poor, all we would have is more poor people. This is critical: lack of resources is not caused by lack of money, it's caused by the lack of capability to create money. Nearly all poverty is covered by two causes: 1) self choice, and 2) lack of political freedom and political infrastructure.
The "gloom-and-doomers" are the people who see problems and deal with them rather than sticking their heads in the sand.
I believe in rationality above all else. Doing something that is useless is worse than doing nothing at all, because you delude yourself that you're having an effect, rather than considering what might have a better effect. Your obsession with SUVs is a perfect example: SUVs are NOTHING in the great scheme of problems in the world. But when you work up healthy self-righteousness, you feel like you're doing something constructive.
Yes, I own a car, which gets only 30mpg. But I live four miles from where I work, and I bike there four out of five days every week.
I work out of my house and probably use less resources than you. But go ahead and live whatever lifestyle you want. Please! What you don't understand is that resources are effectively unlimited. You won't understand this, but here's an example: we will NEVER run out of oil. NEVER. I mean, not in a million years. Why? Because oil just gets more expensive to get out of the ground until something else becomes cheaper. That's the way things work. Technology will always produce a solution to our problems, and our temporary excesses.
We will never run out of energy. We are surrounded by enormous amounts of energy! Sometimes it'll get more expensive, but then something else will come along to produce more energy. We're already seeing a shift to electric cars, as the technology is maturing, and the price of oil is making it more economical. As mass production takes off, they'll get cheaper. Voila! I still have my SUV, and I didn't need to suffer in the meantime.
But if you're going to ignore the very real problems our society is facing, you need to realize that you are that shithead who shows up to party but never buys any booze and never helps clean up.
As a matter of fact, I don't ignore them -- but you do, because you don't understand them. Take a few courses in economics. Find out how things really work. Are there messes to clean up? Of course! As there always will be. And things will adjust. I bet you think that things have never been worse than they are now.
You are a douche bag, and everyone knows it and hates you. If you can live with that, then good for you.
As I said, I believe in rationality above all else. You absolutely cannot conceive how little I care that irrational people might hate me. They are simply beneath my notice.
your SUV isn't civilization, and the fact that you think it is indicates a deeply flawed view of the world.
My SUV is absolutely an attribute of civilization. A civilized life is one in which man is made more comfortable. And my SUV is very comfortable. The fact that a mere car that's a bit larger than average has someone become a symbol of decadent waste is one of the absurdities of the whole environmental movement. I like having space. I like being able to go to Home Depot and haul stuff back. I like being able to drive my kids and their friends around.
By this logic, EVERYTHING in life that humans create could be defined as decadent waste. You can always find something less convenient that saves resources. How much energy would I save if I washed my clothes by hand instead of having a washing machine?
The gloom-and-doomers are the new Puritans. If anyone wants to live a better life than what they approve of, then they froth and scream that their killing the planet.
In other words, before you throw stones at my SUV, why don't you list all the areas in your glass house in which you expend energy to make your life better.
The payback time, assuming energy costs don't spike steeply, is a little under nine years. If we sell the house, we should get it all back immediately.
If he thinks someone is going to pay a 36K premium (1/3 of the price of an entire house in some areas of the country), he is completely insane. He'll be lucky to get an extra $5 to $10K, if he's not lucky, it'll reduce the value because of the lack of attractiveness.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a legislative arm. It has broad legislated enforcement mandates from Congress, going back to the early-mid 1930s on communications policy and enforcement.
Yes, exactly. Enforcement. Not legislative. We agree.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access.
And then, frustratingly, you turn right around and are happy(!) that they go power drunk and implement network neutrality in direct violation of THE LAW. Do you not see the problem with this? Do you think your local police should be able to create new laws and ignore others?
That you like the new law they created out of nothing should be irrelevant. Think about the fact they think they can do anything they want.
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
Yes, I've heard that theory, but it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation. I don't like what Comcast did, but I also don't like using abusing unrelated laws.
Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal. The FCC is overstepping its bounds by acting like NN is already law. You might like this particular decision, but it sets a bad precedent for the FCC doing whatever it wants without regard for what the law actually is. You might not like the next decision.
The FCC should be an enforcement arm of the government, not a legislative arm.
I thought maybe different languages might explain things, but I'd say English is by far the most popular languages. I might even buy English is not the majority of pages anymore (though, I'm skeptical), but only 1 in 25 pages is English?
Hmm. This probably means something statistically, but I'm not sure what... I started adding digits to a number until I hit one result. I had to get to nine digits:
123512553
215323703
684354537
I also found a few with 0 to 3 results. Interestingly, I couldn't find any eight digit numbers that scored zero hits.
Counts of words:
the: 18.3 billion pages
a: 23.9B
0: 12.7B
1: 25.4B
in: 17.1B
I: 10.2B
I know these numbers aren't exact, but you'd think one of them would be over 100B if Google is really indexing a trillion pages. What's on them? Anyone find any keywords that produce more?
this "woman researcher" NO FUCKING LESS just shot your entire belief structure down in flames. You talk about creationism, all you've got supporting your theories here is faith. ZERO proof. ZEEE ROHHHH.
Wow... just... wow. You've actually managed to stun me. I shouldn't be surprised, but... the level of denial, and reading what you want to see, rather than what it actually says, is just breathtaking.
I'll just end with quoting the article again, which pretty much says it all:
Astonishing indeed.
Lol! Really, that's all I got, you really can't distinguish between micro and macro.
You know, this actually (frustratingly) reminds me of debating creationism. Yes, I understand the difference between micro and macro, but you don't seem to. "Micro" and "Macro" are not quantities. The difference between them is relative, which is the point I was trying to make with using the term "high level".
Some differences between males and females are great, and some are subtle, but there is no denying that there are very fundamental differences. And subtle differences can be very significant. And yes, there are STRUCTURAL, PHYSICAL differences between men and women's brains. Here is but one article on the subject, from a woman researcher, no less. I quote:
Now I'm done with this subject. Sheesh.
So you agree with me. Yes I took your quote out of context, but your context is all about a point that doesn't matter - low-level differences.
No, I don't agree with you. "From a high level," humans and chimpanzees look very similar. Not that the difference between males and females is the same as the difference between humans and chimps, but the point is that cumulative low-level differences add up to significant differences.
Actually, I'm not even sure what your point is at this point. Are you claiming that men and women are physically identical, except for the sex organs?
Could be... One of the biggest factors in tennis is arm span.
I'm sorry. This has gone beyond absurdity into outright delusional insanity, assuming you're not just trolling. And I just can't bring myself to fix your logic flaws (on so many levels) regarding comparing averages. I think I'll just back away slowly at this point.
How exactly do you arrive at "physically different in nearly every way?"
Why do you think testing of new drugs is broken out by male and female? Because drugs affect males and females differently. Sure, from a high level, men and women work very similarly, but the differences are there, and they are important. And "minor" hormone differences? Uh, no.
when you standardize by scale, disparities frequently disappear.
This is the most absurd thing I've read this week. So, by your theory, Venus Williams and Roger Federer, who are both 6' 1", world-class, and in their prime, should be equally matched?
Then take a look at men and women body builders, both dedicated to being as large as possible. Do you see a bit of difference in how big each one can get?
Then take a look at women's basketball. There are plenty of tall women there, yet there are two (maybe three) dunks performed in the HISTORY of the league. And the two women who can do them can barely do them.
To claim that men and women have identical bodies beyond the sex organs is just plain delusional.
Sweeping generalizations like yours are usually wrong...
Did you actually read that article? The margin in ultramarathons is smaller than usual, but the men are typically 5% faster. That she won a single race by five hours tells us that she wasn't running against the best men in the world.
Note that I didn't say that a woman can never win any race, anytime, against men (that is, of course, ridiculous). I said that the best women in the world never beat the best men in the world.
And anyway, what's your point? That it's a myth that world-class men are athletically superior to world-class women? Even if you managed to find a single sport where world-class women might edge the world-class men, it hardly invalidates the point, when thousands of other sports prove that it's clearly true.
Not controversy, plain wrong
I don't know if you're just trying to be funny or not, but just in case, you'll note that Bobby Riggs was 55 years old and hardly the best male tennis player in the world, but gave Billie Jean King an actual competitive match. She only won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Of course, earlier Riggs had humiliated Margaret Court, age 30 and the best female player in the world, 6-2, 6-1.
Sometime in the 80s, Martina Navratilova was asked about this generally, and she was quoted as saying she would lose to the 100th ranked male player.
Anyone who has dated a geek girl knows that misogyny is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem that girls geared toward science and math face from other girls who will be absolutely VICIOUS in putting them down.
All that proves is that girls have tribal behavior just like boys, and will ostracize anyone who is different. That says nothing about the *average* intrinsic abilities of men and women.
Personally, I don't understand why there is even any debate that men and women are different. Somehow we're supposed to believe that men and women are physically different in nearly every way -- except for the brain. Evolution clearly decided to make the brains identical for political reasons.
People need to lighten up. We're talking about averages. Women can have traditionally male traits, and men can have traditionally female traits.
On the other hand, consider this, just to introduce some controversy (:D) -- there is no case where the world's best female athlete can beat the world's best male athlete at any physical sport. Could this truth also apply to certain narrow cases of neurology? [either male or female].
Transportation is a much simpler problem than dusting and cleaning the house. You have standards and easily quantifiable data all over the road.
Not true. Most of accident avoidance is anticipation -- seeing a child losing a ball on the side of the road, watching a car pulling out of a driveway, watching the eyes of someone who is turning to make sure they are seeing you, etc.
Then we could talk about looking for road debris and pot holes, which is *not* a simple problem.
In a perfectly predictable world, yes, an autonomous car would be easy. In the real, very unpredictable world, it's not.
From what I understand (since I don't seem to be of the mindset) part of the reason why Americans drive the cars they do is status symbol/machismo/style.
I'm sure some do, but that's a very, very small reason. The reason people own cars is for the freedom of travel. With certain exceptions (very dense cities with subways and slow traffic), cars are almost always more efficient for getting around. And they're also nearly always the cheapest way to travel long-distance, even with gas prices what they are, and you get all the freedom to stop and travel where you want to.
The question isn't why Americans love cars, the question is why Europe doesn't.
Talk about a pipe dream. This guy acts as though no one ever thought of autonomous robots before. Let me give the guy a hint: there's a reason we don't have robot butlers yet that clean the house, cook the food, etc, etc. It's because we don't have a science of Artificial Intelligence yet, and don't have a clue how to do it. (And Roomba isn't even in the same universe).
Given that we don't even have autonomous servants that can slowly do our bidding, this guy wants to strap a computer into multi-thousand pound death machine travelling at 40/50/60 miles an hour (calculate that kinetic energy on that), give it a kick in the rear-end and let it fly? On normal, public roads? Yeah, right.
This guy is so in the dark about how far we are away from this that it's funny. Yeah, just ask the geeks to crank this out in their spare time. And then they can pick up their Nobel Prize in Computer Science that'll be invented just for them.
Just those things that have significant cost to the planet, with nearly no gain. For example, an air conditioner is probably not decadent waste.
But you just know there are plenty of people out there who *do* consider air conditioning a decadent waste that's "killing the planet".
But running an air conditioner at 68 degrees on a 110 degree day is decadent waste.
I disagree this is decadent waste -- this is a lifestyle choice. I would say that decadent waste is when you have gross inefficiency. For example, let's say I have a swimming treadmill, and the way I design it is that I add water in one end, and let the other end go into the sewer system. *That's* decadent waste, because I could just as easily have a pump and a pipe, as well as a filtration system. Choosing 68 degrees is simply desiring a comfortable lifestyle, which is achieved in a reasonably efficient way.
Playing the game of "I can tolerate more discomfort than thou" just reduces us all to nothing. There's always someone who can criticize your lifestyle choices as wasteful. Heck, there are people who criticize the entire Western lifestyle as decadent. Anything beyond an African tribesman's lifestyle is decadent.
Personally my pet peeve with SUVs (or for that mater any tall car which is not meant for work) is that they make driving more dangerous for everybody else. Mostly the problem is that they block the forward view to anybody behind them in a car where the driver is lower:
See, this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about -- the irrationality. I also happen to have a minivan (both happen to be Hondas), not usually seen as one of the works of the devil like SUVs. My SUV is *one inch* higher than my minivan (I just measured them). It just happens to have about four inches more ground clearance than the minivan, which makes it *look* like it's bigger. And I like the fact that I'm riding higher and can see around me better, which actually increases my safety margin for everyone else, at least from the standpoint of being able to see.
So you're worried about a vehicle that isn't even that big in the scheme of things -- but you think it is. I worry way more about huge shipping trucks blocking my vision than any passenger car, but you know what? You have to be careful. Cars are incredibly dangerous, and you have to treat them that way.
Of course, heavier cars are more dangerous for smaller cars in a collision. But then, smaller cars are more dangerous for motorcycles in a collision (and you can certainly see around motorcycles easier than a car). Should we frown on everyone who doesn't drive a motorcycle? And it's not fair that motorcycles are heavier than bicycles. Who wins in that collision? And it's not fair that bicycles are dangerous to skateboarders, that are more dangerous to runners, that are more dangerous to walkers, etc, etc.
Cars are dangerous, no doubt about it. But to play the game of "my smaller vehicle is better than your larger vehicle" just reduces us all to walking, in order to minimize risk. Life is risky.
Go try living somewhere with chronic unemployment, and try working yourself out of that hole (perhaps one of the inner cities in your own country) by dint of your 'capability to create money'.
This is actually an amazing sentence. Think about what you're saying. The reason a place has chronic unemployment is because not enough wealth is being created to have a healthy enough economy for full employment.
If you're not willing to try that, ask yourself why, if your credo of 'the poor are poor because they're stupid and lazy' is true.
Wow. Way to miss the point. Go back and read my carefully chosen words.
As to your SUV, the rising price of fuel will teach you lessons that apparently 'rationality' can not.
Actually, this is the first rational thing you've said that actually skirts near an economic principle.
The things you consider civilization are the most worthless parts of it. Clean water is going to be worth much more in one hundred years than your rusted SUV. Clean air will be worth more than your house that was built out of cheap wood and sheetrock, which will likely be demolished sixty years after it was built. The ability to grow food will be worth more than the electronics that will end up in the rubbish pile.
LOL. Nice false dichotomy. Just because I like to live outside of caves doesn't mean I don't value clean water, air, and other necessities.
Because of our lifestyle decisions, we are now unable to meet the needs of our own infrastructure. Maybe you like living at the end of the leash held by the world's oil companies and nationalized dictatorships, but I think it's incredibly short sighted.
You have a fundamental, though painfully common, misunderstanding of how resources are created and allocated. That you quote Chomsky in your signature explains a lot, he is one of the most deluded people in the history of published political literature.
That I own an SUV has nothing to do with the poor African on the other side of the planet. If everyone gave up every luxury and transferred everything to the poor, all we would have is more poor people. This is critical: lack of resources is not caused by lack of money, it's caused by the lack of capability to create money. Nearly all poverty is covered by two causes: 1) self choice, and 2) lack of political freedom and political infrastructure.
The "gloom-and-doomers" are the people who see problems and deal with them rather than sticking their heads in the sand.
I believe in rationality above all else. Doing something that is useless is worse than doing nothing at all, because you delude yourself that you're having an effect, rather than considering what might have a better effect. Your obsession with SUVs is a perfect example: SUVs are NOTHING in the great scheme of problems in the world. But when you work up healthy self-righteousness, you feel like you're doing something constructive.
Yes, I own a car, which gets only 30mpg. But I live four miles from where I work, and I bike there four out of five days every week.
I work out of my house and probably use less resources than you. But go ahead and live whatever lifestyle you want. Please! What you don't understand is that resources are effectively unlimited. You won't understand this, but here's an example: we will NEVER run out of oil. NEVER. I mean, not in a million years. Why? Because oil just gets more expensive to get out of the ground until something else becomes cheaper. That's the way things work. Technology will always produce a solution to our problems, and our temporary excesses.
We will never run out of energy. We are surrounded by enormous amounts of energy! Sometimes it'll get more expensive, but then something else will come along to produce more energy. We're already seeing a shift to electric cars, as the technology is maturing, and the price of oil is making it more economical. As mass production takes off, they'll get cheaper. Voila! I still have my SUV, and I didn't need to suffer in the meantime.
But if you're going to ignore the very real problems our society is facing, you need to realize that you are that shithead who shows up to party but never buys any booze and never helps clean up.
As a matter of fact, I don't ignore them -- but you do, because you don't understand them. Take a few courses in economics. Find out how things really work. Are there messes to clean up? Of course! As there always will be. And things will adjust. I bet you think that things have never been worse than they are now.
You are a douche bag, and everyone knows it and hates you. If you can live with that, then good for you.
As I said, I believe in rationality above all else. You absolutely cannot conceive how little I care that irrational people might hate me. They are simply beneath my notice.
That's quite a lot of self-justifying and pontificating in response to to such a small original comment.
You're under the mistaken, though amusingly self-absorbed, impression that I'm responding to only you personally.
your SUV isn't civilization, and the fact that you think it is indicates a deeply flawed view of the world.
My SUV is absolutely an attribute of civilization. A civilized life is one in which man is made more comfortable. And my SUV is very comfortable. The fact that a mere car that's a bit larger than average has someone become a symbol of decadent waste is one of the absurdities of the whole environmental movement. I like having space. I like being able to go to Home Depot and haul stuff back. I like being able to drive my kids and their friends around.
By this logic, EVERYTHING in life that humans create could be defined as decadent waste. You can always find something less convenient that saves resources. How much energy would I save if I washed my clothes by hand instead of having a washing machine?
The gloom-and-doomers are the new Puritans. If anyone wants to live a better life than what they approve of, then they froth and scream that their killing the planet.
In other words, before you throw stones at my SUV, why don't you list all the areas in your glass house in which you expend energy to make your life better.
The payback time, assuming energy costs don't spike steeply, is a little under nine years. If we sell the house, we should get it all back immediately.
If he thinks someone is going to pay a 36K premium (1/3 of the price of an entire house in some areas of the country), he is completely insane. He'll be lucky to get an extra $5 to $10K, if he's not lucky, it'll reduce the value because of the lack of attractiveness.