SQL didn't exist until long after COBOL was a major thing. What COBOL is good at is dealing with fixed width record format flat files, which was a common way of storing stuff when COBOL was first invented. When you have a large complex system that's been going for decades, is fully debugged, and just works there is a huge cost in rewriting it that may just not be worth it.
I reach at least 35 mph every day I cycle according to the Cyclemeter GPS application. It's pretty easy to reach that speed downhill. On the level I can sustain pretty much all day long 17-18 mph.
I'm a utility cyclist, but cyclemeter tells me I sustain about 17 or 18 mph on the flat (I live in a rural area so cars are not impeding me). I commonly hit 20mph for stretches, and there are some downhill parts of my ride where I hit 35 mph. I don't wear any lycra at all either.
In cities like New York and London, it's usually that the cars cannot keep up with bicycles (not the other way around). I live in a rural area, but whenever I've cycled in congested urban areas, I've often been MUCH quicker than car traffic and usually the cars are slowing me down. Car traffic in cities is slow because there are too many cars, not because of cyclists (or little duckies).
There's even an episode of Top Gear where they prove the bicycle is the fastest method of getting across London. And that's a TV programme unashamedly biased towards the car.
On the flat (and I'm not a lycra clad person either) I can easily keep up 17-18 mph all day. In a city, this is usually as fast (if not faster) than cars. In no way are cyclists doing this speed compatible with 3mph pedestrians. Cyclists belong on the road. (In fact where I live cyclists have a right to be on the road - cars do not, cars need to be licensed, car drivers need to be licensed).
Motorcyclists are also vulnerable road users. Should they be on the sidewalk too?
It's also human nature. We know we're slowly buggering things up, but it'll take a while. To fix it means a large change in the way we run our world, and it will be difficult and may cause mild discomfort in the short term. On the other hand we can simply deny it's happening and continue with the business as usual which is far easier and the path of least resistance. People don't want to feel guilty for driving an SUV either, it's easier and more consistent to deny that anything is happening rather than admitting that you're (an albeit tiny) part of the problem.
Temperatures have increased in the last decade. The problem is you've cherry picked one particularly warm year to use as a reference point. However if you zoom out on the graph you'll see the temperature increase trend has been relentless.
This is true but there is an underlying motive to dismissing the consensus in climate science (particularly AGW). The scientific consensus would require a significant change from business as usual. It's far easier (and you feel less guilty for doing it) to simply dismiss the consensus or try to rubbish the consensus and continue with the current business as usual, than make a meaningful change. It's just people following the path of least resistance.
I live on an island that can be described as entirely rural. It's about the surface area of the Houston area in the US, but with only 80,000 people and also separated by miles of water from any metropolitan area. Our population is mostly dispersed around the island. Yet everyone here can get a 50Mbit/sec connection and we have three ISPs and actual competition.
Don't apologise for your crappy ISPs and lack of competition. If we can do it, any rural area of the US could do it too - if it weren't for the ISPs campaigning to get public infrastructure and real competition banned.
There are plenty of airlines in general with a mid-range option. For example British Airways has "World Traveller Plus" on its transatlantic routes. Basically, it's an economy seat with A LOT more legroom, plus a plug in for your laptop, plus things like real metal cutlery instead of plastic. The price varies but last time I flew it was about 25% more expensive than plain economy.
I used to use a small laptop with a 12 inch screen. On a transatlantic flight the teenage girl in the seat in front reclined the seat so violently it was pure luck the screen didn't get trapped and broken. The recline mechanism really needs a damper in it to limit the speed at which it can recline (and on transatlantic flights, reclining is pretty necessary).
For domestic flights, easyJet has the best idea - their seats don't recline at all.
Who claims fructose is a non-digestable sweetner? Fructose is half of what's in normal sugar (sucrose) and is extremely easy to digest. Fructose is the sugar in US non-diet Coke.
Calorie restriction may increase lifespan more than exercise, but exercise will make it more probable that the achieved lifespan has good quality closer to the end. It's no good boosting your lifespan 10 years if it's going to be 10 years of very poor health and low quality of life caused by chronic conditions caused by chronic lack of exercise.
Just to give you an idea (and why it is move more AND AND AND eat less), I have a hilly bicycle commute. To and from work is 24 miles. Assuming I average 120 watts power output and it takes 50 minutes each way, that's only 720 kilojoules burned exercising (that's only 171 kcal, or about three quarters of a Mars bar).
(Sure I'll burn more than 171kcal in total but most of that will be energy required just to live, which would be burned even if I were sitting at my computer, so the additional energy burned by 24 miles of cycling is only about 171kcal. Even if we add some inefficiency factors to this for energy lost by muscles, it won't work out much more than a Mars bar's worth of calories).
But the real benefit of this exercise is that it's (a) extremely cheap transport and (b) I feel so much better than during an inactive period.
Portion size. I've not been to Japan, but in my native country, portion size is generally less than half of what it is in the USA. We eat a hell of a lot less.
I spend less than an hour on cooking and less than an hour on cleaning up to make a family meal. If it takes you that long to make a healthy meal you're doing it wrong. If I cook just for myself the entire process of cooking and cleaning up is usually under 20 minutes, and the cooking time doesn't require 100% attention (I can often do other things during the heating phase).
Rubbish. I know lots of people over 30 and most of them have fully working bodies (myself included). The difference between over 30s with fully working bodies and the ones without are the ones with fully working bodies have had a long term active lifestyle.
Michael Phelps is a bad example in this case, the overwhelming majority of people cannot dedicate their entire life to fitness like a professional athlete does.
In reality most people don't even do the 2.5 hrs a week of exercise which is the bare minimum, let alone the 5 hours a week that is recommended for good long term health (Phelps probably gets 5 hours *a day*). In reality most people need to both move more AND eat less AND eat better.
If the US and Europe were to reduce carbon output to post civil war levels (i.e. effectively go back to some sort of agrarian lifestyle), China and India certainly wouldn't be using more coal and oil. It is the US and Europe which is driving the demand for fuel in China. It's not Chinese peasants buying all the stuff China puts out, it's generally the West that's fuelling China's increasing demand.
Try a bicycle. It's a marvellous machine, probably the most efficient machine that anyone can go out and buy. When you ride a bicycle for utility you're not just riding to get exercise for the sake of exercise, you're getting useful transport out of it, too. In many urban settings, riding a bicycle for transportation is no slower than any other method of transport and is considerably less expensive and considerably less dangerous once you consider the risks of chronic diseases brought on by lack of exercise you'll avoid.
Even where I live (which is very uncongested traffic wise) where cycling has a time cost, I effectively get two minutes exercise for the price of one minute for every two minutes I ride since driving to work still takes half as long as cycling to work, and not only do I get great health benefits from it, I spend far less on my car by not using it all the time.
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SQL didn't exist until long after COBOL was a major thing. What COBOL is good at is dealing with fixed width record format flat files, which was a common way of storing stuff when COBOL was first invented. When you have a large complex system that's been going for decades, is fully debugged, and just works there is a huge cost in rewriting it that may just not be worth it.
The first two are easy... but the last one? Yikes!
I reach at least 35 mph every day I cycle according to the Cyclemeter GPS application. It's pretty easy to reach that speed downhill.
On the level I can sustain pretty much all day long 17-18 mph.
I'm a utility cyclist, but cyclemeter tells me I sustain about 17 or 18 mph on the flat (I live in a rural area so cars are not impeding me). I commonly hit 20mph for stretches, and there are some downhill parts of my ride where I hit 35 mph. I don't wear any lycra at all either.
In cities like New York and London, it's usually that the cars cannot keep up with bicycles (not the other way around). I live in a rural area, but whenever I've cycled in congested urban areas, I've often been MUCH quicker than car traffic and usually the cars are slowing me down. Car traffic in cities is slow because there are too many cars, not because of cyclists (or little duckies).
There's even an episode of Top Gear where they prove the bicycle is the fastest method of getting across London. And that's a TV programme unashamedly biased towards the car.
That's a troll, right?
On the flat (and I'm not a lycra clad person either) I can easily keep up 17-18 mph all day. In a city, this is usually as fast (if not faster) than cars. In no way are cyclists doing this speed compatible with 3mph pedestrians. Cyclists belong on the road. (In fact where I live cyclists have a right to be on the road - cars do not, cars need to be licensed, car drivers need to be licensed).
Motorcyclists are also vulnerable road users. Should they be on the sidewalk too?
It's also human nature. We know we're slowly buggering things up, but it'll take a while. To fix it means a large change in the way we run our world, and it will be difficult and may cause mild discomfort in the short term. On the other hand we can simply deny it's happening and continue with the business as usual which is far easier and the path of least resistance. People don't want to feel guilty for driving an SUV either, it's easier and more consistent to deny that anything is happening rather than admitting that you're (an albeit tiny) part of the problem.
Temperatures have increased in the last decade. The problem is you've cherry picked one particularly warm year to use as a reference point. However if you zoom out on the graph you'll see the temperature increase trend has been relentless.
This is true but there is an underlying motive to dismissing the consensus in climate science (particularly AGW). The scientific consensus would require a significant change from business as usual. It's far easier (and you feel less guilty for doing it) to simply dismiss the consensus or try to rubbish the consensus and continue with the current business as usual, than make a meaningful change. It's just people following the path of least resistance.
I live on an island that can be described as entirely rural. It's about the surface area of the Houston area in the US, but with only 80,000 people and also separated by miles of water from any metropolitan area. Our population is mostly dispersed around the island. Yet everyone here can get a 50Mbit/sec connection and we have three ISPs and actual competition.
Don't apologise for your crappy ISPs and lack of competition. If we can do it, any rural area of the US could do it too - if it weren't for the ISPs campaigning to get public infrastructure and real competition banned.
There are plenty of airlines in general with a mid-range option. For example British Airways has "World Traveller Plus" on its transatlantic routes. Basically, it's an economy seat with A LOT more legroom, plus a plug in for your laptop, plus things like real metal cutlery instead of plastic. The price varies but last time I flew it was about 25% more expensive than plain economy.
I used to use a small laptop with a 12 inch screen. On a transatlantic flight the teenage girl in the seat in front reclined the seat so violently it was pure luck the screen didn't get trapped and broken. The recline mechanism really needs a damper in it to limit the speed at which it can recline (and on transatlantic flights, reclining is pretty necessary).
For domestic flights, easyJet has the best idea - their seats don't recline at all.
The obesity epidemic also correlates with the increase in amount of food eaten and the decrease in the amount of exercise taken.
Who claims fructose is a non-digestable sweetner? Fructose is half of what's in normal sugar (sucrose) and is extremely easy to digest. Fructose is the sugar in US non-diet Coke.
Calorie restriction may increase lifespan more than exercise, but exercise will make it more probable that the achieved lifespan has good quality closer to the end. It's no good boosting your lifespan 10 years if it's going to be 10 years of very poor health and low quality of life caused by chronic conditions caused by chronic lack of exercise.
Just to give you an idea (and why it is move more AND AND AND eat less), I have a hilly bicycle commute. To and from work is 24 miles. Assuming I average 120 watts power output and it takes 50 minutes each way, that's only 720 kilojoules burned exercising (that's only 171 kcal, or about three quarters of a Mars bar).
(Sure I'll burn more than 171kcal in total but most of that will be energy required just to live, which would be burned even if I were sitting at my computer, so the additional energy burned by 24 miles of cycling is only about 171kcal. Even if we add some inefficiency factors to this for energy lost by muscles, it won't work out much more than a Mars bar's worth of calories).
But the real benefit of this exercise is that it's (a) extremely cheap transport and (b) I feel so much better than during an inactive period.
Portion size. I've not been to Japan, but in my native country, portion size is generally less than half of what it is in the USA. We eat a hell of a lot less.
I spend less than an hour on cooking and less than an hour on cleaning up to make a family meal. If it takes you that long to make a healthy meal you're doing it wrong. If I cook just for myself the entire process of cooking and cleaning up is usually under 20 minutes, and the cooking time doesn't require 100% attention (I can often do other things during the heating phase).
Rubbish. I know lots of people over 30 and most of them have fully working bodies (myself included). The difference between over 30s with fully working bodies and the ones without are the ones with fully working bodies have had a long term active lifestyle.
Michael Phelps is a bad example in this case, the overwhelming majority of people cannot dedicate their entire life to fitness like a professional athlete does.
In reality most people don't even do the 2.5 hrs a week of exercise which is the bare minimum, let alone the 5 hours a week that is recommended for good long term health (Phelps probably gets 5 hours *a day*). In reality most people need to both move more AND eat less AND eat better.
So the Russian military allows their soldiers to go on leave in a tank?
Why? In my country not only is it legal to do so but it's expected that motorcyclists will lane split (we call it "filtering" here).
China is our off shored CO2 producer. China only produces this much because of Western demand for their goods.
If the US and Europe were to reduce carbon output to post civil war levels (i.e. effectively go back to some sort of agrarian lifestyle), China and India certainly wouldn't be using more coal and oil. It is the US and Europe which is driving the demand for fuel in China. It's not Chinese peasants buying all the stuff China puts out, it's generally the West that's fuelling China's increasing demand.
Try a bicycle. It's a marvellous machine, probably the most efficient machine that anyone can go out and buy. When you ride a bicycle for utility you're not just riding to get exercise for the sake of exercise, you're getting useful transport out of it, too. In many urban settings, riding a bicycle for transportation is no slower than any other method of transport and is considerably less expensive and considerably less dangerous once you consider the risks of chronic diseases brought on by lack of exercise you'll avoid.
Even where I live (which is very uncongested traffic wise) where cycling has a time cost, I effectively get two minutes exercise for the price of one minute for every two minutes I ride since driving to work still takes half as long as cycling to work, and not only do I get great health benefits from it, I spend far less on my car by not using it all the time.