There are very few roads with 70 mile per hour speed limits and 1 foot of clearance. Like, none.
Usually, a road with four lanes will have a median if the speed limit is above about 40 mph, and even below 40 there is often a fifth lane for turning.
Two lane roads have lanes that are about 5 feet wider than most cars, so in reality, there is 4-5 feet of clearance between vehicles, and it is rare for the combined speed in those situations to exceed 120 mph, which generally would require the drives to be going a combined 10 miles per hour faster than the posted speed (which is 55 mph on almost all two lane highways, there are some exceptions here and there). It isn't all that uncommon for people to drive 65 mph when the posted speed is 55 mph, but it isn't the rule either.
Yes, but you are incapable of censoring me, whereas the government is capable of censoring me.
See, preventing me from using your resources to spread my message isn't censorship, because you aren't preventing me from spreading my message, you are preventing me from using your resources, which you have every right to do.
In the U.S., people are certainly better off than they were 100 years ago. That's an easy test though. I would say most people in the U.S. are better off than they would have been 50 years ago. That's still probably an easy test.
Go back more than 100 years and the discussion becomes a joke. Come closer than 50 years and you need to do something other than claim that trends are such and such or numbers are such and such, you need to point at the numbers you think represent the situation and explain why your interpretation is correct.
The way I see it, an engaged, wealthy China is better for its citizens than an isolated, poor China, so I don't really feel bad participating in the system and I use Google.
They are ratios of total national productivity to population. The idea is that economic productivity needs to match consumption in order to sustain a lifestyle(setting aside whether the economic activity is environmentally sustainable). If the U.S. was run in an entirely, evenly redistributive fashion, there would be $43k of resources to give to each person (assuming the redistribution did not impact productivity in either direction). If you only redistribute to people who are economically productive, there is $100,000 per person.
So the definition of rich is then "more than average", which is a probably a pretty good floor(i.e., someone with less than average isn't going to think they are rich, ever).
I'm not sure how a standard deviation would be (or even could be) derived for such a thing.
If you run the same numbers for total global productivity versus total global population, it is more like $11,000 per person, so the great majority of people in the U.S. are rich by global standards (pretty much everybody except for relatively low income households with several children).
That article talks about administrative costs (this is where employee salaries get accounted for) as if they are somehow evil drains on what should be R&D spending. If there wasn't any administrative cost, there wouldn't be a company. You are making it worse by grouping administrative, sales and marketing costs all under 'marketing'.
Drug companies spend a healthy amount of money on marketing, and they make healthy profits, but the solution isn't to dismantle them, it is to build more efficient competitors and then let them dismantle themselves. If it isn't possible to build a more efficient competitor, then the law needs to be changed, or the drug companies are making appropriate profits.
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There are 40,000+ traffic deaths a year in the U.S. alone. That's more than 100 per day.
I'm pretty sure that there isn't a fatal plane crash every 5 days.
Oh, I got that.
Then I made a joke about metric vs English units.
I'm pretty sure that Kjella was not joking.
Your life will be flashing before your eyes.
It should say "You watched it, you can't unwatch it" in an ominous voice.
There is a big difference between driving into a new city at ~6 pm and seeing an ad for a restaurant that serves cuisine that you like and spam.
I didn't think it was _that_ bad.
There are about 100 vehicle related fatalities in the United States everyday. 40,000+ a year.
http://www.ite.org/crashes/index.htm
(just an interesting statistic, not really a counter to anything you said)
Traffic is slow in Atlanta because there aren't any natural obstructions. Or that is probably part of it anyway:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten?printable=true
Every time you stick in a new road, more people decide that they can drive further.
There are very few roads with 70 mile per hour speed limits and 1 foot of clearance. Like, none.
Usually, a road with four lanes will have a median if the speed limit is above about 40 mph, and even below 40 there is often a fifth lane for turning.
Two lane roads have lanes that are about 5 feet wider than most cars, so in reality, there is 4-5 feet of clearance between vehicles, and it is rare for the combined speed in those situations to exceed 120 mph, which generally would require the drives to be going a combined 10 miles per hour faster than the posted speed (which is 55 mph on almost all two lane highways, there are some exceptions here and there). It isn't all that uncommon for people to drive 65 mph when the posted speed is 55 mph, but it isn't the rule either.
Is it bad that I immediately thought "75 mph" when I read "how fast they're actually going when they're driving 120 kilometer/hour"?
I do agree with your point though, people drive in an astonishingly aggressive fashion, even at high speeds where seconds are serious distances.
Please assist in enhancing the captainobvious tag, it should be captainoblivious.
It was awful nice of you to click on "Post" for him.
Yes, but you are incapable of censoring me, whereas the government is capable of censoring me.
See, preventing me from using your resources to spread my message isn't censorship, because you aren't preventing me from spreading my message, you are preventing me from using your resources, which you have every right to do.
There is no need to invoke the Mods.
They, like the Gods, will do as they will.
You mean that he's gonna have a hell of time finding where to put his coffee.
The article:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4258725.html
They don't say anything about the hard disks used in each machine, so it is at least possible to speculate that the Mac has a faster disk in it.
It's not all broken:
http://dilbert.com/fast/2008-05-10/
This is also pretty nice:
http://dilbert.com/rss/
You are insinuating that the people who work in life and death situations at NASA are incapable of acting in a professional manner. It's preposterous.
That's like not running an emergency room on April 1st because a doctor might decide it is funny to cut a patients head off.
What numbers?
In the U.S., people are certainly better off than they were 100 years ago. That's an easy test though. I would say most people in the U.S. are better off than they would have been 50 years ago. That's still probably an easy test.
Go back more than 100 years and the discussion becomes a joke. Come closer than 50 years and you need to do something other than claim that trends are such and such or numbers are such and such, you need to point at the numbers you think represent the situation and explain why your interpretation is correct.
Respect for other people will never be an outdated concept.
The way I see it, an engaged, wealthy China is better for its citizens than an isolated, poor China, so I don't really feel bad participating in the system and I use Google.
That's assuming that policy allows the developer to create a branch on a whim.
They are ratios of total national productivity to population. The idea is that economic productivity needs to match consumption in order to sustain a lifestyle(setting aside whether the economic activity is environmentally sustainable). If the U.S. was run in an entirely, evenly redistributive fashion, there would be $43k of resources to give to each person (assuming the redistribution did not impact productivity in either direction). If you only redistribute to people who are economically productive, there is $100,000 per person.
So the definition of rich is then "more than average", which is a probably a pretty good floor(i.e., someone with less than average isn't going to think they are rich, ever).
I'm not sure how a standard deviation would be (or even could be) derived for such a thing.
If you run the same numbers for total global productivity versus total global population, it is more like $11,000 per person, so the great majority of people in the U.S. are rich by global standards (pretty much everybody except for relatively low income households with several children).
That article talks about administrative costs (this is where employee salaries get accounted for) as if they are somehow evil drains on what should be R&D spending. If there wasn't any administrative cost, there wouldn't be a company. You are making it worse by grouping administrative, sales and marketing costs all under 'marketing'.
Drug companies spend a healthy amount of money on marketing, and they make healthy profits, but the solution isn't to dismantle them, it is to build more efficient competitors and then let them dismantle themselves. If it isn't possible to build a more efficient competitor, then the law needs to be changed, or the drug companies are making appropriate profits.