Why not make "Project White-dar"? I'll bet you could figure out if someone is white (or black, or Hispanic, or Zoroastrian) based on their Facebook friends. Most white people don't go around online pointing out loudly that they're white.
People tend to point out ways in which they are NOT the default for a given venue. So you can reasonably conclude that those who don't point out their differences probably don't have said differences. Rather like how here on Slashdot, we can reasonably assume posters are geeks unless they state otherwise, because that's the local default.
As to this notion that Authority is *automatically* entitled to trust and respect....
I'm reminded that when someone finally got around to actually *studying* the issue of "self-esteem" (since there's been this hoo-rah about "teaching kids to have self-esteem" even tho it had never been studied), the very highest level of self-esteem was found in -- criminals!! In other words, in people who assumed they were automatically better than everyone else.
Gothmolly points out: "People are posting anonymously because they have no trust in the police."
Agreed... and it would be interesting to see if the cops had the balls to arrest someone who posted the same statements under their real name. It's a lot easier to denounce an anonymous 'enemy'.
===== "Terrorists are attacking us!! We must stop this!" "Which terrorists are these??" "Uh, well, nameless terrorists..."
Yep... by the time such comments CAN erode public trust in any meaningful way, the boat is already well out to sea.
If an official has confidence in their own actions and their own department, it makes more sense (and does less to trigger the Streisand Effect) if they just ignore such comments, or direct folks to make their own observations rather than believing hearsay -- then let their actions, and their department's actions, speak for themselves.
Actually I am not a fan of democracy anymore... because in its pure form it is rule of mobs and snake-oil salesmen at the expense of average folks. I'm not sure 'educated' is a good criterion anymore either, given the education level of our congresscritters (look how many have degrees). Trouble is there's no good filter for common sense, at least not for politics.:(
That bodybuilder is also a very successful businessman, who built most of his wealth through study and hard work.
And... first you ask for amateurs to run for office, then you want people who've spent their lives studying politics. Isn't that what "professional politicians" ARE?? Make up my mind!!
Fact is, if we had more successful BUSINESSMEN (the kind who've built a business from the ground up) in office, maybe the country would be run in a more businesslike fashion and we wouldn't waste taxpayer dollars on makework bullshit like the DHS threat level thing.
And politics needs fewer lawyers (people who make their living arguing over *the problems of others*) and journalists (people who make their living reporting *the problems of others*)... do you notice the common theme, "the problems of others"?? Is it any wonder that gov't talks a lot about solving our problems, but in the long run generally makes things worse? If things got better, or if gods forbid we could fend for ourselves, we wouldn't "need" so much gov't to "solve our problems", and a lot of lawyers and journalists would be out of a political job!
Elect more backhoe operators, restaurant owners, truck drivers, and the like, and maybe problems would get SOLVED rather than perpetuated.
I have slight myopia -- I'm legal to drive without correction. And without correction it's not distance or objects that are a problem -- it's focus. As I've aged I've developed fixed focus. So I see the cars and the poles and lines and various other objects and landmarks, and I see the lettering on the signs -- but can't resolve it, making most signs at best semi-readable. This is quite different from folks I know who are more classically nearsighted -- for them, anything beyond a certain point blurs out of sight, so their world *ends* at that point. That isn't an issue for me; I see all the way to the horizon.
With correction the nonresolving-signs problem goes away, but then I can't read my dashboard (I see the letters but they don't resolve), because now my fixed focus is way the hell out yonder!!
[laughing] I know what you mean. I carry a permanent mapset in my head, and an address is a definite coordinate. But a description could be anywhere!
Ironically, my official street address is nowhere near my house, so I have to give landmark-based directions to visitors. But to my own mind I still live at a particular grid point.
I tend to do the same thing. I don't get lost. I may not know exactly where I am but I always know pretty much which way I want to go, based on my sense of direction (and the general and specific maps I carry in my head) -- I almost always know which way is north, without really thinking about it.
I've found it's latitude-dependent, tho -- grew up in MT, and first time I drove from MT to SoCal, starting at about the halfway point, I could feel the world "rotating" around me until by the time I reached San Diego, I was completely convinced that the sun should come up over the ocean! It took several months of living in SoCal before I had my directions square to the world again. (The sensation was especially strong when I was lying down.)
However, trips to the east or west don't seem to affect it.
I also have good timesense (visible sun or not). Now that you mention it, I wonder if the two go together, maybe a dual sensing of the earth's rotation and magnetic fields.
Actually, I'd reached the same conclusion... SOMEONE has got to step up and say enough is enough, and get themselves elected to office where they can actually implement the will of We The People. This thought soon turned into "Crap, if no one else does so, I might have to do it" and thoughts of running for office once I get moved back to MT, where it might actually be feasible to go forth and talk to ALL my constituents.
(Can't do in CA for various reasons, and our district does happen to have good reps right now anyway. It's the rest of CA that's elected a bunch of lunatics.:(
My truck may weigh more but uses wider tires than your average lighter car, so it's probably about the same per square inch of contact surface.
Because it's a pickup, I'm already assessed commercial weight fees with my annual license tags, so I already pay more (FOUR TIMES more than a CAR of the same weight). So I'm already paying not only extra, but a penalty simply for being the wrong TYPE of vehicle.
On top of state tags, 18-wheelers pay additional weight and licensing fees for every state they operate in.
As someone else mentioned... funny thing, no one ever thinks of reducing costs. Explain to me how we could build the whole freakin' Interstate system during the 1960s, with WAY less tax revenue, but now with taxes way up we somehow can't pay to maintain it, let alone build anew? Right......
And vehicle age doesn't necessarily correlate well with emissions. Frex, my 1978 Ford truck not only passes CA smog, it passes at about 1/3rd the allowed emissions level. Not quite a fluke, since my 1979 Chrysler car does likewise.
I've seen figures that concluded that the environmental cost to manufacture a new car (especially what with all the plastics in cars nowadays) actually exceeds the emissions cost of the average old clunker. I don't know how accurate that is, but from what I know of manufacturing and materials costs, I'd guess it's about right.
I agree with you completely, and if the number of regular middle-American folks at the Tea Parties is any indication, so do a lot of other people. The problem is getting past the political process to a candidate who really represents We The People, meaning what WE want and need, not what the GOVERNMENT wants and needs. Hello, Citizens don't exist to serve gov't; it's supposed to be the other way around!!
I've seen estimates of gov't overhead (ie. how much of our tax dollars goes just to run the gov't, BEFORE any of these dollars come back to us in whatever programs) at about 70%. Why do we tolerate that, when they already take 40-some percent of every dollar we make?? Just flush $30 out of the next $100 you earn and you'll get the same value from it!
Likely depends on the cargo, size and weight, and how easy it is to transship, as well as whether it will need multiple hops from ship to rail to truck or not. I'm sure accountants for cargo-dependent companies have nifty spreadsheets that work it all out based on current freight costs via any available method (I know Walmart does, including warehousing costs, which is why they decided to go to all superstores that would each be its own warehouse). It would be interesting to compare, tho, especially if there's a question about kickbacks to a given shipper or class of shippers and/or handlers (eg. unions).
Every chain of reasoning I've seen as to why rail mostly died out has boiled down to "truckers were given an unfair advantage in the marketplace". But I still wonder how much rail we've lost due to the death of our own manufacturing industries and the loss of need for mass distribution (no more "giant lot sent from Detroit to Chicago by rail"; now it's 50 trucks sent in all directions). I'd sure like to see it come back to America, along with the railroads. And I've read that pound for pound, rail is the most fuel-efficient way to ship freight.
Logically you'd think so... if you forget that NYC has a harbor too, as do a few other eastern seaboard cities:) and it's probably cheaper to ship stuff around the Horn on a slow barge than it is to unload it, reload it on a truck (actually that would be on several hundred trucks), drive it cross-country, unload it... perishables already go by air, so time isn't really a factor.
Middle of the country, of course, still needs that surface freight.
Reporting your odometer miles has its own privacy drawbacks:
Drive way more than the norm, and that's suspicious -- "No one drives that many miles unless they're up to something!"
Drive way less than the norm, and same thing -- "No one drives that few miles, so you are hereby convicted of tampering with the GPS."
Conversely the gas tax is anonymous and tells no one ANYTHING about your movements -- since you can still buy gas with cash. If you buy with a credit card, you have voluntarily told someone where you are, and that's on YOUR head. But it won't affect anyone else.
Otherwise... damn straight, the earlier we kill bad bills and bad policy, the better off we are. And it's about time Congresscritters had to read what they vote on. Did you see what some senator said about Obamacare? To quote the/. posts: ======= And yet they spend ~2000 billion on bank bailouts, I thought it was funny when Conyers said, "People keep saying read the bill. Have you seen the bill? It's over 1000 pages long and requires two lawyers sitting by my side to explain what it means! We don't have time to read the bill. We need to get it passed."
Someone else responded, "If your representatives don't understand what they're passing, they're no longer in control. Those two lawyers, and whoever pays them, are." ====== So very, very true.
I'd be okay with the fees being weight-related for ALL vehicles. But CA's object was to ding "commercial vehicles" just because they COULD.
As to 18-wheelers and other big trucks, there's another factor: how many more vehicle-miles would be required to move the same mass of freight, if it had to be done in smaller trucks? That 18-wheeler may actually produce LESS *NET* wear-and-tear (and probably uses less net fuel) because it only has to make ONE trip, while the same 80,000 pound load requires 40 to 60 trips in a fullsized pickup, and at least 80 trips in a mini-pickup. The smaller the truck, the more inefficient the load-to-miles ratio becomes.
And I do agree, we need rail as a viable option again. Of course, most of what used to be moved by rail, we now get off a boat from China...
It occurs to me that the same study could be accomplished through linking to the GPSs in people's cellphones, using volunteers and a little cooperation from one of the providers, at a negligible cost to taxpayers.
But $157M?! That's about $41 per resident, so call it $100 per vehicle, or somewhere around 1 to 2 months' worth of gas tax on the average driver. Perspective, anyone??
But... none of it at ANY price is worth the intrusion on our lives.
Slashdot Mirror
People tend to point out ways in which they are NOT the default for a given venue. So you can reasonably conclude that those who don't point out their differences probably don't have said differences. Rather like how here on Slashdot, we can reasonably assume posters are geeks unless they state otherwise, because that's the local default.
As to this notion that Authority is *automatically* entitled to trust and respect....
I'm reminded that when someone finally got around to actually *studying* the issue of "self-esteem" (since there's been this hoo-rah about "teaching kids to have self-esteem" even tho it had never been studied), the very highest level of self-esteem was found in -- criminals!! In other words, in people who assumed they were automatically better than everyone else.
So, it follows that they, as Democracts, agree with and support his actions.
Remember that, next time you vote.
Gothmolly points out: "People are posting anonymously because they have no trust in the police."
Agreed ... and it would be interesting to see if the cops had the balls to arrest someone who posted the same statements under their real name. It's a lot easier to denounce an anonymous 'enemy'.
=====
"Terrorists are attacking us!! We must stop this!"
"Which terrorists are these??"
"Uh, well, nameless terrorists..."
Yep... by the time such comments CAN erode public trust in any meaningful way, the boat is already well out to sea.
If an official has confidence in their own actions and their own department, it makes more sense (and does less to trigger the Streisand Effect) if they just ignore such comments, or direct folks to make their own observations rather than believing hearsay -- then let their actions, and their department's actions, speak for themselves.
How many of those are coyotes' "clients" ??
I've heard of illegal aliens claiming that their coyote "kidnapped" them to sneak them across the border. Right.....
Actually I am not a fan of democracy anymore... because in its pure form it is rule of mobs and snake-oil salesmen at the expense of average folks. I'm not sure 'educated' is a good criterion anymore either, given the education level of our congresscritters (look how many have degrees). Trouble is there's no good filter for common sense, at least not for politics. :(
I'm reminded of the "tutti-frutti" effect in DOOM, which happens to walls when there's nothing there.
Ya know, all of a sudden I like your scheme a whole lot!!
That bodybuilder is also a very successful businessman, who built most of his wealth through study and hard work.
And... first you ask for amateurs to run for office, then you want people who've spent their lives studying politics. Isn't that what "professional politicians" ARE?? Make up my mind!!
Fact is, if we had more successful BUSINESSMEN (the kind who've built a business from the ground up) in office, maybe the country would be run in a more businesslike fashion and we wouldn't waste taxpayer dollars on makework bullshit like the DHS threat level thing.
And politics needs fewer lawyers (people who make their living arguing over *the problems of others*) and journalists (people who make their living reporting *the problems of others*) ... do you notice the common theme, "the problems of others"?? Is it any wonder that gov't talks a lot about solving our problems, but in the long run generally makes things worse? If things got better, or if gods forbid we could fend for ourselves, we wouldn't "need" so much gov't to "solve our problems", and a lot of lawyers and journalists would be out of a political job!
Elect more backhoe operators, restaurant owners, truck drivers, and the like, and maybe problems would get SOLVED rather than perpetuated.
I see you're way ahead of the rest of us on the road to the totalitarian state ;)
Taking the timeline the other direction... do you remember the brand of floppies called "Moby Disks"??
Maybe something like myself:
I have slight myopia -- I'm legal to drive without correction. And without correction it's not distance or objects that are a problem -- it's focus. As I've aged I've developed fixed focus. So I see the cars and the poles and lines and various other objects and landmarks, and I see the lettering on the signs -- but can't resolve it, making most signs at best semi-readable. This is quite different from folks I know who are more classically nearsighted -- for them, anything beyond a certain point blurs out of sight, so their world *ends* at that point. That isn't an issue for me; I see all the way to the horizon.
With correction the nonresolving-signs problem goes away, but then I can't read my dashboard (I see the letters but they don't resolve), because now my fixed focus is way the hell out yonder!!
[laughing] I know what you mean. I carry a permanent mapset in my head, and an address is a definite coordinate. But a description could be anywhere!
Ironically, my official street address is nowhere near my house, so I have to give landmark-based directions to visitors. But to my own mind I still live at a particular grid point.
I tend to do the same thing. I don't get lost. I may not know exactly where I am but I always know pretty much which way I want to go, based on my sense of direction (and the general and specific maps I carry in my head) -- I almost always know which way is north, without really thinking about it.
I've found it's latitude-dependent, tho -- grew up in MT, and first time I drove from MT to SoCal, starting at about the halfway point, I could feel the world "rotating" around me until by the time I reached San Diego, I was completely convinced that the sun should come up over the ocean! It took several months of living in SoCal before I had my directions square to the world again. (The sensation was especially strong when I was lying down.)
However, trips to the east or west don't seem to affect it.
I also have good timesense (visible sun or not). Now that you mention it, I wonder if the two go together, maybe a dual sensing of the earth's rotation and magnetic fields.
Shouldn't that be something like "Yonder lies the portion for which thou hast the blame" ?? ;)
Actually, I'd reached the same conclusion... SOMEONE has got to step up and say enough is enough, and get themselves elected to office where they can actually implement the will of We The People. This thought soon turned into "Crap, if no one else does so, I might have to do it" and thoughts of running for office once I get moved back to MT, where it might actually be feasible to go forth and talk to ALL my constituents.
(Can't do in CA for various reasons, and our district does happen to have good reps right now anyway. It's the rest of CA that's elected a bunch of lunatics. :(
My truck may weigh more but uses wider tires than your average lighter car, so it's probably about the same per square inch of contact surface.
Because it's a pickup, I'm already assessed commercial weight fees with my annual license tags, so I already pay more (FOUR TIMES more than a CAR of the same weight). So I'm already paying not only extra, but a penalty simply for being the wrong TYPE of vehicle.
On top of state tags, 18-wheelers pay additional weight and licensing fees for every state they operate in.
As someone else mentioned... funny thing, no one ever thinks of reducing costs. Explain to me how we could build the whole freakin' Interstate system during the 1960s, with WAY less tax revenue, but now with taxes way up we somehow can't pay to maintain it, let alone build anew? Right......
I wonder how many times I'd have to hit it with a hammer before the innards would stop working??
And vehicle age doesn't necessarily correlate well with emissions. Frex, my 1978 Ford truck not only passes CA smog, it passes at about 1/3rd the allowed emissions level. Not quite a fluke, since my 1979 Chrysler car does likewise.
I've seen figures that concluded that the environmental cost to manufacture a new car (especially what with all the plastics in cars nowadays) actually exceeds the emissions cost of the average old clunker. I don't know how accurate that is, but from what I know of manufacturing and materials costs, I'd guess it's about right.
I agree with you completely, and if the number of regular middle-American folks at the Tea Parties is any indication, so do a lot of other people. The problem is getting past the political process to a candidate who really represents We The People, meaning what WE want and need, not what the GOVERNMENT wants and needs. Hello, Citizens don't exist to serve gov't; it's supposed to be the other way around!!
I've seen estimates of gov't overhead (ie. how much of our tax dollars goes just to run the gov't, BEFORE any of these dollars come back to us in whatever programs) at about 70%. Why do we tolerate that, when they already take 40-some percent of every dollar we make?? Just flush $30 out of the next $100 you earn and you'll get the same value from it!
"In 1982, 693 people fell off their bicycles -- and drowned."
-- a real bumper sticker seen on Oregon cars following a wet spring
Likely depends on the cargo, size and weight, and how easy it is to transship, as well as whether it will need multiple hops from ship to rail to truck or not. I'm sure accountants for cargo-dependent companies have nifty spreadsheets that work it all out based on current freight costs via any available method (I know Walmart does, including warehousing costs, which is why they decided to go to all superstores that would each be its own warehouse). It would be interesting to compare, tho, especially if there's a question about kickbacks to a given shipper or class of shippers and/or handlers (eg. unions).
Every chain of reasoning I've seen as to why rail mostly died out has boiled down to "truckers were given an unfair advantage in the marketplace". But I still wonder how much rail we've lost due to the death of our own manufacturing industries and the loss of need for mass distribution (no more "giant lot sent from Detroit to Chicago by rail"; now it's 50 trucks sent in all directions). I'd sure like to see it come back to America, along with the railroads. And I've read that pound for pound, rail is the most fuel-efficient way to ship freight.
Logically you'd think so... if you forget that NYC has a harbor too, as do a few other eastern seaboard cities :) and it's probably cheaper to ship stuff around the Horn on a slow barge than it is to unload it, reload it on a truck (actually that would be on several hundred trucks), drive it cross-country, unload it... perishables already go by air, so time isn't really a factor.
Middle of the country, of course, still needs that surface freight.
Reporting your odometer miles has its own privacy drawbacks:
Drive way more than the norm, and that's suspicious -- "No one drives that many miles unless they're up to something!"
Drive way less than the norm, and same thing -- "No one drives that few miles, so you are hereby convicted of tampering with the GPS."
Conversely the gas tax is anonymous and tells no one ANYTHING about your movements -- since you can still buy gas with cash. If you buy with a credit card, you have voluntarily told someone where you are, and that's on YOUR head. But it won't affect anyone else.
Otherwise... damn straight, the earlier we kill bad bills and bad policy, the better off we are. And it's about time Congresscritters had to read what they vote on. Did you see what some senator said about Obamacare? To quote the /. posts:
=======
And yet they spend ~2000 billion on bank bailouts, I thought it was funny when Conyers said, "People keep saying read the bill. Have you seen the bill? It's over 1000 pages long and requires two lawyers sitting by my side to explain what it means! We don't have time to read the bill. We need to get it passed."
Someone else responded, "If your representatives don't understand what they're passing, they're no longer in control. Those two lawyers, and whoever pays them, are."
======
So very, very true.
I'd be okay with the fees being weight-related for ALL vehicles. But CA's object was to ding "commercial vehicles" just because they COULD.
As to 18-wheelers and other big trucks, there's another factor: how many more vehicle-miles would be required to move the same mass of freight, if it had to be done in smaller trucks? That 18-wheeler may actually produce LESS *NET* wear-and-tear (and probably uses less net fuel) because it only has to make ONE trip, while the same 80,000 pound load requires 40 to 60 trips in a fullsized pickup, and at least 80 trips in a mini-pickup. The smaller the truck, the more inefficient the load-to-miles ratio becomes.
And I do agree, we need rail as a viable option again. Of course, most of what used to be moved by rail, we now get off a boat from China...
I believe you are correct on all counts...
It occurs to me that the same study could be accomplished through linking to the GPSs in people's cellphones, using volunteers and a little cooperation from one of the providers, at a negligible cost to taxpayers.
But $157M?! That's about $41 per resident, so call it $100 per vehicle, or somewhere around 1 to 2 months' worth of gas tax on the average driver. Perspective, anyone??
But... none of it at ANY price is worth the intrusion on our lives.