It always amazes me how such an educated group of individuals as exists on/. always makes such irrational statements evertime an article like this comes around. Full Disclosure: I've been in digital media for several years and am currently a fairly high-level individual on the more technical analytics/strategy side of things at a top digital media agency.
Irrational? Let's peer into the self-proclaimed mind of a high level advertiser, and see who's irrational. We'll ignore the pandering comment about how 2 million or so Slashdot members are "educated," since demonstrating otherwise would be a chore for no one.
Now, despite my background, I want to preface this by saying that since I was very young, I've always been very paranoid about my privacy, and still remain paranoid to this day.
By "paranoid" let's presume you mean careful and cautious, which is not the psychological definition but is more or less the way the term is used around here.
I used to react to these sorts of things by spewing vitriol without knowing enough technical details to truly be qualified to comment. I would venture that is the case for the vast majority of people here.
Here you venture into categorizing individuals and belittling the layperson. The world is filled with specialties, and there are forums where topics come up that are discussed by amateurs and experts alike. This is one of those places. Richard Feynman used to read all the letters amateur physicists would send him, just in case someone noticed something he didn't. You might suggest Feynman was the only one "truly qualified" to comment, but he thought otherwise.
You know how to code, but I doubt you know how these systems actually work, what they actually collect, or how that data is actually used in the real world (not whatever scare story you are reading this week). If you knew these things, you wouldn't be so disgusted by online advertising tracking practices.
Since advertising agencies, as a policy, do not make public all the data they collect from all sources, who all that data is sold to, and what all is done with that data, then a typical person is forced to make conjectures. Assessments based on knowledge of data that could be collected, how databases can be used, a few facts in various articles (e.g. ChoicePoint now LexisNexis), books (e.g. Edward Bernays), what friends and colleagues say, personal experience, and extrapolation.
Do I dislike intrusive advertising? Yes.
Cool, nearly everyone probably agrees with this.
Do I think there is a lot of shitty advertising out there? The vast majority of it is. But just as there are bad coders who give the rest a negative reputation, the same is true for online advertising.
Wait, you said earlier that if we knew more we wouldn't be disgusted, but now as an insider you're saying that the "vast majority" is "shitty advertising." This is contradictory, unless you think shitty advertising isn't disgusting. Then you go on to say the majority of "shitty" advertisers give the rest a "negative reputation." Yes, this is in fact how the whole "majority" notion works. Much like the joke where 99.9% of politicians give the others a bad name, get it? The technical term for these self-contradictions is cognitive dissonance; and if people say you're full of shit, this is part of the reason why.
Bottom line, the rest of your post is filled with similar drivel, which deserves to be further critiqued but perhaps this is already enough to evaluate properly.
Thus, the most likely result of DNT is the erosion of nameless, faceless tracking companies like doubleclick and the rise of ad networks built around sales platforms like Amazon, search networks like Google, and maybe, *maybe* social networking sites like Facebook. This is almost inarguably a good thing...
Ummm in 2007 Google bought Doubleclick for $3 billion. Which still more or less supports your thesis, that advertising agencies and networks are becoming commerce sites, and vice versa. Though I would argue with the inarguable, and say the purposes and effectiveness of public relations and propaganda industries are not a "good thing."
Well, to be fair, the foreign buyer exclusion is a fairly recent change (late 2011, early 2012) in Argentina's policy. A policy which, according to your own link and 5 minutes research, grandfathers in (over a million hectares of) land already owned by foreigners. Foreigners, according to this document (PDF) including several different fashion designers, a food manufacturer, and others. So to say that the land has not been bought by US and other international business people is demonstrably false. Thus Kupfernigk is quite well informed, far better than you, dear AC; and more importantly, Argentinians are losing much of their land to foreign owners, which only contributes to the country's domestic problems. Problems which are also the result of IMF and World Bank dealings.
Unions are not perfect organizations, there's all manner of small and large corruption in some of them. Given that, unions have also gained huge benefits for people (e.g. 40 hr work week, health insurance, retirement), particularly when union members are involved in union negotiations. That means workers are on the negotiating team. If what you say is true, though it sounds false to me, were you involved in contract negotiations, helping your negotiators choose issues, or just letting things happen to you?
I'm all for being worried when a competent system is released.
If a law or use of technology is wrong (according to community or other public agreement), the time to act is before it's put in place. If the public waits until afterward, the task is more difficult.
Ummm, when you equate genocide with migrating, facts you dislike with complaining, and recommend that people who disagree with you leave the country, having a useful discussion becomes unlikely.
Not a straight line continuation, as you noticed, but there are a lot of forces at work here.
We're talking about people and mass influence. It takes a while to shift from being afraid of the "Red Scare" to fearing a "Cold War," to worrying about the "War on Terror." You have to allow time for memories to fade, if you try to shift enemies too quickly the people might see through the lies. Also, slip in there a "War on Drugs" whose funds don't all show in military spending. There isn't a one to one correlation between "Forever War" and military spending, given the messiness that is people and policies, but perhaps this goes some way toward explaining the peaks and valleys, and generally upward trend, of the Defense Spending graph.
It's complicated, money and lobbying and jobs are part of this too. The "Forever War" presumption is just one of the strategies used by the military-industrial-government complex to justify spending. Necessary for war profiteers because of the lack of actual enemies, and the lack of attacks on the US.
Also, there's the effect of public influence. Which at times is strong enough to change government spending. As the 1970s dip shows, probably largely due to civilizing protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Then a jump in spending partly due to the laughable fear of Grenada, but mainly the manufactured justifications in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Central America generally. "They are just a three day march from the Texas border" was the rallying cry, which was baseless yet scary enough to justify huge spending increases. Oddly enough, baseless FUD is the basis of the "Forever War."
Then a dip when the Berlin Wall was symbolically removed, when USSR Cold War fears went poof. Followed by a slow build toward fearing Iraq, growing into fearing a violent strategy (i.e. terrorism). There's a lot going on here, and I'm summarizing decades in a few sentences, but maybe that's enough to be of some use.
Odd indeed. Or maybe not so odd... It's pretty easy to believe your own lie, especially if you tell it frequently. To believe your policies are the reason the world is mostly safe. Then like you say, "mishaps" occur because dissenters stopped you from implementing your full policies. Never suspecting that your policies are more the cause of than fix for mishaps. Well, almost never. Alan Greenspan finally saw one of his wrong presumptions, and some hawkish general (that I can't recall the name of, maybe Shoup?) after long reflection wrote a factual essay on political lies and the real causes and beneficiaries of war.
Just to add to your excellent post, the "Forever War" is more a continuation than the beginning. Before the "War on Terrorism" there was the "Cold War." Before that, the "Red Scare." And so on. Each an excuse to build up the military and grab political power by frightening the public with exaggerations. Quite effective, really. What would it be like, to make up an enemy that is whatever you say it is?
True, we were only talking deaths (as numbers and statistics, which is creepily abstract). My first guess is that increased injuries are somewhat proportional to deaths, but that proportion could be exponential. With a bit of research you might find that out and write an informed article for a Texas newspaper.
Let's remember that in the entire history of this country, we've been invaded...
Your "entire history" starts a little late. The Native Americans know the facts are different. Their land is still occupied by terrorist religious zealots.
Short answer: buy a crappy used computer which you two can talk about as you figure it out.
Most kids are curious, they're also influenced by your passions. So if you're into hardware, your kid will be too. I can't help recommending, along with an interest in technology and programming, that you offer opportunities to explore nature, art, and people. In that vein:
How about taking him to a yard sale. Bargain with the seller for a used desktop, they often go for around $50-$100 on CraigsList. Talk to your child about how the price of things is determined by the buy and seller agreeing, how to re-use something useless to someone else. Take the computer home, tear it apart, blow the dust off, explain what the pieces do and how they go together. Plug it in and watch how it sits there doing nothing, until you turn it on, explain a wee bit about electricity. Watch the fan spin while the computer does slightly more than nothing until you install programs (operating system and applications). I don't think you want to risk boredom by compiling from scratch, so install some fancy open source system, perhaps Edubuntu. Look at science software, graphics programs, play a few games. Install a kid-oriented programming language or several, see if there's any interest.
Watch what really fires the kid up, and indulge. One thing will (eventually) lead to another. Maybe he wants to draw, color, catapult rocks; but as you already know, frequently he'll be watching you to see what you react to, just as you're doing with him. Building things, fixing them, making them do new stuff, being frustrated by what can't be done (yet) when you don't know the reasons, the rules, the logic and physics. Talk about how people like you and him wrote all those lines of code if you two start writing some yourselves. Eventually a better part (e.g. memory, video card) or even computer might be needed, which is a chance to discuss why you might buy cheap and used at first, and better later if/when it's needed. Sell or give the old one to a friend, so your kid can be the helpful expert. What happens if you just throw something away, how is selling a used but whole thing different than recycling pieces?
Doubt is fine, you can question any number of studies for a huge variety of reasons. Unfortunately, after an all-too-brief search, I can only find results and not the studies themselves. However, perhaps seeing results from Canada, which is not quite as famous for politicized science as the US and unknown nerds, will provide a little more confidence to an event that, to me, is basic physics.
When parachutists are in free fall, their speed increases until they reach a terminal velocity due (largely) to air resistance. The actual speed is determined by body shape and positioning, materials, air density, and other factors, but I think we can safely ignore those in this case. When first jumping out, a skydiver accelerates at the speed of gravity (9.75 m/s/s, 32 ft/sec/sec). The faster they go, though, the more wind resistance they experience, until the wind resistance is as strong as the pull of gravity and they fall no faster--they've reached terminal velocity. This is also why some cars are designed to lower wind resistance, and why some trucks have a big louver above the cab to smooth the air flow around the container. Now obviously cars are not falling down, but you could say they're falling sideways. And as they fall sideways faster, as their speed increases, they encounter higher wind resistance, requiring more force to match the resistance (e.g. stick your hand out the window, at 10 mph you can barely feel wind resistance, but stick it out at 85 mph and you definitely will). This time, though, the (terminal) velocity is determined by wind resistance and the engine's output (your foot on the accelerator), instead of wind resistance and gravity.
This is how Science is like a failed software project: they value their process more than their goal. I could go out and make the most amazing, society-altering discovery ever, but I wouldn't be allowed to tell AAAS Science Magazine about it, because it would be "original research" and it would require "peer review." If or when Science dies, this, along with the oft-reviled entrenched fiefdoms, will be the reason. [emphasis added]
Speed traps (financial influence) and trucking associations (delivery time beats diesel costs), while effective for political and popular influence, are likely biased sources of scientific info. My brief research, confirmed by personal anecdotal experiment, shows that driving slower (up to a point) does save gas. Cites: FuelEconomy.gov, MPG for Speed.
84/310000000 does turn out to be pretty statistically irrelevant number.
Instead of using your 1.8 versus 2% figures (which I'm not sure where they came from), let's return to the article, which states: "A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health studied traffic fatalities in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005 and found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads." You can divide 12,500 deaths by 10 years, getting 1250 deaths per year caused by higher speeds.
I want to say you can't divide 1250 people by the 310 million population (0.0004%) and get anything meaningful. Death rates are 0.8%/year in the US. Accidents account for 118,021 of 2,437,163, or about 5%, of those deaths. Making 1250 higher-speed deaths about 0.05% of all deaths. So even though I don't like it, I begrudgingly see your point. On the big list of things to improve, high-speed deaths are a small, even minuscule, concern.
41 miles at 85 MPH = 30 minutes
41 miles at 65 MPH = 37.85 minutes
How much are you willing to pay to free up 7.85 minutes per trip for something you find more productive or enjoyable than driving?
Yeah, you pretty quickly get to questions that can't be answered; do we really want to measure everything in time and money? Are you on vacation, thinking while driving, headed home to wonderful family, awful family, alone for dinner, or surfing the Internet at home or at work? How much time do you lose waiting for higher-speed accidents to clear, allow more time if you're in one. Is that $5.60/trip for gas (41 miles, $4/gal gas, 30 mpg car) a better trade-off than paying 20% more, or $6.72 per trip? $1.12 doesn't sound like much. That's just for 1 trip though. How about the commuters over a year.
Starting with time:
41 miles/ 65 mph = 38 minutes
41 miles / 85 mph = 29 minutes
38 - 29 = 9 minutes/trip
0:09/trip * 2 trips/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year = 75 hours/year
Over 3 days extra driving every year, yikes.
Now for the money, presuming 20% worse mileage for higher speeds (YMMV):
30 mpg * 80% = 24 mpg
4 $/gal * 41 miles / 30 mpg * 500 trips/yr = $2733/yr
4 $/gal * 41 miles / 24 mpg * 500 trips/yr = $3417/yr
We should probably include the toll, which I'm guessing will be around $1/trip, or $500/year.
$3417 + $500 = $3917/yr
So how much is this 85 mph instead of 65 costing per hour?
$3917 - $2733 = $1184/yr difference
$1184/75 hours = $16/hour
Plus extra wear and tear on your engine and tires.
So what does that all mean? I don't know, it's up to the individual. I presume the rich will pay without noticing, while regular people will lose 3 days or give up a few days of their vacation.
Dropping your odds of survival from 2% to 1.8% really doesn't impress me that much.
What say we put some very rough numbers to those percentages. Not counting differences in injuries, in 2003 there were 42 000 people killed in auto accidents in the US. 2% of that is 840, 1.8% is 756. 840-756=84. Does 84 people living instead of dying every year impress anyone, statistically speaking?
Only complete pussies ever drove below 80 on this road, even when the speed limit was 65.
Ever calculate the costs of driving faster? For example, driving 55 mph instead of 65 saves about 10% on fuel. Driving 85 would, I suspect, result in increased fuel costs of some 20%. Saving fuel, money, and carbon monoxide emissions are a few reasons for choosing a slower driving speed, but then I surely don't want to be a complete pussy. What a dilemma.
If by "minimal warming affect" you mean a few degrees, then yes, that's what all the fuss is about. Well, the few degrees of world temperature, which is an average of more varying data from many locales. There are some predictions of what will happen. How minimal or horrific those are depend on your definition of "minimal" and "horror;" whether we're talking 20 or 200 years; and, for some, whether they live there or not.
If you look at the IPCC report (wg1 chapter 2 page 136 although it's already starting to get a bit old), there is still a (minimal) chance that none of it is caused by CO2, because human release of aerosols cause a cooling effect. Of course there are other considerations like methane, etc. Most scientific organizations say things like, "most of the warming we've seen is caused by humans....." Although 'most' is a wiggle word that accurately represents our uncertainty on the matter.
Most climatologists, 97%, agree with AGW. An indication that "most" can have a measurable meaning. Of course like all measurements, it comes with an error rate or wiggle room. If you want to believe in all the minimal chances of things, buy a lottery ticket--just one should be enough.
I visited a friend in Phnom Penh a couple of years ago. They have lots of "DVD shops" in any of their shopping areas. 100% of the DVDs are pirated.
The US, when it was parting ways with the British, was the same way; publishing texts with British copyright. All first world countries ignored copyrights and patents of other countries until their local publishers established themselves because there just wasn't all that much original content available. Then the newly-established country, with its now active content-producing businesses, starts making agreements with other first world publishers while harassing poorer countries for ignoring copyrights, patents, trademarks, and such.
What should Cambodia do with Svartholm? That's Cambodia's decision.
I'm pretty much a Mac-only house except for a couple of Linux boxen (either old junk hardware or self-built).... Which leads me to the ultimate realization that, at least in the long term, advertising is dead. With the availability of better alternatives that do a great job of showing you things that you want to buy (and only while you're in a shopping mood), there's just no room for advertising in a modern society.
A "Mac-only house" with a couple of computers running Linux is not a Mac-only house. It is an example of cognitive dissonance, Orwellian double-think; and believing such is a demonstration of Apple's successful marketing. Proof that advertising is not dead. "Going all-Google" is the same thing with a different name.
How does a non-marketing person think? "My house has 7 computers." Dull, isn't it? Missing all the drama and bickerings and thrills of marketing speak. Feels peaceful though.
When the rest of the world insults you, including your allies, perhaps you should listen.
Ask some foreigners why they find you backwards. They'll tell you honestly and directly. Most of them perceive you more objectively than you're able to assess your own country. Depends on who you ask, of course; the rich who profit from US business will give you a different answer than the general population. However, if you're going to ridicule Europeans who have leaders running around "mad," then it's only fair to be evaluated similarly. If you sincerely want to understand, prepare to listen even while feeling shame.
Europe doesn't "draw us into bloodshed," the US creates it. For instance: the US knows that the chemical weapons precursors it sold to Iraq in the 1980s have decomposed. The UN weapons investigators find nothing in Iraq. The US sends an investigator to Niger, who finds no yellow cake uranium sales to Iraq. Scientists in the US evaluate Iraq's aluminum tubes and find them useless for weapons grade centrifuges. The US collects no evidence of Iraq cooperating with 9-11, Afghani, or other terrorists. After the US has determined that Iraq is no threat, the US invades and occupies. Kills some 650 000+ innocents, bombing a nearly first world infrastructure into third world status, and selling its largest natural resource to international oil corporations with almost no benefit to locals.
Foreigners understand well what the US has done in Iraq, Columbia, Cuba, Haiti, Chile, Panama, El Salvador, Guatermala, Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, Hawaii, North America, and more; and have millions of dead-body reasons to call inactive American adults "opossums." The insightful thing is that the Iraqis know the US population is more or less friendly but enormously misinformed; and it's the government, military, and propaganda industry that are so influential and dangerous. Now the foreigners are watching the greedy in the US do same thing again, this time to Iran (again).
You won't find the above in corporate owned media. The only way you can find more independent news is traveling and reading, especially the Internet. And that's why even if broadband providers gouge the US population and rake in massive profits, supporting network neutral universal bradband access is vital for the rural poor, and the tax worthwhile.
Slashdot Mirror
It always amazes me how such an educated group of individuals as exists on /. always makes such irrational statements evertime an article like this comes around. Full Disclosure: I've been in digital media for several years and am currently a fairly high-level individual on the more technical analytics/strategy side of things at a top digital media agency.
Irrational? Let's peer into the self-proclaimed mind of a high level advertiser, and see who's irrational. We'll ignore the pandering comment about how 2 million or so Slashdot members are "educated," since demonstrating otherwise would be a chore for no one.
Now, despite my background, I want to preface this by saying that since I was very young, I've always been very paranoid about my privacy, and still remain paranoid to this day.
By "paranoid" let's presume you mean careful and cautious, which is not the psychological definition but is more or less the way the term is used around here.
I used to react to these sorts of things by spewing vitriol without knowing enough technical details to truly be qualified to comment. I would venture that is the case for the vast majority of people here.
Here you venture into categorizing individuals and belittling the layperson. The world is filled with specialties, and there are forums where topics come up that are discussed by amateurs and experts alike. This is one of those places. Richard Feynman used to read all the letters amateur physicists would send him, just in case someone noticed something he didn't. You might suggest Feynman was the only one "truly qualified" to comment, but he thought otherwise.
You know how to code, but I doubt you know how these systems actually work, what they actually collect, or how that data is actually used in the real world (not whatever scare story you are reading this week). If you knew these things, you wouldn't be so disgusted by online advertising tracking practices.
Since advertising agencies, as a policy, do not make public all the data they collect from all sources, who all that data is sold to, and what all is done with that data, then a typical person is forced to make conjectures. Assessments based on knowledge of data that could be collected, how databases can be used, a few facts in various articles (e.g. ChoicePoint now LexisNexis), books (e.g. Edward Bernays), what friends and colleagues say, personal experience, and extrapolation.
Do I dislike intrusive advertising? Yes.
Cool, nearly everyone probably agrees with this.
Do I think there is a lot of shitty advertising out there? The vast majority of it is. But just as there are bad coders who give the rest a negative reputation, the same is true for online advertising.
Wait, you said earlier that if we knew more we wouldn't be disgusted, but now as an insider you're saying that the "vast majority" is "shitty advertising." This is contradictory, unless you think shitty advertising isn't disgusting. Then you go on to say the majority of "shitty" advertisers give the rest a "negative reputation." Yes, this is in fact how the whole "majority" notion works. Much like the joke where 99.9% of politicians give the others a bad name, get it? The technical term for these self-contradictions is cognitive dissonance; and if people say you're full of shit, this is part of the reason why.
Bottom line, the rest of your post is filled with similar drivel, which deserves to be further critiqued but perhaps this is already enough to evaluate properly.
Thus, the most likely result of DNT is the erosion of nameless, faceless tracking companies like doubleclick and the rise of ad networks built around sales platforms like Amazon, search networks like Google, and maybe, *maybe* social networking sites like Facebook. This is almost inarguably a good thing...
Ummm in 2007 Google bought Doubleclick for $3 billion. Which still more or less supports your thesis, that advertising agencies and networks are becoming commerce sites, and vice versa. Though I would argue with the inarguable, and say the purposes and effectiveness of public relations and propaganda industries are not a "good thing."
Well, to be fair, the foreign buyer exclusion is a fairly recent change (late 2011, early 2012) in Argentina's policy. A policy which, according to your own link and 5 minutes research, grandfathers in (over a million hectares of) land already owned by foreigners. Foreigners, according to this document (PDF) including several different fashion designers, a food manufacturer, and others. So to say that the land has not been bought by US and other international business people is demonstrably false. Thus Kupfernigk is quite well informed, far better than you, dear AC; and more importantly, Argentinians are losing much of their land to foreign owners, which only contributes to the country's domestic problems. Problems which are also the result of IMF and World Bank dealings.
Unions are not perfect organizations, there's all manner of small and large corruption in some of them. Given that, unions have also gained huge benefits for people (e.g. 40 hr work week, health insurance, retirement), particularly when union members are involved in union negotiations. That means workers are on the negotiating team. If what you say is true, though it sounds false to me, were you involved in contract negotiations, helping your negotiators choose issues, or just letting things happen to you?
I'm all for being worried when a competent system is released.
If a law or use of technology is wrong (according to community or other public agreement), the time to act is before it's put in place. If the public waits until afterward, the task is more difficult.
Ummm, when you equate genocide with migrating, facts you dislike with complaining, and recommend that people who disagree with you leave the country, having a useful discussion becomes unlikely.
Not a straight line continuation, as you noticed, but there are a lot of forces at work here.
We're talking about people and mass influence. It takes a while to shift from being afraid of the "Red Scare" to fearing a "Cold War," to worrying about the "War on Terror." You have to allow time for memories to fade, if you try to shift enemies too quickly the people might see through the lies. Also, slip in there a "War on Drugs" whose funds don't all show in military spending. There isn't a one to one correlation between "Forever War" and military spending, given the messiness that is people and policies, but perhaps this goes some way toward explaining the peaks and valleys, and generally upward trend, of the Defense Spending graph.
It's complicated, money and lobbying and jobs are part of this too. The "Forever War" presumption is just one of the strategies used by the military-industrial-government complex to justify spending. Necessary for war profiteers because of the lack of actual enemies, and the lack of attacks on the US.
Also, there's the effect of public influence. Which at times is strong enough to change government spending. As the 1970s dip shows, probably largely due to civilizing protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Then a jump in spending partly due to the laughable fear of Grenada, but mainly the manufactured justifications in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Central America generally. "They are just a three day march from the Texas border" was the rallying cry, which was baseless yet scary enough to justify huge spending increases. Oddly enough, baseless FUD is the basis of the "Forever War."
Then a dip when the Berlin Wall was symbolically removed, when USSR Cold War fears went poof. Followed by a slow build toward fearing Iraq, growing into fearing a violent strategy (i.e. terrorism). There's a lot going on here, and I'm summarizing decades in a few sentences, but maybe that's enough to be of some use.
Odd indeed. Or maybe not so odd... It's pretty easy to believe your own lie, especially if you tell it frequently. To believe your policies are the reason the world is mostly safe. Then like you say, "mishaps" occur because dissenters stopped you from implementing your full policies. Never suspecting that your policies are more the cause of than fix for mishaps. Well, almost never. Alan Greenspan finally saw one of his wrong presumptions, and some hawkish general (that I can't recall the name of, maybe Shoup?) after long reflection wrote a factual essay on political lies and the real causes and beneficiaries of war.
More like: 60% of the pee Michael Phelps put in the pool during the Olympics has been filtered out. Fancy a swim?
To stick with your (bad) analogy, here are photos of Michael Phelps' pee in the pool.
It was the beginning of the "Forever War".
Just to add to your excellent post, the "Forever War" is more a continuation than the beginning. Before the "War on Terrorism" there was the "Cold War." Before that, the "Red Scare." And so on. Each an excuse to build up the military and grab political power by frightening the public with exaggerations. Quite effective, really. What would it be like, to make up an enemy that is whatever you say it is?
True, we were only talking deaths (as numbers and statistics, which is creepily abstract). My first guess is that increased injuries are somewhat proportional to deaths, but that proportion could be exponential. With a bit of research you might find that out and write an informed article for a Texas newspaper.
Let's remember that in the entire history of this country, we've been invaded ...
Your "entire history" starts a little late. The Native Americans know the facts are different. Their land is still occupied by terrorist religious zealots.
Short answer: buy a crappy used computer which you two can talk about as you figure it out.
Most kids are curious, they're also influenced by your passions. So if you're into hardware, your kid will be too. I can't help recommending, along with an interest in technology and programming, that you offer opportunities to explore nature, art, and people. In that vein:
How about taking him to a yard sale. Bargain with the seller for a used desktop, they often go for around $50-$100 on CraigsList. Talk to your child about how the price of things is determined by the buy and seller agreeing, how to re-use something useless to someone else. Take the computer home, tear it apart, blow the dust off, explain what the pieces do and how they go together. Plug it in and watch how it sits there doing nothing, until you turn it on, explain a wee bit about electricity. Watch the fan spin while the computer does slightly more than nothing until you install programs (operating system and applications). I don't think you want to risk boredom by compiling from scratch, so install some fancy open source system, perhaps Edubuntu. Look at science software, graphics programs, play a few games. Install a kid-oriented programming language or several, see if there's any interest.
Watch what really fires the kid up, and indulge. One thing will (eventually) lead to another. Maybe he wants to draw, color, catapult rocks; but as you already know, frequently he'll be watching you to see what you react to, just as you're doing with him. Building things, fixing them, making them do new stuff, being frustrated by what can't be done (yet) when you don't know the reasons, the rules, the logic and physics. Talk about how people like you and him wrote all those lines of code if you two start writing some yourselves. Eventually a better part (e.g. memory, video card) or even computer might be needed, which is a chance to discuss why you might buy cheap and used at first, and better later if/when it's needed. Sell or give the old one to a friend, so your kid can be the helpful expert. What happens if you just throw something away, how is selling a used but whole thing different than recycling pieces?
Doubt is fine, you can question any number of studies for a huge variety of reasons. Unfortunately, after an all-too-brief search, I can only find results and not the studies themselves. However, perhaps seeing results from Canada, which is not quite as famous for politicized science as the US and unknown nerds, will provide a little more confidence to an event that, to me, is basic physics.
When parachutists are in free fall, their speed increases until they reach a terminal velocity due (largely) to air resistance. The actual speed is determined by body shape and positioning, materials, air density, and other factors, but I think we can safely ignore those in this case. When first jumping out, a skydiver accelerates at the speed of gravity (9.75 m/s/s, 32 ft/sec/sec). The faster they go, though, the more wind resistance they experience, until the wind resistance is as strong as the pull of gravity and they fall no faster--they've reached terminal velocity. This is also why some cars are designed to lower wind resistance, and why some trucks have a big louver above the cab to smooth the air flow around the container. Now obviously cars are not falling down, but you could say they're falling sideways. And as they fall sideways faster, as their speed increases, they encounter higher wind resistance, requiring more force to match the resistance (e.g. stick your hand out the window, at 10 mph you can barely feel wind resistance, but stick it out at 85 mph and you definitely will). This time, though, the (terminal) velocity is determined by wind resistance and the engine's output (your foot on the accelerator), instead of wind resistance and gravity.
This is how Science is like a failed software project: they value their process more than their goal. I could go out and make the most amazing, society-altering discovery ever, but I wouldn't be allowed to tell AAAS Science Magazine about it, because it would be "original research" and it would require "peer review." If or when Science dies, this, along with the oft-reviled entrenched fiefdoms, will be the reason. [emphasis added]
Speed traps (financial influence) and trucking associations (delivery time beats diesel costs), while effective for political and popular influence, are likely biased sources of scientific info. My brief research, confirmed by personal anecdotal experiment, shows that driving slower (up to a point) does save gas. Cites: FuelEconomy.gov, MPG for Speed.
84/310000000 does turn out to be pretty statistically irrelevant number.
Instead of using your 1.8 versus 2% figures (which I'm not sure where they came from), let's return to the article, which states: "A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health studied traffic fatalities in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005 and found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads." You can divide 12,500 deaths by 10 years, getting 1250 deaths per year caused by higher speeds.
I want to say you can't divide 1250 people by the 310 million population (0.0004%) and get anything meaningful. Death rates are 0.8%/year in the US. Accidents account for 118,021 of 2,437,163, or about 5%, of those deaths. Making 1250 higher-speed deaths about 0.05% of all deaths. So even though I don't like it, I begrudgingly see your point. On the big list of things to improve, high-speed deaths are a small, even minuscule, concern.
41 miles at 85 MPH = 30 minutes
41 miles at 65 MPH = 37.85 minutes
How much are you willing to pay to free up 7.85 minutes per trip for something you find more productive or enjoyable than driving?
Yeah, you pretty quickly get to questions that can't be answered; do we really want to measure everything in time and money? Are you on vacation, thinking while driving, headed home to wonderful family, awful family, alone for dinner, or surfing the Internet at home or at work? How much time do you lose waiting for higher-speed accidents to clear, allow more time if you're in one. Is that $5.60/trip for gas (41 miles, $4/gal gas, 30 mpg car) a better trade-off than paying 20% more, or $6.72 per trip? $1.12 doesn't sound like much. That's just for 1 trip though. How about the commuters over a year.
Starting with time:
41 miles/ 65 mph = 38 minutes
41 miles / 85 mph = 29 minutes
38 - 29 = 9 minutes/trip
0:09/trip * 2 trips/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year = 75 hours/year
Over 3 days extra driving every year, yikes.
Now for the money, presuming 20% worse mileage for higher speeds (YMMV):
30 mpg * 80% = 24 mpg
4 $/gal * 41 miles / 30 mpg * 500 trips/yr = $2733/yr
4 $/gal * 41 miles / 24 mpg * 500 trips/yr = $3417/yr
We should probably include the toll, which I'm guessing will be around $1/trip, or $500/year.
$3417 + $500 = $3917/yr
So how much is this 85 mph instead of 65 costing per hour?
$3917 - $2733 = $1184/yr difference
$1184/75 hours = $16/hour
Plus extra wear and tear on your engine and tires.
So what does that all mean? I don't know, it's up to the individual. I presume the rich will pay without noticing, while regular people will lose 3 days or give up a few days of their vacation.
Dropping your odds of survival from 2% to 1.8% really doesn't impress me that much.
What say we put some very rough numbers to those percentages. Not counting differences in injuries, in 2003 there were 42 000 people killed in auto accidents in the US. 2% of that is 840, 1.8% is 756. 840-756=84. Does 84 people living instead of dying every year impress anyone, statistically speaking?
Only complete pussies ever drove below 80 on this road, even when the speed limit was 65.
Ever calculate the costs of driving faster? For example, driving 55 mph instead of 65 saves about 10% on fuel. Driving 85 would, I suspect, result in increased fuel costs of some 20%. Saving fuel, money, and carbon monoxide emissions are a few reasons for choosing a slower driving speed, but then I surely don't want to be a complete pussy. What a dilemma.
If by "minimal warming affect" you mean a few degrees, then yes, that's what all the fuss is about. Well, the few degrees of world temperature, which is an average of more varying data from many locales. There are some predictions of what will happen. How minimal or horrific those are depend on your definition of "minimal" and "horror;" whether we're talking 20 or 200 years; and, for some, whether they live there or not.
If you look at the IPCC report (wg1 chapter 2 page 136 although it's already starting to get a bit old), there is still a (minimal) chance that none of it is caused by CO2, because human release of aerosols cause a cooling effect. Of course there are other considerations like methane, etc. Most scientific organizations say things like, "most of the warming we've seen is caused by humans....." Although 'most' is a wiggle word that accurately represents our uncertainty on the matter.
Most climatologists, 97%, agree with AGW. An indication that "most" can have a measurable meaning. Of course like all measurements, it comes with an error rate or wiggle room. If you want to believe in all the minimal chances of things, buy a lottery ticket--just one should be enough.
I visited a friend in Phnom Penh a couple of years ago. They have lots of "DVD shops" in any of their shopping areas. 100% of the DVDs are pirated.
The US, when it was parting ways with the British, was the same way; publishing texts with British copyright. All first world countries ignored copyrights and patents of other countries until their local publishers established themselves because there just wasn't all that much original content available. Then the newly-established country, with its now active content-producing businesses, starts making agreements with other first world publishers while harassing poorer countries for ignoring copyrights, patents, trademarks, and such.
What should Cambodia do with Svartholm? That's Cambodia's decision.
I'm pretty much a Mac-only house except for a couple of Linux boxen (either old junk hardware or self-built). ... Which leads me to the ultimate realization that, at least in the long term, advertising is dead. With the availability of better alternatives that do a great job of showing you things that you want to buy (and only while you're in a shopping mood), there's just no room for advertising in a modern society.
A "Mac-only house" with a couple of computers running Linux is not a Mac-only house. It is an example of cognitive dissonance, Orwellian double-think; and believing such is a demonstration of Apple's successful marketing. Proof that advertising is not dead. "Going all-Google" is the same thing with a different name.
How does a non-marketing person think? "My house has 7 computers." Dull, isn't it? Missing all the drama and bickerings and thrills of marketing speak. Feels peaceful though.
When the rest of the world insults you, including your allies, perhaps you should listen.
Ask some foreigners why they find you backwards. They'll tell you honestly and directly. Most of them perceive you more objectively than you're able to assess your own country. Depends on who you ask, of course; the rich who profit from US business will give you a different answer than the general population. However, if you're going to ridicule Europeans who have leaders running around "mad," then it's only fair to be evaluated similarly. If you sincerely want to understand, prepare to listen even while feeling shame.
Europe doesn't "draw us into bloodshed," the US creates it. For instance: the US knows that the chemical weapons precursors it sold to Iraq in the 1980s have decomposed. The UN weapons investigators find nothing in Iraq. The US sends an investigator to Niger, who finds no yellow cake uranium sales to Iraq. Scientists in the US evaluate Iraq's aluminum tubes and find them useless for weapons grade centrifuges. The US collects no evidence of Iraq cooperating with 9-11, Afghani, or other terrorists. After the US has determined that Iraq is no threat, the US invades and occupies. Kills some 650 000+ innocents, bombing a nearly first world infrastructure into third world status, and selling its largest natural resource to international oil corporations with almost no benefit to locals.
Foreigners understand well what the US has done in Iraq, Columbia, Cuba, Haiti, Chile, Panama, El Salvador, Guatermala, Vietnam, Grenada, Nicaragua, Hawaii, North America, and more; and have millions of dead-body reasons to call inactive American adults "opossums." The insightful thing is that the Iraqis know the US population is more or less friendly but enormously misinformed; and it's the government, military, and propaganda industry that are so influential and dangerous. Now the foreigners are watching the greedy in the US do same thing again, this time to Iran (again).
You won't find the above in corporate owned media. The only way you can find more independent news is traveling and reading, especially the Internet. And that's why even if broadband providers gouge the US population and rake in massive profits, supporting network neutral universal bradband access is vital for the rural poor, and the tax worthwhile.