This article is very, very typical of someone who knows enough about cycling to ask questions, but not enough to answer them. I work in the transportation industry. I live car-free. I teach bicycle education. I work with regional transportation agencies, police departments, city planners/councils, and universities to facilitate the use of non-driver-only transportation.
The title of the article should be more direct to the reader: "How Likely Am I to be Injured While Riding My Bike?" That's what people want to know, after all. "How likely am *I* to be hurt?" Most people are concerned with the risks associated with bike commuting or running errands on two-wheels, so let's focus on that. So, let's omit all recreational mountain biking and all competitive (and "training") rides from the data for now. Next, we must differentiate between collisions and solo falls. Most importantly, differentiate between those who have received official bicycle education and those who have not.
Make all those controls and you'll find that an educated cyclist riding on a road where the average speed is 40mph or lower with a small variety of visibility tactics will have an injury only very rarely. And it will likely be due to environmental hazards.
A preferred list of questions for every bike injury logged:
Has the injured bicyclist received bicycle-specific education? (League of American Bicyclists Traffic Skills 101, Cycle Savvy, Other)
What caused the injury to the cyclist? Collision (automobile) Collision (bicycle) Collision (pedestrian) Collision (animal) Collision (mixed) Solo-Fall (road condition) Solo-Fall (other) Strain/Sprain/Other Condition (torn ligament, seizure, etc.)
Which visibility tactics/items were implemented by the bicyclist? Central/Left of Center Lane Position High Visibility Colors All Legally Required Reflectors Reflectivity Beyond Requirements Tail Light Headlight ("see me") Headlight ("see you")
Which of the following faults were performed by the cyclist? Neglect to Yield to Right of Way Inappropriate Lane Position Travel Against Traffic Speeding Other None
Which of the following faults were performed by others involved? Neglect to Yield to Right of Way Inappropriate Lane Position Travel Against Traffic Speeding Other None
Where did the injury take place? On-Road, in an intersection On-Road, within 200 feet of an intersection On-Road, 200 feet or farther from an intersection Off-Road On a Sidewalk On an Off-Street Path
What is the average speed on the road at the point of injury? 5-20 21-40 41+
-- I don't like to be leashed. I don't even like my cell phone. I find calling someone on a phone to be very demanding. When I hear the phone ring, I hear "TALK TO ME, TALK TO ME!" which would be appropriate if it extremely important to do so, but it rarely is. I prefer a text message to which I can respond when the time is appropriate or an email through which I can convey well-thought-out messages.
-- I am not an exhibitionist. I value my privacy and, more accurately, the intimacy of being able to be vulnerable in one-on-one communication. I hold particular disdain for people who feel they must be the frequent/consistent center of attention and envy.
-- I am not a voyeur. I am not particularly interested by the day-to-day happenings of people. I usually don't care about what you ate for lunch unless you've eaten for a week at a restaurant that's new to you and you think that I would personally enjoy eating at the same place. And if that's the case, send me a message-- don't tag me on your Facebook wall so that I have to visit the shrine you've built to your exhibitionist self.
-- I don't like being subject to the constant turn-over and "hard sale". So much of the portable, connected device industry is massive marketing/advertising, and and utterly temporary in lifespan. One cannot expect to buy a smartphone today and be allowed to keep it for 2 years unmolested by the massive disposable device marketing machine. (I currently keep my dumbphone for 2+ years at a time rather comfortably because no one is bothering to sell me a new one.) One cannot expect buy a tablet today with the option of upgrading any component for extend its workable life.
-- I don't like the focus of the smartphone. The smartphone, in my opinion, should be first and foremost a phone. With the billions of dollars put into R&D and infrastructure, one would think that a cell phone call would be at least as clear as talking on an intercom... but that's far from the case. Instead, cellular voice tech has taken back seat to video media quality so that you can watch really high quality Netflix videos in your palm, but you can't talk to someone in the same confidence of communication that could by using a 40-year old telephone.
This list can go on forever. Or I can simply list what I want of a device that would convince me to be a little more connected: A high quality phone A customizable MP3/media player A good camera A calendar application Very long battery life The option to modify the UI (I hate the cartoony feel of iDevices and don't want to waste battery power facilitating it)
Give me all of that and I will consider getting a smartphone. Until then, cons will outweigh the pros.
People are not confident in the quality and sensitivity of their cell phone receivers/microphones. To compensate, they yell, over-enunciate, repeat themselves, or a combination of the prior to feel more confident in their communications. Moreover, many people have very specific PR-style telephone voices and tones (faux excitement/outrage, etc.) that make it easy to stereotype their speakers as ditzy, shallow, etc.
Each of those actions (and particularly combinations therein) are typically very annoying to hear. The frequent annoyance without a socially acceptable method of addressing such annoyance leads to frustration. Frustration leads to outbursts.
Solution #1 Old-school wired telephone receivers or hands-free headsets with the microphones that extend from the ear to the mouth. These physical additions to phones increase confidence and allow a user to feel more confident that his communication is being received.
Solution #2 Make cell phones better phones. Take a couple million dollars that would otherwise be spent on facilitating the graphics requires for the next implementation of "Angry Bird: Fruit Ninja Attack" and make cell phone communication clearer.
Headline could mean: (a) Students Build Ship, Inspecting Robot - So some people came together to build a ship and then stare at a robot... Okay... (b) Students Build Ship-Inspecting Robot - Ah! A great tool! News for Nerds!
It is always intriguing when a post with no "troll" characteristics, is intentfully factual, tactful, spawns discussion, and is modded to at least (+3 Insightful) is eventually moderated down to "Troll".
Call me crazy, but I think people just might actually moderate based on agreement of opinion instead of the descriptors "insightful, informative, funny, etc.".
When you buy the ticket and board the plane, you agree to play by their rules. They have the property rights and have sold you limited rights to your seats with stipulations.
If you can't accept the stipulations and choose to break the rules, don't be surprised if you need to be embarrassed into submission or even thrown off the plane when you get caught breaking the rules.
Your opinion of their rules and the basis of their rules are irrelevant given that you have already agreed to their rules. So sit down, turn off everything they say to turn off, and find solace in the fact that you're following the minimal ethic of peaceful coexistence- honoring a contract.
Rideshare is a federally recognized term that encompasses carpool, vanpool, train, bus, and even bike/walk transportation. The creator of Lyft (John Zimmer) knows this very well as he created a fairly-well-adopted ride-matching website called "Zimride".
Zimride doesn't make too much money, though, so he sold it to Enterprise (the car rental company who also is in the carshare and vanpool markets) and created Lyft. Along with other similar decentralized taxi services, he is trying to brand their business models as "rideshare" to equate them with more sustainable practices and receive subsequent leniency in various markets and even public funding.
If you want to see what genuine real-time rideshare is, check out Carma (formerly "Avego"). This is a carpool-facilitating program that makes sure that the driver doesn't make a profit off the shared ride (per State Department mileage reimbursement rates).
If I had mod points, I'd give you a boost, Coward. I, too, am frequently annoyed by the immediate hyperbole of lazy vocabulary usage.
Racism, Sexism - The genuine belief in superiority of one race/sex over another. Prejudice - This refers to making judgement about something prior to having sufficient genuine experience to make that judgement. Stereotyping - The oversimplification of characteristics for use in folly and/or prejudice. Discrimination - Making decisions to include/exclude based on arbitrary traits. Misogyny - The hatred of women/females. Objectification - The summary of a person's value by one's body parts. Insensitivity - Acting without regards to another's likelihood of taking offense.
Now, all of these things are bad. Most people don't like these in our modern society. However, they are not all equal in "badness".
What happened in this presentation was insensitive objectification-- not sexism.
Ok, here's the thing. If Twitter use/mentions currently are a good predictor of election results, then that's cool. However, when you make it known, you invite a bunch of intentional skewers to the mix thus destroying the instrument.
Doctor Who is a creative work. To ask if a new Doctor should be anything aside from meeting certain plot points or general variety would be to ask if "Harry Potter should have been a female..." or "The lead animated character in Cars should have been an automobile made in India."
The creative works do not belong to "the people" and thus doesn't have any obligation to meet their self-imposed standards of fairness or equal representation.
That said, I thought the next Doctor should have been Sue Perkins partially because female, but mostly because her personality is inline with the Doctor's.
Ya, I love the strength per weight that carbon fiber brings, but the stuff is (as of yet) unrecyclable and non-repurposable. Shatter a bit of carbon fiber and all you have is is a bunch of broken carbon fiber. The repair process is shaky and there's no reclamation process for the baked final product...
My idea of a an irony-laden "green" auto: Carbon Fiber Frame/body Plug-In Battery Electric Owned and Operated in Appalachia
Metals are recyclable. Plastics can be recyclable. When we keep our eyes on the cradle-to-grave aspect, we make better judgements for the futures of our children, grandchildren, etc.
Rideshare is an industry term in Transportation Demand Management. It refers (oddly enough) to any of the following modes of transportation: --Walk --Bike --Carpool --Vanpool --Bus --Train
Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar are all well-aware with the misuse of the term and they defend is with the simple statement that "two people going to the same place in/on the same vehicle is a carpool." Detractors aptly point out that it's actually one person with that genuine destination with the other (the driver), being paid to take the passenger to that destination.
So Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar changed their systems early on. No longer would there be fares or fees, but "expected minimum donations" and the driver's weren't for "hire", they were FRIENDS!
"This is my pal, Steve! My app told him to come pick me up and we're going to be best of buddies because he's taking me somewhere I want to go while expecting (though not requiring) a donation!"
In reality, the systems function as taxi services. No rational person can deny that. They need to be insured and everything else at the same standards that taxis are. The end.
It looks like Tesla properly understands the value of combining quick fueling with slow charging! The only thing they have to do is create a system (likely subscription) so that you don't have to pick up your original battery pack. The battery pack should belong to the fueling company and your subscription should provide the insurance/assurance against battery pack damage.
Battery packs will be standardized within a small group of performance levels (just like today's gasoline) and the only other variance between vehicles will be the *number* of battery packs swapped in/out.
And by the time that's perfected (oh the joys of "proprietary technology"), hydrogen fuel cell automobiles should be breaking into the market.
I never said it was cheap to do anything with gasoline. Instead, I quite directly say that installing fast chargers are so cost-prohibitively expensive that it's likely that they're being subsidized by the federal government to serve expensive, wasteful electricity to the very, very few people who would actually use them.
At the very least, gasoline stations are paid for by private industry and will be able to pay off their own expense. These fast chargers are just getting people used to sub-market value fuel prices.
Note that if the photovoltaic farm is being installed to power the chargers, then the cost of the photovoltaic farm should be included in the cost of the charging station.
Also consider the amount of electricity per square foot that can be generated even by some of the higher end panels today. How much area would be needed to charge a single Nissan Leaf @ level 2 versus a Tesla at level 3/fast charge? Enough to charge 2 cars simultaneously? If not that, then the sheer amount of batteries required to store the power until needed.
You're right that they're more efficient than combustion engines, but so are bicycles. The point is that fast charges are not the future-- they're a dead end to a technology.
Battery swapping, on the other hand, is the most cost efficient, environmentally friendly, and quickest form of refueling an battery EV.
First, 100 fast chargers does not a nationwide blanket make. Second, these things are extremely expensive to install (especially if they're not immediately next to major power lines). We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. Third, fast charges are very inefficient by comparison to level 2 chargers-- there's a lot of waste energy. Fourth, fast chargers are most likely to be used midday when electricity is at its costliest.
So, they're expensive to install, wastes electricity, and are most likely to be used when electricity is at its most expensive. Thus, if they want to install them and want people to use them, there's going to have to be massive subsidies.
Or Tesla's spending themselves into a hole again because they figured out that the quagmire that is proprietary charging payment systems has stymied adoption and they're going to just do it themselves... because their product depends on it! And because they missed out on the only true future for battery-electric vehicles: Battery Swapping!
With a title description of "Basic" iPod Touch, I was thinking it would be a smaller, lighter, more storage, non-touchscreen, longer battery version of life iPod touch. Basically, a cross between the nano and original iPod.
But no, you still have WiFi, Bluetooth, web-browsing, a forward-facing camera, etc. How is that basic? It has a touch screen!
Ok, I'll admit it. I hate iProducts... but Apply could convince me to give up my Creative Zen X-Fi 32GB that I bought 6 years ago for $150 bucks. It has: +Drag-and-drop music loading +No need for iTunes +Buttons so I don't have to stare at the screen to skip a track +SD card slot +No need for OS updates and obsolescence
To be fair, the Zen is over-engineered to have the ability to play video, view pictures, etc. and had they omitted those dumb things, price could have been even cheaper.
Those things aren't perks to the job so much as mood elevators that create a friendly, inviting, and even party-like atmosphere that elevate mood and creativity.
Those aren't "free perks", they're investments in novel software.
I love this question and I appreciate your forwardness and honesty in asking it.
The problem with "lazy, complacent, and dull-minded people" just being left to their own devices is that we assume that they are also kind and want for little. But then there's strain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_theory_%28sociology%29).
Strain theory suggest (rather aptly) that people who want (or feel they deserve) more than to what they have legitimate access will find illegitimate means to obtain their wants. When you have a nation full of people who are trained from day one to consume more and more and to seek out luxury, but are not given the necessary requirements to *earn* that luxury through appropriate means, they will (and do) turn to crime.
Your standard education curriculum seeks to change both the goals and the means to achieve those goals by teaching that you don't need a life of luxury to be happy (via ethics, philosophy, history, literature, etc.) and to provide the usable life and career skills to not need to turn to crime.
In short, we can't just let the happily uneducated stay uneducated because they will not be able to contribute enough to their own well-being via legitimate means and will thus ruin it further for us all.
To speak to another point you make ("We're wasting valuable resources trying to keep mediocre people from entirely failing..."), I don't think we're allocating *enough* resources. But I'm not talking about raw cash, electronics, or amazing new buildings. The most important and long lasting investment you can make in beneficially affect low-performing students is to have a fantastic person in front of the classroom.
In California, there are thousands and thousands of these fantastic educators dying to get into the classrooms, but the state and districts are either severely underfunded or the money isn't being spent as well as it should. Moreover, the cost of becoming a teacher is insane. Let's just take a look at someone who, in high school, seeks to become a great teacher: (1) Do well in school. (2) Apply to 4-year universities. ($45/application. Assume 6 schools.) (3) Graduate from 4-year university ($120,000) (4) Take GRE ($185), CBEST ($40), CSET ($140) (5) Apply to Masters/Credential Programs ($60/application. Assume 4 programs) (6) Graduate from MS/Cred program ($40,000), Receive Preliminary Credential. (7) Apply to school districts/schools. Wait. Wait more. Travel expenses for interviews ($?) (8) Get hired, non-tenure track, work for 3 years on-and-off depending on June-Layoffs (9) Enroll in Professional Teacher Instruction Program, take more classes over a year. ($50 application fee, variable tuition) (10) Complete "Clear" Credential from PTIP.
So... if someone wants to become the teacher that low-income, low-hope students need, s/he would have to spend/in-debt over $200,000 for investing in the *right* to make that change. When your average teacher in California gets paid $35,000/year for the first few years and slowly trudge up to $45,000 without job security, without pension security, and with a for-profit industry doing everything it can to reduce the amount of respect that a teacher receives, it's a pretty hard sell.
I know this stuff because I got to step (5), completely willing to accept the rest with a smile on my face. But then the recession hit and I just couldn't drag my partner through the rest of the steps without any realistic expectation of stability. I took an offer to pursue a secondary passion and am making more than a 10-year veteran teacher would be making after only 2 years on the job.
An educator does not deal with driven, curious, and happily intelligent people all day. Her job is instead to take the lazy, complacent, and dull-minded and instill knowledge and analytical ability.
"Hundreds of people are spending 20 or 30 hours a week just taking free Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They're not looking for credit, just the challenge of learning."
Hundreds, huh? Out of MILLIONS? They are the outliers within the outliers!
MOOC addicts are not the norm. iPad owners with 4G connections are not the norm. Slashdotters are not the norm. AP students are not the norm.
Increasing access to those who already have access will give only marginal gains. If you want to start a revolution in education, focus on the students that regularly receive Cs, Ds, and Fs as course grades. Change THEM and you change the world.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is very, very typical of someone who knows enough about cycling to ask questions, but not enough to answer them. I work in the transportation industry. I live car-free. I teach bicycle education. I work with regional transportation agencies, police departments, city planners/councils, and universities to facilitate the use of non-driver-only transportation.
The title of the article should be more direct to the reader: "How Likely Am I to be Injured While Riding My Bike?" That's what people want to know, after all. "How likely am *I* to be hurt?" Most people are concerned with the risks associated with bike commuting or running errands on two-wheels, so let's focus on that. So, let's omit all recreational mountain biking and all competitive (and "training") rides from the data for now. Next, we must differentiate between collisions and solo falls. Most importantly, differentiate between those who have received official bicycle education and those who have not.
Make all those controls and you'll find that an educated cyclist riding on a road where the average speed is 40mph or lower with a small variety of visibility tactics will have an injury only very rarely. And it will likely be due to environmental hazards.
A preferred list of questions for every bike injury logged:
Has the injured bicyclist received bicycle-specific education? (League of American Bicyclists Traffic Skills 101, Cycle Savvy, Other)
Why kind of riding prompted the injury?
Recreation Paved (roadways, sidewalks, off-street paths)
Recreation Off-Road (dirt, etc.)
Recreation Mixed Terrain (Bike Touring)
Competitive Paved (including training)
Competitive Off-Road (including training)
Utility Paved (Commuting, Errands)
Utility Off-Road
What caused the injury to the cyclist?
Collision (automobile)
Collision (bicycle)
Collision (pedestrian)
Collision (animal)
Collision (mixed)
Solo-Fall (road condition)
Solo-Fall (other)
Strain/Sprain/Other Condition (torn ligament, seizure, etc.)
Which visibility tactics/items were implemented by the bicyclist?
Central/Left of Center Lane Position
High Visibility Colors
All Legally Required Reflectors
Reflectivity Beyond Requirements
Tail Light
Headlight ("see me")
Headlight ("see you")
Which of the following faults were performed by the cyclist?
Neglect to Yield to Right of Way
Inappropriate Lane Position
Travel Against Traffic
Speeding
Other
None
Which of the following faults were performed by others involved?
Neglect to Yield to Right of Way
Inappropriate Lane Position
Travel Against Traffic
Speeding
Other
None
Where did the injury take place?
On-Road, in an intersection
On-Road, within 200 feet of an intersection
On-Road, 200 feet or farther from an intersection
Off-Road
On a Sidewalk
On an Off-Street Path
What is the average speed on the road at the point of injury?
5-20
21-40
41+
-- I don't like to be leashed. I don't even like my cell phone. I find calling someone on a phone to be very demanding. When I hear the phone ring, I hear "TALK TO ME, TALK TO ME!" which would be appropriate if it extremely important to do so, but it rarely is. I prefer a text message to which I can respond when the time is appropriate or an email through which I can convey well-thought-out messages.
-- I am not an exhibitionist. I value my privacy and, more accurately, the intimacy of being able to be vulnerable in one-on-one communication. I hold particular disdain for people who feel they must be the frequent/consistent center of attention and envy.
-- I am not a voyeur. I am not particularly interested by the day-to-day happenings of people. I usually don't care about what you ate for lunch unless you've eaten for a week at a restaurant that's new to you and you think that I would personally enjoy eating at the same place. And if that's the case, send me a message-- don't tag me on your Facebook wall so that I have to visit the shrine you've built to your exhibitionist self.
-- I don't like being subject to the constant turn-over and "hard sale". So much of the portable, connected device industry is massive marketing/advertising, and and utterly temporary in lifespan. One cannot expect to buy a smartphone today and be allowed to keep it for 2 years unmolested by the massive disposable device marketing machine. (I currently keep my dumbphone for 2+ years at a time rather comfortably because no one is bothering to sell me a new one.) One cannot expect buy a tablet today with the option of upgrading any component for extend its workable life.
-- I don't like the focus of the smartphone. The smartphone, in my opinion, should be first and foremost a phone. With the billions of dollars put into R&D and infrastructure, one would think that a cell phone call would be at least as clear as talking on an intercom... but that's far from the case. Instead, cellular voice tech has taken back seat to video media quality so that you can watch really high quality Netflix videos in your palm, but you can't talk to someone in the same confidence of communication that could by using a 40-year old telephone.
This list can go on forever. Or I can simply list what I want of a device that would convince me to be a little more connected:
A high quality phone
A customizable MP3/media player
A good camera
A calendar application
Very long battery life
The option to modify the UI (I hate the cartoony feel of iDevices and don't want to waste battery power facilitating it)
Give me all of that and I will consider getting a smartphone. Until then, cons will outweigh the pros.
People are not confident in the quality and sensitivity of their cell phone receivers/microphones. To compensate, they yell, over-enunciate, repeat themselves, or a combination of the prior to feel more confident in their communications. Moreover, many people have very specific PR-style telephone voices and tones (faux excitement/outrage, etc.) that make it easy to stereotype their speakers as ditzy, shallow, etc.
Each of those actions (and particularly combinations therein) are typically very annoying to hear. The frequent annoyance without a socially acceptable method of addressing such annoyance leads to frustration. Frustration leads to outbursts.
Solution #1 Old-school wired telephone receivers or hands-free headsets with the microphones that extend from the ear to the mouth. These physical additions to phones increase confidence and allow a user to feel more confident that his communication is being received.
Solution #2 Make cell phones better phones. Take a couple million dollars that would otherwise be spent on facilitating the graphics requires for the next implementation of "Angry Bird: Fruit Ninja Attack" and make cell phone communication clearer.
Headline could mean:
(a) Students Build Ship, Inspecting Robot - So some people came together to build a ship and then stare at a robot... Okay...
(b) Students Build Ship-Inspecting Robot - Ah! A great tool! News for Nerds!
All the major airlines have adopted policies to mirror the Federal requirements. Thus they are their own policies as well.
Moreover, to your point, the originator of the rule/policy/law doesn't matter so long as the owner of the plane accepts and enforces it.
It is always intriguing when a post with no "troll" characteristics, is intentfully factual, tactful, spawns discussion, and is modded to at least (+3 Insightful) is eventually moderated down to "Troll".
Call me crazy, but I think people just might actually moderate based on agreement of opinion instead of the descriptors "insightful, informative, funny, etc.".
So here's the thing: It's their plane.
When you buy the ticket and board the plane, you agree to play by their rules. They have the property rights and have sold you limited rights to your seats with stipulations.
If you can't accept the stipulations and choose to break the rules, don't be surprised if you need to be embarrassed into submission or even thrown off the plane when you get caught breaking the rules.
Your opinion of their rules and the basis of their rules are irrelevant given that you have already agreed to their rules. So sit down, turn off everything they say to turn off, and find solace in the fact that you're following the minimal ethic of peaceful coexistence- honoring a contract.
Rideshare is a federally recognized term that encompasses carpool, vanpool, train, bus, and even bike/walk transportation. The creator of Lyft (John Zimmer) knows this very well as he created a fairly-well-adopted ride-matching website called "Zimride".
Zimride doesn't make too much money, though, so he sold it to Enterprise (the car rental company who also is in the carshare and vanpool markets) and created Lyft. Along with other similar decentralized taxi services, he is trying to brand their business models as "rideshare" to equate them with more sustainable practices and receive subsequent leniency in various markets and even public funding.
If you want to see what genuine real-time rideshare is, check out Carma (formerly "Avego"). This is a carpool-facilitating program that makes sure that the driver doesn't make a profit off the shared ride (per State Department mileage reimbursement rates).
If I had mod points, I'd give you a boost, Coward. I, too, am frequently annoyed by the immediate hyperbole of lazy vocabulary usage.
Racism, Sexism - The genuine belief in superiority of one race/sex over another.
Prejudice - This refers to making judgement about something prior to having sufficient genuine experience to make that judgement.
Stereotyping - The oversimplification of characteristics for use in folly and/or prejudice.
Discrimination - Making decisions to include/exclude based on arbitrary traits.
Misogyny - The hatred of women/females.
Objectification - The summary of a person's value by one's body parts.
Insensitivity - Acting without regards to another's likelihood of taking offense.
Now, all of these things are bad. Most people don't like these in our modern society. However, they are not all equal in "badness".
What happened in this presentation was insensitive objectification-- not sexism.
Ok, here's the thing. If Twitter use/mentions currently are a good predictor of election results, then that's cool. However, when you make it known, you invite a bunch of intentional skewers to the mix thus destroying the instrument.
Doctor Who is a creative work. To ask if a new Doctor should be anything aside from meeting certain plot points or general variety would be to ask if "Harry Potter should have been a female..." or "The lead animated character in Cars should have been an automobile made in India."
The creative works do not belong to "the people" and thus doesn't have any obligation to meet their self-imposed standards of fairness or equal representation.
That said, I thought the next Doctor should have been Sue Perkins partially because female, but mostly because her personality is inline with the Doctor's.
Ya, I love the strength per weight that carbon fiber brings, but the stuff is (as of yet) unrecyclable and non-repurposable. Shatter a bit of carbon fiber and all you have is is a bunch of broken carbon fiber. The repair process is shaky and there's no reclamation process for the baked final product...
My idea of a an irony-laden "green" auto:
Carbon Fiber Frame/body
Plug-In Battery Electric
Owned and Operated in Appalachia
Metals are recyclable. Plastics can be recyclable. When we keep our eyes on the cradle-to-grave aspect, we make better judgements for the futures of our children, grandchildren, etc.
Rideshare is an industry term in Transportation Demand Management. It refers (oddly enough) to any of the following modes of transportation:
--Walk
--Bike
--Carpool
--Vanpool
--Bus
--Train
Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar are all well-aware with the misuse of the term and they defend is with the simple statement that "two people going to the same place in/on the same vehicle is a carpool." Detractors aptly point out that it's actually one person with that genuine destination with the other (the driver), being paid to take the passenger to that destination.
So Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar changed their systems early on. No longer would there be fares or fees, but "expected minimum donations" and the driver's weren't for "hire", they were FRIENDS!
"This is my pal, Steve! My app told him to come pick me up and we're going to be best of buddies because he's taking me somewhere I want to go while expecting (though not requiring) a donation!"
In reality, the systems function as taxi services. No rational person can deny that. They need to be insured and everything else at the same standards that taxis are. The end.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3802633&cid=43867447
It looks like Tesla properly understands the value of combining quick fueling with slow charging! The only thing they have to do is create a system (likely subscription) so that you don't have to pick up your original battery pack. The battery pack should belong to the fueling company and your subscription should provide the insurance/assurance against battery pack damage.
Battery packs will be standardized within a small group of performance levels (just like today's gasoline) and the only other variance between vehicles will be the *number* of battery packs swapped in/out.
And by the time that's perfected (oh the joys of "proprietary technology"), hydrogen fuel cell automobiles should be breaking into the market.
How in the world is this Flamebait? Because I said the Apple product is silly if it's the "budget" version at $229?
My comment here spurred fantastic conversation. How in the world did it get modded "troll"? Is this a case of "disagreement modding"?
I never said it was cheap to do anything with gasoline. Instead, I quite directly say that installing fast chargers are so cost-prohibitively expensive that it's likely that they're being subsidized by the federal government to serve expensive, wasteful electricity to the very, very few people who would actually use them.
At the very least, gasoline stations are paid for by private industry and will be able to pay off their own expense. These fast chargers are just getting people used to sub-market value fuel prices.
Note that if the photovoltaic farm is being installed to power the chargers, then the cost of the photovoltaic farm should be included in the cost of the charging station.
Also consider the amount of electricity per square foot that can be generated even by some of the higher end panels today. How much area would be needed to charge a single Nissan Leaf @ level 2 versus a Tesla at level 3/fast charge? Enough to charge 2 cars simultaneously? If not that, then the sheer amount of batteries required to store the power until needed.
You're right that they're more efficient than combustion engines, but so are bicycles. The point is that fast charges are not the future-- they're a dead end to a technology.
Battery swapping, on the other hand, is the most cost efficient, environmentally friendly, and quickest form of refueling an battery EV.
Unfortunately, yes. It was an error. I meant to say that a "budget" iPod shouldn't have a touchscreen.
First, 100 fast chargers does not a nationwide blanket make.
Second, these things are extremely expensive to install (especially if they're not immediately next to major power lines). We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Third, fast charges are very inefficient by comparison to level 2 chargers-- there's a lot of waste energy.
Fourth, fast chargers are most likely to be used midday when electricity is at its costliest.
So, they're expensive to install, wastes electricity, and are most likely to be used when electricity is at its most expensive. Thus, if they want to install them and want people to use them, there's going to have to be massive subsidies.
Or Tesla's spending themselves into a hole again because they figured out that the quagmire that is proprietary charging payment systems has stymied adoption and they're going to just do it themselves... because their product depends on it! And because they missed out on the only true future for battery-electric vehicles: Battery Swapping!
With a title description of "Basic" iPod Touch, I was thinking it would be a smaller, lighter, more storage, non-touchscreen, longer battery version of life iPod touch. Basically, a cross between the nano and original iPod.
But no, you still have WiFi, Bluetooth, web-browsing, a forward-facing camera, etc. How is that basic? It has a touch screen!
Ok, I'll admit it. I hate iProducts... but Apply could convince me to give up my Creative Zen X-Fi 32GB that I bought 6 years ago for $150 bucks. It has:
+Drag-and-drop music loading
+No need for iTunes
+Buttons so I don't have to stare at the screen to skip a track
+SD card slot
+No need for OS updates and obsolescence
To be fair, the Zen is over-engineered to have the ability to play video, view pictures, etc. and had they omitted those dumb things, price could have been even cheaper.
Those things aren't perks to the job so much as mood elevators that create a friendly, inviting, and even party-like atmosphere that elevate mood and creativity.
Those aren't "free perks", they're investments in novel software.
Hi Nemyst,
I love this question and I appreciate your forwardness and honesty in asking it.
The problem with "lazy, complacent, and dull-minded people" just being left to their own devices is that we assume that they are also kind and want for little. But then there's strain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_theory_%28sociology%29).
Strain theory suggest (rather aptly) that people who want (or feel they deserve) more than to what they have legitimate access will find illegitimate means to obtain their wants. When you have a nation full of people who are trained from day one to consume more and more and to seek out luxury, but are not given the necessary requirements to *earn* that luxury through appropriate means, they will (and do) turn to crime.
Your standard education curriculum seeks to change both the goals and the means to achieve those goals by teaching that you don't need a life of luxury to be happy (via ethics, philosophy, history, literature, etc.) and to provide the usable life and career skills to not need to turn to crime.
In short, we can't just let the happily uneducated stay uneducated because they will not be able to contribute enough to their own well-being via legitimate means and will thus ruin it further for us all.
To speak to another point you make ("We're wasting valuable resources trying to keep mediocre people from entirely failing..."), I don't think we're allocating *enough* resources. But I'm not talking about raw cash, electronics, or amazing new buildings. The most important and long lasting investment you can make in beneficially affect low-performing students is to have a fantastic person in front of the classroom.
In California, there are thousands and thousands of these fantastic educators dying to get into the classrooms, but the state and districts are either severely underfunded or the money isn't being spent as well as it should. Moreover, the cost of becoming a teacher is insane. Let's just take a look at someone who, in high school, seeks to become a great teacher:
(1) Do well in school.
(2) Apply to 4-year universities. ($45/application. Assume 6 schools.)
(3) Graduate from 4-year university ($120,000)
(4) Take GRE ($185), CBEST ($40), CSET ($140)
(5) Apply to Masters/Credential Programs ($60/application. Assume 4 programs)
(6) Graduate from MS/Cred program ($40,000), Receive Preliminary Credential.
(7) Apply to school districts/schools. Wait. Wait more. Travel expenses for interviews ($?)
(8) Get hired, non-tenure track, work for 3 years on-and-off depending on June-Layoffs
(9) Enroll in Professional Teacher Instruction Program, take more classes over a year. ($50 application fee, variable tuition)
(10) Complete "Clear" Credential from PTIP.
So... if someone wants to become the teacher that low-income, low-hope students need, s/he would have to spend/in-debt over $200,000 for investing in the *right* to make that change. When your average teacher in California gets paid $35,000/year for the first few years and slowly trudge up to $45,000 without job security, without pension security, and with a for-profit industry doing everything it can to reduce the amount of respect that a teacher receives, it's a pretty hard sell.
I know this stuff because I got to step (5), completely willing to accept the rest with a smile on my face. But then the recession hit and I just couldn't drag my partner through the rest of the steps without any realistic expectation of stability. I took an offer to pursue a secondary passion and am making more than a 10-year veteran teacher would be making after only 2 years on the job.
An educator does not deal with driven, curious, and happily intelligent people all day. Her job is instead to take the lazy, complacent, and dull-minded and instill knowledge and analytical ability.
"Hundreds of people are spending 20 or 30 hours a week just taking free Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They're not looking for credit, just the challenge of learning."
Hundreds, huh? Out of MILLIONS? They are the outliers within the outliers!
MOOC addicts are not the norm.
iPad owners with 4G connections are not the norm.
Slashdotters are not the norm.
AP students are not the norm.
Increasing access to those who already have access will give only marginal gains. If you want to start a revolution in education, focus on the students that regularly receive Cs, Ds, and Fs as course grades. Change THEM and you change the world.