It's not about "idyllic", it's about relative levels of psychological damage.
And you can "like to see" sex delayed until 40, for all most teens care. They may not be making mature decisions, but they're still making them.
Idyllic? No. Pretty good? Yes. Far better than my life would likely have been like 1000 years ago. Very good chance I wouldn't have even lived this long.
Would you prefer to be living back when it was common for girls to be having kids by the time they were 14? How many sane women would want that?
My son has had "girlfriends" fairly regularly since he was 14. One of them from last year had to change schools when she was 12 or 13 because she had a "reputation" at her previous school as a result of various rumors. Some kid ended up groping her. This made her quite skittish around boys. Though you wouldn't expect any relationship among 15 year olds to last very long, the one she had with my son ended partially because of that. She's struggling. He goes to a small school. We know her parents.
I've seen many of his texts and unfortunately some of the pictures that have gotten exchanged between he and his friends. For the most part I consider it normal and harmless but it can very easily go too far and cause some real difficulties. He lost his phone for quite awhile because he made some bad decisions and we discovered them before it got worse.
So yes, they make decisions, and yes they should be allowed to make mistakes, - but there are times when parents need to step in.
Just because we survived as a species does not mean that young girls lead idyllic lives when they were married off or sold into slavery at 13. When whole populations could be wiped out by disease, famine, or war, producing lots of babies was important to survival. Even then, there were pretty strict mores regarding sex. Violating them could mean a death sentence or being ostracized.
Typically, as societies become more successful and wealthy, women have fewer kids and wait until later in life to have them. And even though we are physically able to produce children at young ages, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Our brains aren't fully developed until around age 25 or so. Because of this many adolescents are practically wired to make crappy decisions. Sometimes the natural consequences are what's necessary to keep them from repeating the same mistakes. Other times some intervention or prevention is necessary. Lots of teens are definitely at risk for suicide. You don't always want to wait for them to work it out themselves.
I have a 15 year old son, and a 12 year old daughter so I'm right in the middle of this. Even though my son's hormones are raging and my daughter's are headed in that direction, they aren't even close to being physically or emotionally mature. They do not have the means to raise a child on their own. Of course, there is such a thing as birth control, but the chemical methods have bad side effects and potential health risks when used for a long time. Non-chemical methods tend not to be that reliable. So delaying full blown sex until their later teens or early twenties is something we'd like to see. Definitely past 14. Past 17 is probably pushing it, but we can hope. 17 is the current average for when kids become sexually active.
There lots of stupid things that 14 year olds can do which can be harmful to themselves and to others without being criminal. This kid may have trouble getting employment when he's 24 because of what he did when he was 14. In my opinion, one 14 year old sending a naked picture of themselves to another 14 year old requires some parental intervention, but it isn't criminal (unless it's in violation of some restraining order) and shouldn't become part of any police record.
As a culture, it seems we need to take a deep breath and figure out what is truly damaging behavior for teenagers and what is normal exploration of sexuality. Technology opens the doors to behaviors that weren't open before. What are the real consequences for those behaviors? Like I said, I don't believe that one boy sending a naked picture of himself to one girl is going to destroy her under most circumstances. However, what if 15 boys in a class thought it would be funny to send a naked pic of themselves to the same girl and they kept doing it over period of weeks and months? That I could see as being extremely traumatic for her.
I used it a very long time ago and countless people have used it before and since. It's far better to have a definite end date rather than just sporadic updates that grow farther apart and less significant, - leaving people to wonder if it's being maintained or not.
Instead of the maintainer feeling the occasional pang of guilt over not doing anything, they can feel good about what was accomplished during the life of the project and move on to the next thing.
I'm almost 30 years into my career and have had access to a shower in at least half of the places I've worked. In lots of situations you really don't need one as long as it's relatively flat and you're not killing yourself to get there. A lot of the time cycling takes no more effort than walking. It's just faster.
I graduated and started programming in 1987. I drove a car with no A/C and vinyl seats. I was sweatier getting out of that thing on some mornings than I would be after biking at a moderate pace.
No, the traffic is probably going 20 to 25. At least where I would ride with them. Suburbia might be different.
Bicycle trailers are difficult for cars to see in many situations. They're not a good place to drag a child. You can tell yourself whatever you want, but there's just no way to make that safe. In certain limited circumstances the risk may be comparable to other stuff you do daily, but for the most part, it's just a bad idea. I mostly see them in places where it's a very bad idea, that may be confirmation bias, but obviously plenty of people are using them that way.
Describe for me a situation where you can't see a trailer and would be likely to collide with one? The idea that you could see a kid on a bike easier than you could see something taller (the adult), wider, and over twice as long makes no sense. Think about it.
I'm not saying it's a risk free activity, but we are far more likely to die doing something else that we wouldn't think twice about. You've decided they're unsafe because they were relatively uncommon until recently and because many of us are no longer used to seeing anything but cars on the streets. The fact that kids used to ride their bikes on the streets all the time has been lost from collective memory since we as a society have started driving them everywhere along with ourselves.
Getting thrown doesn't mean the kid will not get injured or killed. Hitting the pavement or curb is where a lot of serious bike injuries come from.
With a bike trailer, the kids are buckled in and protected by a metal frame. We had our kids wear helmets as well. The trailers are brightly colored and have big orange flags the stick up for visibility. Plus there's an adult on a bike immediately in front of them. They're pretty hard not to see.
Have you ever ridden a bike carrying a bag full of newspapers? It's not particularly maneuverable, stable, or fast. Not sure that kid has any more chance of avoiding an accident and maybe less.
I wouldn't expect the metal frame of the bike trailer to protect a child from a car hitting it at 50 mph or even 30. At the same time I never had a trailer on a street where the speed limit was above 30. In practice, traffic is either light or moving a lot slower.
One of the most likely scenarios for getting hit is a car pulling out of parking spot or lot and not seeing you. As a cyclist you learn to be wary of that potential and act accordingly. Even so, if there is a collision, the cars aren't moving all that fast. Another common collision between bikes and cars is the "right hook". It is where a car will pass you as you approach an intersection and make a right turn in front of you not realizing you were there. In that scenario, it is your momentum that would lead to any injury and it would be the adult that gets hit and not the trailer.
What do you mean by "city streets" ? I live in a city and there's some streets I'd take a trailer on and others I wouldn't, but I could get most places I'd want to go. Speed limits are slower in the city and drivers are used to watching for pedestrians crossing and bikes in the road.
It wasn't that long ago that a common job for kids was delivering papers and they'd do it on their bikes, sometimes on the sidewalk, sometimes on the street. Bikes were a common way for kids to get to school or anywhere else they wanted to go. I used to ride across three towns to get to a shopping mall on roads far more dangerous for bikes than anything near here.
I'm not sure where it happened but somewhere along the line, our fears have gotten way out of proportion with reality. Somewhere between 700 and 800 people are killed on bikes in the US each year and a small percentage of them are kids. So yes it can happen. About 5,000 teenagers die every year in car crashes. About 400,000 are seriously injured. About 700 kids drown each year. There are 246,000 medically treated trampoline injuries each year.
I'm far more worried about the prospect of my 15 year old driving next year, than I am of his riding his bike around town. Statistics would seem to support my concerns.
We have a Burley D'Lite. It's about 15 years old now and our kids have long since out grown it. We still use it to haul stuff. Anyway the capacity of the new models are about 100 pounds I'm not sure what ours is. It was expensive but we got our money's worth. It doubled as a stroller. There are lots of choices now that weren't available then.
I'm not an expert on bakfiets but they come in various sizes. I've seen some with a listed capacity of 80kg in the front and another 25kg in the rear.
Once our kids outgrew the trailer, we got a Trek "Mountain Tram", - essentially it's like a kid's bike without a front wheel that attaches to the back of your bike. The kids can either help you by pedaling or they can just coast and make you do all the work. We had one from Trek but there are all kinds of them. Newer one's I've seen are almost like recumbents that have seat backs, etc. A child could ride a long ways in one of those in comfort. I've seen people attach one of these to their bike and then a trailer to the tram to put the smaller kids in.
Anyway, the main point is that there are lots of good options for bringing the kids along.
I'm not sure I follow. Because it takes you 4 times longer to get where you're going that some how quadruples the amount of space you take up? If every cyclist rode single file and every car stayed behind every cyclist that might be the case, but that's not how it works.
And I agree that it seems unlikely that it takes you 4 times as long to get to work on a bike. The building I work in like many buildings in the city has very limited parking. Most people have to park somewhere and walk a few blocks. I can ride door to door. That saves me time. During the summer I can ride the 6 miles to work in 25 minutes or less. I'm very lucky if I can drive to work during rush hour and arrive in that same period of time.
Lots of metro areas are becoming like this and so increasingly are suburbs. I live in Minneapolis and bike year round. We have a bike freeway that cuts through the middle of the city on an old railroad line. It's the quickest way across the city, especially during rush hour.
Lots and lots of people die in car accidents and it doesn't stop folks from driving.
While a low income is associated with obesity, it doesn't mean that all poor people are fat. And being obese doesn't mean you can't ride a bike, - even if you weigh 500 pounds. Check out this story about a guy that lost over 300 pounds by changing his diet and riding a bike: http://www.bicycling.com/food/.... Clearly this guy had some money in order to be able to afford a customized bike, but a 300 pound person has plenty of options in stock bikes. An older steel bike might even be better.
Again, I'm not sure how promoting a less expensive form of transportation hurts the poor, especially since other forms of transportation aren't being eliminated.
I ride my bike to work most days. It's 30 years old and I paid $75 for it at a garage sale. It's a simple fixed gear and probably costs less per year to maintain on average than a single tank of gas, - and that's in the US. I'm sure that operating a vehicle in London is a lot more expensive than it is here.
This seems like the kind of policy that has long term benefits for the poor and really just about everyone if you care about the environment.
You really don't see it? They're going to create these bike lanes by taking a car lane and walling it off. Thus, more traffic and it sucks for everyone but bike riders.
I know that a lot of bike riders think of this as a positive, which is unfortunate. You can't ride a bike unless you're physically fit, which rules out the disabled, the elderly, the young, and much of the poor. Also to people who sweat a lot, and entirely genetic problem. It's like a giant middle finger to everyone in society. The attitude seems to be, "tough, now it's time for YOU to suffer!"
How physically fit do you need to be to ride a bike? It's not that hard and the beauty is that if you're not that fit now, you can get more fit by riding.
How does it hurt the young? If they're too young to ride there are lots of options for the parents to bring them along on a bike (via trailer, bakfiets, or whatever). The young certainly can't drive.
The poor? They're too poor to ride a bike, but they can own a car, pay for fuel, and for parking? Sorry, that doesn't make sense.
It's not like the road is going away completely or there aren't going to be trains or buses for people who aren't able to ride.
Take a good look around your city and notice how much space is devoted to the automobile. If you could take even 10% of the cars away by making it practical for people to get around by other means, imagine how much space that would free up. There might even be LESS congestion in lots of places.
Your wrist is an extremely handy place to have information available when you're on the move. That's why over time there's been so many specialty watches created whether for diving, sailing, training, etc. Ever notice what's on the wrists of quarter backs, running backs, and receivers during a football game? Not watches, but playlists.
The smart watch is in its infancy. We might be a ways off from ones that are truly useful and convenient, but the potential is definitely there.
I have a divers watch with a traditional analog display and two small digital readouts for other information like current depth, water temp and other dive related info. I actually do dive with it but mostly I use it as a regular watch. From a diver's perspective, watches like this have been largely replaced by dive computers. Lots of people get watches like this purely for the fashion and I do get a compliment on it once in awhile.
Though it's pretty durable, I do have to be careful with it in some ways. Battery replacement is expensive because it has to be pressure tested to 200 meters, and only a few places are able to do it for this particular watch. The watch was gone for two weeks the last time I had the the battery replaced. For that reason I don't often wear it while swimming because I swim a lot and it will automatically go into dive mode. It's not like the battery drain in that mode is THAT bad but not wearing while swimming probably gives me another 6 months of battery life. Wish I would have spent the extra money for an Eco-drive. But the battery/capacitor eventually goes on those too.
For me an Apple Watch would cost about the same and provide a lot more functionality. It does have a fairly basic water resistance rating, but according to this test: https://youtu.be/kJFci42OO7c It actually survives the pressure of being submerged at substantial depths pretty well. Lots of people have figured this out and there's even been a swim app designed for it.
My point is that they're not as fragile as you make them out to be and people tend to take care of their "nice" watches anyway. An Apple Watch may not provide any feature you'd be interested in but that doesn't mean they don't have genuine value for other people.
At first I was skeptical that a smart watch would have any impact on the market for Swiss watches but looking at what Fossil sells, I can kind of see it. They have lots of extra dials and gizmos on them. It's not just a classic high end watch that tells time.
Aren't politics also in the eye of the beholder? Whether or not you like the politics in Minnesota would sort of depend on your political beliefs. For that matter, no matter what your politics are, you could find a happy place there (and I suppose anywhere). Everyone from Michelle Bachman, to Al Franken, to Jess Ventura has found a niche in Minnesota politics.
The climate sucks by comparison to almost everywhere else. It's nice just often enough to know what we are missing when it's not.
The food is bland across the entire state, even in the cities. Spaghetti is considered a spicy ethnic delicacy.
We are stifled by Marxist politics and oppressed by the nanny state
The mosquitoes are ginormous
The ratio of women to men is only 50 to 50 which is not nearly good enough for males in the tech industry to have any real hope for a love life.
In popular culture we are most well known for our accent and creative use of wood chippers.
Let the open tech jobs go unfilled. Those of us already here in the tech industry will do our best to slog through the constant blizzards to do the jobs that companies can't pay enough for outsiders to take.
Actually there's always been a fair number of tech jobs here, - going back to Control Data and Cray Research. Seagate has a major presence here. There's long history of medical device development/manufacturing and 3M has its tentacles everywhere.
If you went to the CES keynote this past winter you will have heard of "SmartThings", a major player in the IOT/smart home market. They came out of a very active "Maker" community.
Electrification is a major requirement in order to have a significant impact on green house gas emissions. That means electrification of transportation for example. However, if your means of producing electricity is dirty that doesn't help. Reducing emissions from generating electricity is a logical step in solving the larger problem. It is not the only step.
We seem to be having a very hard time managing the waste now. Nobody wants it anywhere near them. Just because it's technically and theoretically easy politically. Like it or not, that matters too.
Sometimes you get a discount. More often it's just that you'll be one of the first to get your hands on a product. Contributing to a kickstarter campaign is not done for the financial rewards (there are none). It's done to help fund a product that you're interested in, or just to help somebody out. If there is an equivalent product out there, then it doesn't make sense.
At the time Ouya was going to offer something that the major console makers weren't. In the end, they simply didn't execute well enough, fast enough. That is a risk you take when deciding to contribute. You have to remember too that most of these campaigns ask for relatively small contributions. You're not betting your house on the success of these startups.
Then you'd have just a cycle cpu rather something that can be used for a variety of purposes.
The Apple Watch will be fine with salt and sweat and even being submerged in water (though not very deep).
Ant+ is a perfect reason why one should be careful products from traditional cycling computer manufacturers. It's only been around a few years and it's already being dropped like a hot potato. Very poor range compared to BLE. I feel bad for the people that invested a lot of money in ANT+ sensors.
I had a Polar Cycling Computer in a watch form factor. I bought it used, otherwise it was quite expensive. It would show heart rate, cadence, speed, etc. but it had lots of limitations. One being that it's range was extremely limited. It couldn't reliably get a signal from the speed sensor unless it was mounted on the bars. It wouldn't work on my wrist which made it pretty inconvenient. In spite of the problems, I did like the concept.
I'm sure things have improved quite a bit in the last few years but it seems to me that having a more general purpose device on your wrist is more cost effective and future proof than having devices that focus on fitness alone.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not leading an idyllic life. Are you?
It's not about "idyllic", it's about relative levels of psychological damage.
And you can "like to see" sex delayed until 40, for all most teens care. They may not be making mature decisions, but they're still making them.
Idyllic? No. Pretty good? Yes. Far better than my life would likely have been like 1000 years ago. Very good chance I wouldn't have even lived this long.
Would you prefer to be living back when it was common for girls to be having kids by the time they were 14? How many sane women would want that?
My son has had "girlfriends" fairly regularly since he was 14. One of them from last year had to change schools when she was 12 or 13 because she had a "reputation" at her previous school as a result of various rumors. Some kid ended up groping her. This made her quite skittish around boys. Though you wouldn't expect any relationship among 15 year olds to last very long, the one she had with my son ended partially because of that. She's struggling. He goes to a small school. We know her parents.
I've seen many of his texts and unfortunately some of the pictures that have gotten exchanged between he and his friends. For the most part I consider it normal and harmless but it can very easily go too far and cause some real difficulties. He lost his phone for quite awhile because he made some bad decisions and we discovered them before it got worse.
So yes, they make decisions, and yes they should be allowed to make mistakes, - but there are times when parents need to step in.
Just because we survived as a species does not mean that young girls lead idyllic lives when they were married off or sold into slavery at 13. When whole populations could be wiped out by disease, famine, or war, producing lots of babies was important to survival. Even then, there were pretty strict mores regarding sex. Violating them could mean a death sentence or being ostracized.
Typically, as societies become more successful and wealthy, women have fewer kids and wait until later in life to have them. And even though we are physically able to produce children at young ages, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Our brains aren't fully developed until around age 25 or so. Because of this many adolescents are practically wired to make crappy decisions. Sometimes the natural consequences are what's necessary to keep them from repeating the same mistakes. Other times some intervention or prevention is necessary. Lots of teens are definitely at risk for suicide. You don't always want to wait for them to work it out themselves.
I have a 15 year old son, and a 12 year old daughter so I'm right in the middle of this. Even though my son's hormones are raging and my daughter's are headed in that direction, they aren't even close to being physically or emotionally mature. They do not have the means to raise a child on their own. Of course, there is such a thing as birth control, but the chemical methods have bad side effects and potential health risks when used for a long time. Non-chemical methods tend not to be that reliable. So delaying full blown sex until their later teens or early twenties is something we'd like to see. Definitely past 14. Past 17 is probably pushing it, but we can hope. 17 is the current average for when kids become sexually active.
There lots of stupid things that 14 year olds can do which can be harmful to themselves and to others without being criminal. This kid may have trouble getting employment when he's 24 because of what he did when he was 14. In my opinion, one 14 year old sending a naked picture of themselves to another 14 year old requires some parental intervention, but it isn't criminal (unless it's in violation of some restraining order) and shouldn't become part of any police record.
As a culture, it seems we need to take a deep breath and figure out what is truly damaging behavior for teenagers and what is normal exploration of sexuality. Technology opens the doors to behaviors that weren't open before. What are the real consequences for those behaviors? Like I said, I don't believe that one boy sending a naked picture of himself to one girl is going to destroy her under most circumstances. However, what if 15 boys in a class thought it would be funny to send a naked pic of themselves to the same girl and they kept doing it over period of weeks and months? That I could see as being extremely traumatic for her.
I used it a very long time ago and countless people have used it before and since. It's far better to have a definite end date rather than just sporadic updates that grow farther apart and less significant, - leaving people to wonder if it's being maintained or not.
Instead of the maintainer feeling the occasional pang of guilt over not doing anything, they can feel good about what was accomplished during the life of the project and move on to the next thing.
Natural gas explosions occur about every other day in the US and over 400 people die per year from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Our existing sources of power and heat aren't exactly risk free.
I'm almost 30 years into my career and have had access to a shower in at least half of the places I've worked. In lots of situations you really don't need one as long as it's relatively flat and you're not killing yourself to get there. A lot of the time cycling takes no more effort than walking. It's just faster.
I graduated and started programming in 1987. I drove a car with no A/C and vinyl seats. I was sweatier getting out of that thing on some mornings than I would be after biking at a moderate pace.
So then there's probably traffic going 40.
No, the traffic is probably going 20 to 25. At least where I would ride with them. Suburbia might be different.
Bicycle trailers are difficult for cars to see in many situations. They're not a good place to drag a child. You can tell yourself whatever you want, but there's just no way to make that safe. In certain limited circumstances the risk may be comparable to other stuff you do daily, but for the most part, it's just a bad idea. I mostly see them in places where it's a very bad idea, that may be confirmation bias, but obviously plenty of people are using them that way.
Describe for me a situation where you can't see a trailer and would be likely to collide with one? The idea that you could see a kid on a bike easier than you could see something taller (the adult), wider, and over twice as long makes no sense. Think about it. I'm not saying it's a risk free activity, but we are far more likely to die doing something else that we wouldn't think twice about. You've decided they're unsafe because they were relatively uncommon until recently and because many of us are no longer used to seeing anything but cars on the streets. The fact that kids used to ride their bikes on the streets all the time has been lost from collective memory since we as a society have started driving them everywhere along with ourselves.
Getting thrown doesn't mean the kid will not get injured or killed. Hitting the pavement or curb is where a lot of serious bike injuries come from.
With a bike trailer, the kids are buckled in and protected by a metal frame. We had our kids wear helmets as well. The trailers are brightly colored and have big orange flags the stick up for visibility. Plus there's an adult on a bike immediately in front of them. They're pretty hard not to see.
Have you ever ridden a bike carrying a bag full of newspapers? It's not particularly maneuverable, stable, or fast. Not sure that kid has any more chance of avoiding an accident and maybe less.
I wouldn't expect the metal frame of the bike trailer to protect a child from a car hitting it at 50 mph or even 30. At the same time I never had a trailer on a street where the speed limit was above 30. In practice, traffic is either light or moving a lot slower.
One of the most likely scenarios for getting hit is a car pulling out of parking spot or lot and not seeing you. As a cyclist you learn to be wary of that potential and act accordingly. Even so, if there is a collision, the cars aren't moving all that fast. Another common collision between bikes and cars is the "right hook". It is where a car will pass you as you approach an intersection and make a right turn in front of you not realizing you were there. In that scenario, it is your momentum that would lead to any injury and it would be the adult that gets hit and not the trailer.
What do you mean by "city streets" ? I live in a city and there's some streets I'd take a trailer on and others I wouldn't, but I could get most places I'd want to go. Speed limits are slower in the city and drivers are used to watching for pedestrians crossing and bikes in the road.
It wasn't that long ago that a common job for kids was delivering papers and they'd do it on their bikes, sometimes on the sidewalk, sometimes on the street. Bikes were a common way for kids to get to school or anywhere else they wanted to go. I used to ride across three towns to get to a shopping mall on roads far more dangerous for bikes than anything near here.
I'm not sure where it happened but somewhere along the line, our fears have gotten way out of proportion with reality. Somewhere between 700 and 800 people are killed on bikes in the US each year and a small percentage of them are kids. So yes it can happen. About 5,000 teenagers die every year in car crashes. About 400,000 are seriously injured. About 700 kids drown each year. There are 246,000 medically treated trampoline injuries each year.
I'm far more worried about the prospect of my 15 year old driving next year, than I am of his riding his bike around town. Statistics would seem to support my concerns.
We have a Burley D'Lite. It's about 15 years old now and our kids have long since out grown it. We still use it to haul stuff. Anyway the capacity of the new models are about 100 pounds I'm not sure what ours is. It was expensive but we got our money's worth. It doubled as a stroller. There are lots of choices now that weren't available then.
I'm not an expert on bakfiets but they come in various sizes. I've seen some with a listed capacity of 80kg in the front and another 25kg in the rear.
Once our kids outgrew the trailer, we got a Trek "Mountain Tram", - essentially it's like a kid's bike without a front wheel that attaches to the back of your bike. The kids can either help you by pedaling or they can just coast and make you do all the work. We had one from Trek but there are all kinds of them. Newer one's I've seen are almost like recumbents that have seat backs, etc. A child could ride a long ways in one of those in comfort. I've seen people attach one of these to their bike and then a trailer to the tram to put the smaller kids in.
Anyway, the main point is that there are lots of good options for bringing the kids along.
I'm not sure I follow. Because it takes you 4 times longer to get where you're going that some how quadruples the amount of space you take up? If every cyclist rode single file and every car stayed behind every cyclist that might be the case, but that's not how it works.
And I agree that it seems unlikely that it takes you 4 times as long to get to work on a bike. The building I work in like many buildings in the city has very limited parking. Most people have to park somewhere and walk a few blocks. I can ride door to door. That saves me time. During the summer I can ride the 6 miles to work in 25 minutes or less. I'm very lucky if I can drive to work during rush hour and arrive in that same period of time.
Lots of metro areas are becoming like this and so increasingly are suburbs. I live in Minneapolis and bike year round. We have a bike freeway that cuts through the middle of the city on an old railroad line. It's the quickest way across the city, especially during rush hour.
Lots and lots of people die in car accidents and it doesn't stop folks from driving.
While a low income is associated with obesity, it doesn't mean that all poor people are fat. And being obese doesn't mean you can't ride a bike, - even if you weigh 500 pounds. Check out this story about a guy that lost over 300 pounds by changing his diet and riding a bike: http://www.bicycling.com/food/.... Clearly this guy had some money in order to be able to afford a customized bike, but a 300 pound person has plenty of options in stock bikes. An older steel bike might even be better.
Again, I'm not sure how promoting a less expensive form of transportation hurts the poor, especially since other forms of transportation aren't being eliminated.
I ride my bike to work most days. It's 30 years old and I paid $75 for it at a garage sale. It's a simple fixed gear and probably costs less per year to maintain on average than a single tank of gas, - and that's in the US. I'm sure that operating a vehicle in London is a lot more expensive than it is here.
This seems like the kind of policy that has long term benefits for the poor and really just about everyone if you care about the environment.
You really don't see it? They're going to create these bike lanes by taking a car lane and walling it off. Thus, more traffic and it sucks for everyone but bike riders.
I know that a lot of bike riders think of this as a positive, which is unfortunate. You can't ride a bike unless you're physically fit, which rules out the disabled, the elderly, the young, and much of the poor. Also to people who sweat a lot, and entirely genetic problem. It's like a giant middle finger to everyone in society. The attitude seems to be, "tough, now it's time for YOU to suffer!"
How physically fit do you need to be to ride a bike? It's not that hard and the beauty is that if you're not that fit now, you can get more fit by riding.
How does it hurt the young? If they're too young to ride there are lots of options for the parents to bring them along on a bike (via trailer, bakfiets, or whatever). The young certainly can't drive.
The poor? They're too poor to ride a bike, but they can own a car, pay for fuel, and for parking? Sorry, that doesn't make sense.
It's not like the road is going away completely or there aren't going to be trains or buses for people who aren't able to ride.
Take a good look around your city and notice how much space is devoted to the automobile. If you could take even 10% of the cars away by making it practical for people to get around by other means, imagine how much space that would free up. There might even be LESS congestion in lots of places.
Your wrist is an extremely handy place to have information available when you're on the move. That's why over time there's been so many specialty watches created whether for diving, sailing, training, etc. Ever notice what's on the wrists of quarter backs, running backs, and receivers during a football game? Not watches, but playlists.
The smart watch is in its infancy. We might be a ways off from ones that are truly useful and convenient, but the potential is definitely there.
I have a divers watch with a traditional analog display and two small digital readouts for other information like current depth, water temp and other dive related info. I actually do dive with it but mostly I use it as a regular watch. From a diver's perspective, watches like this have been largely replaced by dive computers. Lots of people get watches like this purely for the fashion and I do get a compliment on it once in awhile.
Though it's pretty durable, I do have to be careful with it in some ways. Battery replacement is expensive because it has to be pressure tested to 200 meters, and only a few places are able to do it for this particular watch. The watch was gone for two weeks the last time I had the the battery replaced. For that reason I don't often wear it while swimming because I swim a lot and it will automatically go into dive mode. It's not like the battery drain in that mode is THAT bad but not wearing while swimming probably gives me another 6 months of battery life. Wish I would have spent the extra money for an Eco-drive. But the battery/capacitor eventually goes on those too.
For me an Apple Watch would cost about the same and provide a lot more functionality. It does have a fairly basic water resistance rating, but according to this test: https://youtu.be/kJFci42OO7c It actually survives the pressure of being submerged at substantial depths pretty well. Lots of people have figured this out and there's even been a swim app designed for it.
My point is that they're not as fragile as you make them out to be and people tend to take care of their "nice" watches anyway. An Apple Watch may not provide any feature you'd be interested in but that doesn't mean they don't have genuine value for other people.
At first I was skeptical that a smart watch would have any impact on the market for Swiss watches but looking at what Fossil sells, I can kind of see it. They have lots of extra dials and gizmos on them. It's not just a classic high end watch that tells time.
Aren't politics also in the eye of the beholder? Whether or not you like the politics in Minnesota would sort of depend on your political beliefs. For that matter, no matter what your politics are, you could find a happy place there (and I suppose anywhere). Everyone from Michelle Bachman, to Al Franken, to Jess Ventura has found a niche in Minnesota politics.
Let's get real for a moment. I grew up here.
The climate sucks by comparison to almost everywhere else. It's nice just often enough to know what we are missing when it's not.
The food is bland across the entire state, even in the cities. Spaghetti is considered a spicy ethnic delicacy.
We are stifled by Marxist politics and oppressed by the nanny state
The mosquitoes are ginormous
The ratio of women to men is only 50 to 50 which is not nearly good enough for males in the tech industry to have any real hope for a love life.
In popular culture we are most well known for our accent and creative use of wood chippers.
Let the open tech jobs go unfilled. Those of us already here in the tech industry will do our best to slog through the constant blizzards to do the jobs that companies can't pay enough for outsiders to take.
Actually there's always been a fair number of tech jobs here, - going back to Control Data and Cray Research. Seagate has a major presence here. There's long history of medical device development/manufacturing and 3M has its tentacles everywhere.
If you went to the CES keynote this past winter you will have heard of "SmartThings", a major player in the IOT/smart home market. They came out of a very active "Maker" community.
So nobody should do anything?
Electrification is a major requirement in order to have a significant impact on green house gas emissions. That means electrification of transportation for example. However, if your means of producing electricity is dirty that doesn't help. Reducing emissions from generating electricity is a logical step in solving the larger problem. It is not the only step.
Argh. Should read: "Just because it's technically and theoretically easy doesn't mean it's politically easy".
We seem to be having a very hard time managing the waste now. Nobody wants it anywhere near them. Just because it's technically and theoretically easy politically. Like it or not, that matters too.
Sometimes you get a discount. More often it's just that you'll be one of the first to get your hands on a product. Contributing to a kickstarter campaign is not done for the financial rewards (there are none). It's done to help fund a product that you're interested in, or just to help somebody out. If there is an equivalent product out there, then it doesn't make sense.
At the time Ouya was going to offer something that the major console makers weren't. In the end, they simply didn't execute well enough, fast enough. That is a risk you take when deciding to contribute. You have to remember too that most of these campaigns ask for relatively small contributions. You're not betting your house on the success of these startups.
Then you'd have just a cycle cpu rather something that can be used for a variety of purposes.
The Apple Watch will be fine with salt and sweat and even being submerged in water (though not very deep).
Ant+ is a perfect reason why one should be careful products from traditional cycling computer manufacturers. It's only been around a few years and it's already being dropped like a hot potato. Very poor range compared to BLE. I feel bad for the people that invested a lot of money in ANT+ sensors.
I had a Polar Cycling Computer in a watch form factor. I bought it used, otherwise it was quite expensive. It would show heart rate, cadence, speed, etc. but it had lots of limitations. One being that it's range was extremely limited. It couldn't reliably get a signal from the speed sensor unless it was mounted on the bars. It wouldn't work on my wrist which made it pretty inconvenient. In spite of the problems, I did like the concept.
I'm sure things have improved quite a bit in the last few years but it seems to me that having a more general purpose device on your wrist is more cost effective and future proof than having devices that focus on fitness alone.