You are 100% right. There is one human race. No more, no less.
And yet, as a white, blond scandinavian guy, I find myself instinctively being more aware of my wallet and phone etc. if I meet a group of immigrants from the middle east or eastern Europe. It's completely involuntary, and I hate myself for reacting that way. Luckily, it goes away again almost instantly, but for that split-second, I feel like the worst person in the world for having those prejudices.
If they're letting it sit in Ireland or wherever because of a 35% tax, what's to stop them letting it sit in Ireland because of a 10% tax?
Why would they pull that money back into a taxable country when there's a clear benefit for them in letting it sit? 0% tax is still cheaper than even 1% tax.
No, that would be the trigger for Hell freezing over.
Re:Ummm, what's so special about this?
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 1
It could have been much much worse. The Smoking Gun have posted some real horrorshow pop/rap star riders. The sense of entitlement those people have is absoutely mindboggling.
RMS comes off quite reasonable in comparison, if a little overspecific, quirky and dare I say it, mildly autistic?
It happens to me sometimes as well, and I've never been diagnosed with any sort of autistic disorder. However, I am a loner and don't mind it, so I may be an extremely mild case.
There is no doubt in my mind that RMS is quite autistic, though. Read the rider, even small things like compulsively describing his likes and dislikes in surprising detail scream "autism!" to me.
If more people were to take the bus, more frequent stops would be installed and more busses would run on more routes.
The people in their cars just haven't realized yet that public transport only gets better and better when more and more people use it.
Public transport is not a "highly inefficient use of public resources". By getting more people to use public transport, you cut down on pollution, reduce congestion and drastically reduce the needed number of parking spaces. That space can be put to other, better uses.
It's the future of local transportation. Western civilization has had an unhealthy obsession with the automobile since the model T Ford. There needs to be a balance, and currently it's skewed way too far towards personal transportation.
A base-level income and solid standard of living should be given to all, but those with the ambition, skillset and drive to do work for the good of society should be rewarded for doing so by earning larger incomes and thus being able to sustain an improved standard of living.
That way, everyone is guaranteed a reasonable standard of living, but exceptional people can still aspire to rise above.
But it won't happen as long as the stodgy old conservatives continue to use "socialism" and "communism" as great big boogeymen to scare the public into submission.
Re:Not a Real Problem Unless Vacations Are Evil
on
The Real Job Threat
·
· Score: 1
I live in Denmark, one of the most socialist countries in the world (free healthcare and education for all! 50% tax rate or higher! etc.).
We also happen to be one of the countries paying the largest amount to foreign aid etc. compared to our BNP.
And somehow it works. Imagine that. Disregarding the fact that your conceptions of socialist vs. capitalist countries is severely out of whack, perhaps the southern European countries' problems stem from large-scale corruption and lack of competent leadership, rather than arbitrary economic policies.
Read up a bit on "Cambridge Crude", a group at MIT is researching liquid-refuelled batteries, with anode/cattode liquids that can replaced in minutes and recharged at the service stations using grid electricity.
HFCS has roughly the same fructose:glucose ratio as ordinary white sugar. Their health effects are identical, the only difference between them is that HFCS is liquid and therefore easier to implement into a food processing line.
Cut down on all sugars instead of focusing on only one of them. They're all bad for you.
[quote]Since I'm in a bad mood, that means you are either deliberately lying to promote your preferred solution, or you are too ignorant to debate the issues at hand.[/quote]
Or perhaps you're being willfully opposite-minded.
The pure and simple fact of the matter is that the definition of "good input" is easier to handle and more forgiving in FWD cars than it is in RWD cars.
I speak from experience in driving a wide variety of cars (and motorcycles). I know my traction circle pretty damn well, thank you very much.
So do all the liberty-loving bad guys. The net result is an escalation in the level of violence and a greatly increased risk of death.
All your gun-loving place has achieved by this is a populace that is perpetually scared that the guy next to him on the train has a gun and intends to use it. Therefore, he better get a bigger gun! And so on and so forth.
You're not quite right about FWD snow driving and you're disregarding weight transfer, which is hugely important.
Old-school Saab rally drivers showed the world that on loose surfaces you can make extremely good progress in an FWD car by flooring the throttle, using left-foot braking, willfully unbalancing the car with a Scandinavian Flick and knowing when to apply the handbrake. Done properly, all you really have to do in an FWD car is point the front wheels in the right direction and floor it.
For ordinary driving in snow or other situations where you're on the edge of traction, FWD allows you to regain corner traction by releasing the throttle slightly. This is precisely the wrong thing to do in an RWD vehicle and if you're used to either characteristic, switching over will fuck you up.
Snow tires are of course much more important, but I'm willing to bet you that I, in my little FWD hatchback, can outdrive anyone who's in an RWD car with twice the power in snowy or otherwise slippery conditions. I've been doing it all my life and FWD is far superior on good tires in low-grip situations.
Just Cause II is awesome, but it is nothing compared to Saints Row II or the upcoming Saints Row: The Third when it comes to crazy awesome shit.
Saints Row II lets you dress up as a hotdog and throw people off bridges, put on a trenchcoat and flash people for points, go to the plastic surgeon and give your buff gangsta player character a fat implant and a sassy female voice, ride around on fire in a fireproof suit on an ATV and burn down half the city, spray poo from a septic truck at buildings to lower property values, act as a bodyguard for celebrities by throwing annoying fans into a woodchipper, it's probably the best open-world game currently on the market: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIBjHA_4f_Y
Saints Row: The Third (which is coming out this november) will be even more ridiculously fun. I mean, the game has a dedicated "awesome button", which you can press to make any ingame action cooler. There have been a couple of gameplay videos released so far. Hell, at one point you fight a gang of luchadores complete with crazy wrestling moves, and later on you fight a gang of stereotypical movie hackers, complete with a Tron-like VR world. The whole game is completely over the top: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN2-WSyRuO0
Just take a look at how Norway is handling the Oslo bombings and UtÃya shooting.
Not by being paranoid, not by engaging in a ridiculous "war on terror", but by coming together, recognizing that the harsh tone in the political debate and growing split between the left and right wings helped shape Anders Breiviks convictions and fuel his inner thirst for violent action.
The most prominent far-right wing party in Norway is losing voters at an impressive rate. Think about that for a moment. Norway is handling this the correct way, unlike the regrettable way 9/11 was handled.
I like LA Noire a lot, it's one of the most mature games I've played. That's "serious mature" and not "Leisure Suit Larry mature".
The only complaints I have is that it tends to railroad you quite badly in some parts and tends to hold your hand quite a lot so that sometimes it feels like you're just looking at clues in a sequence the game lays out for you instead of doing your own detective work. Then again, some of the clues are stupidly hard to find, frustratingly so from time to time.
But other than that, the story is solid, most of the characters are nuanced, well-written and solidly acted. The facial animation falls down a bit during some bits such as extreme closeups, but it's still by FAR the best facial animation I've seen in a game. When it does come together, it even tends to look a bit like they superimposed recordings of the actors faces on top of the 3D modeled heads, the facial animation is that far ahead of anything else right now.
Dude, you've been missing out. Machine Head is probably one of the top 3 hard rock albums ever recorded. Everyone knows Smoke On The Water, but I prefer Highway Star and Space Truckin'. Jon Lord's organ work is absolutely magnificent.
Amusingly, considering we're commenting on an article about sound quality, it was recorded in a hotel hallway after the fire at Montreux Casino when an audience member fired a flare into the ceiling during Frank Zappa and The Mothers' concert.
Even better, get the In Rock album and listen to Speed King. Then listen to Child In Time, and listen to the same song from the Live in Japan record. Absolutely brilliant stuff.
But the lane isn't closed until you get to the cones.
The signs really should say say "Merge in 500m", "Merge in 250m", "Merge in 100m"? (Adjust for yards as you please)
I never merge before the 100m sign, but once I pass it, it adjust my speed to match the right lane so I can merge smoothly. I don't "blow by" anything.
We now have signs here that say "Keep your lane until merge" and "Maintain following distance when merging". By reminding people to fully use both lanes, a number of highways have had an increase in throughput by almost 20% during rush hour.
Not using all the lanes of the road during rush hour is counterproductive and inefficient, especially when it comes to merging.
There's a 2-lane merge into one lane. Lots of cars have slowed to a stop, why? If there's 50 cars in the pile, 5 of them are going to rush to the front of the lane that's dissapearing and cut someone off at the front who naturally slows down since they are inches away from some maniac.
The correct way to merge two lanes into one is to fill both lanes all the way to the merge, alternating one car from each lane if possible.
People tend to get really fucking pissed when I take the completely empty left lane all the way to the merge and overtake maybe a hundred cars in the process. No one's forcing you to stay in the blocked right lane, why would you waste your time like that? Those kinds of people get really pissed that you're "cutting in line", but there are no lines in traffic like at the supermarket. Use the whole goddamn road when traffic is tight.
Apart from that, I agree with you. Tailgaters should be shot, as should people who do anything other than driving when they're in a car.
I live in a country with a real attitude problem when it comes to traffic. Yielding is not practiced here, I'm amazed at the anger and self-righteousness on display here every day.
And still, roundabouts generally work better than traffic lights for some reason.
Slashdot Mirror
There are two kinds of hybrid drivers:
The ones who go pedal-to-the-metal everywhere because they think driving a 'green' car negates their negative driving habits.
And people like this waste of air:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVdMySWfAIQ
People are people are people.
You are 100% right. There is one human race. No more, no less.
And yet, as a white, blond scandinavian guy, I find myself instinctively being more aware of my wallet and phone etc. if I meet a group of immigrants from the middle east or eastern Europe. It's completely involuntary, and I hate myself for reacting that way. Luckily, it goes away again almost instantly, but for that split-second, I feel like the worst person in the world for having those prejudices.
If they're letting it sit in Ireland or wherever because of a 35% tax, what's to stop them letting it sit in Ireland because of a 10% tax?
Why would they pull that money back into a taxable country when there's a clear benefit for them in letting it sit? 0% tax is still cheaper than even 1% tax.
Mindlessly slashing taxes does not work.
No, that would be the trigger for Hell freezing over.
It could have been much much worse. The Smoking Gun have posted some real horrorshow pop/rap star riders. The sense of entitlement those people have is absoutely mindboggling.
RMS comes off quite reasonable in comparison, if a little overspecific, quirky and dare I say it, mildly autistic?
It happens to me sometimes as well, and I've never been diagnosed with any sort of autistic disorder. However, I am a loner and don't mind it, so I may be an extremely mild case.
There is no doubt in my mind that RMS is quite autistic, though. Read the rider, even small things like compulsively describing his likes and dislikes in surprising detail scream "autism!" to me.
They're not obvious to me, personally I couldn't care less if I was in my car or on a bus while on my way to work.
Is it because you don't want to be near THE POOR PEOPLE?
If more people were to take the bus, more frequent stops would be installed and more busses would run on more routes.
The people in their cars just haven't realized yet that public transport only gets better and better when more and more people use it.
Public transport is not a "highly inefficient use of public resources". By getting more people to use public transport, you cut down on pollution, reduce congestion and drastically reduce the needed number of parking spaces. That space can be put to other, better uses.
Watch this: http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/proterra-ecoliner-electric-bus/1361158/
It's the future of local transportation. Western civilization has had an unhealthy obsession with the automobile since the model T Ford. There needs to be a balance, and currently it's skewed way too far towards personal transportation.
Take the bus, then, if you're mad about being stuck in traffic.
A base-level income and solid standard of living should be given to all, but those with the ambition, skillset and drive to do work for the good of society should be rewarded for doing so by earning larger incomes and thus being able to sustain an improved standard of living.
That way, everyone is guaranteed a reasonable standard of living, but exceptional people can still aspire to rise above.
But it won't happen as long as the stodgy old conservatives continue to use "socialism" and "communism" as great big boogeymen to scare the public into submission.
I live in Denmark, one of the most socialist countries in the world (free healthcare and education for all! 50% tax rate or higher! etc.).
We also happen to be one of the countries paying the largest amount to foreign aid etc. compared to our BNP.
And somehow it works. Imagine that. Disregarding the fact that your conceptions of socialist vs. capitalist countries is severely out of whack, perhaps the southern European countries' problems stem from large-scale corruption and lack of competent leadership, rather than arbitrary economic policies.
Read up a bit on "Cambridge Crude", a group at MIT is researching liquid-refuelled batteries, with anode/cattode liquids that can replaced in minutes and recharged at the service stations using grid electricity.
HFCS has roughly the same fructose:glucose ratio as ordinary white sugar. Their health effects are identical, the only difference between them is that HFCS is liquid and therefore easier to implement into a food processing line.
Cut down on all sugars instead of focusing on only one of them. They're all bad for you.
I do, however, admit to fucking up the difference between HTML and BB-code from time to time.
[quote]Since I'm in a bad mood, that means you are either deliberately lying to promote your preferred solution, or you are too ignorant to debate the issues at hand.[/quote]
Or perhaps you're being willfully opposite-minded.
The pure and simple fact of the matter is that the definition of "good input" is easier to handle and more forgiving in FWD cars than it is in RWD cars.
I speak from experience in driving a wide variety of cars (and motorcycles). I know my traction circle pretty damn well, thank you very much.
So do all the liberty-loving bad guys. The net result is an escalation in the level of violence and a greatly increased risk of death.
All your gun-loving place has achieved by this is a populace that is perpetually scared that the guy next to him on the train has a gun and intends to use it. Therefore, he better get a bigger gun! And so on and so forth.
Guns have no place in the modern world.
You're not quite right about FWD snow driving and you're disregarding weight transfer, which is hugely important.
Old-school Saab rally drivers showed the world that on loose surfaces you can make extremely good progress in an FWD car by flooring the throttle, using left-foot braking, willfully unbalancing the car with a Scandinavian Flick and knowing when to apply the handbrake. Done properly, all you really have to do in an FWD car is point the front wheels in the right direction and floor it.
For ordinary driving in snow or other situations where you're on the edge of traction, FWD allows you to regain corner traction by releasing the throttle slightly. This is precisely the wrong thing to do in an RWD vehicle and if you're used to either characteristic, switching over will fuck you up.
Snow tires are of course much more important, but I'm willing to bet you that I, in my little FWD hatchback, can outdrive anyone who's in an RWD car with twice the power in snowy or otherwise slippery conditions. I've been doing it all my life and FWD is far superior on good tires in low-grip situations.
Observe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WClJNx8V280
Just Cause II is awesome, but it is nothing compared to Saints Row II or the upcoming Saints Row: The Third when it comes to crazy awesome shit.
Saints Row II lets you dress up as a hotdog and throw people off bridges, put on a trenchcoat and flash people for points, go to the plastic surgeon and give your buff gangsta player character a fat implant and a sassy female voice, ride around on fire in a fireproof suit on an ATV and burn down half the city, spray poo from a septic truck at buildings to lower property values, act as a bodyguard for celebrities by throwing annoying fans into a woodchipper, it's probably the best open-world game currently on the market:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIBjHA_4f_Y
Saints Row: The Third (which is coming out this november) will be even more ridiculously fun. I mean, the game has a dedicated "awesome button", which you can press to make any ingame action cooler. There have been a couple of gameplay videos released so far. Hell, at one point you fight a gang of luchadores complete with crazy wrestling moves, and later on you fight a gang of stereotypical movie hackers, complete with a Tron-like VR world. The whole game is completely over the top:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN2-WSyRuO0
Just take a look at how Norway is handling the Oslo bombings and UtÃya shooting.
Not by being paranoid, not by engaging in a ridiculous "war on terror", but by coming together, recognizing that the harsh tone in the political debate and growing split between the left and right wings helped shape Anders Breiviks convictions and fuel his inner thirst for violent action.
The most prominent far-right wing party in Norway is losing voters at an impressive rate. Think about that for a moment. Norway is handling this the correct way, unlike the regrettable way 9/11 was handled.
Pshaw, "high capacity 220". My clock radio runs at 230V.
Try three-phase 400V at 20A, that'll get yer juices flowin'.
I like LA Noire a lot, it's one of the most mature games I've played. That's "serious mature" and not "Leisure Suit Larry mature".
The only complaints I have is that it tends to railroad you quite badly in some parts and tends to hold your hand quite a lot so that sometimes it feels like you're just looking at clues in a sequence the game lays out for you instead of doing your own detective work.
Then again, some of the clues are stupidly hard to find, frustratingly so from time to time.
But other than that, the story is solid, most of the characters are nuanced, well-written and solidly acted. The facial animation falls down a bit during some bits such as extreme closeups, but it's still by FAR the best facial animation I've seen in a game. When it does come together, it even tends to look a bit like they superimposed recordings of the actors faces on top of the 3D modeled heads, the facial animation is that far ahead of anything else right now.
The one on the right is the game. Contract is waaay too in-your-face.
Dude, you've been missing out. Machine Head is probably one of the top 3 hard rock albums ever recorded. Everyone knows Smoke On The Water, but I prefer Highway Star and Space Truckin'. Jon Lord's organ work is absolutely magnificent.
Amusingly, considering we're commenting on an article about sound quality, it was recorded in a hotel hallway after the fire at Montreux Casino when an audience member fired a flare into the ceiling during Frank Zappa and The Mothers' concert.
Even better, get the In Rock album and listen to Speed King. Then listen to Child In Time, and listen to the same song from the Live in Japan record. Absolutely brilliant stuff.
But the lane isn't closed until you get to the cones.
The signs really should say say "Merge in 500m", "Merge in 250m", "Merge in 100m"? (Adjust for yards as you please)
I never merge before the 100m sign, but once I pass it, it adjust my speed to match the right lane so I can merge smoothly. I don't "blow by" anything.
We now have signs here that say "Keep your lane until merge" and "Maintain following distance when merging". By reminding people to fully use both lanes, a number of highways have had an increase in throughput by almost 20% during rush hour.
Not using all the lanes of the road during rush hour is counterproductive and inefficient, especially when it comes to merging.
There's a 2-lane merge into one lane. Lots of cars have slowed to a stop, why? If there's 50 cars in the pile, 5 of them are going to rush to the front of the lane that's dissapearing and cut someone off at the front who naturally slows down since they are inches away from some maniac.
The correct way to merge two lanes into one is to fill both lanes all the way to the merge, alternating one car from each lane if possible.
People tend to get really fucking pissed when I take the completely empty left lane all the way to the merge and overtake maybe a hundred cars in the process. No one's forcing you to stay in the blocked right lane, why would you waste your time like that? Those kinds of people get really pissed that you're "cutting in line", but there are no lines in traffic like at the supermarket. Use the whole goddamn road when traffic is tight.
Apart from that, I agree with you. Tailgaters should be shot, as should people who do anything other than driving when they're in a car.
I live in a country with a real attitude problem when it comes to traffic. Yielding is not practiced here, I'm amazed at the anger and self-righteousness on display here every day.
And still, roundabouts generally work better than traffic lights for some reason.