What's more, you could even design your cities so that cyclists don't have to weave through high speed car traffic, but can ride on their own bike lanes instead.
A helmet may have a chance to save your life when you're hit by a car, but if you want people to use bikes, it's much more effective to make sure they won't be hit by a car at all. Advertising it as a dangerous activity is only going to win over adrenaline junkies.
This stuff happens all the time. Years ago I heard a similar story about greenhouse farmers in the Dutch Westland. Those greenhouses require lots of energy. After investing in all sorts of efficiency measures, better insulation, etc, energy usage went down to the point that they had to pay extra tot he utility companies. Instead, they opened windows to waste heat and drive up their energy usage, in order to reduce their bill.
It's really common, but it's incredibly backwards and needs to be banned.
"Base13: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" "Six by nine. Forty two." "That's it. That's all there is."" No. You still get fifty four. It doesn't matter how you represent that amount, the amount is still the same. So "6 x 9 = 42" is correct, but "six times nine is forty two" isn't.
That's not how it works. Fifty four is itself a representation of an amount. That amount is represented by 54 in base 10, and 42 in base 13.
This is how many public domain works end up recopyrighted. Nobody is allowed to take photos of the original, and the only existing photos are copyrighted. This especially happens after an historic work of art has had some work done to restore it to its original glory. The old photos all show the unrestored version, and all photos of the restored version are recent and copyrighted. It's an ugly practice and needs to be outlawed.
The big advantage of gas turbines is that they can very rapidly adjust their output based on demand (unlike coal and nuclear, for example). It makes gas ideal for the transition while we move towards more renewable energy.
Information about similar cases is abundant on the internet, and they often get reported on sites like Slashdot and BoingBoing. [..] This kind of thing making it to trial is rare, and they do, they often get acquitted despite obvious guilt.
Yes, these cases are disgusting. However, do similar cases get similar coverage in other countries? My feeling is not. You won't find many English reports of individual police abuse in European countries, and I doubt it is because they don't exist. As the Italian case shows, the mentality that leads to these kind of cases exist elsewhere.
I don't know how common this sort of thing is in Italy, but in Netherland, it's practically national news when a police officer even draws a gun. A policeman hitting or shooting someone, even if it's a criminal, always makes the news. Doing something like that to an innocent would be a national scandal.
In the Italian case you refer to, it took long, but it did go to trial, and they were convicted, even if the actual sentence is way too light.
A conviction over 10 years later with extremely limited consequences = no justice.
Keep in mind that in the US these things often don't even go to trial at all. Yes, late and limited consequences sucks, but no trial or acquittal is even worse.
I don't have a link ready, but in the case I referred to, a medical alarm went off in the house of a black marine veteran. The police burst into his house and shot him. Authorities decided the police did nothing wrong.
Information about similar cases is abundant on the internet, and they often get reported on sites like Slashdot and BoingBoing. There was widely reported case of the cop who maced peaceful protesters, a marine who got shot in the head with a grenade for no reason at an Occupy protest, and a multitude of more common harassments and beatings that never seem to result in even a mere suspension, let alone losing their job or a prison sentence. This kind of thing making it to trial is rare, and they do, they often get acquitted despite obvious guilt. Remember the case of Rodney King?
In the Italian case you refer to, it took long, but it did go to trial, and they were convicted, even if the actual sentence is way too light. I'd love to see even that in American police brutality cases. Often they don't even get a slap on the wrist. Hell, sometimes it's the victim that gets a slap on the wrist (if they're still alive).
Spain used to be a police state under Franco, and I believe the guardia civil is still quite feared there, but even then I've never heard of them entering the home of a disabled army veteran and shooting him for no reason, and getting away with it. Italy is notorious for its endemic corruption, but as far as I know, not to the extent that people fear the police. No doubt lots of police there have been bribed by the mafia, but even they don't shoot, taze, mace or kick citizens for no reason, and if they do, they will be investigated, unlike in the US, where police very often get away with police brutality. Police in the US often seems to operate as a gang instead of a civil service.
By the way, your corruption perception index seems to be about corruption in general, and not specifically police brutality. I have no problem believing that corruption in general is not all that bad in the US. I only see two real and big corruption issues in the US: that the police are not held accountable for their brutality, and that all politicians are owned by the major corporations and industries. Fix those two, and the US will be a wonderful country again.
Even so, with all the stuff about the messed up behaviour the US police gets away with, I honestly do understand the "Don't talk to the police" attitude in Americans. But that really is because of how broken the US police is. In most other countries it's nowhere near that bad.
They're not remotely as terrible as what I hear about the US and the UK, but I still expect more from them than they're delivering.
Dutch politics has been going slowly down the drain over the past 10 years. Not as fast as some other countries, but it's unmistakable. I look to politicians from Iceland with admiration. Even Germany is doing better than us nowadays.
There was a time when Netherland was quite possibly the least sucky nation in the world, but that time is now past.
"No-one will be forced to comply, the department said."
Essentially, they're doing the same thing we're already doing in the US. If you say no, the authorities start implying that you're probably the guilty party. They start investigating you as the real suspect, and during the course of their investigation into your background, it becomes clear to all your friends, girlfriend/wife, coworkers, and family members, that you must have refused to supply them with your dna sample, or refused to take the lie detector test (otherwise, they wouldn't be asking such questions).
This is not the US. They need a stronger basis than that to investigate the hundreds that won't cooperate. But they don't need everybody's DNA. They're not looking for the killer (of course the killer won't comply), they're hoping to identify family of the killer. If you refuse, but they get DNA from your dad or brother, they're fine.
The problem is when people who refuse don't have family in the area at all, and of course there may be people who've been adopted. No idea how they're going to handle that.
And they're claiming they're looking for "family members", but notice they're not asking for dna samples from female participants. Either this is a little white lie designed to minimize the outrage the men must be feeling at being singled out, or perhaps they're hoping to nab a male teenager through the analysis of his fathers' dna (since getting dna from hundreds of male teenagers in the vicinity may actually be harder to achieve politically).
I think they're tracking the Y chromosome. If they find a matching Y chromosome, they know you have to be related along male lines to the killer. The rest of the DNA can help figure out the genetic distance. Of course with mitochondrial DNA they could do the same thing with female lines, but maybe those tests are harder.
From TFA: "No-one will be forced to comply, the department said."
They don't need everybody, and they don't need DNA of the killer. They do need DNA from every family, hoping to find family of the killer. Most people are a lot more outraged about the killer than about the government collecting DNA, so they agree.
And given that this is the Dutch government, and not the US or UK, I'm inclined to believe them when they promise to destroy the data afterwards. Unless they lose it or it gets leaked somehow, of course. Dutch government organizations are pretty good at misplacing important evidence.
But it's a scam that still works better than doing nothing. They use placebos in the control group in order to eliminate the placebo effect from the results. They want to know if it's worth paying lots of money for a drug when they could just as well give them a sugar pill. But that sugar pill is still an option. It's more effective than doing nothing at all, which is the entire reason why they use it in those clinical trials.
So, why not just give everyone sugar pills or saline injections instead of the real thing?
Do you think effectiveness is a binary thing? Either it fixes everything or it fixes nothing? You give the most effective thing available, and if there's nothing more effective than a placebo, you give a placebo, because it's still a lot more effective than doing nothing at all.
Absolutely! It's surprising how well kisses work against pain in toddlers. My son is now in the phase where he has to have a bandaid, even if there's no blood. He wants a bandaid when he has a headache, and it works.
Slashdot Mirror
What's more, you could even design your cities so that cyclists don't have to weave through high speed car traffic, but can ride on their own bike lanes instead.
A helmet may have a chance to save your life when you're hit by a car, but if you want people to use bikes, it's much more effective to make sure they won't be hit by a car at all. Advertising it as a dangerous activity is only going to win over adrenaline junkies.
It's a great name for a hard-SF RPG, though.
You can even generate the electricity and sell it, so another utility company doesn't have to burn as much oil or gas.
This stuff happens all the time. Years ago I heard a similar story about greenhouse farmers in the Dutch Westland. Those greenhouses require lots of energy. After investing in all sorts of efficiency measures, better insulation, etc, energy usage went down to the point that they had to pay extra tot he utility companies. Instead, they opened windows to waste heat and drive up their energy usage, in order to reduce their bill.
It's really common, but it's incredibly backwards and needs to be banned.
"Base13: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" "Six by nine. Forty two." "That's it. That's all there is.""
No. You still get fifty four. It doesn't matter how you represent that amount, the amount is still the same. So "6 x 9 = 42" is correct, but "six times nine is forty two" isn't.
That's not how it works. Fifty four is itself a representation of an amount. That amount is represented by 54 in base 10, and 42 in base 13.
You don't consider it a problem that public domain works become inaccessible, despite interest in them?
But the problem is that the only available images of the original work in its current state are copyrighted.
This is how many public domain works end up recopyrighted. Nobody is allowed to take photos of the original, and the only existing photos are copyrighted. This especially happens after an historic work of art has had some work done to restore it to its original glory. The old photos all show the unrestored version, and all photos of the restored version are recent and copyrighted. It's an ugly practice and needs to be outlawed.
The big advantage of gas turbines is that they can very rapidly adjust their output based on demand (unlike coal and nuclear, for example). It makes gas ideal for the transition while we move towards more renewable energy.
It was an Israeli living in the US. It's not impossible he was a Copt, but quite unlikely.
Information about similar cases is abundant on the internet, and they often get reported on sites like Slashdot and BoingBoing. [..] This kind of thing making it to trial is rare, and they do, they often get acquitted despite obvious guilt.
Yes, these cases are disgusting. However, do similar cases get similar coverage in other countries? My feeling is not. You won't find many English reports of individual police abuse in European countries, and I doubt it is because they don't exist. As the Italian case shows, the mentality that leads to these kind of cases exist elsewhere.
I don't know how common this sort of thing is in Italy, but in Netherland, it's practically national news when a police officer even draws a gun. A policeman hitting or shooting someone, even if it's a criminal, always makes the news. Doing something like that to an innocent would be a national scandal.
In the Italian case you refer to, it took long, but it did go to trial, and they were convicted, even if the actual sentence is way too light.
A conviction over 10 years later with extremely limited consequences = no justice.
Keep in mind that in the US these things often don't even go to trial at all. Yes, late and limited consequences sucks, but no trial or acquittal is even worse.
I don't have a link ready, but in the case I referred to, a medical alarm went off in the house of a black marine veteran. The police burst into his house and shot him. Authorities decided the police did nothing wrong.
Information about similar cases is abundant on the internet, and they often get reported on sites like Slashdot and BoingBoing. There was widely reported case of the cop who maced peaceful protesters, a marine who got shot in the head with a grenade for no reason at an Occupy protest, and a multitude of more common harassments and beatings that never seem to result in even a mere suspension, let alone losing their job or a prison sentence. This kind of thing making it to trial is rare, and they do, they often get acquitted despite obvious guilt. Remember the case of Rodney King?
In the Italian case you refer to, it took long, but it did go to trial, and they were convicted, even if the actual sentence is way too light. I'd love to see even that in American police brutality cases. Often they don't even get a slap on the wrist. Hell, sometimes it's the victim that gets a slap on the wrist (if they're still alive).
Spain used to be a police state under Franco, and I believe the guardia civil is still quite feared there, but even then I've never heard of them entering the home of a disabled army veteran and shooting him for no reason, and getting away with it. Italy is notorious for its endemic corruption, but as far as I know, not to the extent that people fear the police. No doubt lots of police there have been bribed by the mafia, but even they don't shoot, taze, mace or kick citizens for no reason, and if they do, they will be investigated, unlike in the US, where police very often get away with police brutality. Police in the US often seems to operate as a gang instead of a civil service.
By the way, your corruption perception index seems to be about corruption in general, and not specifically police brutality. I have no problem believing that corruption in general is not all that bad in the US. I only see two real and big corruption issues in the US: that the police are not held accountable for their brutality, and that all politicians are owned by the major corporations and industries. Fix those two, and the US will be a wonderful country again.
Are you saying it's wrong to compare the US to Europe, and I should compare it to a third world country instead?
In that case, I agree that for a third world country, the US is absolutely fantastic. But do you really want to lay the bar so low?
Even so, with all the stuff about the messed up behaviour the US police gets away with, I honestly do understand the "Don't talk to the police" attitude in Americans. But that really is because of how broken the US police is. In most other countries it's nowhere near that bad.
They're not remotely as terrible as what I hear about the US and the UK, but I still expect more from them than they're delivering.
Dutch politics has been going slowly down the drain over the past 10 years. Not as fast as some other countries, but it's unmistakable. I look to politicians from Iceland with admiration. Even Germany is doing better than us nowadays.
There was a time when Netherland was quite possibly the least sucky nation in the world, but that time is now past.
Are you American? That would explain your attitude towards the police. The Dutch police is by no means perfect, but they're not thugs.
"No-one will be forced to comply, the department said."
Essentially, they're doing the same thing we're already doing in the US. If you say no, the authorities start implying that you're probably the guilty party. They start investigating you as the real suspect, and during the course of their investigation into your background, it becomes clear to all your friends, girlfriend/wife, coworkers, and family members, that you must have refused to supply them with your dna sample, or refused to take the lie detector test (otherwise, they wouldn't be asking such questions).
This is not the US. They need a stronger basis than that to investigate the hundreds that won't cooperate. But they don't need everybody's DNA. They're not looking for the killer (of course the killer won't comply), they're hoping to identify family of the killer. If you refuse, but they get DNA from your dad or brother, they're fine.
The problem is when people who refuse don't have family in the area at all, and of course there may be people who've been adopted. No idea how they're going to handle that.
And they're claiming they're looking for "family members", but notice they're not asking for dna samples from female participants. Either this is a little white lie designed to minimize the outrage the men must be feeling at being singled out, or perhaps they're hoping to nab a male teenager through the analysis of his fathers' dna (since getting dna from hundreds of male teenagers in the vicinity may actually be harder to achieve politically) .
I think they're tracking the Y chromosome. If they find a matching Y chromosome, they know you have to be related along male lines to the killer. The rest of the DNA can help figure out the genetic distance. Of course with mitochondrial DNA they could do the same thing with female lines, but maybe those tests are harder.
You can't say "no".
From TFA: "No-one will be forced to comply, the department said."
They don't need everybody, and they don't need DNA of the killer. They do need DNA from every family, hoping to find family of the killer. Most people are a lot more outraged about the killer than about the government collecting DNA, so they agree.
And given that this is the Dutch government, and not the US or UK, I'm inclined to believe them when they promise to destroy the data afterwards. Unless they lose it or it gets leaked somehow, of course. Dutch government organizations are pretty good at misplacing important evidence.
But it's a scam that still works better than doing nothing. They use placebos in the control group in order to eliminate the placebo effect from the results. They want to know if it's worth paying lots of money for a drug when they could just as well give them a sugar pill. But that sugar pill is still an option. It's more effective than doing nothing at all, which is the entire reason why they use it in those clinical trials.
So, why not just give everyone sugar pills or saline injections instead of the real thing?
Do you think effectiveness is a binary thing? Either it fixes everything or it fixes nothing? You give the most effective thing available, and if there's nothing more effective than a placebo, you give a placebo, because it's still a lot more effective than doing nothing at all.
Do you have any idea how many research has been done about the placebo effect? You'd better do some reading, instead of clinging to your ignorance.
No, the patient does not need a placebo. The patient needs to talk to a psychiatrist.
That is far more expensive than a placebo. When a placebo is probably enough, try that first.
Now I suddenly wonder to what extent the effect of psychiatry has really been proven. Have there been any real experiments?
You really need to read up on the placebo effect. It's a very real thing, and can do a lot more than just alleviate pain.
Absolutely! It's surprising how well kisses work against pain in toddlers. My son is now in the phase where he has to have a bandaid, even if there's no blood. He wants a bandaid when he has a headache, and it works.