"With over 6.3 Million auto crashes in the U.S. each year, and over 38,000 [dot.gov] fatalities in crashes per year (that's 14.66 fatalities per 100,000 population), I'd say it's a problem begging for an answer.
Perhaps you need to do better research. Most traffic safety experts agree that deaths per millions of miles traveled is the best statistic to find trends in auto (and road) safety. Take a look at the link you provided and you'll find the Fatalities per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled steadily decreases over time. Where's the problem you are referring to?
There are only three ways to fix the problem:
1) Reduce the number of vehicles on the road/vehicle miles traveled.[snip]
2) Increase driver training and knowledge and capability testing.[snip]
3) Take the highly variable and erratic human out of the equation.[snip]
4) Let the market continue to improve traffic safety without your guiding hand making it better for all of us. Don't artificially drive the price up of today's safer vehicles trapping people in their older less safe vehicles. Don't kill your neighbors because you meant well.
Seriously, other than the speed freaks, the ricers, and the "therapy through driving agressive" people, I don't see why anyone is against this.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
Your argument is reminiscent of an author of a book named Unsafe at Any Speed. That author also could not see why government should not be used to force everyone to use safety belts. He pointed out the problem of deaths on our roads. Soon safety belts were mandatory in all automobiles.
The following decade saw Fatalities per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled rise for the first time since such statistics were gathered. They had been falling since the first Model A rolled off the assembly line. For another decade they were flat. Then the statistics again started to fall.
Why did active restraint systems not save lives?
The authors of the legislation forgot (or didn't know) how economics works. If you increase the cost of producing a product you will increase the price of selling it. Increased price will decrease demand. Lower demand means less people are buying newer models. Which means more of the older unsafe vehicles remain on the road -- killing people.
The government didn't have engineers with a fifty year track record of making cars safer. Those engineers worked for car companies and received far higher pay than government engineers. The law doomed all passengers of new vehicles to rely on "safe" cars regulated by inexperienced government engineers instead of those with reliable proven track records.
With minimum safety standards there is less incentive to actually build safer cars. All a car manufacturer needs to do is meet the minimum requirement to reduce costs or, more likely, apply that talent to other areas. In the unregulated marketplace one manufacturer might add a new safety feature to a luxury model. If it catches on it may extend the option to other models. If that catches on, it may include that feature as standard. As other makers see that feature works for their competitors they add it to their vehicles. Safety grows through innovation and demand, not regulation.
If the market demands safety, it will be added into newer models as price and demand allows. Law makers and advocates of consumer safety laws circumvent that process. When the market is free, customers are free to choose their own safety features.
"The government needs money to operate (pay the military / fund education / social security / welfare / etc) so WHERE that money is collected will ALWAYS result in "meddling in the economy"."
Government does not need money for social programs. It should not be dispensing social programs. It is not good at it. The market place can do the same thing more efficiently and can serve needs better and faster.
Government is needed to provide a common defense (not an active offense). Government should not interfere with the internal politics of other nations. Government need not enter military alliances and treaties.
Government need not mandate education. Education is best controlled by local communities and by parents, not by whoever gains political power.
Government is needed for the establishment of laws which do not place the rights of one group of individuals above the rights of another group. It needs to ensure that private property rights are not infringed and it needs to be deliberately shackled from growing. It needs to be a place where power hungry people will not find solace.
"The wealthy of this nation have the vast vast majority of the wealth. We need that money to pay for housing and for education and for healtcare."
No. We don't. The government does not need to supply those items. It is not the role of government to supply those items. Governement sucks at supplying those items.
"It is abundantly clear to me that laissez faire, neoliberal, and supply side economics does NOT work as advertised, and is really just a facade for greed."
True capitalism promises nothing. That is the real problem liberals like you have. Capitalism can exist without some grand scheme. Most importantly, capitalism can exist without your schemes and plans. The very idea of everyone having the opportunity to reach their own goals and their own dreams instead of yours scares the crap out you.
"I say we raise the top tax rates to 70% and take the wealth of America back from the parasitic rich."
The parasite is big government. Most of the rich are conservatives. Like you, they wish to keep the money they earn. Unlike you they are mostly not interested in redistributing your wealth.
so "he's" just screwing with us? sat up there on a little crowd laughing his tits off?
Recall that this is the Supreme Being who, according to legend, created beings with original sin just only to have them search for absolution from that sin through faith. That takes a being with either great sense of humor or a really twisted sense of humor.
An Omnipotent Being would receive the punchline when it started the joke, so I doubt it would be laughing long. Even screwing with us would get boring after a few microseconds. No, there must be some hidden meaning there which we are unable to perceive which prompted such a Supreme Being to play such obvious jokes.
"By not believing in carbon dating you are not beleviing what God wanted you to believe."
I didn't state anything about myself. My belief or disbelief in the carbon dating process is irrelvant. The point is that an Omnipotent Being is all powerful. It can do anything. It is not bound by the physical laws lesser beings must obey.
"Care to explain why exactly that would have made it invalid, or skew results significantly enough to produce multiple magnitudes of order discrepancies?"
Hello! We are talking Omnipotent Being here. It created day, night, and photosynthesizing plants before it created the Sun. It flooded and then drained the entire Earth with more water than is available on Earth. Surely it could diddle with carbon dating a little.
How about using the solar to preheat water and save power to your water heater?
There are at least two phases to adding renewable power to a home. The first phase involves energy reduction. By reducing your electrical energy needs, you reduce the size and price of your renewable system.
Your question assumes everyone will be storing water for hot water production. Some homes benefit from pre-heated water, but many do not. As a single guy I don't need hot water storage. Demand heating makes much more sense. And uses less electricity.
You could even use a really simple 'battery' like a motor that lifts a heavy weight or pumps water into a tower, then the weight turns the motor as a generator at night time.
I own a small mobile home park in Texas. All water stored above ground is regulated, even water on private property. Trust me. You don't want to store energy in stored water.
I don't know, it just seems like there should be some fairly easy way to store energy for a house.
The power grid is the best storage around. No muss, no fuss. (Once your system is approved by your utility.) While many managers and decision makers like to drag their feet, the power company engineers who come to your home usually love the idea. My local power company employs people who like projects that are unusual.
... because there is one thing that seperates the US from many of other countries - we fiercely protect our freedoms.
No we don't! Most people in the US cannot even define their freedoms, much less protect them.
Many US citizens are superstitious, narrow-minded, non-voters who wouldn't know their freedoms were being taken if you wrote it on the bottom of their beer bottles. And they also wouldn't know how to protect themselves if they did notice a freedom gone.
The US empire, like all empires, is on the decline. The party is ending. Move along now.
Probably not a popular view around here, but I think that identity theft should be a capital offense. So should wire fraud.
I disagree. Indetity theft provides a necesary service. It points out the flaws in our identity processes.
Making identity theft an extraordinary crime relaxes us. It lowers the incidence of the crime and reduces the impetus toward finding better identity solutions.
If you are referring to the bible, the book of Judges proves that the prophecy of the book of Joshua was not fulfilled.
In the prophecy in the second book of Samuel God promises David an everlasting throne. The house of David no longer sits on the throne of Israel.
In Matthew's 24th chapter (Mark chapter 9, etc.) Jesus prophesied the second coming in his generation. Either we are on the inherited Earth, in Hell, or the prophecy is false.
Many more biblical prophecies have been proven to be false.
Exactly. That's 10,000 years of nature at work, with a little guidance from us humans. If there was a cross of wheat strains that just wasn't "right" by nature's standards, it wouldn't even be propogated (though the cross might grow). That's why I like heirloom varieties, versus hybrids and GE varieties -- they've stood the test of time within Nature's machinery.
Er, shouldn't that be several billion years of nature with ten thousand years of human guidance?
Ten thousand years of unnatural selection which has led to very diverse group of crops and livestock and increasing levels of conrol. GM seeds and livestock are a "natural" progression of those levels of control.
4. Exxon and Ford, both no strangers to monopoly abuse and technology suppression in the name of profit (see the "planned obsolescence" trend of the 30s, 40s and 50s), decide to sit on the invention until reasonable competition arose elsewhere, figuring that in this way the current market could be preserved and sold off for maximum value before the transition, thereby maximizing profits.
Exactly how is "planned obsolescence", a product marketing tool, the same as "technology suppression"?
And why would companies that, according to you, excel in planned obsolescence abandon that approach when they could plan an obsolescence that would make it possible to have at least an initial monopoly in both the automotive and energy marketplaces?
For example during prolonged power outages (like after a hurricane, the local cell tower died after 12 hours, and I doubt the landlines would have lasted if the power had been out for 3 or 4 days).
If the power is out, can electrical lines still be used for digital communications?
If they can be, how many people would actually have the ability to power up their computers to use power lines for communications?
What would computer users communicate to if the ISP were local and its power were also out?
It seems to me that the use of power lines for communications would decrease during a emergencies which might require HAM.
Is there a scenario where HAM operators are needed for emergencies where power line communications would probably not be decreased?
... it is rather easy to counterfeit the holograms that are commonly used today in security applications, and holograms have been counterfeited more than once.
If a significant percentage of our population suffers health problems if they ingest a particular chemical, maybe we should keep people from spraying vegetables with it. Maybe.
But DDT didn't have clinical evidence to back the claim. Taking DDT off the list of approved chemicals in the U.S. meant that any country receiving U.S. fiancial aid had to stop using the cheap pesticide as well.
Malaria was a known killer. DDT was mostly just the subject of Silent Spring. A fictional account of a fictional town devistated by a chemical.
But when are they gonna start writing this software?!
Everytime the right hand gets up and going fixing the problems, the left hand comes out with some new Windows version.
MS programmers are not terrible programmers. The better ones probably have started to write better software many times. The question should be: But when are they gonna finish writing this software?!
If each book is tagged with an RFID tag, why would they need to be filed? You can find the book by its tag. There's no need to place it on a particular shelf. Any shelf (with adequate space) would do.
A central system might be used to track the general where abouts and a scanner could be used to find that specific book.
I find humor in almost every human endeavor including rape. That does not mean I have no compassion for victims of this crimes. Whether the victim of a rape is male or female, a rape is horrible. It is said to be worse than death to its victims. Prison rape seems worse because its environment is more controlled than free environments.
A joke is often more about delivery than about substance. I am often laughing at something or some wording which is unaffected by the subject. Look at racial humor. It often can be translated into non-racial humor and be just as effective.
Jokes, especially those on late night US TV, tell a lot about current issues and current concerns. It would be nice to live in a time when a joke about prison rape is not only not funny, but is not relevant or understood.
If you really want to end the humor of prison rape jokes help end the chance of prison rape. Only when this crime stops will the jokes about it stop seeming humorus.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you need to do better research. Most traffic safety experts agree that deaths per millions of miles traveled is the best statistic to find trends in auto (and road) safety. Take a look at the link you provided and you'll find the Fatalities per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled steadily decreases over time. Where's the problem you are referring to?
4) Let the market continue to improve traffic safety without your guiding hand making it better for all of us. Don't artificially drive the price up of today's safer vehicles trapping people in their older less safe vehicles. Don't kill your neighbors because you meant well.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
Your argument is reminiscent of an author of a book named Unsafe at Any Speed. That author also could not see why government should not be used to force everyone to use safety belts. He pointed out the problem of deaths on our roads. Soon safety belts were mandatory in all automobiles.
The following decade saw Fatalities per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled rise for the first time since such statistics were gathered. They had been falling since the first Model A rolled off the assembly line. For another decade they were flat. Then the statistics again started to fall.
Why did active restraint systems not save lives?
The authors of the legislation forgot (or didn't know) how economics works. If you increase the cost of producing a product you will increase the price of selling it. Increased price will decrease demand. Lower demand means less people are buying newer models. Which means more of the older unsafe vehicles remain on the road -- killing people.
The government didn't have engineers with a fifty year track record of making cars safer. Those engineers worked for car companies and received far higher pay than government engineers. The law doomed all passengers of new vehicles to rely on "safe" cars regulated by inexperienced government engineers instead of those with reliable proven track records.
With minimum safety standards there is less incentive to actually build safer cars. All a car manufacturer needs to do is meet the minimum requirement to reduce costs or, more likely, apply that talent to other areas. In the unregulated marketplace one manufacturer might add a new safety feature to a luxury model. If it catches on it may extend the option to other models. If that catches on, it may include that feature as standard. As other makers see that feature works for their competitors they add it to their vehicles. Safety grows through innovation and demand, not regulation.
If the market demands safety, it will be added into newer models as price and demand allows. Law makers and advocates of consumer safety laws circumvent that process. When the market is free, customers are free to choose their own safety features.
"The government needs money to operate (pay the military / fund education / social security / welfare / etc) so WHERE that money is collected will ALWAYS result in "meddling in the economy"."
Government does not need money for social programs. It should not be dispensing social programs. It is not good at it. The market place can do the same thing more efficiently and can serve needs better and faster.
Government is needed to provide a common defense (not an active offense). Government should not interfere with the internal politics of other nations. Government need not enter military alliances and treaties.
Government need not mandate education. Education is best controlled by local communities and by parents, not by whoever gains political power.
Government is needed for the establishment of laws which do not place the rights of one group of individuals above the rights of another group. It needs to ensure that private property rights are not infringed and it needs to be deliberately shackled from growing. It needs to be a place where power hungry people will not find solace.
"The wealthy of this nation have the vast vast majority of the wealth. We need that money to pay for housing and for education and for healtcare."
No. We don't. The government does not need to supply those items. It is not the role of government to supply those items. Governement sucks at supplying those items.
"It is abundantly clear to me that laissez faire, neoliberal, and supply side economics does NOT work as advertised, and is really just a facade for greed."
True capitalism promises nothing. That is the real problem liberals like you have. Capitalism can exist without some grand scheme. Most importantly, capitalism can exist without your schemes and plans. The very idea of everyone having the opportunity to reach their own goals and their own dreams instead of yours scares the crap out you.
"I say we raise the top tax rates to 70% and take the wealth of America back from the parasitic rich."
The parasite is big government. Most of the rich are conservatives. Like you, they wish to keep the money they earn. Unlike you they are mostly not interested in redistributing your wealth.
Recall that this is the Supreme Being who, according to legend, created beings with original sin just only to have them search for absolution from that sin through faith. That takes a being with either great sense of humor or a really twisted sense of humor.
An Omnipotent Being would receive the punchline when it started the joke, so I doubt it would be laughing long. Even screwing with us would get boring after a few microseconds. No, there must be some hidden meaning there which we are unable to perceive which prompted such a Supreme Being to play such obvious jokes.
"By not believing in carbon dating you are not beleviing what God wanted you to believe."
I didn't state anything about myself. My belief or disbelief in the carbon dating process is irrelvant. The point is that an Omnipotent Being is all powerful. It can do anything. It is not bound by the physical laws lesser beings must obey.
Hello! We are talking Omnipotent Being here. It created day, night, and photosynthesizing plants before it created the Sun. It flooded and then drained the entire Earth with more water than is available on Earth. Surely it could diddle with carbon dating a little.
There are at least two phases to adding renewable power to a home. The first phase involves energy reduction. By reducing your electrical energy needs, you reduce the size and price of your renewable system.
Your question assumes everyone will be storing water for hot water production. Some homes benefit from pre-heated water, but many do not. As a single guy I don't need hot water storage. Demand heating makes much more sense. And uses less electricity.
You could even use a really simple 'battery' like a motor that lifts a heavy weight or pumps water into a tower, then the weight turns the motor as a generator at night time.I own a small mobile home park in Texas. All water stored above ground is regulated, even water on private property. Trust me. You don't want to store energy in stored water.
I don't know, it just seems like there should be some fairly easy way to store energy for a house.The power grid is the best storage around. No muss, no fuss. (Once your system is approved by your utility.) While many managers and decision makers like to drag their feet, the power company engineers who come to your home usually love the idea. My local power company employs people who like projects that are unusual.
No we don't! Most people in the US cannot even define their freedoms, much less protect them.
Many US citizens are superstitious, narrow-minded, non-voters who wouldn't know their freedoms were being taken if you wrote it on the bottom of their beer bottles. And they also wouldn't know how to protect themselves if they did notice a freedom gone.
The US empire, like all empires, is on the decline. The party is ending. Move along now.
I disagree. Indetity theft provides a necesary service. It points out the flaws in our identity processes.
Making identity theft an extraordinary crime relaxes us. It lowers the incidence of the crime and reduces the impetus toward finding better identity solutions.
If you are referring to the bible, the book of Judges proves that the prophecy of the book of Joshua was not fulfilled.
In the prophecy in the second book of Samuel God promises David an everlasting throne. The house of David no longer sits on the throne of Israel.
In Matthew's 24th chapter (Mark chapter 9, etc.) Jesus prophesied the second coming in his generation. Either we are on the inherited Earth, in Hell, or the prophecy is false.
Many more biblical prophecies have been proven to be false.
Hmm. That doesn't sound right. Let's check:
Looks like Ararat was covered for at least 150 days, possibly more. You really should have read the story before you made your argument.
Er, shouldn't that be several billion years of nature with ten thousand years of human guidance?
Ten thousand years of unnatural selection which has led to very diverse group of crops and livestock and increasing levels of conrol. GM seeds and livestock are a "natural" progression of those levels of control.
Exactly how is "planned obsolescence", a product marketing tool, the same as "technology suppression"?
And why would companies that, according to you, excel in planned obsolescence abandon that approach when they could plan an obsolescence that would make it possible to have at least an initial monopoly in both the automotive and energy marketplaces?
And what is "monopoly abuse"?
I wouldn't. I walk about sixty feet to work. From my bedroom to my office. This thing would ruin my ceiling.
If the power is out, can electrical lines still be used for digital communications?
If they can be, how many people would actually have the ability to power up their computers to use power lines for communications?
What would computer users communicate to if the ISP were local and its power were also out?
It seems to me that the use of power lines for communications would decrease during a emergencies which might require HAM.
Is there a scenario where HAM operators are needed for emergencies where power line communications would probably not be decreased?
I live in a rural town in Texas. $2 for matinee and $4 for evening shows.
Not according to Hologram Counterfeiting: Problems and Solutions, which comes with illustrations and costs.
EXCERPT
... it is rather easy to counterfeit the holograms that are commonly used today in security applications, and holograms have been counterfeited more than once.
Go get the book The Disaster Lobby. It was written in the 1970's. Long before the TV program you are referring to.
If your a big fan of Ralph Nater or Dr. Needleman, you might want to skip this title.
But DDT didn't have clinical evidence to back the claim. Taking DDT off the list of approved chemicals in the U.S. meant that any country receiving U.S. fiancial aid had to stop using the cheap pesticide as well.
Malaria was a known killer. DDT was mostly just the subject of Silent Spring. A fictional account of a fictional town devistated by a chemical.
Everytime the right hand gets up and going fixing the problems, the left hand comes out with some new Windows version.
MS programmers are not terrible programmers. The better ones probably have started to write better software many times. The question should be: But when are they gonna finish writing this software?!
If each book is tagged with an RFID tag, why would they need to be filed? You can find the book by its tag. There's no need to place it on a particular shelf. Any shelf (with adequate space) would do. A central system might be used to track the general where abouts and a scanner could be used to find that specific book.
And terrorists claiming it was God's way of punishing the infidels.
Seems you're getting terrorists and television eveangelists confused.
On second thought, perhaps you're not!
I find humor in almost every human endeavor including rape. That does not mean I have no compassion for victims of this crimes. Whether the victim of a rape is male or female, a rape is horrible. It is said to be worse than death to its victims. Prison rape seems worse because its environment is more controlled than free environments.
A joke is often more about delivery than about substance. I am often laughing at something or some wording which is unaffected by the subject. Look at racial humor. It often can be translated into non-racial humor and be just as effective.
Jokes, especially those on late night US TV, tell a lot about current issues and current concerns. It would be nice to live in a time when a joke about prison rape is not only not funny, but is not relevant or understood.
If you really want to end the humor of prison rape jokes help end the chance of prison rape. Only when this crime stops will the jokes about it stop seeming humorus.
There are good puns?
Perhaps the little robot that could might nudge the little flashlight that could just before the eclipse.