Unlike same sex marriage proponents who call it a 'right' that they are being 'denied'... they do not face criminal prosecution for them living their lives within the current system.
That makes me wonder if any gay couple has been prosecuted for tax evasion due to attempting to file "married filing jointly." Or for trespassing/disorderly conduct/any catch-all offense when trying to visit their [not-legally-recognized] spouse in the hospital. Or with fraud or whatever when trying to exercise power of attorney in each others' name. Etc.
I figured that nobody here would be too stupid to realize I was obviously talking about a "space backhoe" purpose-built for the task in the same way that a lunar rover is different from a Honda Civic. Since you came along, I guess I was overly optimistic.
Maybe there are people who are A-OK with that, so long as the banner ads are for their preferred brand of toothpaste
But such people would certainly be shown ads for every brand of toothpaste except their preferred one (in an effort to get them to switch); therefore the set of people A-OK with targeted ads is empty.
That actually works both ways. There is so much entertainment which involves terrorists and serial killers -- it's probably fair to say that the number of fictional serial killers exceeds reality by now. Which might cause the public, and possibly even some of the law enforcers who really should know better, to grossly overestimate the actual danger they're in from day to day. And overreact accordingly when something does happen.
Even worse, news. The rarer an event is, the more coverage it gets, which distorts our perception of the probability of those sorts of events.
A headline you will never see: "93 people were killed in car accidents today." (And yes, per Wikipedia, that actually is the per-day average for 2012 in the US.)
Remember the issue is radiation exposure both during the trip and on the surface of Mars. Mars has no magnetic field to speak of and a very thin atmosphere, so it provides very little natural shielding for radiation.
Step 1: send a backhoe. Step 2: use backhoe to bury the habitat except for the solar panels, transmitters and airlock/windows.
The robot missions are limited to using the equipment that they've taken with them. Woudn't a human mission have exactly the same limitation?
No. Humans can creatively jury-rig new tools.
Besides, building a robot with a manipulator arm versatile enough to (for example) manipulate a roll of duct tape, flint-knap a rock, disassemble a complicated device and solder a circuit (without something else holding it steady) -- and more importantly, do all those things without waiting three months for some guy in Houston to meticulously program each step -- would probably cost even more than just sending a human anyway.
Such a TV show would be unethical not because suicide is inherently unethical, but because the producers' profit motive tempts them to coerce the contestants into declaring that they are suicidal when they might not actually be so. It's a conflict of interest.
Why not just have a single tax rate (X%) for everything imported, on a per dollar of value basis? You want to import a quantity of steel that would cost $10,000 if bought in the US? Fine, pay $10,000 * X%. You want to import a car (made of steel) that would sell for $ 20,000 in the US? Fine, pay $20,000 * X%. You want to outsource foreign labor for a job you'd have to pay a US worker $60,000 to do? Fine, pay $60,000 * X%.
Except you have to understand that your work has to creath value in order to accumulate wealth.
Nope. You can be the most both highly-paid and productive "worker" in the history of the world and you'll never become wealthy. The only way to become wealthy is to control the production of others in a scalable way, and skim profit off the top. In other words, you have to own a business or businesses or profit-generating property, either actively (as an entrepreneur or real-estate investor) or passively (as an investor).
My requirements for a useful wearable device would be a little different:
Have an eye-tracking camera and an outward-facing camera that can pan so that the camera is looking at the same thing my eyes are focused on
Be able to actually use the camera for more than 20 minutes without the battery running out (which Google Glass can't do, by the way)
Skip the explicit "natural language commands" and instead have software that pays attention to what I'm doing, looking at, and talking to (i.e., talking to people, not the device), and then figures out what to do based on that
Understand hand gestures/virtual keyboard-type stuff using a separate device that I wear like a ring or something, so that I can leave my hand down at my side instead of putting it within the camera view
Do NOT send any of the information collected by any sensor to anyone unless I explicitly say so. Do all processing either on the device or on a server I have set up under my own control
Suit pants don't have the right shape if you stuff things like a phone in the pockets. The interior of the suit jacket is already occupied by the wallet.
So, do you have a reason (other than prejudice against left-handed people) why suit jackets don't have interior pockets on both sides?
hese guys made a deal with Pepsi...and they expected Fiji water and organic bananas on the set?
Well, since Pepsi makes Aquafina, the first half of that expectation is actually relatively reasonable. Maybe the second half is less reasonable, since Pepsi doesn't have any fruit distribution subsidiaries as far as I can tell. Tropicana fruit juice should have been doable...
There are even documentaries and how-to shows still around; they're just no longer on channels like Discovery. (Instead, they're where they've always been: PBS.)
"ending a play by touching their tools to the ground, as in football (as opposed to soccer; not actually sure what the sport is called where soccer is referred to as football) ".
I think they call it "American Football" but Rugby is similar enough that you're likely better off just referencing it instead. Assuming Rugby has "downs," that is...
Oh, except that the insurers are trying to recoup their recent losses by squeezing their current customers. But insurance isn't supposed to work that way, is it?
It kind of is, actually: the point of insurance is to spread the cost out so that you pay extra to avoid the possibility of a catastrophic loss. The trouble is that a) we should not require insurance (other than liability insurance, which is reasonable to require since it protects people other than the insured) instead of allowing people the freedom to eat the potential losses if they wish, and b) it's entirely unfair to spread the cost of insuring expensive coastal properties in hurricane-prone areas to our (presumably) much more modest properties in much lower-risk areas.
So the only correct calculation is that going to Stanford will net you an extra $300k versus going to the University of Virginia (obviously this is not a very precise calculation though).
You know what the real flaw in the calculation was? They probably didn't account for the fact that Stanford grads don't get paid a lot necessarily because they went to Stanford, but because they were already in Silicon Valley and are therefore more likely to work there after they graduate.
In contrast, Georgia Tech produces programmers of similar skill and talent, but since they're more likely to end up working in Atlanta they also end up getting paid less.
I think your math has some issues. From TFS, this is expected to prevent only 13 to 15 deaths (presumably, per year). Using your $6M/death figure, that's a cost to society of $90M/year. I don't think it's reasonable to multiply by the lifetime of a car; you're only building the camera into each one once. Using your 20 million cars built per year figure, that means it's only reasonable to spend $4.50 per car to implement this (give or take the cost of the injuries prevented). I heard on the radio that the actual cost per car is projected to be somewhere around $140, so it's pretty clearly not worth it. (Even if we did multiply the value by 10 years as you suggest, it would still only be worth $45 per car.)
Here's the issue: drivers backing up should be looking out their windows AND their mirrors AND this camera. But in practice, they will look out ONLY from the camera.
I fully expect this to cause more accidents than it will prevent!
(And of course, there's also the whole issue that reasonably-sized cars don't have enough "low down behind the car" area for it to be a big deal. Putting a camera on an SUV makes a certain amount of sense; putting one on a Miata is just plain stupid.)
I once spun out during an autocross because I was driving a flappy-paddle automatic (instead of a manual like I'm used to) and it unexpectedly downshifted to first when I floored the gas.
The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay
Give or take the environmental impact of producing those chemical preservatives, and the fact that the production of paper takes a lot of electricity (to run the grinders), water (to hydrate the pulp), and heat (to dry it out again).
If you're trying to sequester carbon using wood products, I think you're better off building wooden buildings. Log buildings, in particular, would be closest to ideal since they both use the largest amount of wood per unit area (compared to timber frame or stick-built) and the wood used has the least amount of milling. Even then, there are still the issues that (unless you find some Amish to do the building for you) you're probably using fossil-fuel powered tools, and that (more fundamentally) the rate of new buildings needed is probably much smaller than the rate of carbon sequestration needed.
I was recently required to buy flood insurance for my house, despite the fact that it was entirely unaffected by the 500-year flood from 5 years ago. (I'm across the street from a creek, but the headwaters of said creek are only a half mile away. I'm also only about a mile from -- and only a few feet in elevation below -- the subcontinental divide. To classify my house as in a flood zone is pretty damn unreasonable.)
I'm sure there are many cases where the flood map update is a good thing, but it's still far from perfect.
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That makes me wonder if any gay couple has been prosecuted for tax evasion due to attempting to file "married filing jointly." Or for trespassing/disorderly conduct/any catch-all offense when trying to visit their [not-legally-recognized] spouse in the hospital. Or with fraud or whatever when trying to exercise power of attorney in each others' name. Etc.
I figured that nobody here would be too stupid to realize I was obviously talking about a "space backhoe" purpose-built for the task in the same way that a lunar rover is different from a Honda Civic. Since you came along, I guess I was overly optimistic.
But such people would certainly be shown ads for every brand of toothpaste except their preferred one (in an effort to get them to switch); therefore the set of people A-OK with targeted ads is empty.
Even worse, news. The rarer an event is, the more coverage it gets, which distorts our perception of the probability of those sorts of events.
A headline you will never see: "93 people were killed in car accidents today." (And yes, per Wikipedia, that actually is the per-day average for 2012 in the US.)
You only think so because your estimate is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude low.
Ok, so give a tax rebate for exporting then.
Step 1: send a backhoe. Step 2: use backhoe to bury the habitat except for the solar panels, transmitters and airlock/windows.
Was that so hard?
No. Humans can creatively jury-rig new tools.
Besides, building a robot with a manipulator arm versatile enough to (for example) manipulate a roll of duct tape, flint-knap a rock, disassemble a complicated device and solder a circuit (without something else holding it steady) -- and more importantly, do all those things without waiting three months for some guy in Houston to meticulously program each step -- would probably cost even more than just sending a human anyway.
Such a TV show would be unethical not because suicide is inherently unethical, but because the producers' profit motive tempts them to coerce the contestants into declaring that they are suicidal when they might not actually be so. It's a conflict of interest.
At least Jar Jar didn't steal focus when you were in the middle of trying to type something!
Why not just have a single tax rate (X%) for everything imported, on a per dollar of value basis? You want to import a quantity of steel that would cost $10,000 if bought in the US? Fine, pay $10,000 * X%. You want to import a car (made of steel) that would sell for $ 20,000 in the US? Fine, pay $20,000 * X%. You want to outsource foreign labor for a job you'd have to pay a US worker $60,000 to do? Fine, pay $60,000 * X%.
Nope. You can be the most both highly-paid and productive "worker" in the history of the world and you'll never become wealthy. The only way to become wealthy is to control the production of others in a scalable way, and skim profit off the top. In other words, you have to own a business or businesses or profit-generating property, either actively (as an entrepreneur or real-estate investor) or passively (as an investor).
My requirements for a useful wearable device would be a little different:
And an extensive period of even clunkier Palms, Symbians, IBM Simons, etc. before that!
So, do you have a reason (other than prejudice against left-handed people) why suit jackets don't have interior pockets on both sides?
Well, since Pepsi makes Aquafina, the first half of that expectation is actually relatively reasonable. Maybe the second half is less reasonable, since Pepsi doesn't have any fruit distribution subsidiaries as far as I can tell. Tropicana fruit juice should have been doable...
Or how-to shows.
There are even documentaries and how-to shows still around; they're just no longer on channels like Discovery. (Instead, they're where they've always been: PBS.)
I think they call it "American Football" but Rugby is similar enough that you're likely better off just referencing it instead. Assuming Rugby has "downs," that is...
It kind of is, actually: the point of insurance is to spread the cost out so that you pay extra to avoid the possibility of a catastrophic loss. The trouble is that a) we should not require insurance (other than liability insurance, which is reasonable to require since it protects people other than the insured) instead of allowing people the freedom to eat the potential losses if they wish, and b) it's entirely unfair to spread the cost of insuring expensive coastal properties in hurricane-prone areas to our (presumably) much more modest properties in much lower-risk areas.
You know what the real flaw in the calculation was? They probably didn't account for the fact that Stanford grads don't get paid a lot necessarily because they went to Stanford, but because they were already in Silicon Valley and are therefore more likely to work there after they graduate.
In contrast, Georgia Tech produces programmers of similar skill and talent, but since they're more likely to end up working in Atlanta they also end up getting paid less.
I think your math has some issues. From TFS, this is expected to prevent only 13 to 15 deaths (presumably, per year). Using your $6M/death figure, that's a cost to society of $90M/year. I don't think it's reasonable to multiply by the lifetime of a car; you're only building the camera into each one once. Using your 20 million cars built per year figure, that means it's only reasonable to spend $4.50 per car to implement this (give or take the cost of the injuries prevented). I heard on the radio that the actual cost per car is projected to be somewhere around $140, so it's pretty clearly not worth it. (Even if we did multiply the value by 10 years as you suggest, it would still only be worth $45 per car.)
Here's the issue: drivers backing up should be looking out their windows AND their mirrors AND this camera. But in practice, they will look out ONLY from the camera.
I fully expect this to cause more accidents than it will prevent!
(And of course, there's also the whole issue that reasonably-sized cars don't have enough "low down behind the car" area for it to be a big deal. Putting a camera on an SUV makes a certain amount of sense; putting one on a Miata is just plain stupid.)
I once spun out during an autocross because I was driving a flappy-paddle automatic (instead of a manual like I'm used to) and it unexpectedly downshifted to first when I floored the gas.
Give or take the environmental impact of producing those chemical preservatives, and the fact that the production of paper takes a lot of electricity (to run the grinders), water (to hydrate the pulp), and heat (to dry it out again).
If you're trying to sequester carbon using wood products, I think you're better off building wooden buildings. Log buildings, in particular, would be closest to ideal since they both use the largest amount of wood per unit area (compared to timber frame or stick-built) and the wood used has the least amount of milling. Even then, there are still the issues that (unless you find some Amish to do the building for you) you're probably using fossil-fuel powered tools, and that (more fundamentally) the rate of new buildings needed is probably much smaller than the rate of carbon sequestration needed.
I was recently required to buy flood insurance for my house, despite the fact that it was entirely unaffected by the 500-year flood from 5 years ago. (I'm across the street from a creek, but the headwaters of said creek are only a half mile away. I'm also only about a mile from -- and only a few feet in elevation below -- the subcontinental divide. To classify my house as in a flood zone is pretty damn unreasonable.)
I'm sure there are many cases where the flood map update is a good thing, but it's still far from perfect.