I've been a Mac user since the 80s (I'll never pollute my house with a PC) and I never thought I'd say this, but I hate my Mac!
I have a MacBook and aside from the ordeal I had to go through getting basic developer tools working, the edges are so sharp that I'm gonna have to take some sandpaper out or file them down before the pain in my wrists become too much for me.
Decades? Centuries? I have more faith in developers than that. I agree that retrofitting sprawling suburbs is difficult. What's less difficult is allowing mixed-use zoning in new developments.
I'm going to disagree with you there. Walking across the street to the corner store to buy a postage stamp is always going to be way more efficient than taking vehicular transport several miles to a laughably mis-named 'convenience store' for the same thing no matter the means of propulsion.
Don't get me wrong, I love my car and I think cars have their place. I just don't think they should be the only means of moving between basic daily needs and I certainly don't think that entire cities should be built in a way that denies people the choice of using their feet to get around.
...Personal Rapid Transit, but on roads rather than rails.
In any case I think that people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place by trying to put an end to Single Use Zoning and fixing the silly way we build our so-called cities. It's not as geek-friendly or glamorous as rolling out a shiny new car that looks like something from an episode of Buck Rogers, but North American culture has too much faith in high-tech solutions to complex problems.
Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.
It's unfortunate that people have to pay such a premium for walkable neighbourhoods in the US. In other parts of the world they're available to everyone, and you wouldn't have to pay 50-100% more to live in a place like that. The problem in the US is that walkable neighbourhoods are so rare that the demand for them outstrips their supply, hence at this point they're only available to higher earners. If more of them were built then they'd become more affordable. I'm what you would call a liberal in US politics, but this is a case of me asking for local government to get out of the way and stop blocking mixed-use zoning - the market has a substantial number of people whose demand for 'new urbanist' style neighbourhoods is not being met. Nobody's forcing anyone to live in higher density settlements, but people who want to live there are being forced to the suburbs.
Fine. Nobody's forcing you to live in a city. But the demand is there for high density urban living, as is evidenced by the high premium people are prepared to pay for it in traditional places like Manhattan, San Francisco, and newer developments that emulate it like Santana Row in San Jose. Just as you shouldn't be forced to live in a small apartment, I shouldn't be forced to live in a sprawling subdivision.
Tinkering with the means of propulsion is putting a bigger bucket under the leaking roof instead of fixing the leak. Why do North Americans have to make such an abnormally high number of car journeys in the first place?
The answer is single-use-zoning and suburban sprawl.
Daily needs are separated from each other so that you have to drive between home, work, shopping and entertainment. It's flat out illegal to build a corner store in a residential neighbourhood or build a building with apartments above retail stores, and developers are forced to set them back off the road behind enormous parking lagoons, just to make sure the cars are happy and pedestrians are prohibited.
This is a monumentally wasteful pattern of settlement. It's like building a 'house' with the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom all miles apart but connected by roads.
Bring back mixed-use mixed-income development. Bring back the humble 'street' that has served humanity so well for millennia ever since we started living in cities. This isn't the industrial revolution age anymore, the days are gone when every workplace spewed soot into the air and it made some sense to partition it off where people didn't live. An office in the same building as your apartment isn't going to hurt you, nor will a corner store that you can walk to. Write to your congressman and tell him to back the New Urbanist movement.
But before you do that, you have to get mad! I want you to go out to your window, lean out, and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!!"
Roads and highways had been around for a really long time, and were a mature technology before the interstate system was built.
Roads maybe, but motorways were NOT a mature technology when the Interstates were built, Adolf had opened the first Autobahn not so long before. One result is a plethora of death-trap 'cloverleaf' junctions that cross accelerating traffic with decelerating vehicles in the merge, and for the most part we're stuck with them.
"Erodes and cheapens genuine human interaction?" Caller ID has already taken care of that. The days are gone when you call someone secure in the knowledge that they're either going to pick up or can't hear the phone ringing.
...if this is connected to what I could swear is an increase in spam lately. Has anyone else noticed an unusually high amount of sensational false headlines and Russian nonsense appearing in their inboxes?
When I was a design engineer, I was a better CAD draughtsman because I understood the underlying principles of geometry that you learn best when working with a pencil and compass. Similarly, if you want to be a better linguist in any one or combination of European languages, a grounding in Latin would greatly improve your chances. And if you want to be a better cook, you'll stand a much better chance if you go back to basics and learn how to cook something from the raw ingredients instead of putting a TV dinner in the microwave.
It is. It's still a motorcycle though, since the word 'motorcycle' doesn't contain 'bi' as in 'two' like the word 'bicycle' does. A three-wheeled motorcycle is still a motorcycle. I could see there being a problem with the word 'motorbike' since 'bike' is a contraction of 'bicycle.'
IIRC, lead shots were made by dropping molten lead down a tall chimney-like structure, they'd be cool enough to stay solid by the time they got to the bottom. Know how a raindrop is a sphere? Same principle.
Did you know that in the US, because it's legal for people to walk around with guns...
Not for much longer, if various legislative asshats and the loudmouthed morons who push them have anything to say about it. If you want to carry a gun, better move to Montana or some other state that still has a clue. Washington, my home state, is pretty good too but Seattle is a really bad influence on freedom to carry.
I'm more interested in how many crimes are prevented by the presence of CCTV. This is much harder to monitor, but deterrence is better than the post-crime investigation that the summary seems to be focussed on. I remember standing in many's a chip shop late at night and seeing potential fights diffused because the drunken potential fighters knew they were on camera.
Also, I don't know why so many people on this thread have gone off into the weeds talking about 1984. Last time I checked, there was no Ministry of Truth in the UK, the media (particularly the BBC) give the government a grilling on a daily basis that would horrify the average American politician, and there is NOT a camera in everyone's bedroom.
I too followed the trail to the 'source' and it seems to be coming from anecdotal reports from motorists. I found no evidence that this was taking place at all, to say nothing of it being done 'deliberately to generate revenue' as is claimed in the blog entries.
When an evolutionary biologist asserts that there is no evidence for God, he is correct in a very specific way. In truth, though, he is speaking of something that he knows nothing about. He is like the blind man who denies the possibility of color because he has no evidence for it. To everyone who has sensed the reality of color, such an assertion is silly. Likewise are the assertions of atheists to those who have experienced spiritual things.
A blind man who (through wishful thinking, misunderstanding of natural phenomena, or just plain brainwashing) imagines that he has experienced colour is quite different from a man who can actually see. In your analogy, someone has yet to actually see. The world is full of blind people divided into those who use other means to find their way around, and those who claim that they can see as if by magic.
Apply for permanent residence with the INS, pass the background, health, and character checks, and wait in the 5 year long line like every other law abiding immigrant
This law-abiding immigrant has been here working and paying taxes for seven years, and has spent about $4000 on lawyers' fees. Still no sign of my green card. Luckily I have a technology job and a company to sponsor me. Some day labourer from Mexico with a family to house and feed is not going to stand a chance against this broken bureaucratic mess.
God, I'm getting so tired of the Whiny anti-drinking bitching. Especially inside. Get the fuck over it. These two points really piss me off. You don't like someone pouring alcohol down your throat without your permission? Move your lazy ass! Anybody who doesn't like it can go somewhere else.
I don't even drink, and that is not the point. I fervently believe people should have the right to drink. It is 100% a personal liberty issue.
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I have a MacBook and aside from the ordeal I had to go through getting basic developer tools working, the edges are so sharp that I'm gonna have to take some sandpaper out or file them down before the pain in my wrists become too much for me.
Decades? Centuries? I have more faith in developers than that. I agree that retrofitting sprawling suburbs is difficult. What's less difficult is allowing mixed-use zoning in new developments.
Don't get me wrong, I love my car and I think cars have their place. I just don't think they should be the only means of moving between basic daily needs and I certainly don't think that entire cities should be built in a way that denies people the choice of using their feet to get around.
In any case I think that people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place by trying to put an end to Single Use Zoning and fixing the silly way we build our so-called cities. It's not as geek-friendly or glamorous as rolling out a shiny new car that looks like something from an episode of Buck Rogers, but North American culture has too much faith in high-tech solutions to complex problems.
Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.
It's unfortunate that people have to pay such a premium for walkable neighbourhoods in the US. In other parts of the world they're available to everyone, and you wouldn't have to pay 50-100% more to live in a place like that. The problem in the US is that walkable neighbourhoods are so rare that the demand for them outstrips their supply, hence at this point they're only available to higher earners. If more of them were built then they'd become more affordable. I'm what you would call a liberal in US politics, but this is a case of me asking for local government to get out of the way and stop blocking mixed-use zoning - the market has a substantial number of people whose demand for 'new urbanist' style neighbourhoods is not being met. Nobody's forcing anyone to live in higher density settlements, but people who want to live there are being forced to the suburbs.
Fine. Nobody's forcing you to live in a city. But the demand is there for high density urban living, as is evidenced by the high premium people are prepared to pay for it in traditional places like Manhattan, San Francisco, and newer developments that emulate it like Santana Row in San Jose. Just as you shouldn't be forced to live in a small apartment, I shouldn't be forced to live in a sprawling subdivision.
The answer is single-use-zoning and suburban sprawl.
Daily needs are separated from each other so that you have to drive between home, work, shopping and entertainment. It's flat out illegal to build a corner store in a residential neighbourhood or build a building with apartments above retail stores, and developers are forced to set them back off the road behind enormous parking lagoons, just to make sure the cars are happy and pedestrians are prohibited.
This is a monumentally wasteful pattern of settlement. It's like building a 'house' with the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom all miles apart but connected by roads.
Bring back mixed-use mixed-income development. Bring back the humble 'street' that has served humanity so well for millennia ever since we started living in cities. This isn't the industrial revolution age anymore, the days are gone when every workplace spewed soot into the air and it made some sense to partition it off where people didn't live. An office in the same building as your apartment isn't going to hurt you, nor will a corner store that you can walk to. Write to your congressman and tell him to back the New Urbanist movement.
But before you do that, you have to get mad! I want you to go out to your window, lean out, and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!!"
Roads maybe, but motorways were NOT a mature technology when the Interstates were built, Adolf had opened the first Autobahn not so long before. One result is a plethora of death-trap 'cloverleaf' junctions that cross accelerating traffic with decelerating vehicles in the merge, and for the most part we're stuck with them.
"Erodes and cheapens genuine human interaction?" Caller ID has already taken care of that. The days are gone when you call someone secure in the knowledge that they're either going to pick up or can't hear the phone ringing.
...if this is connected to what I could swear is an increase in spam lately. Has anyone else noticed an unusually high amount of sensational false headlines and Russian nonsense appearing in their inboxes?
When I was a design engineer, I was a better CAD draughtsman because I understood the underlying principles of geometry that you learn best when working with a pencil and compass. Similarly, if you want to be a better linguist in any one or combination of European languages, a grounding in Latin would greatly improve your chances. And if you want to be a better cook, you'll stand a much better chance if you go back to basics and learn how to cook something from the raw ingredients instead of putting a TV dinner in the microwave.
See my sig
IIRC, lead shots were made by dropping molten lead down a tall chimney-like structure, they'd be cool enough to stay solid by the time they got to the bottom. Know how a raindrop is a sphere? Same principle.
Did you know that in the US, because it's legal for people to walk around with guns...
Not for much longer, if various legislative asshats and the loudmouthed morons who push them have anything to say about it. If you want to carry a gun, better move to Montana or some other state that still has a clue. Washington, my home state, is pretty good too but Seattle is a really bad influence on freedom to carry.
See my sig.I'm more interested in how many crimes are prevented by the presence of CCTV. This is much harder to monitor, but deterrence is better than the post-crime investigation that the summary seems to be focussed on. I remember standing in many's a chip shop late at night and seeing potential fights diffused because the drunken potential fighters knew they were on camera. Also, I don't know why so many people on this thread have gone off into the weeds talking about 1984. Last time I checked, there was no Ministry of Truth in the UK, the media (particularly the BBC) give the government a grilling on a daily basis that would horrify the average American politician, and there is NOT a camera in everyone's bedroom.
Wasn't it more of a bomber than a fighter?
I too followed the trail to the 'source' and it seems to be coming from anecdotal reports from motorists. I found no evidence that this was taking place at all, to say nothing of it being done 'deliberately to generate revenue' as is claimed in the blog entries.
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
God, I'm getting so tired of the Whiny anti-drinking bitching. Especially inside. Get the fuck over it. These two points really piss me off. You don't like someone pouring alcohol down your throat without your permission? Move your lazy ass! Anybody who doesn't like it can go somewhere else. I don't even drink, and that is not the point. I fervently believe people should have the right to drink. It is 100% a personal liberty issue.
Maybe it's space junk from an ancient civilisation.
Doesn't the UK have the Unfair Contract Terms Act to protect consumers from sinister fine print that they may have signed up to?