Yes but my point is "nobody died because of this" is a wholly invalid statement.
We assert that people are dying because they don't have health insurance, thus we need to improve the availability of healthcare in some way--better insurance or some other vehicle to get people healthcare--to stop people from dying.
These things cost money, but we hope that the result is greater than the cost. If the result is successful but less successful than the harm of the cost, then these actions look good but cause more poverty, leading to further death and suffering. In this case, people died because of this; you can't see it, but it happened.
If the result is troubled or unsuccessful--the current situation--then by our own original motivation we must necessarily assume that people are dying every day and we have made mistakes that result in people continuing to die when they should have been given the opportunities that would save their lives. Again, people died from this.
It's the same problem as the death penalty: maybe we execute an innocent man occasionally; but we also let murderers out, who kill people again and get back in jail. We also can't clearly determine if the death penalty is or is not a deterrent--the arguments on both sides are weak, data shows for both, and culture has a high impact (i.e. poverty-stricken regions are more predisposed to crime, rich regions less so, and middle-class regions are more likely to be affected by punishment as a deterrent in general). And then nobody wants to talk about murderers killing inmates in prison--it doesn't get on the news, we don't think about it, we don't really care, but even then don't we kill an innocent when a 5-year sentence for serial burglary becomes a death sentence? All of these things are difficult to quantify; but people want to say "you killed this man" or "you did not kill this man" and to hell with everyone else who dies as a secondary result of these decisions--even if it's saving 5 innocents at the cost of 100.
I don't care about your ability to hand-wave away the consequences of your actions; I only care about if the consequences are there. "Possibly" and "Probably" are both neither "Yes" nor "No", and you cannot say "X does not cause Y" if it probably doesn't but we have no way to actually measure that and an understanding that the system is complex and it possibly could for very well understood reasons.
The plural of anecdote IS data. Data is a collection of information; studies are collections of anecdotal evidence, while experiments generate anecdotal evidence in a controlled scenario. The quality of this evidence can be examined and controlled and readily understood, so it becomes 'experimental evidence'. A single data point is considered anecdote in this context.
Uh, 24 bit color covers greater than the visual sensitivity of the human eye. 32 bit color discards the top 8 bits, but it sends them; it's 8 x 8 x 8 x PAD.
Uh, no. This was passed by the House and Senate. Romney's input was that this was great for MA but what's good for one state isn't necessarily tailored to the economic needs of another state.
We could not have integrated a single-payer system into this country in one sweeping move. It would cause severe economic destruction. To go that way, we need a long-term plan that doesn't collapse the job market by marginalizing the insurance companies all at once. It's not as simple as you push a button and all these magical things happen with no consequence.
Of course you see that with the ACA too. Push a button and magically everyone has to pay fines or pay expensive healthcare, some of them get a discount, but many people are too poor for this shit and get no subsidy. Meanwhile for $200/mo you can get a HDHP that covers nothing, not even wellness coverage, and lets you get an HSA; it's cheaper to put the $3500 in the bank every year and pay the taxes than to pay to manage your own healthcare this way, except you'd pay a $700 fine plus $1000 in taxes and the HDHP costs $2400 ($1700 is still cheaper). Regular old health insurance now costs like five times what I used to pay for the same shit: I've seen coverage I spent $350/mo on go for $900-$1200 depending on who you ask.
Look, first off, I'm a fucking genius. This sucks because savant-level genius necessarily means you're not really good at anything and have no social life. Directed specialists are much better off.
Second, I've figured out how to reliably induce hypomania, so fuck you I feel great. Look guys, I played bipolarism and won!!! (Bonus: I'm so used to depression that it's preferable to baseline, so if I ever swing back or miss and land in a depressive state I'm better off anyway; heads I win, tails you lose!)
It's commonly called "wisdom", although that's not an exact definition. It is an amusing observation, however: humans have the ability to learn from the mistakes of others, but also the strong lack of interest to do so.
In my case, I'm just unnaturally good at risk. Most people evaluate what's scary or produces funny feelings in their tummy; I do a complex comparison involving a basic risk analysis (how likely versus how severe), crossed with return on risk investment. If the risk is low but the reward is... nothing... then it's not worth the risk; if the risk is high but the reward is good but not significantly better than not taking the risk, it's not worth it; if the risk is low and the reward is extremely high--i.e. using public roads in general versus not using public roads on foot, car, bicycle, or motorcycle--then it's totally worth it.
Certain behaviors just aren't worth the risk. Motorcycles are more enjoyable in light clothing with no safety gear at high speeds... but not in any way I care about. Proper safety gear is slightly less comfortable and slightly inconvenient, but again not in any way that I'll really notice. This is not a difficult decision. Similarly if I want to drive my car hard and fast and at the edge of its abilities and mine, there's the autocross track where screw-ups land me sliding sideways through road cones; otherwise the risk of property damage, insurance increases, citations, arrest, injury, and death to have some fun on the road or save 10 minutes of time just isn't worth driving like a maniac.
Again, this is separate from skill. Which I've also developed to an extent. When I started driving, I couldn't even read business signs: if I didn't know where I was and where I was going, I was lost. Glancing away from the road caused me to immediately and dramatically slide into the next lane. With experience, I have learned to look around me and to look for landmarks or businesses I'm trying to find without losing track of other vehicles or losing control of mine. I've also learned collision avoidance skills: better vehicle handling (collision avoidance techniques like lane tossing, skid recovery, and advanced braking) as well as awareness skills (i.e. evaluating risks and shifting focus to compensate). These skills can always be improved on; developing them is a risk reduction strategy, supplying both mitigation (awareness and avoidance skills) and contingency (avoidance and recovery skills).
It costs $300 for an advanced driving course where they teach you all about vehicle dynamics, the impact of tire choice, and basic vehicle maintenance; as well as giving hands-on experience with collision avoidance, braking, steering, and skid recovery techniques on a closed course designed to simulate high-risk public road driving situations such as vehicles and pedestrians suddenly blocking the lane of traffic you're driving in, losing control of your car in rain or snow, or intersection conflicts (i.e. some moron runs a stop sign or red light directly in front of you and you have no space to stop, you must brake and avoid with and without ABS). This isn't standard; if only I could get thousands of petitioners to appear at our state capitol with signs and loud voices, maybe we could force these skills to be standard requirements for a driver's license.
First off, you're wrapping yourself into a cherry-picking bubble where data of type X is the only valid data, regardless of quality or impact.
Second, how are billboards different? You're looking at the billboard, you're not looking at the road. Should we illegal billboards? (The answer is yes, but perhaps not for that reason)
Except that all the really good music was written by the bands. Queen wrote their own shit. ZZ Top. Aerosmith. Scorpions (I don't like Scorpions personally, but yeah... okay, they're good). Sonata Arctica. Iron Maiden. Johann Sebastian Bach. Greenday. Lard.
I'm as bad a driver in one vehicle as in another. Also it's plain to see that plenty of motorcyclists weave between cars, race down the highway at 150mph, pass too close, and generally drive like shit while wearing t-shirts and jeans (jeans shred against the road; you need leather) and no helmet (I saw a guy with a bicycle helmet once, just once; I've seen plenty of no-helmet guys and quite a few with half-helmets that weren't strapped).
If you're actually following proper lane etiquette, keeping with traffic instead of trying to go Road Rash all over the highway, and making proper use of appropriate safety gear, your risk is reduced. Your "I'm a much better driver than everyone else" concept seems to apply when all the other drivers have their foot to the floor and aren't wearing seat belts and have taken the doors off their cars. I may not be Mario Andretti, but I'm better than these suicidal retards.
(Also amusing: I've actually seen no-door wranglers with people riding around with no top, no doors, no seatbelt, going off-roading...)
No, trolls have eyes in weird places. They might have eyes on the top of their head so they can see out their windshield when the two usual eyes are pointed elsewhere and don't continue that in their field of view. It might help if it weren't for the fact that
Since it has become illegal to use the phone while driving, people put their phone down in between their legs, below their steering wheel and have to take their eyes off the road. As opposed to before, or in states where it is perfectly legal, they keep the phone in front of them, so the road is still in their line of sight.
Fatality rate in motorcycle collisions at given speed is the same as fatality rate in cars at given speed
Take every motorcycle collision or dismount at 20-30mph. Compare injuries to every car collision at 20-30mph.
Take every motorcycle collision or dismount at 30-40mph. Compare to car collisions at 20-30mph.
And so on.
People say, "But dude, at 80mph on the highway, if you hit something on a motorcycle you will probably die!" Yes that's true. At 80mph on the highway, if you hit something in your fucking Mazda 3, you will probably die too.
People come off motorcycles at 40mph and slam into trees and survive. I've had friends do this. They require serious medical attention for a while, but they come out 100% fine. They also do this and die. Fatality rate at 40mph is quite a lot higher than fatality rate at 25mph--which is ridiculously low. So low you can slam your SUV into a 10 year old child at 25mph and, unless you roll over them, they'll probably (like 85%) survive with bruises and maybe--possibly not--broken bones. Much less being in a motorcycle and being able to steer away or brake to reduce the impact, or coming off and rolling. Or being in a car (people do sustain injury at 25mph).
At a given speed, in a collision, you're roughly as likely to sustain the same level of injury on a motorcycle as you are in a car. I don't care that motorcyclists like to drive like dbags; that's somebody else's problem and doesn't affect my risk level if I get on a motorcycle. What affects my risk level is absolute survivability of a collision at speed, and how much controllable risk I effect on myself. The absolute survivability is roughly equivalent.
No matter how furiously you handwave, study after study confirms that the average person cannot so quickly react when distracted.
Study after study does not confirm, however, that the average person cannot react AT ALL. Human evolution and survival have demanded this reaction to external stimuli.
Let me repeat this to make it clear:
A person texting on their cell phone, looking down into their lap or over at the center console or at their steering wheel or wherever they're holding it, is functionally equivalent to A BLIND PERSON DRIVING. Their eyes are NOT RECEIVING LIGHT FROM THE ROAD and DO NOT PASS IMAGES TO THE BRAIN.
A person looking through Google Glass while engaging in similar activities IS RECEIVING INPUT FROM THE ROAD, but THEIR BRAIN MAY BE IGNORING IT.
In one of these situations, a reaction is physically possible; in the other, a reaction is physically impossible. One of these situations is similar to driving while blindfolded; the other is similar to driving while watching the car in front of you when a retarded pedestrian suddenly steps off the curb and struts directly toward the roadway. One of these situations is similar to a driver painting his windows opaque black; the other is similar to the driver holding a conversation with a passenger while driving.
You continue to harp on this idea that people become blind the moment their mind isn't 100% devoted to the road; physically, biologically, and psychologically, this is not true. Your "study" that "shows multitasking is impossible" is the same as many studies that show that humans engage in PREEMPTIVE MULTITASKING: that they "multitask" by switching between multiple activities, in some cases by internal time slicing and yielding and in others by interrupt (external stimulus). It does not preclude that a person may suddenly switch their attention; science only suggests--and has not formed a very strong conclusion--that humans cannot actively execute more than one conscious task at a time.
Your arguments are logical fallacies, you are providing incorrect equivocation, and you are making an ass of yourself in public.
I didn't really expect anyone to agree, since it takes pages and pages of justification and a fair grasp on economics to get it. Also most people can't distinguish between "lazie-faire capitalism" and "let's make it uncomfortable to engage in poor behavior," which is why our actions are between "do nothing" and "actively force a socialist ideal".
No, you provided me a link to news media reports about "a study". I can provide you with "a study" showing that orange juice and vitamin C prevent heart disease; it's not actually true, and many studies have concluded that vitamin C doesn't prevent colds or flu. There is scientific evidence that global warming is a farce, too.
My primary argument is this: human beings have the ability to react to external stimuli. Human beings, when focused on one thing, will see movement in their peripheral vision and switch their focus. This is why you can't walk up in front of someone who is eating, reach over, and slap him in the side of the head; you have to sneak up behind him--and hope he doesn't hear you, while he's focused on his spaghetti or his cell phone or whatever.
Turning your field of vision away from the road removes the external stimuli of the road 100% from your field of vision. Shifting your mental focus elsewhere does not move the road from your field of vision. That's a big difference: it means you're still subject to external stimuli occurring on the road. If that didn't make a difference, you wouldn't be able to drive in any functional way. You'd never react to pedestrians until you hit them, for example, because you're busy watching other cars on the road. You'd never react to doors opening in front of you. You wouldn't be able to react to break lights or street signs.
By the way: when I drive, I hold conversations in my head. Multiple, multi-sided. I also design machines, simulate engines, listen to my car and examine it for deviations while trying to pin down what would make that sound and what might need maintenance. I sing with the radio. Just because I'm looking forward you think more than 3% of my attention is out the window, or even outside my head? My coworkers think I'm holding conversations with them; I'm replaying conversations I had with them in the car days ago on my way to lunch, with minor adjustments.
Executives are there to execute business strategy. They should be present in business; their interference with government regulations is questionable, although hiring these people for their expertise is justifiable.
Consider however in a business, you require some form of top-down authority. Now you have a Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, and Chief Executive Officer (i.e. Executive of Executives, the guy who decides we need a CFO and CIO and CTO). Now your business deals in a lot of Internet stuff, but you don't have a CTO or CISO. So people at the bottom complaining about the business leveraging technology horribly or about poor information security practices don't have a voice up at the executive level. We're buying things--Executives are into this--and peering with new networks.
Someone decides we need information security, and the CEO decides to hire a CISO.
Now when the executives meet and discuss the business strategy, the CISO starts injecting that the business relies on functional Internet services. The CISO starts complaining that we peered with a network that doesn't meet the business' non-existent security standards, and that the network is so fucked up that it's probably compromised and probably now allows hoards of botnet hackers to suck credit card information out of their supposedly PCI3 compliant financial systems. The CISO starts slamming his fist on the table in the boardroom screaming about the unbelievable amount of unacceptable risk and legal liability the business is exposed to, and how the business strategy is racing forward with reckless abandon and not integrating these critical aspects of their business needs into the business strategy and actions.
That's what Executives do. When there's an executive missing that the business needs, stuff becomes really shitty for the business, its customers, and its employees. Hell, some businesses have Chief Ethics Officers just so there's someone there to not allow them to sell customer information to scammers with the protective shielding of some legal loophole that dispels all liability (or because there's Ethics Regulation in their business--it's either voluntary or forced).
That's kind of the point. Who does know about the needs of the communications industry? These regulatory industries have to deal with making rules to facilitate business strategy--that means they have to protect the interests of both small and large businesses. They need to know not about just engineering concerns, but also executive-level management concerns.
Bunker busters don't split the earth; they penetrate an outer shell to damage something squishy inside. Still, the 'digging' part of this is useful. This one goes 200 feet.
A quarter million miles out there is a rock traveling in excess of 30,000mph (YU55 was traveling at 29,000mph; Chelyabinsk was traveling 41,750mph). The earth is 8000 miles in diameter, so we need to move this rock 4000 miles in about 8 hours. We can consider that for each 30,000 miles it approaches us we need it to move 500 miles perpendicularly. That means with this rock 1/4 million miles away, we need to immediately give it 500mph velocity perpendicular to its approach. Given that acceleration takes time, the actual final velocity will be much higher.
Consider that the distance to the moon is 1/4 million miles; while to mars the distance is between 36 million miles and 250 million miles. Let's say we can see something as far away as Mars at 100 million miles--we're looking for a spec of space dust, it's hard to see. At 30,000mph that gives us 3,333 hours to move 4000 miles--about 1.2mph sideways instantaneously; however we're going to approach the rock at like 17,400mph (Space Shuttle Discovery's top speed), so 47,400mph approach gives interception at 2,109 hours with the rock about 36.7 million miles away instead of 100 million--2/3 of the time gone, leaving us 1224 hours to move 4000 miles, a good 3.25mph required.
So you need 3.25mph, or over time who knows? To move a 10,000 tonne (10 million kilogram) meteor like Cheylabinsk, a city-destroyer, you need to accelerate it more than that but let's go with 3.25mph over 1224 hours. F=ma, so 10,000,000kg * 1.45m/s / 1224hr = 3.3kgm/s^2. 3.3 newtons applied for a continuous 1224 hours.
The S-IC used 700,000L of RP-1 at 0.81g/mL and 1,305,000L of liquid oxygen at 1.141g/mL to produce 33MN of thrust for 150 seconds with 567,000kg fuel and 1,840,050kg of oxidizer (total payload: 2,407,050kg of fuel). If we divide that 33MN down by 10 million to 3.3N and then multiply that 150 seconds to 1224 hours, we need roughly.003 times as much fuel needed: 7,068kg
You need 7,000kg of fuel to deflect a city killer detected 100 million miles away moving at 30,000mph, in addition to launch fuel, and assuming you can spot and immediately deploy countermeasures. Or, yeah, use a nuclear generator to dig and throw rocks away.
At this point we're at "evacuate the city" territory. The risk and expense are bigger than the expense of building a city--and you'll have all that nickle-iron material to use too!
Something with 100 times as much energy will take 100 times the energy to deflect... or more: if it's moving much faster, you'll need to apply a lot more force. A meteor moving twice as fast is moving faster than your probe, so it will reach your prior interception point before your probe.. you'll land on it when it's closer. If it's 10 times faster, you'll barely be off the ground; you have hours, not weeks. If it's 10 times as big, you only have to push it 10 times as hard.
And then there's the whole "it's hard to see something that small 100 million miles away" problem. It'll probably start weeks out, not months out. If it comes from the direction of the sun, or obscured by the moon, it could be invisible. A lot of non-obscured space rocks are invisible most of the time even when you know exactly where they are.
You won't make tons of high speed debris as a thrust source. Consider if you split the rock 50/50 mass-wise, you have to launch one 50% size chunk at a velocity V to produce enough thrust to launch the other 50% chunk at -V. If you launch a proportionally smaller piece--say a 1% chunk, 1/99--you have to launch that chunk at velocity V to launch the other chunk at -V/99. So if you want to move a 200 ton rock by launching 2 tons of rock off it, to get it moving 100mph you need to mechanically launch the dislodged 2 tons of rock at 10,000mph in the opposite direction. You can launch many pebbles at 10,000mph instead of one 2 ton chunk, but you will need to do that.
If you dig a hole deep enough and just set off a nuke, a big ass rock might not crack. Nickle-iron probably won't. You might get a canon.
How do you engineer a penetrator? I assume it uses a nuclear power source.
They already do that. Fatality rate in motorcycle collisions at given speed is the same as fatality rate in cars at given speed, but people complain about how dangerous motorcycles are.
If I have a magic shutter over my windshield that turns it completely black, that's a lot different than raising my arm to glance at my watch and still being able to see the giant wall that is the rear of the trailer in front of me suddenly expanding in my field of view. In one case, I'm blind; in another, my focus is on another object in a similar way that it is when I'm verifying the actions of the driver in the next lane (who appears to be readying to cut me off) rather than hyperfocusing on the truck in front of me.
Or are you going to argue now that not being able to physically see something is the same as looking at it but not really thinking about it? Like if I stick my penis in your face while you're trying to work out how much your wedding is going to cost, you won't notice?
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Yes but my point is "nobody died because of this" is a wholly invalid statement.
We assert that people are dying because they don't have health insurance, thus we need to improve the availability of healthcare in some way--better insurance or some other vehicle to get people healthcare--to stop people from dying.
These things cost money, but we hope that the result is greater than the cost. If the result is successful but less successful than the harm of the cost, then these actions look good but cause more poverty, leading to further death and suffering. In this case, people died because of this; you can't see it, but it happened.
If the result is troubled or unsuccessful--the current situation--then by our own original motivation we must necessarily assume that people are dying every day and we have made mistakes that result in people continuing to die when they should have been given the opportunities that would save their lives. Again, people died from this.
It's the same problem as the death penalty: maybe we execute an innocent man occasionally; but we also let murderers out, who kill people again and get back in jail. We also can't clearly determine if the death penalty is or is not a deterrent--the arguments on both sides are weak, data shows for both, and culture has a high impact (i.e. poverty-stricken regions are more predisposed to crime, rich regions less so, and middle-class regions are more likely to be affected by punishment as a deterrent in general). And then nobody wants to talk about murderers killing inmates in prison--it doesn't get on the news, we don't think about it, we don't really care, but even then don't we kill an innocent when a 5-year sentence for serial burglary becomes a death sentence? All of these things are difficult to quantify; but people want to say "you killed this man" or "you did not kill this man" and to hell with everyone else who dies as a secondary result of these decisions--even if it's saving 5 innocents at the cost of 100.
I don't care about your ability to hand-wave away the consequences of your actions; I only care about if the consequences are there. "Possibly" and "Probably" are both neither "Yes" nor "No", and you cannot say "X does not cause Y" if it probably doesn't but we have no way to actually measure that and an understanding that the system is complex and it possibly could for very well understood reasons.
The plural of anecdote IS data. Data is a collection of information; studies are collections of anecdotal evidence, while experiments generate anecdotal evidence in a controlled scenario. The quality of this evidence can be examined and controlled and readily understood, so it becomes 'experimental evidence'. A single data point is considered anecdote in this context.
Uh, 24 bit color covers greater than the visual sensitivity of the human eye. 32 bit color discards the top 8 bits, but it sends them; it's 8 x 8 x 8 x PAD.
32 bit color is 24 bit color.
Uh, no. This was passed by the House and Senate. Romney's input was that this was great for MA but what's good for one state isn't necessarily tailored to the economic needs of another state.
We could not have integrated a single-payer system into this country in one sweeping move. It would cause severe economic destruction. To go that way, we need a long-term plan that doesn't collapse the job market by marginalizing the insurance companies all at once. It's not as simple as you push a button and all these magical things happen with no consequence.
Of course you see that with the ACA too. Push a button and magically everyone has to pay fines or pay expensive healthcare, some of them get a discount, but many people are too poor for this shit and get no subsidy. Meanwhile for $200/mo you can get a HDHP that covers nothing, not even wellness coverage, and lets you get an HSA; it's cheaper to put the $3500 in the bank every year and pay the taxes than to pay to manage your own healthcare this way, except you'd pay a $700 fine plus $1000 in taxes and the HDHP costs $2400 ($1700 is still cheaper). Regular old health insurance now costs like five times what I used to pay for the same shit: I've seen coverage I spent $350/mo on go for $900-$1200 depending on who you ask.
Nothing happens in a bubble.
Look, first off, I'm a fucking genius. This sucks because savant-level genius necessarily means you're not really good at anything and have no social life. Directed specialists are much better off.
Second, I've figured out how to reliably induce hypomania, so fuck you I feel great. Look guys, I played bipolarism and won!!! (Bonus: I'm so used to depression that it's preferable to baseline, so if I ever swing back or miss and land in a depressive state I'm better off anyway; heads I win, tails you lose!)
Michael Jackson.
It's commonly called "wisdom", although that's not an exact definition. It is an amusing observation, however: humans have the ability to learn from the mistakes of others, but also the strong lack of interest to do so.
In my case, I'm just unnaturally good at risk. Most people evaluate what's scary or produces funny feelings in their tummy; I do a complex comparison involving a basic risk analysis (how likely versus how severe), crossed with return on risk investment. If the risk is low but the reward is ... nothing ... then it's not worth the risk; if the risk is high but the reward is good but not significantly better than not taking the risk, it's not worth it; if the risk is low and the reward is extremely high--i.e. using public roads in general versus not using public roads on foot, car, bicycle, or motorcycle--then it's totally worth it.
Certain behaviors just aren't worth the risk. Motorcycles are more enjoyable in light clothing with no safety gear at high speeds... but not in any way I care about. Proper safety gear is slightly less comfortable and slightly inconvenient, but again not in any way that I'll really notice. This is not a difficult decision. Similarly if I want to drive my car hard and fast and at the edge of its abilities and mine, there's the autocross track where screw-ups land me sliding sideways through road cones; otherwise the risk of property damage, insurance increases, citations, arrest, injury, and death to have some fun on the road or save 10 minutes of time just isn't worth driving like a maniac.
Again, this is separate from skill. Which I've also developed to an extent. When I started driving, I couldn't even read business signs: if I didn't know where I was and where I was going, I was lost. Glancing away from the road caused me to immediately and dramatically slide into the next lane. With experience, I have learned to look around me and to look for landmarks or businesses I'm trying to find without losing track of other vehicles or losing control of mine. I've also learned collision avoidance skills: better vehicle handling (collision avoidance techniques like lane tossing, skid recovery, and advanced braking) as well as awareness skills (i.e. evaluating risks and shifting focus to compensate). These skills can always be improved on; developing them is a risk reduction strategy, supplying both mitigation (awareness and avoidance skills) and contingency (avoidance and recovery skills).
It costs $300 for an advanced driving course where they teach you all about vehicle dynamics, the impact of tire choice, and basic vehicle maintenance; as well as giving hands-on experience with collision avoidance, braking, steering, and skid recovery techniques on a closed course designed to simulate high-risk public road driving situations such as vehicles and pedestrians suddenly blocking the lane of traffic you're driving in, losing control of your car in rain or snow, or intersection conflicts (i.e. some moron runs a stop sign or red light directly in front of you and you have no space to stop, you must brake and avoid with and without ABS). This isn't standard; if only I could get thousands of petitioners to appear at our state capitol with signs and loud voices, maybe we could force these skills to be standard requirements for a driver's license.
First off, you're wrapping yourself into a cherry-picking bubble where data of type X is the only valid data, regardless of quality or impact.
Second, how are billboards different? You're looking at the billboard, you're not looking at the road. Should we illegal billboards? (The answer is yes, but perhaps not for that reason)
Except that all the really good music was written by the bands. Queen wrote their own shit. ZZ Top. Aerosmith. Scorpions (I don't like Scorpions personally, but yeah... okay, they're good). Sonata Arctica. Iron Maiden. Johann Sebastian Bach. Greenday. Lard.
Compare that to, uh. Bieber. Or Beyonce.
We already have a games and entertainment review board. It's called the RIAA and MPAA and Nintendo.
But Siskel and Ebert gave that shitty movie Shitty Movie 3 two thumbs up!
I'm as bad a driver in one vehicle as in another. Also it's plain to see that plenty of motorcyclists weave between cars, race down the highway at 150mph, pass too close, and generally drive like shit while wearing t-shirts and jeans (jeans shred against the road; you need leather) and no helmet (I saw a guy with a bicycle helmet once, just once; I've seen plenty of no-helmet guys and quite a few with half-helmets that weren't strapped).
If you're actually following proper lane etiquette, keeping with traffic instead of trying to go Road Rash all over the highway, and making proper use of appropriate safety gear, your risk is reduced. Your "I'm a much better driver than everyone else" concept seems to apply when all the other drivers have their foot to the floor and aren't wearing seat belts and have taken the doors off their cars. I may not be Mario Andretti, but I'm better than these suicidal retards.
(Also amusing: I've actually seen no-door wranglers with people riding around with no top, no doors, no seatbelt, going off-roading...)
No, trolls have eyes in weird places. They might have eyes on the top of their head so they can see out their windshield when the two usual eyes are pointed elsewhere and don't continue that in their field of view. It might help if it weren't for the fact that
Since it has become illegal to use the phone while driving, people put their phone down in between their legs, below their steering wheel and have to take their eyes off the road. As opposed to before, or in states where it is perfectly legal, they keep the phone in front of them, so the road is still in their line of sight.
No, wrong.
Fatality rate in motorcycle collisions at given speed is the same as fatality rate in cars at given speed
Take every motorcycle collision or dismount at 20-30mph. Compare injuries to every car collision at 20-30mph.
Take every motorcycle collision or dismount at 30-40mph. Compare to car collisions at 20-30mph.
And so on.
People say, "But dude, at 80mph on the highway, if you hit something on a motorcycle you will probably die!" Yes that's true. At 80mph on the highway, if you hit something in your fucking Mazda 3, you will probably die too.
People come off motorcycles at 40mph and slam into trees and survive. I've had friends do this. They require serious medical attention for a while, but they come out 100% fine. They also do this and die. Fatality rate at 40mph is quite a lot higher than fatality rate at 25mph--which is ridiculously low. So low you can slam your SUV into a 10 year old child at 25mph and, unless you roll over them, they'll probably (like 85%) survive with bruises and maybe--possibly not--broken bones. Much less being in a motorcycle and being able to steer away or brake to reduce the impact, or coming off and rolling. Or being in a car (people do sustain injury at 25mph).
At a given speed, in a collision, you're roughly as likely to sustain the same level of injury on a motorcycle as you are in a car. I don't care that motorcyclists like to drive like dbags; that's somebody else's problem and doesn't affect my risk level if I get on a motorcycle. What affects my risk level is absolute survivability of a collision at speed, and how much controllable risk I effect on myself. The absolute survivability is roughly equivalent.
No matter how furiously you handwave, study after study confirms that the average person cannot so quickly react when distracted.
Study after study does not confirm, however, that the average person cannot react AT ALL. Human evolution and survival have demanded this reaction to external stimuli.
Let me repeat this to make it clear:
A person texting on their cell phone, looking down into their lap or over at the center console or at their steering wheel or wherever they're holding it, is functionally equivalent to A BLIND PERSON DRIVING. Their eyes are NOT RECEIVING LIGHT FROM THE ROAD and DO NOT PASS IMAGES TO THE BRAIN.
A person looking through Google Glass while engaging in similar activities IS RECEIVING INPUT FROM THE ROAD, but THEIR BRAIN MAY BE IGNORING IT.
In one of these situations, a reaction is physically possible; in the other, a reaction is physically impossible. One of these situations is similar to driving while blindfolded; the other is similar to driving while watching the car in front of you when a retarded pedestrian suddenly steps off the curb and struts directly toward the roadway. One of these situations is similar to a driver painting his windows opaque black; the other is similar to the driver holding a conversation with a passenger while driving.
You continue to harp on this idea that people become blind the moment their mind isn't 100% devoted to the road; physically, biologically, and psychologically, this is not true. Your "study" that "shows multitasking is impossible" is the same as many studies that show that humans engage in PREEMPTIVE MULTITASKING: that they "multitask" by switching between multiple activities, in some cases by internal time slicing and yielding and in others by interrupt (external stimulus). It does not preclude that a person may suddenly switch their attention; science only suggests--and has not formed a very strong conclusion--that humans cannot actively execute more than one conscious task at a time.
Your arguments are logical fallacies, you are providing incorrect equivocation, and you are making an ass of yourself in public.
I didn't really expect anyone to agree, since it takes pages and pages of justification and a fair grasp on economics to get it. Also most people can't distinguish between "lazie-faire capitalism" and "let's make it uncomfortable to engage in poor behavior," which is why our actions are between "do nothing" and "actively force a socialist ideal".
A rock moving at 100mph relative to the earth is going to come down with a thud. You should worry about it landing in the ocean more than anything.
No, you provided me a link to news media reports about "a study". I can provide you with "a study" showing that orange juice and vitamin C prevent heart disease; it's not actually true, and many studies have concluded that vitamin C doesn't prevent colds or flu. There is scientific evidence that global warming is a farce, too.
My primary argument is this: human beings have the ability to react to external stimuli. Human beings, when focused on one thing, will see movement in their peripheral vision and switch their focus. This is why you can't walk up in front of someone who is eating, reach over, and slap him in the side of the head; you have to sneak up behind him--and hope he doesn't hear you, while he's focused on his spaghetti or his cell phone or whatever.
Turning your field of vision away from the road removes the external stimuli of the road 100% from your field of vision. Shifting your mental focus elsewhere does not move the road from your field of vision. That's a big difference: it means you're still subject to external stimuli occurring on the road. If that didn't make a difference, you wouldn't be able to drive in any functional way. You'd never react to pedestrians until you hit them, for example, because you're busy watching other cars on the road. You'd never react to doors opening in front of you. You wouldn't be able to react to break lights or street signs.
By the way: when I drive, I hold conversations in my head. Multiple, multi-sided. I also design machines, simulate engines, listen to my car and examine it for deviations while trying to pin down what would make that sound and what might need maintenance. I sing with the radio. Just because I'm looking forward you think more than 3% of my attention is out the window, or even outside my head? My coworkers think I'm holding conversations with them; I'm replaying conversations I had with them in the car days ago on my way to lunch, with minor adjustments.
Executives are there to execute business strategy. They should be present in business; their interference with government regulations is questionable, although hiring these people for their expertise is justifiable.
Consider however in a business, you require some form of top-down authority. Now you have a Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer, and Chief Executive Officer (i.e. Executive of Executives, the guy who decides we need a CFO and CIO and CTO). Now your business deals in a lot of Internet stuff, but you don't have a CTO or CISO. So people at the bottom complaining about the business leveraging technology horribly or about poor information security practices don't have a voice up at the executive level. We're buying things--Executives are into this--and peering with new networks.
Someone decides we need information security, and the CEO decides to hire a CISO.
Now when the executives meet and discuss the business strategy, the CISO starts injecting that the business relies on functional Internet services. The CISO starts complaining that we peered with a network that doesn't meet the business' non-existent security standards, and that the network is so fucked up that it's probably compromised and probably now allows hoards of botnet hackers to suck credit card information out of their supposedly PCI3 compliant financial systems. The CISO starts slamming his fist on the table in the boardroom screaming about the unbelievable amount of unacceptable risk and legal liability the business is exposed to, and how the business strategy is racing forward with reckless abandon and not integrating these critical aspects of their business needs into the business strategy and actions.
That's what Executives do. When there's an executive missing that the business needs, stuff becomes really shitty for the business, its customers, and its employees. Hell, some businesses have Chief Ethics Officers just so there's someone there to not allow them to sell customer information to scammers with the protective shielding of some legal loophole that dispels all liability (or because there's Ethics Regulation in their business--it's either voluntary or forced).
That's kind of the point. Who does know about the needs of the communications industry? These regulatory industries have to deal with making rules to facilitate business strategy--that means they have to protect the interests of both small and large businesses. They need to know not about just engineering concerns, but also executive-level management concerns.
How do you do that?
Bunker busters don't split the earth; they penetrate an outer shell to damage something squishy inside. Still, the 'digging' part of this is useful. This one goes 200 feet.
A quarter million miles out there is a rock traveling in excess of 30,000mph (YU55 was traveling at 29,000mph; Chelyabinsk was traveling 41,750mph). The earth is 8000 miles in diameter, so we need to move this rock 4000 miles in about 8 hours. We can consider that for each 30,000 miles it approaches us we need it to move 500 miles perpendicularly. That means with this rock 1/4 million miles away, we need to immediately give it 500mph velocity perpendicular to its approach. Given that acceleration takes time, the actual final velocity will be much higher.
Consider that the distance to the moon is 1/4 million miles; while to mars the distance is between 36 million miles and 250 million miles. Let's say we can see something as far away as Mars at 100 million miles--we're looking for a spec of space dust, it's hard to see. At 30,000mph that gives us 3,333 hours to move 4000 miles--about 1.2mph sideways instantaneously; however we're going to approach the rock at like 17,400mph (Space Shuttle Discovery's top speed), so 47,400mph approach gives interception at 2,109 hours with the rock about 36.7 million miles away instead of 100 million--2/3 of the time gone, leaving us 1224 hours to move 4000 miles, a good 3.25mph required.
So you need 3.25mph, or over time who knows? To move a 10,000 tonne (10 million kilogram) meteor like Cheylabinsk, a city-destroyer, you need to accelerate it more than that but let's go with 3.25mph over 1224 hours. F=ma, so 10,000,000kg * 1.45m/s / 1224hr = 3.3kgm/s^2. 3.3 newtons applied for a continuous 1224 hours.
The S-IC used 700,000L of RP-1 at 0.81g/mL and 1,305,000L of liquid oxygen at 1.141g/mL to produce 33MN of thrust for 150 seconds with 567,000kg fuel and 1,840,050kg of oxidizer (total payload: 2,407,050kg of fuel). If we divide that 33MN down by 10 million to 3.3N and then multiply that 150 seconds to 1224 hours, we need roughly .003 times as much fuel needed: 7,068kg
You need 7,000kg of fuel to deflect a city killer detected 100 million miles away moving at 30,000mph, in addition to launch fuel, and assuming you can spot and immediately deploy countermeasures. Or, yeah, use a nuclear generator to dig and throw rocks away.
At this point we're at "evacuate the city" territory. The risk and expense are bigger than the expense of building a city--and you'll have all that nickle-iron material to use too!
Something with 100 times as much energy will take 100 times the energy to deflect ... or more: if it's moving much faster, you'll need to apply a lot more force. A meteor moving twice as fast is moving faster than your probe, so it will reach your prior interception point before your probe.. you'll land on it when it's closer. If it's 10 times faster, you'll barely be off the ground; you have hours, not weeks. If it's 10 times as big, you only have to push it 10 times as hard.
And then there's the whole "it's hard to see something that small 100 million miles away" problem. It'll probably start weeks out, not months out. If it comes from the direction of the sun, or obscured by the moon, it could be invisible. A lot of non-obscured space rocks are invisible most of the time even when you know exactly where they are.
Good luck, Solar Jetman!
Taiwan should just go to the UN and threaten to bombard China with Iranian nukes until the UN acknowledges them as a sovereign nation.
Really this dispute is so stupid that at this point I'd just launch every ICBM in Taiwan at Shanghai so we don't have to deal with it anymore.
You won't make tons of high speed debris as a thrust source. Consider if you split the rock 50/50 mass-wise, you have to launch one 50% size chunk at a velocity V to produce enough thrust to launch the other 50% chunk at -V. If you launch a proportionally smaller piece--say a 1% chunk, 1/99--you have to launch that chunk at velocity V to launch the other chunk at -V/99. So if you want to move a 200 ton rock by launching 2 tons of rock off it, to get it moving 100mph you need to mechanically launch the dislodged 2 tons of rock at 10,000mph in the opposite direction. You can launch many pebbles at 10,000mph instead of one 2 ton chunk, but you will need to do that.
If you dig a hole deep enough and just set off a nuke, a big ass rock might not crack. Nickle-iron probably won't. You might get a canon.
How do you engineer a penetrator? I assume it uses a nuclear power source.
They already do that. Fatality rate in motorcycle collisions at given speed is the same as fatality rate in cars at given speed, but people complain about how dangerous motorcycles are.
Well, you're wrong.
If I have a magic shutter over my windshield that turns it completely black, that's a lot different than raising my arm to glance at my watch and still being able to see the giant wall that is the rear of the trailer in front of me suddenly expanding in my field of view. In one case, I'm blind; in another, my focus is on another object in a similar way that it is when I'm verifying the actions of the driver in the next lane (who appears to be readying to cut me off) rather than hyperfocusing on the truck in front of me.
Or are you going to argue now that not being able to physically see something is the same as looking at it but not really thinking about it? Like if I stick my penis in your face while you're trying to work out how much your wedding is going to cost, you won't notice?