The speed depends on where your mail gets sorted. This last year, the Peterborough Ontario mail was no longer sorted locally, it all goes to Ottawa before coming back to local addresses. In the past, mail to the local region was separated out locally and then delivered, now that all goes to Ottawa. For mail destined for out-of-town, it probably makes no difference. For mail to my neighbours, it adds at least a couple of days to the delivery time.
Mac OS 9 had a smaller install base than current Mac OS X and was constantly riddled with viruses. I don't think that market share alone determines whether or not something ends up riddled with viruses. That being said, Apple has been particularity lax about security these last three years.
I don't know that "constantly riddled with viruses" is particularly accurate. Were there more than even a dozen? Were any widespread? Wikipedia only seem to list a half dozen (not that that is a definitive proof of anything): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Macintosh_viruses
While malware was not a large issue for Mac OS pre-X, that was mostly a function of the ecosystem - I don't know of any technical reasons making the Mac difficult to target. I did once hear a talk that a lot of malware from the 1980s and 1990s was produced by disaffected youth from Eastern Europe, who had access and experience with Winel machines rather than Apple/Motorola systems, and thus used what they knew. Perhaps if cheap Mac clones were used in the Eastern Block regions more extensively the situation would have been different.
This is unrelated to your post, but you make me wonder, how does your belief impact others outside of your religion? For instance, I'm gay and have an agenda because of it: talk about it sometimes, perhaps just in passing, with the goal of getting people used to the idea so we can be more accepted. Do you have any equivalent behavior?
The "moderate" christian is in a bit of a bind. They believe that they have knowledge of a very important bunch of information - one that if understood by others would save their lives, prevent pain and suffering, and generally bring about all sorts of positive things. What is their moral duty?
If you knew that eating a four leaf clover while standing on one foot and facing North would prevent and cure both cancer and being bald - how would that effect our behaviour? What if you also knew that not-sharing that knowledge would result in yourself going bald and getting cancer?
Anyhow, it ain't easy for non-pushy christians - dammed if they do, dammed if they don't.
All of your questions are interesting, but even with my very limited understanding of present-day biological developmental knowledge, none of them poses particularly large difficulties in coming up with an "explanation" based on shared ancestry and evolutionary change. Thus there is currently no need to impose some "intelligent designer" to answer these questions, and doing so is intellectually equivalent to saying "a wizard did it". It leads to no further understanding.
Here are some "story book" ideas for your questions. The current understanding of these particular issues is likely quite different, but in no case requires a "designer" to have a reasonable explanation.
Bilateral symmetry is the result of shared ancestry from some earlier creature with bilateral symmetry, and changes to that symmetry have not had enough physical advantage to be very successful.
The costs to support the ability to regenerate limbs are greater than the benefit it would provide. For example, it might be that the biological systems necessary to support regeneration would result in taking 5% longer to reach child-bearing age or something like that. Non-regenerators on average would grow and reproduce quicker and thus out-compete the regenerators. For longer lived animals this might not be such a big deal, and being more able to recover from injury might be more advantageous.
Hate and vengeance could help to limit the success of "freeloaders" in a group. Animals that live in social groups have a danger of being exploited by individuals in that group who behave too selfishly - a mechanism to prevent/punish such individuals can lead to better overall success. The animal groups that become dominated by freeloaders are not as successful as those that are dominated by freeloaders.
Animals that are specialized to operate only at certain portions of the day can be better suited to exploit that time of day with specialized night or day vision or movement for example. Sleeping during non-active phases uses less energy than being awake, and thus creatures that sleep need less food than those that do not.
The cost of multiple teeth formation for primates is greater than the benefit. If most of the animals who survive to child bearing age only need two sets of teeth, there is little pressure for more sets.
We don't know actually know that one and only one species of creature on earth has developed sentience. Intelligent crabs or dinosaurs could have been around for quite some time before getting wiped out by whatever. Humanity took a long time to go from "banging rocks" to "building rockets", and it is not obvious that intelligence requires "advancement" in this type of direction. We might never find out about the race of farmer dinosaurs who sang epic poems to each other for millions of years before being wiped out in a famine, because they never went beyond hand tilling of their fields and had a religion that prevented them from leaving their holy valley.
People (and many animals) have a sense of beauty and symmetry that is used to judge potential mates. This mate-judging system also gets used to judge non-food-items like flowers. It also probably provides a larger barrier to non-bilateral-symmetry (as mentioned above) arising - it is hard to develop a third lung to pass on to your kids when you look ugly if one crops up.
The sense of smell helps to decide what is good to eat from what is poisonous. It is not a perfect system, like almost all of our bodies, only just good enough to do the job without being too expensive in terms of resources to support it. Some things smell good that are not good to eat and probably some things smell bad that are good to eat, but enough bad things smell bad, and good things smell good that the sense of smell gives an advantage to those that have it over those that do not.
I would also question your list of "uniformly beautiful" things - are you sure that these are genetic rather than cultural outcomes? I seem to recall reading that up until relativity recently (like withing the past few hundred years), seascapes and rocky shores were viewed as ugly/bad/evil . It is certainly true that cultures are subjected to evolutionary pressures, generally the ID/evolution "controversy" does not delve into that area.
And how many of those aren't taking money from the coal, oil or other industries whose very livelihood depends on them downplaying the evidence?
How many AGW proponents don't stand to profit heavily off of "green" jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc.?
I doubt very much that any climate scientist is likely to profit heavily from "jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc." Local politicians, business people, lobbyists, etc. might be able to benefit from some of these things - but working scientists? Tenured academics already have pretty secure lifetime employment. Perhaps we could imagine a few who might be better off individually if the science was one way rather than the other, but the majority of them have little financial stake in the result of the scientific studies one way or another.
There are three things tenured academics always want: Salary increases Attention Grant money
They are by no means immune to corruption.
Yeah, sure, but publishing "with the crowd" doesn't give you any particular salary bumps or attention, and grant money again doesn't typically follow from specified results, certainly not funding from the national funding agencies. In fact, it seems more likely that one could get funding (from "private" sources) and attention by going against the consensus.
I am in no means claiming that academics are immune to corruption, but rather that the incentives for falsifying this type of research are fairly minor and indirect for the people actually doing the research, and that there are at least as great incentives for falsifying things in the other direction.
Fraud in science certainly can (and does) occur, but typically when found out people are relatively eager to expose it. See for example the "Schön scandal".
While I have no doubt that climate research has all sorts of areas where errors have been made, or understanding needs to be improved, over the last 20 years that I have been vaguely paying attention to the field, I have seen the consensus become more clear and the critics of that consensus sounding and behaving more like the "critics" of evolution than like people with valuable insight. Unfortunately this does mean that I tend to pay less attention to the whole group, when so large a fraction of the criticism is based on bad science, poor understanding, or minor details.
And how many of those aren't taking money from the coal, oil or other industries whose very livelihood depends on them downplaying the evidence?
How many AGW proponents don't stand to profit heavily off of "green" jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc.?
I doubt very much that any climate scientist is likely to profit heavily from "jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc." Local politicians, business people, lobbyists, etc. might be able to benefit from some of these things - but working scientists? Tenured academics already have pretty secure lifetime employment. Perhaps we could imagine a few who might be better off individually if the science was one way rather than the other, but the majority of them have little financial stake in the result of the scientific studies one way or another.
Seems like that might be a better form of consumerism from a societal point of view than one based on other symbols of status. Maybe we should encourage it?
A taxi driving pattern is probably one of the toughest you would typically find, so they can't be too bad for more regular use.
Taxis are pretty much the ideal usage pattern for a hybrid. Taxis spend most of their time starting and stopping, which means that they're constantly using the electric motor for short periods. Normal driving patterns won't see such a benefit.
Sure, they have the greatest benefit, but this type of usage also has the greatest wear and tear on all the systems, so is a useful metric to gauge the longevity and reliably of the system as a whole.
This doesn't mean that a professor is always right, that student is always wrong, or that there is not a considerable amount of subjectiveness in any of this, but in general it is found that the great majority of people learn better when they are taught by someone expert in the field being studied.
Education is one of those fields where often the basis of what is "in general" found to be, is often not actually known. I wonder how much correlation there is between instructor expertise and student outcomes? I would not be surprised to find that people learn best from instructors just slightly more knowledgeable then themselves. Learning outcomes most strongly are influenced by the engagement and work done by the student, and it seems plausible that having subject matter expert instructors would be less effective than subject matter not-quite-so-expert instructors but higher student engagement.
Seriously, it is INSANE to buy a car with parallel hybrid. You inherit the worst of both ICE and Electrical. That is just crazy. For cars, you should either buy electric (like tesla model S), OR an ICE using gas/diesel. You would buy ICE if you are going to be traveling more than once a month more than the distance of the electric car.
Why are so many taxis I see in Vancouver Priuses? Are all of those business people INSANE? And they keep replacing them when they wear out with new hybrids?
I suppose they are not technically "parallel hybrid" as the nifty planetary gearing system can be used in a manner similar to parallel or series, but I think your "INSANE" statement is a bit strong even with that.
A hybrid has at least the potential to gain the best of both ICE and Electrical, in that the ICE can provide extended range, while the efficiencies in energy recovery and low speed torque from the electrical system can also be achieved.
Its because most consumers don't actually understand what hybrids are really for.
Its amazing how many people (including the motoring media) in the US incorrectly believe that the reason for buying a hybrid over a normal car is to save gas money. This is not even close to the actual reason hybrids were invented, so its no surprise that it doesn't really work out that way either.
Don't believe me? Go compare the price and MPG of a Toyota Prius compared to, say, a Toyota Yaris.
The real reason hybrids came about is as a way to reduce CO2 emisions for a greener environment and to fight global warming, mostly regardless of cost of ownership.
But the green angle doesn't look so good either when you factor in the (actually quite nasty) emissions from the production and disposal of all the extra stuff like Lithium batteries that that go into a Prius over a conventional car.
While you may have a point, some of it is offset by the errors in your analysis.
CO2 emission is virtually the same thing as fuel usage - if you have low CO2 emission you necessarily have low fuel usage (for a gas powered vehicle at least), and if you have low fuel usage you necessarily have low CO2 emission. No matter what the vehicle, each gallon of gas you burn produces the same amount of CO2.
I do not know the details of the hybrid battery disposal/recycling, but that is the only "extra" stuff in a Prius compared to any other "conventional" vehicle. All of the battery components can in principle be recycled, which doesn't mean that it actually is unfortunately.
1. All hybrids come with low rolling resistance tires. The tires on my wife's car needed to be replaced after 20,000 miles. Tires were worn down to the tread wear indicators. I replaced then with 40,000 mile + tires. Cost about $1000. Gas mileage dropped by about 1-1.5 miles per gallon. We were getting 23.6 mpg. Now we get about 22 mpg. At an extra $1000 every 20,000 miles, I will take the loss of MPG.
For such a thrifty guy, I question your tire purchase decisions. I recently replaced all four tires on our car with LRR tires for about $500, with a rated lifetime of 100,000 miles (Kumho eco Solus). Rather than spending $1000 every 40,000 miles, maybe spending half as much, for 2.5 times as long life would be a wiser use of your money. LRR tires may improve fuel economy by as much as 3 or 4%, so can be cost effective even if higher priced than non-LRR tires. Obviously if they are actually cheaper that's even better.
Excellent point you brought up. I know someone that bought a hybrid specifically so he can use the carpool lane, 90 minutes vs. 15 min each way on a commute.
Isn't there a way of filling those empty seats to legitimately use the HOV lane? Heck, doesn't CA only require one extra person beyond the driver? Where are all the hitchhikers? I guess it is called "slugging" when done for HOV lanes.
'It's hard to know what's causing the low repurchase rate.
You could try, oh, maybe, *asking* them why not?
That would make sense.
It might not actually get at the real reason as it is clear that people often say one thing when they believe another thing, or even think they made a decision for one reason when in actual fact the decision was based on something else less consciously felt. The social sciences are hard to do well.
I've shied away from hybrid cars because of things I've heard from other owners. I drive a LOT of miles. Typically around 200,000 before I trade to the next car. I typically own the car about 6 or 7 years. I've been told by other hybrid owners that the battery pack is only good for about 100,000 miles and then has to be replaced. I'd be curious as to the experience of other hybrid owners.
Yea? Nay?
I'd question "owners" who told you that the battery pack is only good for that long. That's typically the warrante time, and the reported lifetimes seem to be significantly above that. Basically, the battery pack seems to last at least as long as typical transmission lifetimes.
Vancouver seems to have completely switched to Prius taxis. A taxi driving pattern is probably one of the toughest you would typically find, so they can't be too bad for more regular use.
In a way, yes. Why should people get tax breaks for signing a paper?
It seems to be the case that about half of married US couples get a tax break by being married, while about half get dinged with a higher bill when being married. Couples with similar incomes end up paying more if they are married than if they are not (due to higher tax brackets for the average income of a married couple), while couples with different incomes get a tax break (due to income splitting/averaging).
It looks like this might not be as big of an issue in recent years due to tinkering with the tax code, but 2010 was when things were supposed to revert to the higher penalty rules, and I don't know if they were extended.
Ok you guys are using very bad logic. You are assuming that the suicidal gun owner would not just hang himself I he had no gun handy. You are also assuming that criminals would not use brute force, edged weapons , clubs etc I they had no guns. I would rather be Armed with a gun and have two criminals armed with Guns out to get me than be unarmed trying to fight two unarmed men or men armed with melee weapons
As would I.
The questions you are not answering though are: What are the chances of being in a situation as described where the gun could be very useful to you, and what are the chances of being in a situation where the gun would be a very bad thing to have available?
What are the relative chances of being confronted with an armed assailant compared to being confronted with a drunk neighbor who is trying to get into your front door thinking it is his? Or your teenager climbing through the window because they lost their key? Or any number of other highly unlikely situations that could lead to terrible consequences.
We are both probably basing our decisions more on emotional responses rather than pure risk/cost/benefit analysis. Such analysis is not very straightforward, as they are all sorts of possible situations that could be imagined that are fairly rare event.
I personally know nobody who has been killed in a domestic burglary, or even anyone who has been present while their home was burgled. Thus in my world-view, protecting against dangers accompanying a home burglary is not a very high priority. Increasing my family's risk (and the wider community's risk for that matter) of other non-burglary accidents by the presence of a handgun seems like a poor use of our resources. Of course my personal experience is not much better than anecdotal, but it is such that I don't feel the need to research the issue in greater depth.
Thanks for pointing out the errors of my posting. How foolish of me! Of course, now I see that I and the parent were talking nonsense.
I am glad nobody tried to parody our position by exaggerating it to the point of absurdity. If that had happened someone else might have thought they were serious and tried to point out the errors of their thinking!
The pound coin was introduced in 1983, while the Canadian dollar coin did not come into play until 1987 according to wikipedia. According to http://www.triacom.com/frame.html?http://www.triacom.com/archive/exchange.en.html&en in 1986 the US dollar was worth 1.401 CAD and 0.6894 GBP, so the GBP was worth about $2.03 CAD. Back in 1986 that had about the purchasing power of $3.80.
If I then later exploit the store return policy to return the first items on the list for a refund, since I paid in cash, I should receive cash back, which again, should be rounded to the nearest nickel... but this time, they would have to round it up, and I would get an extra 2 cents back.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
If your objective is to spend time with the cute sales clerk, this might be an intelligent thing to pass your time with. If that is your goal, the price differential is not your primary motivation.
On the other hand, if you wanted to actually make $10, you would only need to do this five hundred times. If it takes you more than 72 seconds for this purchase-return procedure, that would be more than ten hours in total for this little scheme. I suspect there are probably many legal ways to earn $10 quicker and with less work.
I agree, although you would change your coin system if you dropped one decimal.
I'm all for dropping a decimal and going to dimes. However, I would go ahead and change a few things: dump all current coins and switch to dimes, 50c coins, and $1 coins. This way cash prices can only be in dimes and you phase in $1 coins. The shape of the new 50c coin would be slightly larger than today's nickel, and the dollar can still be those dollar coins they've been minting.
Dimes will be dimes and they'll start to feel like pennies. The only difference is now you only need 50 to trade to a $5 bill (new lowest bill denomination) instead of 100 pennies to get to a $1 today. Similarly, 5 dimes would get you to 50c just as 5 pennies get you to 5c.
I agree, basically the quarter screws things up as far as nice patterns and good combinations go.
In my opinion, the Euro countries got their base units right: 1, 2, 5 -- 10, 20, 50 -- 100, 200, 500 -- etc.
With that system, starting at the dime we could go with the following coins: 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2, 5 and then go to "paper" for 10, 20, 50 and 100, 200, 500
It's a prisoner's dilemma. Guns are good for you, because they make you feel a little safer. They are terrible for society, because they are stolen by thieves, who sell them to gangster wannabes who wouldn't normally be able to get them.
There is also a significant non-zero chance that a firearm will be used in a suicide or accidental gun death. If there is no history of violent home invasions in your area, I would find it difficult to justify gun ownership in order to address a perceived burglary problem. While the accidental gun death rate does not seem to be huge (under a thousand per year in the US), the number of burglaries when the tenant is present and the theif doesn't run when they realize they are not alone, is also low - thus the need for such a weapon seems fairly low.
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The speed depends on where your mail gets sorted. This last year, the Peterborough Ontario mail was no longer sorted locally, it all goes to Ottawa before coming back to local addresses. In the past, mail to the local region was separated out locally and then delivered, now that all goes to Ottawa. For mail destined for out-of-town, it probably makes no difference. For mail to my neighbours, it adds at least a couple of days to the delivery time.
Mac OS 9 had a smaller install base than current Mac OS X and was constantly riddled with viruses. I don't think that market share alone determines whether or not something ends up riddled with viruses. That being said, Apple has been particularity lax about security these last three years.
I don't know that "constantly riddled with viruses" is particularly accurate. Were there more than even a dozen? Were any widespread? Wikipedia only seem to list a half dozen (not that that is a definitive proof of anything): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Macintosh_viruses
While malware was not a large issue for Mac OS pre-X, that was mostly a function of the ecosystem - I don't know of any technical reasons making the Mac difficult to target. I did once hear a talk that a lot of malware from the 1980s and 1990s was produced by disaffected youth from Eastern Europe, who had access and experience with Winel machines rather than Apple/Motorola systems, and thus used what they knew. Perhaps if cheap Mac clones were used in the Eastern Block regions more extensively the situation would have been different.
This is unrelated to your post, but you make me wonder, how does your belief impact others outside of your religion? For instance, I'm gay and have an agenda because of it: talk about it sometimes, perhaps just in passing, with the goal of getting people used to the idea so we can be more accepted. Do you have any equivalent behavior?
The "moderate" christian is in a bit of a bind. They believe that they have knowledge of a very important bunch of information - one that if understood by others would save their lives, prevent pain and suffering, and generally bring about all sorts of positive things. What is their moral duty?
If you knew that eating a four leaf clover while standing on one foot and facing North would prevent and cure both cancer and being bald - how would that effect our behaviour? What if you also knew that not-sharing that knowledge would result in yourself going bald and getting cancer?
Anyhow, it ain't easy for non-pushy christians - dammed if they do, dammed if they don't.
All of your questions are interesting, but even with my very limited understanding of present-day biological developmental knowledge, none of them poses particularly large difficulties in coming up with an "explanation" based on shared ancestry and evolutionary change. Thus there is currently no need to impose some "intelligent designer" to answer these questions, and doing so is intellectually equivalent to saying "a wizard did it". It leads to no further understanding.
Here are some "story book" ideas for your questions. The current understanding of these particular issues is likely quite different, but in no case requires a "designer" to have a reasonable explanation.
Bilateral symmetry is the result of shared ancestry from some earlier creature with bilateral symmetry, and changes to that symmetry have not had enough physical advantage to be very successful.
The costs to support the ability to regenerate limbs are greater than the benefit it would provide. For example, it might be that the biological systems necessary to support regeneration would result in taking 5% longer to reach child-bearing age or something like that. Non-regenerators on average would grow and reproduce quicker and thus out-compete the regenerators. For longer lived animals this might not be such a big deal, and being more able to recover from injury might be more advantageous.
Hate and vengeance could help to limit the success of "freeloaders" in a group. Animals that live in social groups have a danger of being exploited by individuals in that group who behave too selfishly - a mechanism to prevent/punish such individuals can lead to better overall success. The animal groups that become dominated by freeloaders are not as successful as those that are dominated by freeloaders.
Animals that are specialized to operate only at certain portions of the day can be better suited to exploit that time of day with specialized night or day vision or movement for example. Sleeping during non-active phases uses less energy than being awake, and thus creatures that sleep need less food than those that do not.
The cost of multiple teeth formation for primates is greater than the benefit. If most of the animals who survive to child bearing age only need two sets of teeth, there is little pressure for more sets.
We don't know actually know that one and only one species of creature on earth has developed sentience. Intelligent crabs or dinosaurs could have been around for quite some time before getting wiped out by whatever. Humanity took a long time to go from "banging rocks" to "building rockets", and it is not obvious that intelligence requires "advancement" in this type of direction. We might never find out about the race of farmer dinosaurs who sang epic poems to each other for millions of years before being wiped out in a famine, because they never went beyond hand tilling of their fields and had a religion that prevented them from leaving their holy valley.
People (and many animals) have a sense of beauty and symmetry that is used to judge potential mates. This mate-judging system also gets used to judge non-food-items like flowers. It also probably provides a larger barrier to non-bilateral-symmetry (as mentioned above) arising - it is hard to develop a third lung to pass on to your kids when you look ugly if one crops up.
The sense of smell helps to decide what is good to eat from what is poisonous. It is not a perfect system, like almost all of our bodies, only just good enough to do the job without being too expensive in terms of resources to support it. Some things smell good that are not good to eat and probably some things smell bad that are good to eat, but enough bad things smell bad, and good things smell good that the sense of smell gives an advantage to those that have it over those that do not.
I would also question your list of "uniformly beautiful" things - are you sure that these are genetic rather than cultural outcomes? I seem to recall reading that up until relativity recently (like withing the past few hundred years), seascapes and rocky shores were viewed as ugly/bad/evil . It is certainly true that cultures are subjected to evolutionary pressures, generally the ID/evolution "controversy" does not delve into that area.
And how many of those aren't taking money from the coal, oil or other industries whose very livelihood depends on them downplaying the evidence?
How many AGW proponents don't stand to profit heavily off of "green" jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc.?
I doubt very much that any climate scientist is likely to profit heavily from "jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc." Local politicians, business people, lobbyists, etc. might be able to benefit from some of these things - but working scientists? Tenured academics already have pretty secure lifetime employment. Perhaps we could imagine a few who might be better off individually if the science was one way rather than the other, but the majority of them have little financial stake in the result of the scientific studies one way or another.
There are three things tenured academics always want:
Salary increases
Attention
Grant money
They are by no means immune to corruption.
Yeah, sure, but publishing "with the crowd" doesn't give you any particular salary bumps or attention, and grant money again doesn't typically follow from specified results, certainly not funding from the national funding agencies. In fact, it seems more likely that one could get funding (from "private" sources) and attention by going against the consensus.
I am in no means claiming that academics are immune to corruption, but rather that the incentives for falsifying this type of research are fairly minor and indirect for the people actually doing the research, and that there are at least as great incentives for falsifying things in the other direction.
Fraud in science certainly can (and does) occur, but typically when found out people are relatively eager to expose it. See for example the "Schön scandal".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal
While I have no doubt that climate research has all sorts of areas where errors have been made, or understanding needs to be improved, over the last 20 years that I have been vaguely paying attention to the field, I have seen the consensus become more clear and the critics of that consensus sounding and behaving more like the "critics" of evolution than like people with valuable insight. Unfortunately this does mean that I tend to pay less attention to the whole group, when so large a fraction of the criticism is based on bad science, poor understanding, or minor details.
And how many of those aren't taking money from the coal, oil or other industries whose very livelihood depends on them downplaying the evidence?
How many AGW proponents don't stand to profit heavily off of "green" jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc.?
I doubt very much that any climate scientist is likely to profit heavily from "jobs bills, carbon credits, cap and trade, etc." Local politicians, business people, lobbyists, etc. might be able to benefit from some of these things - but working scientists? Tenured academics already have pretty secure lifetime employment. Perhaps we could imagine a few who might be better off individually if the science was one way rather than the other, but the majority of them have little financial stake in the result of the scientific studies one way or another.
Exactly. One of the main reason for buying a Prius seems to be conspicuous conservation
.
Good point.
Seems like that might be a better form of consumerism from a societal point of view than one based on other symbols of status. Maybe we should encourage it?
A taxi driving pattern is probably one of the toughest you would typically find, so they can't be too bad for more regular use.
Taxis are pretty much the ideal usage pattern for a hybrid. Taxis spend most of their time starting and stopping, which means that they're constantly using the electric motor for short periods. Normal driving patterns won't see such a benefit.
Sure, they have the greatest benefit, but this type of usage also has the greatest wear and tear on all the systems, so is a useful metric to gauge the longevity and reliably of the system as a whole.
Sure, but if someone is complaining about purely financial payback issues, the PS2's probably are not the best choice....
This doesn't mean that a professor is always right, that student is always wrong, or that there is not a considerable amount of subjectiveness in any of this, but in general it is found that the great majority of people learn better when they are taught by someone expert in the field being studied.
Education is one of those fields where often the basis of what is "in general" found to be, is often not actually known. I wonder how much correlation there is between instructor expertise and student outcomes? I would not be surprised to find that people learn best from instructors just slightly more knowledgeable then themselves. Learning outcomes most strongly are influenced by the engagement and work done by the student, and it seems plausible that having subject matter expert instructors would be less effective than subject matter not-quite-so-expert instructors but higher student engagement.
Seriously, it is INSANE to buy a car with parallel hybrid. You inherit the worst of both ICE and Electrical. That is just crazy. For cars, you should either buy electric (like tesla model S), OR an ICE using gas/diesel. You would buy ICE if you are going to be traveling more than once a month more than the distance of the electric car.
Why are so many taxis I see in Vancouver Priuses? Are all of those business people INSANE? And they keep replacing them when they wear out with new hybrids?
I suppose they are not technically "parallel hybrid" as the nifty planetary gearing system can be used in a manner similar to parallel or series, but I think your "INSANE" statement is a bit strong even with that.
A hybrid has at least the potential to gain the best of both ICE and Electrical, in that the ICE can provide extended range, while the efficiencies in energy recovery and low speed torque from the electrical system can also be achieved.
Good points!
Its because most consumers don't actually understand what hybrids are really for.
Its amazing how many people (including the motoring media) in the US incorrectly believe that the reason for buying a hybrid over a normal car is to save gas money. This is not even close to the actual reason hybrids were invented, so its no surprise that it doesn't really work out that way either.
Don't believe me? Go compare the price and MPG of a Toyota Prius compared to, say, a Toyota Yaris.
The real reason hybrids came about is as a way to reduce CO2 emisions for a greener environment and to fight global warming, mostly regardless of cost of ownership.
But the green angle doesn't look so good either when you factor in the (actually quite nasty) emissions from the production and disposal of all the extra stuff like Lithium batteries that that go into a Prius over a conventional car.
While you may have a point, some of it is offset by the errors in your analysis.
CO2 emission is virtually the same thing as fuel usage - if you have low CO2 emission you necessarily have low fuel usage (for a gas powered vehicle at least), and if you have low fuel usage you necessarily have low CO2 emission. No matter what the vehicle, each gallon of gas you burn produces the same amount of CO2.
I do not know the details of the hybrid battery disposal/recycling, but that is the only "extra" stuff in a Prius compared to any other "conventional" vehicle. All of the battery components can in principle be recycled, which doesn't mean that it actually is unfortunately.
1. All hybrids come with low rolling resistance tires. The tires on my wife's car needed to be replaced after 20,000 miles. Tires were worn down to the tread wear indicators. I replaced then with 40,000 mile + tires. Cost about $1000.
Gas mileage dropped by about 1-1.5 miles per gallon. We were getting 23.6 mpg. Now we get about 22 mpg. At an extra $1000 every 20,000 miles, I will take the loss of MPG.
For such a thrifty guy, I question your tire purchase decisions. I recently replaced all four tires on our car with LRR tires for about $500, with a rated lifetime of 100,000 miles (Kumho eco Solus). Rather than spending $1000 every 40,000 miles, maybe spending half as much, for 2.5 times as long life would be a wiser use of your money. LRR tires may improve fuel economy by as much as 3 or 4%, so can be cost effective even if higher priced than non-LRR tires. Obviously if they are actually cheaper that's even better.
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/vehicles/fuel_economy_tires_light.html
Excellent point you brought up. I know someone that bought a hybrid specifically so he can use the carpool lane, 90 minutes vs. 15 min each way on a commute.
Isn't there a way of filling those empty seats to legitimately use the HOV lane? Heck, doesn't CA only require one extra person beyond the driver? Where are all the hitchhikers? I guess it is called "slugging" when done for HOV lanes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_ridesharing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_carpooling
'It's hard to know what's causing the low repurchase rate.
You could try, oh, maybe, *asking* them why not?
That would make sense.
It might not actually get at the real reason as it is clear that people often say one thing when they believe another thing, or even think they made a decision for one reason when in actual fact the decision was based on something else less consciously felt. The social sciences are hard to do well.
I've shied away from hybrid cars because of things I've heard from other owners. I drive a LOT of miles. Typically around 200,000 before I trade to the next car. I typically own the car about 6 or 7 years. I've been told by other hybrid owners that the battery pack is only good for about 100,000 miles and then has to be replaced. I'd be curious as to the experience of other hybrid owners.
Yea?
Nay?
I'd question "owners" who told you that the battery pack is only good for that long. That's typically the warrante time, and the reported lifetimes seem to be significantly above that. Basically, the battery pack seems to last at least as long as typical transmission lifetimes.
Vancouver seems to have completely switched to Prius taxis. A taxi driving pattern is probably one of the toughest you would typically find, so they can't be too bad for more regular use.
http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1023454_toyota-prius-taxi-tops-340000mi-dispels-battery-myth
In a way, yes. Why should people get tax breaks for signing a paper?
It seems to be the case that about half of married US couples get a tax break by being married, while about half get dinged with a higher bill when being married. Couples with similar incomes end up paying more if they are married than if they are not (due to higher tax brackets for the average income of a married couple), while couples with different incomes get a tax break (due to income splitting/averaging).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty
http://marriage.about.com/od/finances/a/marriagepenalty.htm
It looks like this might not be as big of an issue in recent years due to tinkering with the tax code, but 2010 was when things were supposed to revert to the higher penalty rules, and I don't know if they were extended.
visual identification is pretty strong evidence.
I'm not so sure - the few studies I have seen indicate that eye witness identification is actually pretty shitty.
Ok you guys are using very bad logic. You are assuming that the suicidal gun owner would not just hang himself I he had no gun handy. You are also assuming that criminals would not use brute force, edged weapons , clubs etc I they had no guns. I would rather be Armed with a gun and have two criminals armed with Guns out to get me than be unarmed trying to fight two unarmed men or men armed with melee weapons
As would I.
The questions you are not answering though are: What are the chances of being in a situation as described where the gun could be very useful to you, and what are the chances of being in a situation where the gun would be a very bad thing to have available?
What are the relative chances of being confronted with an armed assailant compared to being confronted with a drunk neighbor who is trying to get into your front door thinking it is his? Or your teenager climbing through the window because they lost their key? Or any number of other highly unlikely situations that could lead to terrible consequences.
We are both probably basing our decisions more on emotional responses rather than pure risk/cost/benefit analysis. Such analysis is not very straightforward, as they are all sorts of possible situations that could be imagined that are fairly rare event.
I personally know nobody who has been killed in a domestic burglary, or even anyone who has been present while their home was burgled. Thus in my world-view, protecting against dangers accompanying a home burglary is not a very high priority. Increasing my family's risk (and the wider community's risk for that matter) of other non-burglary accidents by the presence of a handgun seems like a poor use of our resources. Of course my personal experience is not much better than anecdotal, but it is such that I don't feel the need to research the issue in greater depth.
Thanks for pointing out the errors of my posting. How foolish of me! Of course, now I see that I and the parent were talking nonsense.
I am glad nobody tried to parody our position by exaggerating it to the point of absurdity. If that had happened someone else might have thought they were serious and tried to point out the errors of their thinking!
The pound coin was introduced in 1983, while the Canadian dollar coin did not come into play until 1987 according to wikipedia. According to http://www.triacom.com/frame.html?http://www.triacom.com/archive/exchange.en.html&en in 1986 the US dollar was worth 1.401 CAD and 0.6894 GBP, so the GBP was worth about $2.03 CAD. Back in 1986 that had about the purchasing power of $3.80.
Nice little gift.
If I then later exploit the store return policy to return the first items on the list for a refund, since I paid in cash, I should receive cash back, which again, should be rounded to the nearest nickel... but this time, they would have to round it up, and I would get an extra 2 cents back.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
If your objective is to spend time with the cute sales clerk, this might be an intelligent thing to pass your time with. If that is your goal, the price differential is not your primary motivation.
On the other hand, if you wanted to actually make $10, you would only need to do this five hundred times. If it takes you more than 72 seconds for this purchase-return procedure, that would be more than ten hours in total for this little scheme. I suspect there are probably many legal ways to earn $10 quicker and with less work.
I agree, although you would change your coin system if you dropped one decimal.
I'm all for dropping a decimal and going to dimes. However, I would go ahead and change a few things: dump all current coins and switch to dimes, 50c coins, and $1 coins. This way cash prices can only be in dimes and you phase in $1 coins. The shape of the new 50c coin would be slightly larger than today's nickel, and the dollar can still be those dollar coins they've been minting.
Dimes will be dimes and they'll start to feel like pennies. The only difference is now you only need 50 to trade to a $5 bill (new lowest bill denomination) instead of 100 pennies to get to a $1 today. Similarly, 5 dimes would get you to 50c just as 5 pennies get you to 5c.
I agree, basically the quarter screws things up as far as nice patterns and good combinations go.
In my opinion, the Euro countries got their base units right: 1, 2, 5 -- 10, 20, 50 -- 100, 200, 500 -- etc.
With that system, starting at the dime we could go with the following coins: 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2, 5 and then go to "paper" for 10, 20, 50 and 100, 200, 500
It's a prisoner's dilemma. Guns are good for you, because they make you feel a little safer. They are terrible for society, because they are stolen by thieves, who sell them to gangster wannabes who wouldn't normally be able to get them.
There is also a significant non-zero chance that a firearm will be used in a suicide or accidental gun death. If there is no history of violent home invasions in your area, I would find it difficult to justify gun ownership in order to address a perceived burglary problem. While the accidental gun death rate does not seem to be huge (under a thousand per year in the US), the number of burglaries when the tenant is present and the theif doesn't run when they realize they are not alone, is also low - thus the need for such a weapon seems fairly low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States