Do you really think the usa is better off than it was 5 years ago ?
Do you really think that th eusa is heading in the correct direction ?
Do you really think goverment should have absolute power ?
No, no, and no. I hate kneejerk liberalism as much as I hate "Gay Marriage is wrong because the Bible says so.". I am mostly against people are literally lie to get their point across. I fight for actual rational thought based on facts. I like people who base their opinion on reality, on facts, on the real world... and don't use a big pile of rhetorical nonsense to do it.
Reading through your posting history leads me to belive you are a right winger.
You should read closer. 90% of my posts are against people who make popular statements that are poorly thought out or poorly evidenced... on either side. If you can't back up for your opinions with a marginal bit of reality, I don't like it... I don't think it's too much to ask for people to be intellectually honest and rational. Labeling me a "right-winger" because I am ASKING for someone to provide evidence for ridiculous claims... is seriously mind boggling to me.. am I just supposed to say "oh, he's probably right.. i'm sure there's lots of cases of murdering of US citizens in front of their families".
It's not much to ask, I don't think. If you are going to claim the US government is taking people form their homes, torturing and murdering them in front of their families... I should be able to ask for some type of evidence without being labeled "right-wing" and have random people start assuming I support Bush...
How about starting a war against a nation that post no clear and present danger to the US of A. Misuse of the military would certainly be an impeachable offense.
I'm sorry, but he was given the legal authorization to use the military... therefore there was no "misuse". Look, I hate to come off as a Bush apologist... I swear I'm not... I can't wait for 08.. the sooner he is out of office the better.... but you can't just.. not like the guy, and start making up reasons to get rid of him. The bottomline here is... the guy hasn't done anything that is impeachable.. the wiretapping thing MAY turn out to be that way, but right now.. even that isn't. I'm amazed no one brought up the CIA leak he supposedly authorized.. that's another angle that MAY include some illegal actions (again, he is in a grey area.. so impeachment is difficult).
I realise you think he sucks. He might be the worst president ever.. I understand you think the war in Iraq was a terrible idea and terrible for the country... Unfortunately, incompetance isn't grounds for impeachment. He has to break the law.
Yes, I really think that not spending billions on finding new and more efficient ways of killing people would be better for this country.
We should be spending this money on medicine and education, not uber war ships that are pointless in the types of war we'll be fighting anytime soon.
That kind of analysis is no less scary to me then "We should do this because God says so". The simplistic and dismissive nature.. the lack of depth... the shallow arguments... the rhetorical labeling... it scares me so much.
I just can't take anyone who seriously supports the dismantlement, for instance, of the CIA... I realize it's 'trendy' to hate them... but.. give me a break...
Because you aren't the first conservative I've run across to say "prove what laws he broke" to me--but when I ask them "So based on the credible evidence we have, should there be an investigation by Congress?"
First of all, assuming I am conservative because I realize the difference between doing something provably illegal (perjury) and "massive debt" or whatever other nosense the GP posted, is really your first mistake. As for an investigation, I'm all for it. If he broke a law, impeach him. I have no problem with that. The problem is there have been several courts, already, that have found the wiretapping wasn't illegal, and no one has had the balls to push it up higher into appeals. It's pretty hard to impeach someone for something that isn't even (currently) considered illegal. The reason the democrats aren't pushing for this investigation is because they would need to appeal to the Supreme Court on decisions already made by lesser Courts... and they, unlike the Republicans circa Clinton, aren't anywhere near as sure it's a winner. It's politics... losing would be suicide. The Republicans are self-destructing enough as it is, it makes no sense for the Democrats to take a weak case and bet their political capital on it.
By the way, I can only assume you mean there should be an investigation into the wiretapping... and that is the "allegation" you are refering to... you didn't actually specify.
First of all, I'm not bitching I wasn't given any answers. I was. They were all completely wrong. No one at Abu Gharib was an American citizen. No one in any of the cases had their citizenship revoked, and no one was murdered. The original poster is making things up, and so are you. You are literally being dishonest to push your agenda. One guy AGREED to give up his citizenship as terms of his release. The other guy was found in Afghanistan fighting against American troops. None of these people were "stripped from their homes" and "killed in front of their families" like the original posters suggests. The fact that you think three seperate cases, none of which as severe as originally implied, is meaningful to a testment to how blinded you are by your own ideology.
If there is a case of the American government taking an American citizen out of his home, revoking his citizenship, torturing and murdering him. I want to know. I'll be the first one in line to crucify someone...
It saddens me how low the bar is set for what qualifies as "proof" of completely ridiculous claims.
Can you provide a link with evidence supporting this?
And I thought the slashdot left-wing groupthink was a myth... I literally got modded down for asking for a link for evidence so I could read about the torture, murder, and revocation of citizenship by the American government to American citizens on my own, instead of taking the word of some slashbot.
You ask to commit what offense. AT&T broke wiretap laws in order...
Listen, if your entire argument the president should be impeached rests on the fact that the wiretaps were illegal, then alright. I think you have a legimate case to be made. The problem is they have never been shown and found to be illegal in a court of a law. You are absolutely right that nothing will happen, simply because it's such a large grey area that going after the president on this issue, and not knowing the outcome, is political suicide.
A democrat tried to censure the president over this issue, and his own party laughed at him. No one really knows what the Supreme Court would say about this program.. and until they speak up, you cannot say the wiretaps are, in fact, illegal. We can all play airchair judge and interpret the laws ourselves, and think.. presume... assume...predict... what the outcome would be.. but until the Court says so, it ain't so.
The moment I don't let you assume the wiretaps are, in fact, illegal, your entire argument falls to pieces. If they are, in fact, found to be illegal, then you have grounds right then and there for an impeachment, and you don't need to the elaborate conspiracy ploy.
PS. Good luck with the treason thing... sounds like crackpottery to me.
Because we're living in such times that we're constantly obtaining "a little safety", allegedly, and certainly giving up liberties on a fairly regular basis. That's how.
It should be invoked even more often these days, I'd think. If it's tired, that's only because it's getting so much exercise. It's surely not losing meaning and relevance.
Listen, I appreciate the Ben Franklin quote. It's quite brilliant... however trotting out something a founding father said as anything other than a well-worded insight, is just.. for lack of a better word.. idolatry.
We trade freedom for safety a hundred different ways every day. I could use the same quote at every part of the spectrum in the tradeoffs. Being forced to get a state driver's liscense is giving up some of your freedoms in return for some level of safety on the roads... Traffic law enforcement is giving up your freedoms... First ammendment restrictions (FIRE!!) is giving up some of your freedoms... this can go on ad nauseam. Just trotting out this same tired old quote as defense of freedom, on its own, is just poor logic. It's a warning against govermental "feature creep". It isn't the -answer- to protecting freedom.
I didn't say Clinton wasn't impeached. I said he wasn't impeached for a blowjob, nor hiding it from the public, nor hiding it from his wife. He was impeached for lying under oath. This shouldn't be a difficult distinction for people to make... yet 10 years later, people can't seem to figure it out.
Bigger Issues? How about:
This government says it can seize US citizens and subject them to secret military tribunals.
This government says it can make you not a citizen by simple declaration without evidence.
This government says it can rape, torture and murder suspected terrorists.
Now add all that up: Any US President can say you are a terrorist, kidnap your whole family in the middle of the night, and have your kids raped to death in front of your wife to make her tell where you are hiding. And Gonzalez will say it's all legal, if anyone ever finds out about it.
Can you provide a link with evidence supporting this?
Blowjobs & hiding it from your wife (and the public) or raping civil liberties, massive debt, illegal wars and profiteering - Which do you think is more of an impeachable offense?
None of the above? No one has been impeached for any of that, and most of the alleged misdeeds above aren't even illegal. The more impeachable offense is the one which is illegal. Perjury is illegal, and in the case of Bill Clinton, highly provable. Until you can explain to me which laws Bush broke, with a sufficient amount of evidence, you have no business brining up the "i" word. It doesn't really matter what you 'want' or what you 'feel' is right.. what matters is the law, and what is and is not provably true under it. Just making up random nonsense (ie, 'massive debt' being an impeachable offense) or misassigning blame (profiteering?), because you don't like someone... doesn't add credibility to your argument. It makes you seem irrational and forces the rest of us to largely dismiss your rantings.
Our country has come a long way since Ben Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Third post, huh? Is that a new record for the invocation of that pretty tired quote? It's becoming the Nazi reference of this topic.
the less data on me the government has, the happier I'll be
I understand the insta-kneejerk generalized reaction. I really do. There are lots of forms of abuse something like this can entail... but a picture-ID with DOB and a unique number is not valuable nor new information.
Can someone please inform me about the information they are going to keep on me and my id card that isn't in my tax return? Please? Anyone?
Since i'm not an american and i'm nowhere near US, it won't affect me
Instead of reading the the summary, thinking for 9 seconds, and posting as quickly as possible with the first kneejerk reaction you have, in order to get karma, you might want to consider reading the article. Among other things, this has been proposed before, it is also being considered in Australia (getting closer to home yet?) with the next logical step being that search engines will only (be forced to) index rated sites (effect you yet?), and the US will be able to use it's considerable clout to help get similar legislation passed around the world?
. Last time I heard about that, it was just called "superscalar execution".
That's not quite right, and I think there is alot of misunderstanding going around. So let me tell you what I know about this technology. First of all, the entire idea of having two processors work on a single thread of a program isn't that far-fetched, and has been a topic of research for a long time. What most people don't understand is that, in general, it requires a massive revamp of the instruction set. What happens is you design instructions in very particular ways to maxmimize parallelism, and you also, generally, INCLUDE dependancy information in the instruction. This, essentially, pushes the blind scheduler currently in hardware onto the compiler. However, with this setup, you can generally create computers that get close to x2 speedups with x2 cores. Of course, the real question is, how does a 1x processor compare with and old-style current-instruction-set processor? The answer is almost always, unfavorably. To create such a "parrallel" instruction set, you really end up gimping the instruction set in some ways. There is, of course, always room for improvement.
So, to summerize... there is, in modern compiled software, alot of parrallelism to be taken advantage of.. the problem is that recognizing it is incredibly difficult.. especially on the fly, blindly, and in hardware... So, the future lies, most likely, in a new type of instruction set that is simpler, that pushes the dependancy information onto the compiler. This will make compilers quite a bit more difficult, but allow processors and multi-cores to more effectively split stuff up. This is largely, as I understand it, way off in the distance.. so I think someone, somewhere, got a little excited by the prospects and is pumping this "development". However, I don't think it's quite as ridiculous as most of ya'll believe.
How about minimum driving ages being changed? It shouldn' surprise anyone that kids under the age of 18 account for a HUGELY disporportionate piece of the accident pie. How about something like a learners permit (requiring a licensed driver in the car until 17 instead of 16. How about a restricted license (to work and back, etc...) until 18. Give these kids a chance to learn how to drive before we shove them off on their own. Seriously, now we give them a permit at 15.5 yrs and by 16 we shove em out of the driving nest to fly on their own. Them we get outraged at the damage they cause.
I did very much enjoy your psuedo-random hijacking of the topic into this soapboax tirade... and while I disagree with most of it, this part in particular bothers me the most. Need I repeat the first law of drawing statistical conclusions? The one about correlation and causality? I concede the point, without research, that 16-17 year olds are involved in the highest percentage of accidents. Though, if you ask any insurance company, it's all males under 25... so the first flaw in your logic is if I naturally extrapolate your logic to change the driving age to 25. The problem is, do you have any other proof other than this statistics that age is not only correlated with accidents, but also the cause.
Based solely on this statistic, I can equally argue that inexperience is the cause of these accidents, and consequently your plan is going to do absolutely nothing. Worst yet, it will set the precedent to continue to raise the driving age in a statistically fallacious attempt to remove the worst element of a population.
I know that they are known for their robotics department, but did they work with DARPA as a result of thier participation in the Grand Challenge? Anyone have any insight on this?
CMU and its Robotics Institute has worked with DARPA long before the Grand Challenge, and will likely continue to work with them long into the future.
Ahh yes but perhaps you might want to divide that by per head of population? Oh but no...in you world, US citizens must have some divine rights to use and polute more than most other citizens who share this earth?
They also produce more then any other citizen in the world. Sorry for thinking it all the way through. 32% of the GDP for 25% of the population. That makes the US one of the mose effecient countries in the world. Feel free to read my actual response to the first person who tried to use the "per capita" retort.
Feel free to read my response to the other 3 people who have tried to use "per capita" retort. Instead, why don't you try to calculate pollution per capita, per GDP.. to find out which nation help the economy of the world the most at the cost of pollution. 32% of the GDP of the world for 25% of the pollution. That's actually pretty effecient.
The per capita reposnse holds absolutely no water. Read the response I made to the other two people who used it. Yes, per capita the US pollutes alot. Per capita the US also generates alot. The average US person is responsible for alot of pollution, and alot of the world's economy. The average US person adds more to the economy of world, per bit of pollution emitted... The average US person is one of the most effecient user of resources, therefore. That is, of course, if we assume that GDP and pollution are both good measures of "production" and "energy usage". Of course they are not perfect... not metric is...
However the point is, pollution is a cost, with a benefit of "production", "economy".. whatever you want to call it. If there was no benefit to pollution, at all, then we could just cap it to 0, and everyone would be better off. The problem is you can't start massaging only the negative numbers without taking into the account the benefit. When you include the economic value provided by each megaton of pollution, the US is extremely effecient.
Yes, you are right. Kyoto is really about industrial development. Thus Americans opposing it is really about American Imperialism.
Oh the propaganda and rhetoric. SUVs... Vegas... Imperialism... maybe you should take 5 seconds and research where, why, and how the majority of US pollution comes from, and where it goes (hint, it goes to the 32% of the worlds GDP that the US produces, at a cost of 25% of the world pollutiong... making the US one of the most effecient users of "energy" in the world). There are coal fires in China that put out more CO2 then all the SUVs in America combined.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really think the usa is better off than it was 5 years ago ?
Do you really think that th eusa is heading in the correct direction ?
Do you really think goverment should have absolute power ?
No, no, and no. I hate kneejerk liberalism as much as I hate "Gay Marriage is wrong because the Bible says so.". I am mostly against people are literally lie to get their point across. I fight for actual rational thought based on facts. I like people who base their opinion on reality, on facts, on the real world... and don't use a big pile of rhetorical nonsense to do it.
Reading through your posting history leads me to belive you are a right winger.
You should read closer. 90% of my posts are against people who make popular statements that are poorly thought out or poorly evidenced... on either side. If you can't back up for your opinions with a marginal bit of reality, I don't like it... I don't think it's too much to ask for people to be intellectually honest and rational. Labeling me a "right-winger" because I am ASKING for someone to provide evidence for ridiculous claims... is seriously mind boggling to me.. am I just supposed to say "oh, he's probably right.. i'm sure there's lots of cases of murdering of US citizens in front of their families".
It's not much to ask, I don't think. If you are going to claim the US government is taking people form their homes, torturing and murdering them in front of their families... I should be able to ask for some type of evidence without being labeled "right-wing" and have random people start assuming I support Bush...
How about starting a war against a nation that post no clear and present danger to the US of A. Misuse of the military would certainly be an impeachable offense.
I'm sorry, but he was given the legal authorization to use the military... therefore there was no "misuse". Look, I hate to come off as a Bush apologist... I swear I'm not... I can't wait for 08.. the sooner he is out of office the better.... but you can't just.. not like the guy, and start making up reasons to get rid of him. The bottomline here is... the guy hasn't done anything that is impeachable.. the wiretapping thing MAY turn out to be that way, but right now.. even that isn't. I'm amazed no one brought up the CIA leak he supposedly authorized.. that's another angle that MAY include some illegal actions (again, he is in a grey area.. so impeachment is difficult).
I realise you think he sucks. He might be the worst president ever.. I understand you think the war in Iraq was a terrible idea and terrible for the country... Unfortunately, incompetance isn't grounds for impeachment. He has to break the law.
Yes, I really think that not spending billions on finding new and more efficient ways of killing people would be better for this country. We should be spending this money on medicine and education, not uber war ships that are pointless in the types of war we'll be fighting anytime soon.
That kind of analysis is no less scary to me then "We should do this because God says so". The simplistic and dismissive nature.. the lack of depth... the shallow arguments... the rhetorical labeling... it scares me so much.
I just can't take anyone who seriously supports the dismantlement, for instance, of the CIA... I realize it's 'trendy' to hate them... but.. give me a break...
Because you aren't the first conservative I've run across to say "prove what laws he broke" to me--but when I ask them "So based on the credible evidence we have, should there be an investigation by Congress?"
First of all, assuming I am conservative because I realize the difference between doing something provably illegal (perjury) and "massive debt" or whatever other nosense the GP posted, is really your first mistake. As for an investigation, I'm all for it. If he broke a law, impeach him. I have no problem with that. The problem is there have been several courts, already, that have found the wiretapping wasn't illegal, and no one has had the balls to push it up higher into appeals. It's pretty hard to impeach someone for something that isn't even (currently) considered illegal. The reason the democrats aren't pushing for this investigation is because they would need to appeal to the Supreme Court on decisions already made by lesser Courts... and they, unlike the Republicans circa Clinton, aren't anywhere near as sure it's a winner. It's politics... losing would be suicide. The Republicans are self-destructing enough as it is, it makes no sense for the Democrats to take a weak case and bet their political capital on it.
By the way, I can only assume you mean there should be an investigation into the wiretapping... and that is the "allegation" you are refering to... you didn't actually specify.
First of all, I'm not bitching I wasn't given any answers. I was. They were all completely wrong. No one at Abu Gharib was an American citizen. No one in any of the cases had their citizenship revoked, and no one was murdered. The original poster is making things up, and so are you. You are literally being dishonest to push your agenda. One guy AGREED to give up his citizenship as terms of his release. The other guy was found in Afghanistan fighting against American troops. None of these people were "stripped from their homes" and "killed in front of their families" like the original posters suggests. The fact that you think three seperate cases, none of which as severe as originally implied, is meaningful to a testment to how blinded you are by your own ideology.
If there is a case of the American government taking an American citizen out of his home, revoking his citizenship, torturing and murdering him. I want to know. I'll be the first one in line to crucify someone...
It saddens me how low the bar is set for what qualifies as "proof" of completely ridiculous claims.
Too bad we can't cut funding for all "black" projects in the Department of Defense while we're at it.
So you really believe that no NSA, no CIA, no DIA, no secret government research at the national labs is better for the country?
Can you provide a link with evidence supporting this?
And I thought the slashdot left-wing groupthink was a myth... I literally got modded down for asking for a link for evidence so I could read about the torture, murder, and revocation of citizenship by the American government to American citizens on my own, instead of taking the word of some slashbot.
So much for "facts".
You ask to commit what offense. AT&T broke wiretap laws in order...
Listen, if your entire argument the president should be impeached rests on the fact that the wiretaps were illegal, then alright. I think you have a legimate case to be made. The problem is they have never been shown and found to be illegal in a court of a law. You are absolutely right that nothing will happen, simply because it's such a large grey area that going after the president on this issue, and not knowing the outcome, is political suicide.
A democrat tried to censure the president over this issue, and his own party laughed at him. No one really knows what the Supreme Court would say about this program.. and until they speak up, you cannot say the wiretaps are, in fact, illegal. We can all play airchair judge and interpret the laws ourselves, and think.. presume... assume...predict... what the outcome would be.. but until the Court says so, it ain't so.
The moment I don't let you assume the wiretaps are, in fact, illegal, your entire argument falls to pieces. If they are, in fact, found to be illegal, then you have grounds right then and there for an impeachment, and you don't need to the elaborate conspiracy ploy.
PS. Good luck with the treason thing... sounds like crackpottery to me.
Because we're living in such times that we're constantly obtaining "a little safety", allegedly, and certainly giving up liberties on a fairly regular basis. That's how. It should be invoked even more often these days, I'd think. If it's tired, that's only because it's getting so much exercise. It's surely not losing meaning and relevance.
Listen, I appreciate the Ben Franklin quote. It's quite brilliant... however trotting out something a founding father said as anything other than a well-worded insight, is just.. for lack of a better word.. idolatry.
We trade freedom for safety a hundred different ways every day. I could use the same quote at every part of the spectrum in the tradeoffs. Being forced to get a state driver's liscense is giving up some of your freedoms in return for some level of safety on the roads... Traffic law enforcement is giving up your freedoms... First ammendment restrictions (FIRE!!) is giving up some of your freedoms... this can go on ad nauseam. Just trotting out this same tired old quote as defense of freedom, on its own, is just poor logic. It's a warning against govermental "feature creep". It isn't the -answer- to protecting freedom.
I didn't say Clinton wasn't impeached. I said he wasn't impeached for a blowjob, nor hiding it from the public, nor hiding it from his wife. He was impeached for lying under oath. This shouldn't be a difficult distinction for people to make... yet 10 years later, people can't seem to figure it out.
Bigger Issues? How about:
This government says it can seize US citizens and subject them to secret military tribunals.
This government says it can make you not a citizen by simple declaration without evidence.
This government says it can rape, torture and murder suspected terrorists.
Now add all that up: Any US President can say you are a terrorist, kidnap your whole family in the middle of the night, and have your kids raped to death in front of your wife to make her tell where you are hiding. And Gonzalez will say it's all legal, if anyone ever finds out about it.
Can you provide a link with evidence supporting this?
Blowjobs & hiding it from your wife (and the public) or raping civil liberties, massive debt, illegal wars and profiteering - Which do you think is more of an impeachable offense?
None of the above? No one has been impeached for any of that, and most of the alleged misdeeds above aren't even illegal. The more impeachable offense is the one which is illegal. Perjury is illegal, and in the case of Bill Clinton, highly provable. Until you can explain to me which laws Bush broke, with a sufficient amount of evidence, you have no business brining up the "i" word. It doesn't really matter what you 'want' or what you 'feel' is right.. what matters is the law, and what is and is not provably true under it. Just making up random nonsense (ie, 'massive debt' being an impeachable offense) or misassigning blame (profiteering?), because you don't like someone... doesn't add credibility to your argument. It makes you seem irrational and forces the rest of us to largely dismiss your rantings.
Our country has come a long way since Ben Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Third post, huh? Is that a new record for the invocation of that pretty tired quote? It's becoming the Nazi reference of this topic.
the less data on me the government has, the happier I'll be
I understand the insta-kneejerk generalized reaction. I really do. There are lots of forms of abuse something like this can entail... but a picture-ID with DOB and a unique number is not valuable nor new information.
Can someone please inform me about the information they are going to keep on me and my id card that isn't in my tax return? Please? Anyone?
I use my hands/wrist/forearms for a lot of things
It's a shame I can't think of a sophomoric joke that is clever enough to not be trite.
Since i'm not an american and i'm nowhere near US, it won't affect me
Instead of reading the the summary, thinking for 9 seconds, and posting as quickly as possible with the first kneejerk reaction you have, in order to get karma, you might want to consider reading the article. Among other things, this has been proposed before, it is also being considered in Australia (getting closer to home yet?) with the next logical step being that search engines will only (be forced to) index rated sites (effect you yet?), and the US will be able to use it's considerable clout to help get similar legislation passed around the world?
. Last time I heard about that, it was just called "superscalar execution".
That's not quite right, and I think there is alot of misunderstanding going around. So let me tell you what I know about this technology. First of all, the entire idea of having two processors work on a single thread of a program isn't that far-fetched, and has been a topic of research for a long time. What most people don't understand is that, in general, it requires a massive revamp of the instruction set. What happens is you design instructions in very particular ways to maxmimize parallelism, and you also, generally, INCLUDE dependancy information in the instruction. This, essentially, pushes the blind scheduler currently in hardware onto the compiler. However, with this setup, you can generally create computers that get close to x2 speedups with x2 cores. Of course, the real question is, how does a 1x processor compare with and old-style current-instruction-set processor? The answer is almost always, unfavorably. To create such a "parrallel" instruction set, you really end up gimping the instruction set in some ways. There is, of course, always room for improvement.
So, to summerize... there is, in modern compiled software, alot of parrallelism to be taken advantage of.. the problem is that recognizing it is incredibly difficult.. especially on the fly, blindly, and in hardware... So, the future lies, most likely, in a new type of instruction set that is simpler, that pushes the dependancy information onto the compiler. This will make compilers quite a bit more difficult, but allow processors and multi-cores to more effectively split stuff up. This is largely, as I understand it, way off in the distance.. so I think someone, somewhere, got a little excited by the prospects and is pumping this "development". However, I don't think it's quite as ridiculous as most of ya'll believe.
How about minimum driving ages being changed? It shouldn' surprise anyone that kids under the age of 18 account for a HUGELY disporportionate piece of the accident pie. How about something like a learners permit (requiring a licensed driver in the car until 17 instead of 16. How about a restricted license (to work and back, etc...) until 18. Give these kids a chance to learn how to drive before we shove them off on their own. Seriously, now we give them a permit at 15.5 yrs and by 16 we shove em out of the driving nest to fly on their own. Them we get outraged at the damage they cause.
I did very much enjoy your psuedo-random hijacking of the topic into this soapboax tirade... and while I disagree with most of it, this part in particular bothers me the most. Need I repeat the first law of drawing statistical conclusions? The one about correlation and causality? I concede the point, without research, that 16-17 year olds are involved in the highest percentage of accidents. Though, if you ask any insurance company, it's all males under 25... so the first flaw in your logic is if I naturally extrapolate your logic to change the driving age to 25. The problem is, do you have any other proof other than this statistics that age is not only correlated with accidents, but also the cause.
Based solely on this statistic, I can equally argue that inexperience is the cause of these accidents, and consequently your plan is going to do absolutely nothing. Worst yet, it will set the precedent to continue to raise the driving age in a statistically fallacious attempt to remove the worst element of a population.
I know that they are known for their robotics department, but did they work with DARPA as a result of thier participation in the Grand Challenge? Anyone have any insight on this?
CMU and its Robotics Institute has worked with DARPA long before the Grand Challenge, and will likely continue to work with them long into the future.
My source is here. These are numebrs from 2000, so they probably aren't the best source.
Ahh yes but perhaps you might want to divide that by per head of population? Oh but no...in you world, US citizens must have some divine rights to use and polute more than most other citizens who share this earth?
They also produce more then any other citizen in the world. Sorry for thinking it all the way through. 32% of the GDP for 25% of the population. That makes the US one of the mose effecient countries in the world. Feel free to read my actual response to the first person who tried to use the "per capita" retort.
Per capita numbers are meaningless... Include GDP in your metric, things change alot
Feel free to read my response to the other 3 people who have tried to use "per capita" retort. Instead, why don't you try to calculate pollution per capita, per GDP.. to find out which nation help the economy of the world the most at the cost of pollution. 32% of the GDP of the world for 25% of the pollution. That's actually pretty effecient.
The per capita reposnse holds absolutely no water. Read the response I made to the other two people who used it. Yes, per capita the US pollutes alot. Per capita the US also generates alot. The average US person is responsible for alot of pollution, and alot of the world's economy. The average US person adds more to the economy of world, per bit of pollution emitted... The average US person is one of the most effecient user of resources, therefore. That is, of course, if we assume that GDP and pollution are both good measures of "production" and "energy usage". Of course they are not perfect... not metric is...
However the point is, pollution is a cost, with a benefit of "production", "economy".. whatever you want to call it. If there was no benefit to pollution, at all, then we could just cap it to 0, and everyone would be better off. The problem is you can't start massaging only the negative numbers without taking into the account the benefit. When you include the economic value provided by each megaton of pollution, the US is extremely effecient.
Yes, you are right. Kyoto is really about industrial development. Thus Americans opposing it is really about American Imperialism.
Oh the propaganda and rhetoric. SUVs... Vegas... Imperialism... maybe you should take 5 seconds and research where, why, and how the majority of US pollution comes from, and where it goes (hint, it goes to the 32% of the worlds GDP that the US produces, at a cost of 25% of the world pollutiong... making the US one of the most effecient users of "energy" in the world). There are coal fires in China that put out more CO2 then all the SUVs in America combined.