That may be bullshit, but it comes down to implementation whether you can prevent it without worse consequences. The problem is, if you don't take a representative's word, you're putting some other person in control of whether they can perform their legislative duties, namely the guy who says "yeah there's a vote coming up" (remember - they do votes at all kinds of interesting hours). And putting somebody else in control of that is exactly what this part of the Constitution is trying to prevent. What if the cop pulls the rep over and they can't get a hold of that guy, or what if they don't try and detain the rep until they hear back (which of course is conveniently after the vote).
The whole point of that clause is that you couldn't pull any tricks to prevent reps from voting, even if it meant putting up with all kinds of other stuff. Going to a strip joint is pretty minor - do you realize that the language of that clause allows for them to commit proper crimes? The Founders did, and they kept it in anyway, because they'd had experience with a regime who would've (if they didn't actually) pull those kinds of tricks.
Bullshit it's bullshit. It's literally in Article 1 of the Constitution, not even in the bill of rights or precedent or any other such comparatively wishy-washy thing.
Most state Constitutions are modeled on the Federal one. And I quote from a little further down in that page: "A similar clause in many state constitutions protects members of state legislatures in the United States."
I am unable to respect his decision because his decision was stupid, and I don't respect stupidity.
Note that I would not try to prevent him from making it - people should be allowed to be stupid, so long as it's only hurting them. But respect it, no.
The alternative is forcing the AG to appeal everything all the way up, which is pretty messed up too. It went to court, the state defended, and they lost - you want to require them to fight tooth-and-nail over something they don't agree with? We don't have a democracy, we have a republic - the entire point is so that a group of splenic citizens can't become a dictator. It's literally one of the biggest reasons we elect people to positions with some autonomy is so they can refuse ill-conceived requests of the majority. And that's what happened here.
Why would this not qualify as part of the poorly-defined system of "checks and balances"? It is the executive's business to fight the government's case, and if the executive chooses that the case isn't worth fighting, isn't that a check on the legislature passing bad laws? Furthermore, there is no such requirement of the executive in the first place - just convention. Finally, the administration asked the Congress to repeal it before this came up - they didn't.
And you're misinformed about California. California did defend it in court, but chose not to appeal. Would you really compel them to appeal? In any case, when they didn't appeal, the citizen groups tried to do so, but the citizen groups had no standing because they weren't harmed, a basic legal principle.
Why didn't Google need Waze? I mean, 'need' is a strong term, but are you asserting that they have no use for a mobile crowdsourced traffic service to go with their mobile map/directions service?
When I interviewed at Google back in October, I didn't get any crap questions. I got a few string questions (from Peter J Weinberger himself, nice guy), a graph question or two, and a few other fairly straightforward algorithm and system design questions. No tricks, nothing off-the-wall - just a lot of "how would you approach this problem" followed by some iteration to see how well I thought on my feet ("can you do it in O(n) if I add this precondition" etc). I had a pretty positive experience, actually, with the exception of one guy who was just bad at explaining what he wanted me to do properly.
Maybe I was the exception and got lucky, but I didn't see any "off-the-wall" type stuff. I thought they gave that up years ago, about the time it became known that they asked those types of questions.
You mean other than the tens of thousands of of engineers employed at companies like Google, Spotify, Bloomberg, Barnes and Noble online, and the massive presence at all the banks, not to mention all the smaller operations?
Not a startup, but Google bought the second-biggest building (by square footage) in NYC a few years back. They'd been tenants for many years prior. What does that say about their management? Well, it says that they realize that software (of all types) is business, and being near business is a good thing. They also had the foresight to get in early on this tech sector boom that this fine article is talking about, and in fact are helping to create it.
100% right. They outright bought the second largest building in New York, and you can be damn sure they didn't do it without some thought. And if nobody wanted to live and work in the city, why is it their second-largest office? They have a large engineering presence (over 50%), but it's also the primary sales headquarters because it's infinitely valuable to be able to meet with your biggest customers without having to fly across a continent.
Furthermore, for employees, it's not really any more expensive to live there than in the bay area. Rents and pay are similar, but you don't need a car or gas or insurance. Public transit in the NYC metro area is the only world-class public transit system in the United States, and probably the continent. Between subways, trains, and buses (out in the suburbs) you can get from arbitrary point A to arbitrary point B in a 50 mile radius easily, DC/Philly/Boston by Amtrak is no harder, and for the rare times you can't, you can rent a car a few times a year with the money you've saved.
It's fairly obvious, actually. Most traits with a gender component show a wider variance in men than women because men have only one X chromosome, while women have 2, which end up 'averaging' (broadly). This is advantageous genetically as well - if all males were the same, there would be little to distinguish them for sexual competition reasons.
Oh, and since you asked and we're talking about intelligence, source:
Some studies have identified the degree of IQ variance as a difference between males and females. Males tend to show greater variability on many traits including tests of cognitive abilities, though this may differ between countries. A 2005 study by Ian Deary, Paul Irwing, Geoff Der, and Timothy Bates, focusing on the ASVAB showed a significantly higher variance in male scores, resulting in more than twice as many men as women scoring in the top 2%. The study also found a very small (d' 0.07, less than 7%, of a standard deviation) average male advantage in g. A 2006 study by Rosalind Arden and Robert Plomin focused on children aged 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 and 10 and stated that there was greater variance "among boys at every age except age two despite the girls’ mean advantage from ages two to seven. Girls are significantly over-represented, as measured by chi-square tests, at the high tail and boys at the low tail at ages 2, 3 and 4. By age 10 the boys have a higher mean, greater variance and are over-represented in the high tail."
A surprisingly small amount of our oil comes from the Middle East. Last I looked, it was something like 15% - definitely under 20%. Most of our "foreign" oil comes from Canada.
But yes you're right on principle. And more broadly, it's really easy to swap out a powerplant for a cleaner one, especially compared to the 20-50 million cars in that powerplant's service area. Also, if you charge your car at night, you're probably using coal not oil, or even nuclear/hydro not coal (depending on where you are) because it's base load and not peak load.
My brother goes to school in Pittsburgh and has taken the buses back east, and you're full of shit. First of all, Bolt doesn't even go from Pittsburgh to anywhere. And Megabus most certainly isn't nonstop to Philadelphia, it's got a stop in Harrisburg. It is indeed cheaper and has more options (3 vs 1) to take the bus, but Amtrak is almost always on time or early (last time about half an hour) and Megabus is in his experience laughably late. He's taken Megabus a few times to Philadelphia en route to our grandmother (in a suburb) and the time/price difference would be about 40m/$20, plus the SEPTA time back to where he wants to be (40 mins and whatever the wait is) except that there's a closer stop (Paoli) on Amtrak to his destination that means it's about an hour faster to take the train.
To NYC, which he's done more frequently, the time is even better, since he lives in northeast NJ and the train stops at Newark (9hr) and even if Megabus is on time to NYC it still takes about 30-45 minutes back to the house, so the time works about the same, with a lot less comfort. And that's assuming the bus keeps to their schedule.
First time he took Megabus (to NYC, not Philly), the driver was new and went the wrong way (west) out of Pittsburgh despite the passengers telling him he was going the wrong way. Eventually he was convinced to start following somebody's phone, at which point he bottomed out the bus trying to make a U-turn and ended up about 6 hours late because the bus was ruined and they had to wait for another one to transfer everybody on to, and then make it back an hour towards Pittsburgh to even get started. The next time, he was 4 hours late due to traffic and leaving 45 minutes late from the stop at State College, so instead of getting in at 9PM he got in at 1AM (to Midtown Manhattan!), and I had to drive in to pick him up from a street corner. The few other times he tried, it was miserable - either the wifi or power didn't work or the bathroom was out of order (so they had to keep stopping every hour) or some other incompetent problem, and every time they were just plain late by at least 2 hours. He's taken Megabus 6 times, and the service was so bad that 5 of those times he's gotten a refund. Which I suppose helps the price argument, but it seems like a pretty shitty way to save a few bucks.
Due to Megabus' demonstrated and utter incompetence, he looked into taking Greyhound instead, which should be more professional and does stop in Newark, but is barely any cheaper ($10 or so) and in fact slower - even as scheduled, let alone traffic, since it makes 3 other stops.
So despite Amtrak's suckitude (which I don't dispute) west of Harrisburg, mostly due to having to run over Norfolk Southern trackage past Harrisburg (and so limited to diesels and about 40mph), it still is a more pleasant and easier way to travel. He has plenty of room, usually a seat next to him to take a nap (comfortably), hot meals, etc. And Amtrak's working with NS on upgrading the Harrisburg-Pittsburgh route.
Sure you can do better by driving (about 6 hours to our house), but we're talking about public transit here. He doesn't have a car, and somebody driving out to get him doubles the time and cost overall.
Not in the Northeast. It's cost and time competitive with planes from Boston to Washington (even better for points in between, like PhillyNYC) when you include security (and sometimes without). And it's miles more convenient, since it takes you right into the middle of the city. And miles more comfortable.
Some comparisons - from Amtrak website and Expedia, for June 3
Bos - DC - $70 for 7h40, $251 for 6h40. 18 trains between 5AM and 9PM Bos - NYC - $49 for 4h (faster than you can drive it), $107 for 3h25, 19 trains between 5AM and 9PM NYC - Philly - $36 for 1h20 (much faster than you can drive it), $97 for 1h5, 48 trains between 3AM and 11PM NYC - DC - $49 for 3h12 (faster than you can drive it), $144 for 2h44, 38 trains between 3AM and 10PM Philly - DC - $35 for 1h50 (faster than you can drive it), $127 for 1h33, 39 trains between 12AM and 11PM
vs (adding 2 hour minimum "arrive early time" and Google Maps center city to airport, and from airport to center city, by public transit time and cost)
Bos - DC - $79 for 1h26+2h+30 (bos) + 1h30 (DC) = ~5h30 Bos - NYC - $90 for 1h10+2h+30 (bos) + 1h (NYC) = ~4h40 NYC - Philly - $159 for 6h stopping in Charlotte, $265 for nonstop, 55m = stupid idea to fly NYC - DC - $67 for 1h36+2h+1h (NYC) + 1h30 (DC) = ~6h Philly - DC - $188 for 8h via Boston, $315 for nonstop, 55m = stupid idea to fly
The only place airlines are even competitive is the Bos-DC route, and even there it's close to a wash considering the hassle of public transit transfers, security, and how uncomfortable planes are by comparison - not to mention their propensity for delays. In reality most of those "to the airport" times need another 20-50% on top to account for the fact that the bus or subway/etc doesn't leave exactly when you'd like to be there in time to get through security. You could take a cab of course but then you have to add another $60-$100 to the costs, and you wouldn't save much.
The cheapest planes aren't competitive with trains on price, in some cases because they've given up (NYC-Philly and Phil-DC) and in some because planes are just more expensive, even for the longer routes (Bos-DC). And the cheapest planes are at times like 6AM. In all cases, the cheapest trains are spread throughout the day (obviously rush hour is more expensive, but if you can leave 10A-3P or after 7P you're probably going to find one).
So no, "Amtrak is more expensive than airlines on the same route, is usually slower than both airline and intercity express bus (including airport security times) to the same destination. And offers both worse service/schedules and en route service than either.". Amtrak is cheaper and either marginally slower in the best case (about even in the average) or faster, sometimes by a lot, and it has more options at those prices. I didn't even bother with bus because in all cases Amtrak beats the optimal driving distance, and buses are hardly optimal ever.
Admittedly this only counts the northeast Boston to Washington area, but there's rather a lot of people and cities there, so I think it's more than sufficient to counter your claim. There's a lot of the country where trains, properly executed, would be the best option - pretty much anywhere under 400 miles, which incidentally is almost precisely the line of sight DC-Boston distance. The faster the trains go, the longer that distance gets.
Re:funny comparing to "high speed rail" elsewhere
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Amtrak Upgrades Wi-Fi
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Actually most of the NEC is continuously-welded rail on modern concrete sleepers and I've got a GPS snapshot of going 125MPH, not even on the Acela, just the normal trainsets. Still a joke compared to other countries, but you can do Philly-Newark, about 100 miles line of sight, in 58 minutes (real-world and experienced), for $51. For one person, you beat the cost of driving, and for two, you beat the cost of driving and time (especially when you include comfort).
I've actually tried my hand at web design since, and I don't think I've completely embarrassed myself. The most important thing since 2004ish is that the tools are miles better - both the browsers themselves are, you know, predictable, and there are competent debugging utilities if the layout isn't right. In 2004 if you wanted your layout to look right, you were still stretching spacer GIFs all over the place.
What the fuck do you think your freedom deal with America is if it's not a social contract? Do you make use of roads, cleanish air and water, and the right to not be hassled/killed/enslaved by roving warlords? Well you probably would claim that you mean the whole "let's not have people die in the streets" thing more than the roads thing when you say social contract, but I'd argue that you're just drawing an arbitrary line, and you're doing in such a way that it maximizes your assholishness. You're perfectly fine taking some services from the government and paying your share (and expecting the rest to do the same), but some services are too much. And the latter (but not former) services are the "social contract" ones.
A typical explanation of 'social contract' is why we do education. It's because we want the electorate to be educated. It's pretty easy to make the same case about healthcare or foodstamps or unemployment insurance or social security. And yes I know your type, you'll start screaming about welfare queens or personal responsibility or something, but here's the dirty little secret - it is in your interest to do these things. We already have universal healthcare, for example, just literally the worst one imaginable - you can't be turned away at an ER. So only the people who are actually having heart attacks or are in labor get treatment, not people with high cholesterol or looking for prenatal care. Fuck them, which one is cheaper for you? Because the hospital sure doesn't eat the cost, they give it to you in the form of a $2000 MRI, which the insurance doesn't eat and you pay more for that. Some people who could barely afford insurance can't anymore, and then they become part of this problem.
We do that kind of thing a lot in this country - do the worst thing imaginable because of the fear that somewhere, somehow, a poor person might benefit. Even though (in the health care case, and others) it would literally be cheaper to just give everybody health care and pay for it with taxes - as evidenced by every nation with universal healthcare, the OMB, math, logic, etc.
Point being, you have a bad premise. It's at best short-sighted and at worst "fuck you", because it assumes that if anybody else benefits, you must therefore suffer. But doing the best thing for everyone can also be the best thing for you. This is some pretty basic civics, pretty well hashed out by a few hundred years ago. Hell, it's all over the bible itself - be nice to people and you get to go to heaven.
The 'zen' was that you could load a new.css file and have a completely different-looking web page with the same content. I was doing some web design about 8 years ago - badly, I was about 14 and working for my high school over the summer - and even though I didn't know what I was doing it was so obviously a better way to do things than the table-based layout of the existing website that I tried (and failed) to figure out how to do it myself.
Never could figure out web design, so I switched to programming.
That's just a BearCat, and maybe there was a HMMWV there too. Fairly standard SWAT stuff nowadays (unfortunately). The armor seems appropriate, given the large amount of automatic gunfire sent in their direction and literal bombs being thrown at them. One of your pictures has a "poke it with a broom" type attachment, which I hadn't seen before, but I'm fairly sure that's not too much more to worry about from a "heavily armed" standpoint.
I'm first in line to complain about the "militarization" of police agencies, but now that they've got it I can hardly think of a better time to use it. And, unfortunately, even fairly small cities can now make a compelling case that it would be prudent to have some sort of armored vehicle. Had they not been able to approach in a timely fashion and see that this guy was not about to kill them, he probably would have bled out - the alternative being choosing to risk your officers in being the first one to see if he's still trying to gun people down, or has a dead-man detonator on him or something. But since he survived, we get to try him like the criminal he is (accused of being), with courts/lawyer/judge/etc, as opposed to him being "an enemy" gunned down in "battle".
I thought everybody acquitted themselves rather well. The shelter-in-place was totally voluntary, and most people cooperated. Those that didn't.... drove around the city doing their normal errands or whatever. Hardly martial law. And I didn't see any tanks, unless you were watching something I wasn't. What the hell good would they be? You gonna shoot a guy with a tank cannon?
No, the pussies were the nimrods in Congress calling for the guy to be classified as an "enemy combatant" because they have so little faith in our most basic institutions. Everybody else was being reasonable, far more reasonable than after 9/11. Everybody was pretty much like "yeah those guys are dicks" and then just went on with their lives like they do after any other horrific crime. Just the way it SHOULD have been 12 years ago.
But I've heard this kind of talk before, usually from guys a thousand miles away who spent that whole day listening to cable news and didn't bother to actually figure out what was going on on the ground. They spent a few days talking about "imagine how much better we'd handle that here" and guffawing about East Coast types.
Politicians are trainable, and react to incentives just like anybody else. When a politician says something you like, cheer. When he says something you don't like, boo. Do this often enough and they'll learn to do the things that earn them treats instead of swats with a rolled-up newspaper. But if you just keep smacking him no matter what he does (or still cheering him on even when he wets on the carpet), he'll never learn
Except for some rare cases, they're hearing mostly-equal cheers and boos about everything they do. And it's still only a percent or two of their constituency. You have a stunningly naive view of politics.
This is why it's more important to vote for people who you think will make good decisions than if you like the stuff they've done (or said they'd do). I'd never vote for Paul, despite happening to agree with a lot of what he says and does, because I have no confidence that he actually evaluates the arguments for or against anything and comes to the conclusion that's based on fact and logic, not philosophy. And he doesn't even follow that stated philosophy very well anyways, so how does he actually decide what to do? This is an important thing to understand about a politician, probably the most important thing.
You should lay off the ganja at least 8 hours before flying (as is the FAA requirement).
If indeed you have actually flown small planes and you don't care about ATC, you've therefore never flown under anything other than VFR - or even out of a towered airfield. The idea of any sort of routine commercial flight happening only in VMC is laughable at best. And without ATC to provide separation, planes would crash all the time. It's such a vital service that there's a reason the government in almost every country does it - either directly via a government agency like the FAA, or indirectly via a company they own or control. It's not something that can be subject to a profit motive.
More importantly, if people are staying inside they're not getting in car accidents or most of the various other things that tie up police time. It was partly about the danger from the suspect, but also partly about trying to save police resources.
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That may be bullshit, but it comes down to implementation whether you can prevent it without worse consequences. The problem is, if you don't take a representative's word, you're putting some other person in control of whether they can perform their legislative duties, namely the guy who says "yeah there's a vote coming up" (remember - they do votes at all kinds of interesting hours). And putting somebody else in control of that is exactly what this part of the Constitution is trying to prevent. What if the cop pulls the rep over and they can't get a hold of that guy, or what if they don't try and detain the rep until they hear back (which of course is conveniently after the vote).
The whole point of that clause is that you couldn't pull any tricks to prevent reps from voting, even if it meant putting up with all kinds of other stuff. Going to a strip joint is pretty minor - do you realize that the language of that clause allows for them to commit proper crimes? The Founders did, and they kept it in anyway, because they'd had experience with a regime who would've (if they didn't actually) pull those kinds of tricks.
Bullshit it's bullshit. It's literally in Article 1 of the Constitution, not even in the bill of rights or precedent or any other such comparatively wishy-washy thing.
[Members of Congress] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
Most state Constitutions are modeled on the Federal one. And I quote from a little further down in that page: "A similar clause in many state constitutions protects members of state legislatures in the United States."
I am unable to respect his decision because his decision was stupid, and I don't respect stupidity.
Note that I would not try to prevent him from making it - people should be allowed to be stupid, so long as it's only hurting them. But respect it, no.
The alternative is forcing the AG to appeal everything all the way up, which is pretty messed up too. It went to court, the state defended, and they lost - you want to require them to fight tooth-and-nail over something they don't agree with? We don't have a democracy, we have a republic - the entire point is so that a group of splenic citizens can't become a dictator. It's literally one of the biggest reasons we elect people to positions with some autonomy is so they can refuse ill-conceived requests of the majority. And that's what happened here.
Why would this not qualify as part of the poorly-defined system of "checks and balances"? It is the executive's business to fight the government's case, and if the executive chooses that the case isn't worth fighting, isn't that a check on the legislature passing bad laws? Furthermore, there is no such requirement of the executive in the first place - just convention. Finally, the administration asked the Congress to repeal it before this came up - they didn't.
And you're misinformed about California. California did defend it in court, but chose not to appeal. Would you really compel them to appeal? In any case, when they didn't appeal, the citizen groups tried to do so, but the citizen groups had no standing because they weren't harmed, a basic legal principle.
Why didn't Google need Waze? I mean, 'need' is a strong term, but are you asserting that they have no use for a mobile crowdsourced traffic service to go with their mobile map/directions service?
When I interviewed at Google back in October, I didn't get any crap questions. I got a few string questions (from Peter J Weinberger himself, nice guy), a graph question or two, and a few other fairly straightforward algorithm and system design questions. No tricks, nothing off-the-wall - just a lot of "how would you approach this problem" followed by some iteration to see how well I thought on my feet ("can you do it in O(n) if I add this precondition" etc). I had a pretty positive experience, actually, with the exception of one guy who was just bad at explaining what he wanted me to do properly.
Maybe I was the exception and got lucky, but I didn't see any "off-the-wall" type stuff. I thought they gave that up years ago, about the time it became known that they asked those types of questions.
You mean other than the tens of thousands of of engineers employed at companies like Google, Spotify, Bloomberg, Barnes and Noble online, and the massive presence at all the banks, not to mention all the smaller operations?
Not a startup, but Google bought the second-biggest building (by square footage) in NYC a few years back. They'd been tenants for many years prior. What does that say about their management? Well, it says that they realize that software (of all types) is business, and being near business is a good thing. They also had the foresight to get in early on this tech sector boom that this fine article is talking about, and in fact are helping to create it.
Price has gone up, but that $2.50 gets you anywhere in the city, between subways and buses.
7-day unlimited certainly exists and is $30
You're allowed to pay for your unlimited MetroCard with pre-tax money as well, which knocks quite a bit off the effective price: info
100% right. They outright bought the second largest building in New York, and you can be damn sure they didn't do it without some thought. And if nobody wanted to live and work in the city, why is it their second-largest office? They have a large engineering presence (over 50%), but it's also the primary sales headquarters because it's infinitely valuable to be able to meet with your biggest customers without having to fly across a continent.
Furthermore, for employees, it's not really any more expensive to live there than in the bay area. Rents and pay are similar, but you don't need a car or gas or insurance. Public transit in the NYC metro area is the only world-class public transit system in the United States, and probably the continent. Between subways, trains, and buses (out in the suburbs) you can get from arbitrary point A to arbitrary point B in a 50 mile radius easily, DC/Philly/Boston by Amtrak is no harder, and for the rare times you can't, you can rent a car a few times a year with the money you've saved.
It's fairly obvious, actually. Most traits with a gender component show a wider variance in men than women because men have only one X chromosome, while women have 2, which end up 'averaging' (broadly). This is advantageous genetically as well - if all males were the same, there would be little to distinguish them for sexual competition reasons.
Oh, and since you asked and we're talking about intelligence, source:
(wiki with footnotes)
A surprisingly small amount of our oil comes from the Middle East. Last I looked, it was something like 15% - definitely under 20%. Most of our "foreign" oil comes from Canada.
But yes you're right on principle. And more broadly, it's really easy to swap out a powerplant for a cleaner one, especially compared to the 20-50 million cars in that powerplant's service area. Also, if you charge your car at night, you're probably using coal not oil, or even nuclear/hydro not coal (depending on where you are) because it's base load and not peak load.
My brother goes to school in Pittsburgh and has taken the buses back east, and you're full of shit. First of all, Bolt doesn't even go from Pittsburgh to anywhere. And Megabus most certainly isn't nonstop to Philadelphia, it's got a stop in Harrisburg. It is indeed cheaper and has more options (3 vs 1) to take the bus, but Amtrak is almost always on time or early (last time about half an hour) and Megabus is in his experience laughably late. He's taken Megabus a few times to Philadelphia en route to our grandmother (in a suburb) and the time/price difference would be about 40m/$20, plus the SEPTA time back to where he wants to be (40 mins and whatever the wait is) except that there's a closer stop (Paoli) on Amtrak to his destination that means it's about an hour faster to take the train.
To NYC, which he's done more frequently, the time is even better, since he lives in northeast NJ and the train stops at Newark (9hr) and even if Megabus is on time to NYC it still takes about 30-45 minutes back to the house, so the time works about the same, with a lot less comfort. And that's assuming the bus keeps to their schedule.
First time he took Megabus (to NYC, not Philly), the driver was new and went the wrong way (west) out of Pittsburgh despite the passengers telling him he was going the wrong way. Eventually he was convinced to start following somebody's phone, at which point he bottomed out the bus trying to make a U-turn and ended up about 6 hours late because the bus was ruined and they had to wait for another one to transfer everybody on to, and then make it back an hour towards Pittsburgh to even get started. The next time, he was 4 hours late due to traffic and leaving 45 minutes late from the stop at State College, so instead of getting in at 9PM he got in at 1AM (to Midtown Manhattan!), and I had to drive in to pick him up from a street corner. The few other times he tried, it was miserable - either the wifi or power didn't work or the bathroom was out of order (so they had to keep stopping every hour) or some other incompetent problem, and every time they were just plain late by at least 2 hours. He's taken Megabus 6 times, and the service was so bad that 5 of those times he's gotten a refund. Which I suppose helps the price argument, but it seems like a pretty shitty way to save a few bucks.
Due to Megabus' demonstrated and utter incompetence, he looked into taking Greyhound instead, which should be more professional and does stop in Newark, but is barely any cheaper ($10 or so) and in fact slower - even as scheduled, let alone traffic, since it makes 3 other stops.
So despite Amtrak's suckitude (which I don't dispute) west of Harrisburg, mostly due to having to run over Norfolk Southern trackage past Harrisburg (and so limited to diesels and about 40mph), it still is a more pleasant and easier way to travel. He has plenty of room, usually a seat next to him to take a nap (comfortably), hot meals, etc. And Amtrak's working with NS on upgrading the Harrisburg-Pittsburgh route.
Sure you can do better by driving (about 6 hours to our house), but we're talking about public transit here. He doesn't have a car, and somebody driving out to get him doubles the time and cost overall.
Not in the Northeast. It's cost and time competitive with planes from Boston to Washington (even better for points in between, like PhillyNYC) when you include security (and sometimes without). And it's miles more convenient, since it takes you right into the middle of the city. And miles more comfortable.
Some comparisons - from Amtrak website and Expedia, for June 3
Bos - DC - $70 for 7h40, $251 for 6h40. 18 trains between 5AM and 9PM
Bos - NYC - $49 for 4h (faster than you can drive it), $107 for 3h25, 19 trains between 5AM and 9PM
NYC - Philly - $36 for 1h20 (much faster than you can drive it), $97 for 1h5, 48 trains between 3AM and 11PM
NYC - DC - $49 for 3h12 (faster than you can drive it), $144 for 2h44, 38 trains between 3AM and 10PM
Philly - DC - $35 for 1h50 (faster than you can drive it), $127 for 1h33, 39 trains between 12AM and 11PM
vs (adding 2 hour minimum "arrive early time" and Google Maps center city to airport, and from airport to center city, by public transit time and cost)
Bos - DC - $79 for 1h26+2h+30 (bos) + 1h30 (DC) = ~5h30
Bos - NYC - $90 for 1h10+2h+30 (bos) + 1h (NYC) = ~4h40
NYC - Philly - $159 for 6h stopping in Charlotte, $265 for nonstop, 55m = stupid idea to fly
NYC - DC - $67 for 1h36+2h+1h (NYC) + 1h30 (DC) = ~6h
Philly - DC - $188 for 8h via Boston, $315 for nonstop, 55m = stupid idea to fly
The only place airlines are even competitive is the Bos-DC route, and even there it's close to a wash considering the hassle of public transit transfers, security, and how uncomfortable planes are by comparison - not to mention their propensity for delays. In reality most of those "to the airport" times need another 20-50% on top to account for the fact that the bus or subway/etc doesn't leave exactly when you'd like to be there in time to get through security. You could take a cab of course but then you have to add another $60-$100 to the costs, and you wouldn't save much.
The cheapest planes aren't competitive with trains on price, in some cases because they've given up (NYC-Philly and Phil-DC) and in some because planes are just more expensive, even for the longer routes (Bos-DC). And the cheapest planes are at times like 6AM. In all cases, the cheapest trains are spread throughout the day (obviously rush hour is more expensive, but if you can leave 10A-3P or after 7P you're probably going to find one).
So no, "Amtrak is more expensive than airlines on the same route, is usually slower than both airline and intercity express bus (including airport security times) to the same destination. And offers both worse service/schedules and en route service than either.". Amtrak is cheaper and either marginally slower in the best case (about even in the average) or faster, sometimes by a lot, and it has more options at those prices. I didn't even bother with bus because in all cases Amtrak beats the optimal driving distance, and buses are hardly optimal ever.
Admittedly this only counts the northeast Boston to Washington area, but there's rather a lot of people and cities there, so I think it's more than sufficient to counter your claim. There's a lot of the country where trains, properly executed, would be the best option - pretty much anywhere under 400 miles, which incidentally is almost precisely the line of sight DC-Boston distance. The faster the trains go, the longer that distance gets.
Actually most of the NEC is continuously-welded rail on modern concrete sleepers and I've got a GPS snapshot of going 125MPH, not even on the Acela, just the normal trainsets. Still a joke compared to other countries, but you can do Philly-Newark, about 100 miles line of sight, in 58 minutes (real-world and experienced), for $51. For one person, you beat the cost of driving, and for two, you beat the cost of driving and time (especially when you include comfort).
I've actually tried my hand at web design since, and I don't think I've completely embarrassed myself. The most important thing since 2004ish is that the tools are miles better - both the browsers themselves are, you know, predictable, and there are competent debugging utilities if the layout isn't right. In 2004 if you wanted your layout to look right, you were still stretching spacer GIFs all over the place.
What the fuck do you think your freedom deal with America is if it's not a social contract? Do you make use of roads, cleanish air and water, and the right to not be hassled/killed/enslaved by roving warlords? Well you probably would claim that you mean the whole "let's not have people die in the streets" thing more than the roads thing when you say social contract, but I'd argue that you're just drawing an arbitrary line, and you're doing in such a way that it maximizes your assholishness. You're perfectly fine taking some services from the government and paying your share (and expecting the rest to do the same), but some services are too much. And the latter (but not former) services are the "social contract" ones.
A typical explanation of 'social contract' is why we do education. It's because we want the electorate to be educated. It's pretty easy to make the same case about healthcare or foodstamps or unemployment insurance or social security. And yes I know your type, you'll start screaming about welfare queens or personal responsibility or something, but here's the dirty little secret - it is in your interest to do these things. We already have universal healthcare, for example, just literally the worst one imaginable - you can't be turned away at an ER. So only the people who are actually having heart attacks or are in labor get treatment, not people with high cholesterol or looking for prenatal care. Fuck them, which one is cheaper for you? Because the hospital sure doesn't eat the cost, they give it to you in the form of a $2000 MRI, which the insurance doesn't eat and you pay more for that. Some people who could barely afford insurance can't anymore, and then they become part of this problem.
We do that kind of thing a lot in this country - do the worst thing imaginable because of the fear that somewhere, somehow, a poor person might benefit. Even though (in the health care case, and others) it would literally be cheaper to just give everybody health care and pay for it with taxes - as evidenced by every nation with universal healthcare, the OMB, math, logic, etc.
Point being, you have a bad premise. It's at best short-sighted and at worst "fuck you", because it assumes that if anybody else benefits, you must therefore suffer. But doing the best thing for everyone can also be the best thing for you. This is some pretty basic civics, pretty well hashed out by a few hundred years ago. Hell, it's all over the bible itself - be nice to people and you get to go to heaven.
The 'zen' was that you could load a new .css file and have a completely different-looking web page with the same content. I was doing some web design about 8 years ago - badly, I was about 14 and working for my high school over the summer - and even though I didn't know what I was doing it was so obviously a better way to do things than the table-based layout of the existing website that I tried (and failed) to figure out how to do it myself.
Never could figure out web design, so I switched to programming.
That's just a BearCat, and maybe there was a HMMWV there too. Fairly standard SWAT stuff nowadays (unfortunately). The armor seems appropriate, given the large amount of automatic gunfire sent in their direction and literal bombs being thrown at them. One of your pictures has a "poke it with a broom" type attachment, which I hadn't seen before, but I'm fairly sure that's not too much more to worry about from a "heavily armed" standpoint.
I'm first in line to complain about the "militarization" of police agencies, but now that they've got it I can hardly think of a better time to use it. And, unfortunately, even fairly small cities can now make a compelling case that it would be prudent to have some sort of armored vehicle. Had they not been able to approach in a timely fashion and see that this guy was not about to kill them, he probably would have bled out - the alternative being choosing to risk your officers in being the first one to see if he's still trying to gun people down, or has a dead-man detonator on him or something. But since he survived, we get to try him like the criminal he is (accused of being), with courts/lawyer/judge/etc, as opposed to him being "an enemy" gunned down in "battle".
I thought everybody acquitted themselves rather well. The shelter-in-place was totally voluntary, and most people cooperated. Those that didn't.... drove around the city doing their normal errands or whatever. Hardly martial law. And I didn't see any tanks, unless you were watching something I wasn't. What the hell good would they be? You gonna shoot a guy with a tank cannon?
No, the pussies were the nimrods in Congress calling for the guy to be classified as an "enemy combatant" because they have so little faith in our most basic institutions. Everybody else was being reasonable, far more reasonable than after 9/11. Everybody was pretty much like "yeah those guys are dicks" and then just went on with their lives like they do after any other horrific crime. Just the way it SHOULD have been 12 years ago.
But I've heard this kind of talk before, usually from guys a thousand miles away who spent that whole day listening to cable news and didn't bother to actually figure out what was going on on the ground. They spent a few days talking about "imagine how much better we'd handle that here" and guffawing about East Coast types.
Politicians are trainable, and react to incentives just like anybody else. When a politician says something you like, cheer. When he says something you don't like, boo. Do this often enough and they'll learn to do the things that earn them treats instead of swats with a rolled-up newspaper. But if you just keep smacking him no matter what he does (or still cheering him on even when he wets on the carpet), he'll never learn
Except for some rare cases, they're hearing mostly-equal cheers and boos about everything they do. And it's still only a percent or two of their constituency. You have a stunningly naive view of politics.
This is why it's more important to vote for people who you think will make good decisions than if you like the stuff they've done (or said they'd do). I'd never vote for Paul, despite happening to agree with a lot of what he says and does, because I have no confidence that he actually evaluates the arguments for or against anything and comes to the conclusion that's based on fact and logic, not philosophy. And he doesn't even follow that stated philosophy very well anyways, so how does he actually decide what to do? This is an important thing to understand about a politician, probably the most important thing.
You should lay off the ganja at least 8 hours before flying (as is the FAA requirement).
If indeed you have actually flown small planes and you don't care about ATC, you've therefore never flown under anything other than VFR - or even out of a towered airfield. The idea of any sort of routine commercial flight happening only in VMC is laughable at best. And without ATC to provide separation, planes would crash all the time. It's such a vital service that there's a reason the government in almost every country does it - either directly via a government agency like the FAA, or indirectly via a company they own or control. It's not something that can be subject to a profit motive.
More importantly, if people are staying inside they're not getting in car accidents or most of the various other things that tie up police time. It was partly about the danger from the suspect, but also partly about trying to save police resources.
Totally agreed. People need to realize that our brains are predisposed to make stereotypes, and be both prepared and willing to fight against that.