Friday, May 03, 2013
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Thursday Crass Commercialism
Who amongst us doesn't need more external drive storage?
Best way to support this site is to click on the amazon links (direct links in posts like this one, or the bottom right ad) and buy crap you were going to buy anyway. It's their money, then, not yours. The commissions are decent.
Best way to support this site is to click on the amazon links (direct links in posts like this one, or the bottom right ad) and buy crap you were going to buy anyway. It's their money, then, not yours. The commissions are decent.
Kids Today
For people under 18, basically any behavior that didn't involve actual harm to others should be treated as a behavioral problem, not a criminal issue, and certainly not an adult criminal issue. Maybe burglarly should get you a short trip to juvey.
To completely mess up your life at 16, you should have to do something which is actually pretty bad.
To completely mess up your life at 16, you should have to do something which is actually pretty bad.
Capacity
One thing about highways/transit is that people conceptually overestimate highway capacity, let alone actual usage in rural areas.. A highway lane operating at perfect capacity can maybe do 1800 cars per hour. Fewer than capacity is fewer, too many cars means congestion and therefore much less capacity, and obviously things like on/off ramps and accidents slow things down quite a bit, especially on older more poorly designed highways (they have gotten better at this). So if a transit line is hosting 26,000 riders per day, that's roughly equivalent to a highly used highway lane.
My urban hellhole has two heavy rail subway lines. The north-south one, especially, is definitely underutilized, but even it gets 135,000 daily weekday riders.
My urban hellhole has two heavy rail subway lines. The north-south one, especially, is definitely underutilized, but even it gets 135,000 daily weekday riders.
Paternalism
It all just boils down to "I must know what my teenage girl is doing." Which I get, and if you have a healthy open relationship with your teenage daughter (good luck!), good for you. But uncle or daddy might also be raping her, or planning to beat the shit out of her for daring to make Jesus cry. Or quite possibly she's just shy and scared for no good reason and you're wonderful parents who would happily help her. Establishing an age limit of 15 in a world where almost no 15-year-olds have real IDs and increasingly 17-year-olds don't either, puts up a huge access barrier to everybody. Fighting for a higher limit is worse.
Infrastructure
Little Tommy's oft repeated, remarkably stupid, view that technology and globalization changes everything also gets the public policy completely wrong. If we're entering a world of job-shifting entrepreneurship, with high-risk/high-reward opportunities for the talented and diligent,* then we need a government that provides a foundation for that world. That means not just a really solid set of social insurance programs independent of people's jobs, like health care and pensions, but also a stronger basic infrastructure.
Pull optical fiber to every post office and set up public wireless. Give everyone a bank account at the Fed. Restore access to inexpensive higher education. Stop the copyright and patent madness. The best public policy in Tommy's world would eliminate the parasitic monopolists choking off innovation and opportunity.
*Tommy and his ilk leave out the most important factor of all: luck.
Pull optical fiber to every post office and set up public wireless. Give everyone a bank account at the Fed. Restore access to inexpensive higher education. Stop the copyright and patent madness. The best public policy in Tommy's world would eliminate the parasitic monopolists choking off innovation and opportunity.
*Tommy and his ilk leave out the most important factor of all: luck.
The Good Old Days
So much more fun.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, chemistry sets entered the atomic age. Gilbert offered an “Atomic Energy Lab” that came with “radioactive ores” and a Geiger counter. A Porter Chemcraft kit had uranium samples and a spinthariscope, a device for viewing radioactive decay. (The humor site Cracked.com last year named toys like this in a list of “The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys.”)
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Afternoon Thread
I liked this post, especially because I wrote it in about 5 minutes. I suppose if you have to explain the joke it isn't funny, but I was mocking BoBo Brooks's column about how he is the best pundit ever.
Stupid Plan B Rule
Basically anything having to do with teenage girls and sex freaks people out. Whether or not 13-year-old girls should be having sex, plenty of them are. If the drug is safe then it's safe.
...also, too.
...also, too.
What Could Go Wrong
I'm not a parent, but I do know that young children only have a vague understanding of the potential consequences of their actions. Teenagers only have a vague understanding of the potential consequences of their actions. So, you know, don't give them guns.
A Kentucky toddler was accidentally shot dead by her own brother as he played with a gun he'd been given as a gift, police said.
Caroline Starks, 2, was killed after her 5-year-old sibling fired the .22-caliber rifle at their Burkesville home at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
Looting And Pillaging
Clueless and/or malevolent rich people are going to destroy everything nice in this country.
Resistance
NYT: Banks Resist Strict Control of Foreign Bets
Am I the only one who thinks the Times should explain just how banks go about "resisting" laws? I'd like to know, next time I'm in a TSA line.
Am I the only one who thinks the Times should explain just how banks go about "resisting" laws? I'd like to know, next time I'm in a TSA line.
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