Pangloss

The funny/sad thing about automated personal vehicles is that their ultimate success or failure would have more to do with human acceptance than actual safety. The system would have an incredibly high expectation of reliability. It can't just be accurate, and in fact it can't even be just better than the current status quo. The fact that it would save 40,000 lives per year would be irrelevant -- the only thing that would matter would be whether or not it killed anybody. For example if it cut the number of annual deaths in half, the story would be that it was killing 20,000 people per year, not that it was saving 20,000. And it's not just a matter of drama-selling-papers, it goes right to the heart of personal freedom. People don't have a sense that they're victims of statistics in auto driving, they feel that their behaviors protect them (which is at least partially true). In an automated system that gets taken away, so the question is raised of whether the system actually makes them safer or really puts them in greater danger. So it would have to be near-perfect -- of a level comparable to US commercial aviation or better (there hasn't been a fatal accident in US comav since Comair 191, 2.5 years ago). And as I understand it the current technology isn't even in that ballpark. Of course we won't really know until such a system is implemented, but from what I've read it needs a lot more attention and funding for a while yet.

CSM != Faux News

Yah good suggestion.

Nice analogy.

That might be worth seeing just for the non-political, technogeek angle. Thanks Mooey.

What iNow has or hasn't done is irrelevant to a discussion on your actions or lack of actions. If you don't want to talk about gay marriage, fine -- stop talking. If you want to complain about iNow, fine -- my in-box is always open. But if you're just going to make two wrongs a right over and over and over again, I'm not interested. And I'm seriously peeved at anyone -- ANYONE -- who destroys a thread through constant, unrequitting nonsequiturs, spamming it into obscurity just to avoid an honest answer. --------- This thread is on 24-hour suicide watch (to be closed in 24 hours unless new issues/questions are raised).

Some articles you may find helpful to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_access_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_storage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor The second one may be particularly helpful, even going as far as talking about how information was stored before they came up with the idea of a binary gate. Check out the "Hierarchy of Storage" section for some good leads. Good luck!

This is what happens when you vote for YT! He will take away YOUR RIGHT to own a pony! And rumors persist about YT's "practices". Why won't he answer questions about his experiments with innocent ponies? You need an unofficial president who cares about ponies. Vote Pangloss '08!! "Ponies for Everyone!" (I approved this message.)

What are you objecting to, the question or the answer?

Two wrongs don't make a right. But that's all you've been doing for the last four fuggin pages. Total waste of time.

It's not just waitforufo that "lumps" environmentalists, and he's not entirely wrong in doing so. The people casting the objection here are environmentalists -- that's what they call themselves. If other environmentalists disagree then they should step up to the plate and explain why. Many of them won't do that even if they disagree -- they'll support this issue peripherally, through silence or passive support, because they are opposed to coal. Just as it's wrong to assume that all environmentalists believe the same thing, it is also wrong for environmentalists to leverage that misunderstanding to their advantage. Special interest groups do this all the time, banding together on issues that logically they have no common interests in, for the purpose of forcing an issue. Why do you think the National Organization for Women has an environmental action policy, or a position on gay rights? But sure, I agree that we can't automatically assume that all environmentalists see the subject of this article as a bad thing. Even though that's what the article says, and that's what the environmentalists quoted in this article want us to believe. Quite right.

I think what may be realistic is the idea of "commuter" air services -- small planes running passengers out of small airports. It's a very old idea that has made a comeback recently due to the growing nightmare of major air carrier travel. A number of these already operate in more populous areas of the country such as the northeast, southeast and California. A new startup here in Florida actually operates tiny jets, running a profit with as few as 2-3 passengers popping back and forth across the state on business or vacation-related travel. Some even have flexible scheduling. I think Mokele's point is a good one -- solutions tend to be driven by problems.

Just wondering what you all think of the situation over there. I am no mindless supporter of Israel, often criticizing their behavior on this forum. But this time it seems to me that they've shown astounding restraint given the way they are being constantly and inexcusably attacked. There is no country on this green earth that would stand for that -- not a single one. For the UN to say that they've not been responding proportionally is insane -- that's putting body counts ahead of justice and fairness. Since when is the number of deaths even relevant in the issue of justice? How does that even enter into the discussion? And frankly it WAS a proportional response. Exactly the RIGHT proportion. And perfectly justified given the complete and utter lack of international effort to actually fix the problem. International politics is crazy. Just crazy.

I would like for Jackson33 and Mr Skeptic to answer my questions, please. I am increasingly appalled at both of your behavior in this thread. This is the one jackson33 dances around in post #125: Here's the last one I asked Mr Skeptic before he decided it was more important to marginalize iNow than to talk about gay marriage:

He's not a Senator or a government official of any kind, but I really don't see a problem with authorizing the president-elect to use an official government information outlet that is clearly, transparently stated to be coming from where it is coming from. The Post Office isn't a government entity either, nor is the Federal Reserve, but both have .gov addresses (though the USPS one seems to redir to a .com). I don't think it was misleading either -- I think the reason for making it ".gov" instead of something else is so that people would know it's really Obama and not somebody else pretending to be Obama. I don't think it was because he wanted people to think that his statements there carried official weight as an officer of government -- he's been extremely careful to support the current government, even going as far as backing President Bush in many public statements. I don't have a problem with the suggestion that the rules need to be tightened up or clarified on who gets .govs and who doesn't. More clarity is usually a good thing.

But you haven't addressed the issue of equality; you're actually ignoring it. You state that they have equal protection under law, and yet in this thread it's been demonstrated that they do not. The government certificate/contract allows non-gays access to protected advantages/benefits that gays do not have access to -- they don't enjoy that protection. How do you explain that discrepancy?

Well you're welcome to your opinion but I don't think it answers the question before us. Just because I'm married to my wife doesn't mean that we're doing anything illegal, so the first point seems irrelevant and is already covered under separate law (however misguided it may be). And a religious wedding doesn't get you the equal protection and rights that a state-enforced contract provide. And the last paragraph is a different subject and not a justification for anything related to this issue. Don't change the subject. In short, you haven't really addressed the issue at all, jackson33.

Not THAT much safer. You have to be careful here because general aviation's record is not to be confused with the safety record of commercial aviation -- they aren't even in the same ballpark. If memory serves GA is still much safer than driving, but given the amount of training and education that goes into acquiring a pilot's license this should not be a surprise. This comes up a lot and I always raise the same education-based objections. It's just not realistic to expect that most people would be able to handle aviation, even with vast simplification of controls and improvements in capabilities. Ever try to spot power lines from 5,000 feet up? Know what your neighborhood looks like from that altitude? (Actually the latter has probably improved dramatically in recent years just due to the availability of Google Maps, but terrain at an angle is still a major hurdle to understanding location at altitude.) Besides, the public fright factor is enormous. The flying car fantasy ends the moment the first drunk "flier" drops out of the sky killing a single mom with three kids and a $9/hr hairdresser job who can barely afford her balloon mortgage but still gives every other Friday to help out at the local orphanage. But hey, it's good to have dreams.

According to a law professor I had in college, the ONLY exceptions are the discrimination groups (age, gender, religion, etc -- I think there are seven?). It's true that it's illegal to refuse a legal form of payment for a service rendered, but what people typically miss here is that they have the right to refuse to perform the service (unless they're a member of a protected discrimination group). In other words, the merchant says "sorry, I won't serve you", and thus no contract is formed and no legal obligation to accept payment is created. In short, the merchant doesn't have to serve anybody he or she doesn't want to, unless they're a member of the protected discrimination group. This is why the issue of pharmacists servicing customers with contraceptives and abortion drugs is an actual legal conundrum. It's easy to see why that might be a form of discrimination; much harder to see how the merchant might have a legitimate point of view on this, if you don't realize that merchants can refuse service to people in general. In this case the issue is impacted by other variables, however, such as medical obligations and availability of care options in rural areas, etc -- such may trump the merchant's right of refusal (and be, perhaps, an exception that's not technically part of the discrimination groups).

iNow, when you misinterpret another person's argument (even if it's not deliberate) it makes your own argument less clear. In this case, when Mr Skeptic made a point about the current status of gay marriage (pointing out that they cannot currently get married), and you responded by saying that that has not been proven (when what you really meant was that his earlier point that there's a legal basis for them not being allowed to marry has not been proven), the result is muddy waters -- it makes it harder for people to track what either side was trying to say. It leads to 20 pages of roundabout instead of 2 or 3 posts of concise, clear, intelligent discourse. Make sense? I feel confident that you can do a better job in this discussion with Mr Skeptic.

Sounds interesting. I'll have to add this to my list.

It's funny how many people think that "legal tender" means that the merchant is forced to accept it.

There's a difference between "civilized" and "non-sentient". What scientific aspect of the problem would you like to discuss? We need to be specific, but if you want to talk about the problems of sentience from a philosophical perspective I can move this over to General or to Pseudoscience and Speculations for you.

Reading Sisyphus's interesting post above, I had a thought about my own feelings about drug use that lead to a question: Can I be "not opposed" to this, rather than "in favor of it"? Or is that a cop out? What do you all think? Really what that means in the Pangloss Panoply of Political Positions (Book IV, Chapter 8, "Darmok and Gilad") is that I'm not opposed to legalization but I don't consider it a priority; if it became a priority and my opinion became relevant then I would probably become "in favor". But I would have to be convinced that the pros outweigh the cons. The reason I raise it here (why I don't think it's off subject) is that I think it probably impacts on whether this issue ever gets passed. You have to convince people who aren't necessarily in favor of it, but aren't radically opposed to it either, that this is important enough to fix, and that it's worth the new appearance of "costs" that will occur, even if it happens to cause some current "costs" to disappear.

iNow he doesn't have to establish that marriage is only allowed between a man and a woman -- that's the status quo. And Mr. Skeptic, there is a legitimate question here aside from the status quo that deserves an answer. You two need to stop fighting over semantics. It does NOT enlighten other people about this issue -- it ONLY makes you both look frothy at the mouth. Make your arguments clear, don't spin each other or hide behind rhetoric, and remember that you're talking to people who haven't made up their minds yet, not circumcising philistines.