While using cellphone (and now smartphone) have been accused of causing a lot of accidents, they are not the only distraction. Long before the advent of the cellphone, a lot of traffic accidents were caused by drivers adjusting their radio (either looking for station of turning up/down the volume), or adjusting the seat, or the air condition, or whatever.

And here is even more evidence that Americans are simply not taught to drive properly.

The absolute first thing you do when you get into a car is adjust your seat and mirrors.

Adjusting the radio or AC isn't even in the same league of distractions as a smartphone. People do need to be able to handle taking their eyes off the road in front of them momentarily. You need to do this to check your mirrors, instrumentation and blindspots when needed. When people use a smartphone they don't just take their eyes off the road for a fraction of a second, they take their entire minds off the job of driving for up to minutes at a time.

Comparing phones to changing the radio station is a strawman and a bad strawman at that. It's like saying that attractive women must be banned from riding motorcycles or walking along the side of a street because a male motorist might become distracted. It's utter bollocks because you as a driver, are expected to maintain enough discipline that you can ignore distractions and are smart enough not to play with the radio and AC or spend too long oogling at a hot chick on the side of the road. It used to be the same with phones until people demonstrated they would prioritise their phone call/text above driving.

This would not surprise me.

Australia, Finland and Sweden don't have significant problems with gangs or ethnic violence, however we do have very big drinking cultures. Drinking lowers inhibitions and makes it easy for someone predisposed towards violence to lose their head. Please note this is no excuse, in fact an Australian court is likely to be less lenient on you for killing whilst drunk.

Erm.. fixed that for you.

Hey, looks like you didn't read the article and don't know what you're on about.

First off, it's not a law. It's a legally binding agreement between an employers federation and a workers organisation. So it only covers the signatories, not all of France.

Secondly, its a private agreement. I know I mentioned it twice, but it's such a big point it's worth mentioning twice.

Thirdly, the onus to ignore work emails is placed on the employee. the boss may still send them, but if an employee reads them the employee is in violation of the agreement. The only restriction on the employer is that they cannot pressure an employee to do anything outside of work hours.

Here's the article

Hey, but the actual problem sounds like employers and employees getting along... That doesn't make for good news for angry conservatives.

No, they aren't. Lack of labour laws have always lead to abuses in all historical examples. The abuses of employees lead to unions becoming so powerful.

Besides this, France didn't enact a law. The headline was inaccurate to make it look worse than it actually is. Libertarians and angry conservatives who hate their employees love to do this. In reality it was a private agreement but that actually sounds capitalistic and nothing to get angry about. You might want to try reading the article before launching on a badly thought out tirade.

What happened was that an employer's federation and workers organisation signed a legally binding agreement that employee's must ignore work emails after 6PM. So your boss can still send emails, the employee is in violation of the agreement by answering or even reading it.

Above this the agreement only applies to the signatories, not all French employees.

Thats because French, Italian and Spanish have closer ties to the root language, Latin than English does.

English is really a mongrel language. English doesn't just borrow words from other languages, it chases them down alleys, beats them down and rifles through their pockets for new vocabulary.

Those are two completely different scenarios.

The first is about employers screwing over employees.
The second is about regulation external to employers and employees.

I live in a city that did not permit Sunday trading until last year. 20-fucking-13 and we're not some backwater town in Bumfuck, Louisiana, this is a state capital and one of the largest cities in Australia. You have no idea how shit it is not to be able to go to the shop on a Sunday, out of bread, well fuck you because the politicians say a baker or supermarket is not allowed to open on a Sunday. Deregulated trading hours is overwhelmingly a good thing. Now stores aren't forced to open on a Sunday but they used to be forced to close on a Sunday. Now this is fixed.

That being said, I committed ./ heresy and read the article. This isn't a law in France that applies to all companies in France, it's an agreement between an employers federation and a workers union that employees must ignore work emails (this doesn't mean the boss cant send them) after 6PM. It is legally binding but only to the signatories of the pact.

Not quite, Auto insurance is hedge against damage costs. This cost can be divided into two sections, damage to your car and damage to everything that isn't your car. This is why most countries have two levels of insurance, cover for anything you hit or cover for anything you hit and your car. Obviously the former is cheaper. So if you hit a car that isn't insured, because the accident is your fault your insurer will pay out. Before I travelled to the US, I only thought it was your health insurance system that was fucked up, when I got there I learned your auto insurance system is equally as screwed.

Insurance is a means of distributing risk, the people who pay insurance and don't claim pay for the claims that are paid out (as well as operating costs and dividends for shareholders). The more people who claim, the more premiums/tariffs will rise. This is why your auto insurance is increasing in price, there are a lot more claims with much higher payouts and this must be covered by all premiums. Insurance is quite socialist when you learn about it, well apart from the people running the scheme living high on the hog from it... wait, that's exactly how communism works in reality.

Now the insurers I use in Australia are not for profit. Meaning they don't have shareholders taking a slice of my premiums for themselves. Also, we have universal health care provided by the government which provides a minimum standard of care at the lowest cost. The lowest priced health insurance I can get in the US is US$2,500 per year. I pay for top hospital cover in Australia (the highest you can get) for A$850, the minimum cover is A$350. As Medicare levy (1.5%) is a separate line item on my tax and I earn A$70,000, the amount I pay is 1050 p/a. So for A$1900 (US$1790) I get full hospital cover with physio and major dental (basic dental is included in all plans) for 700 less than the cheapest plan for me in the US.

Universal health care done right leads to cheaper and better care for everyone. Australia is far from the only example. What the US needs to do is take it out of the hands of the politicians and hire someone who's actually worked for a universal health care provider. Even the UK's NHS for all it's flaws is so far superior to the US's system it's not funny.

Only problem is that many MDs I have met are just as muck quacks.

Maybe you need to move, my experiences are the complete opposite.

I've been to see doctors in several countries (Australia, Thailand, Singapore) and all of them were extremely good, asked a lot of questions, sent me away for tests when needed, arranged appointments to discuss test results, follow up consultations and the lot.

The problem a lot of doctors have is that their patients lie out of their arses at them. When a patient does that the doctor cant accurately gauge what's wrong with them.

People love to blame doctors, but 99 times out of 100, bad calls are made because the patient gave bad information.

The car maker in question is Land Rover. Land Rover dont make small cars. In fact, here is the Land Rover Discovery 4, the latest Disco. You wont have problems seeing the bonnet on that. However you will have a problem with seeing in front of it.

This means you need to spend more time in your vehicle learning about it. It's not hard to find out where the corners of a modern car are. In fact if it takes you a while to learn this, driving is not your forte.

If you have trouble figuring out where the front of your car is, it must be nigh upon imposisble for you to figure out where the back is.

The curved bonnet gives me a better view of the road in front of me, my major gripe with cars are the ones that have massive blindspots on the B or C pillars.

"Well it's only a dollar" is the kind of financial wisdom that leads you to spending 1000's one dollar at a time.

Its the financial equivalent of "death by 1000 cuts".

Like most things, a lot of apps just aren't worth paying for. However pointing this out leads to the shrill cries of "what about the developers". It seems the entitlement complex is on the other end, that any piece of crap software requires payment.

What you're basically saying is that I can't use my own judgements on the value of a product to me. In many cases, it's wrong if not almost criminal to charge for some of the junk I've seen in the Itunes and Google Play stores. I'm a big fan of supporting developers who do right by me, I plonked down US$100 for the Gal Civ 3 founders edition weeks ago because Stardock has earned that much good will with me, Dodgy Dave and his OOber Fart App haven't even though he's only asking for $1 it's really asking money for something that is free on other platforms (including through my browser). The biggest app business model is to find games/applications that are free through the browser and charge money for them. Half of Kongregate is now on the Itunes or Google Play store and has a price tag when they are free via a browser.

You think I'm self entitled for not wanting to pay for something that has traditionally been free?

The mind boggles.

If you want to get paid for something, you need to produce something of value to your customers. Saying "its only $1" is the financial advice of a fool, a fool who is soon parted with their money. if you want my $1, you need to provide real value and not just some repackaged flash based application that's free on my laptop.

This.

A doctor using non pharmaceutical or therapeutic treatments isn't practising alternative medicine, he's practising medicine. A lot of minor aliments can be cured with a change in lifestyle.

The problem isn't with a doctor recommending a patient eat high vitamin C foods for a vitamin deficiency. The problem is with a quack with no medical knowledge what so ever recommending herbal tea for a symptom they have no idea what the cause of is. They dont test to see what the cause is so they end up working to treat the symptom not the cause and almost never follow up. The worst part is if the alternative medicine treats the symptom but not the cause, the problem is likely to get worse.

More like I can pay with a 5 cent coin and a large handful of rust.

In the case of Homoeopathy, probably not.

Placebo's are effective because the patients believe it. People who believe in Homoeopathy over proper medicine will likely write off the report as biased and wrong on the basis that they disagree with it. If countering bad beliefs with facts were that easy, most religions would be have all but died out, racism would be a thing of the past and people would stop speeding. Sadly people who have invested a lot in their beliefs are extremely reluctant to give them up, so they'll rather attack the source of the "fact" rather than re-evaluate their beliefs.

In fact, to someone who believes in Homoeopathy, the cognitive dissonance created by this report will end up bolstering their beliefs and improve the placebo effect because admitting the pain/health deterioration is a result of homoeopathy is unconscionable to them.