While the MPG figure will be useful to you zero times per decade as it tells you nothing about whether you have enough gas to make a particular trip.

True, but the original point was about 4-cylinder engines not "economy cars", which was a really silly statement considering top speed is more a function of power, weight and air friction than only power alone.

In the real world situation of car shopping. When one gauges a car--no pun intended--one estimates total cost of ownership. A large proportion of TCO is yearly fuel costs. Its trivial to compute yearly fuel costs in ones head using a volume per distance measure than distance per volume measure.

In your situation of "do I have enough fuel to get to X from here" an average figure does not help that much. A car that gets 38 MPG might get 11MPG on that specific hilly stop-light invested route. It might get 50 MPG on the deserted country road down hill. It might get 25 MPG in the cold. The figure we're discussing is far more useful for comparing efficiency of engines over long periods and types of trips and less useful to answer the "do I have enough fuel for specific trip X" question.

I get mine from DSL. It's far superior to Comcast. I have a dark Comcast jack in my living room. I get the speeds I pay for. My service is not oversold. My ISP does not block any ports. My ISP does not charge me $35 for an IP address like Comcast did. My ISP does not throttle my traffic. My ISP does not have a data cap. My ISP answers the phone within 30 seconds with a competent tech. My ISP does not care what traffic I have going in or out nor that it's going in and out 24/7 pretty much at max speed. My ping time is amazing compared to what I had with Comcast.

Yes, my bandwidth is less, but it's enough to stream HD and larger downloads still take more than instant so I just download them overnight anyhow (thinks like 30GB games). Whether I have 7Mb/s or 30Mb/s doesn't matter in that scenario.

Comcast is certainly not good internet. I agree good internet is not negotiable; my point being that having a Comcast wire going up to the property seems like a really blinding hatred of Comcast to pass on a good house (unless Comcast was the only ISP but that wasn't mentioned).

Could you not buy the house and not subscribe to Comcast? It's not like you have to, you know. I wouldn't give up a swell house because it happens to have a dark Comcast cable going into it. I might even sever the connection at the curb or wherever their property ends just to be safe, but pass on the house? Nah.

People do not have one identity in the real world, they have multiple identities. With the confines of time and space one can choose which identity to present at any moment. If the point is to equate online identities with real world identities, then Facebook would have to offer multiple identities. But that is not the point, the point of Facebook is to compress all a products identities into one over-all identity that can be easily quantized to sell to users.

Absolutely agree, but as it stands not everyone can get an ID easily. Giving out ID to everyone is too socialist I suppose.

Changing your legal name because you don't identify with it anymore makes sense. Many transgender people do that. Here, though we are talking about people that identify with their legal name most of the time but a different name some of the time. They want to have an online profile that represents that some-time facet of them.

A rule to force a user to always use their legal name has one purpose: to prevent people from having profiles other than their "real" self. Not everyone fits that rubric. If Facebook exempts cross dressers, what about cosplayers? What about schizophrenics? What about double agents?

They should just drop the rule.

The AC you are replying to did not claim voter ID laws were racist. Since you did, though, I will answer why it is unfair to require an ID to vote. In 1965 we as a country enacted legislation to prohibit discrimination in voting. Unless the proportion of people with the required identification (which is above and beyond what we require today) is the same as the proportion of people that can vote legally today, then passing a voter ID law discriminates against that skew. That skew happens to be towards black people. Until we decide we are okay with discrimination and repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we should do our best to not discriminate.

Buying beer and buying cigarettes from another person and has nothing to do with voting so I'm going to ignore it as it's not really germane here.

Look at who is pushing for voter ID laws: those getting a smaller proportion of the black vote with an interest in reducing the proportion of blacks in the voting public. Look who is pushing against voter ID laws: those getting a larger proportion of the black vote with an interest in keeping the current proportions. THAT is exactly why voter ID laws are bigotry by proxy. They are worded to sound innocuous and sold to people like you as "fair" but their entire purpose is to discriminate in a back handed way.

I would posit that one buys a car that fits one's needs not the other way around.

My point wasn't that zig-zagging was less pleasurable than leisure. My point was that as one gets older, one tends to fiend a commute better to be take leisurely (what's the rush to get to work of back from work -- it takes what it takes) and saving the zig-zagging for times when one can maximize the pleasure while reducing the risk (the track, the country or mountain road, etc). Of course, not everyone also sees it this way, but I found that many of my friends have changed as they aged into a similar mindset--it could be my sample size is skewed of course. The zig-zaggers commuting around here tend to be harried youngsters; the older people tend to commute serenely. At the track, the most outrageous speed demons who min-max their performance are older gents.

Older people tend to be wiser too.

What's the point of doing 55 in a 35 in a city with pedestrians and the like around. One misstep and they have issues to deal with that are easy to avoid by driving 35. With lights and traffic, 55 is unlikely to really save them that much time. Not worth the risk/reward.

What's the point of doing more than 65 on a congested highway? 65 will get you there in about the same time as zoom stop zig zag zoom stop zoom stop and be more pleasant, save fuel, and not call attention from the police.

If they want to drive fast they can take their track car to the track or their sports car to the curvy mountain road. When they were younger, they've probably done 55 in the city 70+ on their highway commute. They've realized it's not really worth it; there are other outlets of "spirited driving".

I've come to realize the same as I got older. I used to own a small sports car and drive my commute as spiritedly as I could. Now, I realize my commute in a large German sedan at a leisurely pace is maybe 5 minutes longer but far more pleasant and relaxing. I travel to the alps for a fun drive, or a coastal cliff-side road, or a track.

Yes, I wasn't asking if it has a reasonable browser installed, I was asking if there was one available to install later, otherwise that if could never be satisfied. Sorry for the confusion.

That does not address party membership of the voters.