You completely negated the point you were trying to make in the first paragraph. Dumping sewage on your neighbors property is a violation of his property rights and thus illegal. He can (and would) take you to court and win the case against you. At which point you would have to clean up the mess you made of his property, pay for someone else to do it, and pay various other damages. That is how freedom works. Most rights boil down to property rights, and you do not have the right to damage someone else's property. Environmental laws are simply unnecessary as there are already laws that cover any such damages from scenarios like dumping waste on other people's property, or even on your won and having it leech into someone else's property or ground water supplies

He's right. I haven't been in a movie theater for years, because it's so damn expensive. I don't miss it, but it would be nice to go see a movie now and again. Last time I was in a movie theater I paid under $5 for a ticket, prime weekend evening, not matinee. This was at a nice theater 18+ only unless accompanied by adult. No kids, no teens, and I have to say it but no minorities yakking on the cell phones. This theater also showed a lot of indie films and such that you couldn't see anywhere else local. They raised prices a lot, business slowed down, and were bought out and are now just another expensive place with kids being loud and people talking on cell phones and texting through the film, and no indie films. It's unfortunate.

I do go maybe once or twice a year to the drive in movies though. $6 to see two movies, sometimes three. For a fee you can bring your own food. I always buy something from the snack bar to support them. To top it off no worries about people being rude. You enjoy the movie in the comfort and privacy of your own car and can talk to whoever you're with without disturbing others.

The state of NJ charges a $2 "convenience fee" to renew your vehicle registration online or the same fee per any transactions they allow online. They mail you a renewal form pre-filled out with a reference number and you can go to their site, type in the number, and it populates everything for you. Alternatively you fill in the missing lines on the form and bring it to the DMV. I'll spend the gas and time to go to the DMV, because I'm not paying an additional $2 tax to the State for something that saves them money, they tax the hell out of me already.

Regardless, in this VZ situation it seems the easiest option to avoid the fee, and postage, hassle of writing a check is use your banks bill pay feature if they offer one, or sign up with one of several free bill pay services. The end result is they send either a paper check in the mail for you or a electronic check, however that works, but the bill gets paid adn it would seem from Verizon's verbage that the "convenience fee" does not apply to those types of payments. Thus you avoid the fee and still pay the bill. If there's no way to avoid it without it being an inconvenience, cancel the service. Use another provider. On a related note, I hope this doesn't apply to FIOS or I'll be stuck switching to cable or DSL or maybe smoke signals. I won't tolerate nickel and diming through fees on services I use that SAVE a company money.

I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters...

I'm approx 3.4% from my place of birth. Given the choices, that puts me between two choices but by a significant margin I chose to round down though. Regardless, maybe in a few years I will fall pleasantly in the 4%-10% range.

I live in the States and am not dependent on government at all. I have never collected any money from the government and don't want to. I pay ludicrously high taxes because not that I'm starting to earn a better income the government keeps taking more, and eliminate my tax breaks. Meanwhile I can barely scrape by and any small increases in pay are much smaller when factoring the higher taxes. I am scraping by and don't have a lot to save for emergencies, there is nothing left to give to friends and family when they are in need. If government did not take such a large portion of my income I would be able to live very comfortably on my current income, increase my standard of living, and be able to give to those in need.

Voted "floating above" since there was no libertarian option. Foolish people believe it has to be a two party system. These are the same fools who believe it's a "wasted vote" to vote for anyone but a neocon or a socialist. It's two flavors of communist. Socialists are the "Give me your wallet" type of communists while neocons are the "Papers Comrade" type of communist. Either way the loser is each and every one of us.

The only way to fix this country is to shift back towards a Constitutional society which respects individual liberty, natural rights, and property rights. Libertarians, most notably Ron Paul, offer this. Of course they are also the only ones with sane and well thought out economic plans that they aren't shy about discussing in detail. No neocon or socialist will do that.

For recreational reading, anything by Timothy Zahn. I particularly like the Quadrail series as of recently... A scifi Sherlock Holmes type of railroad series. I enjoyed them. Another good book I read recently was The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith, a libertarian themed alternate reality scifi book. There is a series expanding on the original book though not quite as good as the first.

So far as environmental impact, I absolutely would not argue that city dwellers should dispose of their own garbage. It's not practical and due to the population density it's more efficient to have collections. For most of suburbia or especially rural areas, disposing of your own is more environmentally friends and of course cost effective. As you said, people in these areas drive most everywhere. With typical locations of dumps, can combine it with at least some other trips, or make less frequent garbage disposal trips.

The environmental impact of garbage disposal would surely be significantly less than burning 8600 gallons of diesel. let's assume 5 days/week pickup. I really wish I knew how many people a typical trash truck serves in a day of operation, but we can say it burns ~33 gallons/day and travels ~92.6 miles in a day. Most of the distance traveled will not be picking up trash, but rather will be spent getting to and from the dispatch center and pickup areas as well as to and from the dump, if that particular service uses the regular trash trucks to transport the compacted garbage to the dump (many do, some bring it to their own local sorting facility to presort or further compact and haul to a dump on big rigs).

If I knew that number of pickups/homes in a day it would help to get some further numbers and estimates. A quick google turned up this college test, which I find interesting and may solve 5b later on for one possible answer to number of pickups/homes served. Environmental Systems Engineering Assignment, look at 5b

That is the point of a yellow as opposed to just having green and red. it is legal to enter the intersection on yellow, whether it's a fresh or stale yellow. It is illegal to enter on red. The reason is when the light changes you may only be 5' from the intersection, or 20', or some other distance where stopping is either not possible or not safe. A sufficiently long yellow (IIRC 1 second for every 10 MPH of traffic speed) virtually eliminates red light runners, a brief overlap of red prevents the occasional oblivious driver entering on a fresh red from causing an accident.

I will say around here since they started putting up red light cameras I now slam on my brakes if there's any hope I may be able to stop. Had a few close calls almost sliding into the intersection and also damn near got rear ended a couple times. Not my problem though because the State is obviously more interested in revenue collection (hidden taxes) than safety. A red light camera (and of course the State) doesn't care if the road is wet or icy, or any other scenario that would make it safer or more prudent to proceed through a yellow even if it's a stale yellow. I won't take the chance of getting fined for doing something safe, I'd rather get rear ended and take that to court for a new paint job or new vehicle. You can win against someone else who caused an accident by inattentiveness or following too closely, you can't win against the State as the deck is stacked heavily against you.

Also red light cameras have caused me to make the occasional illegal uturn, or reverse down a road rather than proceed on red. This is when the light will never change or will go through several cycles and never turn my side green. Typically this happens more often later at night when tehre is less traffic on the road. Normally after waiting at a light for 5-10+ minutes with no traffic on the road I'd assume it won't change and treat it like a stop sign so long as I have good visibility both directions. Instead with red light cameras I'll make an illegal uturn or illegal reverse and take an alternate route, so as not to get a fine.

The point is out in the country where there's no trash collection there are many dumps which are typically located on the way to town for most folks. The cost to use the dump is very little compared to trash pickup. About $25 vs $500-$700 for pickup, depending on area. Figure the cost to dispose of my own trash at the dump, it was always on the way to town that I was going for something else anyway. Never made trips just for trash. So literally going down the road the dump was on to get to town, I couldn't imagine burning more than $.25-$.50 in gas each trip to drive down the road to the dump and back out to the street. So for a year of typical trips that's $6.50-$13 per year for a total cost of $31.50-$38 to dispose of my trash vs a LOT more where you are forced to pay for trash collection.

Now let's look at the costs that factor into that much higher cost for trash collection. Some basic info and rough numbers first.
179,000 garbage trucks in the US
8,600 gallons of diesel on average per year, per truck
2.8 MPG typical
$43,000 average US garbage collector salary
$54,000 average garbage collector salary where I sadly live now, in suburbia

Let's examine the cost to run one garbage truck that services a suburban town around here, nevermind that there are a few of them out collecting trash around here on most days.
8600 gallons of diesel at $3.75/gal = $32,250
3 garbage collectors to run the truck at $54,000 each = $162,000
4 oil changes per year @ $100 each = $400

So far that's $194,650 to run a track truck for a year, plus misc other maintenance and you're looking north of $200k when you figure fuel filters and such every year, glow plugs now and again, tires every few years, etc. That's a lot of money that in most cases is changed in taxes that people have no choice but to pay or have the government steal their home. I firmly believe it is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to dispose of my garbage myself at a local dump. It frees up a lot of money and is not an inconvenience for me.

Garbage truck figures

Having lived in both areas where I'm forced to pay for weekly garbage collection and areas where I have to take my own trash to the dump I find it far more efficient to deal with my trash and recycles myself. Dealing with it myself is far cheaper. There is a specialized trash and recycling center with a specialized team of waste disposal professionals to handle such things. They don't need large fleets of big heavy diesel trucks that get terrible MPG stopping and going all day every day to collect trash from the surrounding areas, nor a huge staff of well paid people to run those trucks and maintain them. I bring my own trash and recycles about every other week to the dump on my way to town (I don't need weekly collection). I don't go out of my way, don't use any more gas than I would to go into town, since I only bring my trash when I'm going to town anyway. Having forced trash collection is far more expensive and has a greater negative environmental impact.

I'm sure this is an unpopular sentiment amongst the crowd here, but I'm stuck in the cold northeast and as a result of the poor economy it wouldn't make financial sense to take a paycut by not getting a job in my field and moving to a more pleasant (warm) part of the country, even though cost of living would be tens of thousands less. A little global warming can take the edge off and make life here just a bit less unpleasant. The earth is dynamic and has always been changing, warm swings, cold swings, and all sorts of changes. If a couple degrees warmer average temps mean a shorter winter and less snow, I don't mind.

Wrong... '62 Falcon brochure and MPG

My '63 got right around that in normal highway driving, not MPG squeezing driving. It was a plain jane bare bones two door post car with a 144 straight six, 3 on the tree with no syncros in first, no power steering, no accessories or options. I rebuilt the carb, gave it a tune up, and adjusted the timing curve to get more timing while slightly leaning out the mixture. Very basic tune to increase MPG and power, not an all out thing for sure. I never did strictly city stop adn go driving but in normal 50/50 driving it got mid 20s and over 30 MPG on the highway.

With an Aussie head ported with an Offy intake, header, dual exhaust, mild torque cam, raised compression to around 9.5:1-9.7:1, possibly an Autolite 2100 carb with the small .98" venturi, and misc other performance and MPG tweaks I could see a very efficient engine making very respectable HP and torque numbers for a small six. With a '60s vehicle not encumbered by emissions requirements you can make an engine very efficient where newer engines will be federally mandated to comply with various emissions laws that are a detrmiment to MPG. Regardless, couple this with a T5 trans and rear gearing around 3.00:1 or 3.25:1 and I can easily see 40 MPG at 65-70 MPH, more if driving at granny speeds.

As for aerodynamics... They're not as bad as you'd think just because they're small and don't have nearly the frontal surface area of a midsize or full size which are taller and wider. Aerodynamics aren't that big a deal at legal speeds in the States (55-65 MPH here on the east coast), at least not compared to having an efficient engine in a light vehicle with an efficient driveline.

One of these days I'll get another Falcon and turn it into a real MPG machine. I've been looking for a couple months now waiting for the right car for the right price. When I do it, it'll be my daily driver whenever there's not snow on the ground and should save me a good amount in fuel.

That's waht the market will bear. I think it's retarded they make so much, but Americans are more concerned with season tickets in good seats than important issues. Not that football is bad (I have no interest in it), but there's no reason to ignore everything else going on around you in politics, sciencem etc. just because you enjoy a particular sport.