How do you teach grit, anyway?

My wife taught me grit. We fell in love despite my inability to even keep a clean room, and then she started slowly with things like "clean up your mess" then "here is a list of things to get done" then "maybe you should make your own lists of things you need to get done" etc...

Both positive and negative rewards were given to me!

Anyway, she helped me pick up a reasonable amount of grit to go with my intelligence. Now I need to stop reading Slashdot for the day!

murder isn't the only way people are killed by guns.

True, but the mortality rates are different. For gunshot wounds, mortality rate is 22%, while that for stab wounds was 4% (source, though from 1994 and I wonder with more cell phones whether faster trauma admission speeds may enhance differential mortalities due to differential bleed rates between the two modalities).

Detroit is the US city with the highest murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate of 45 per 100,000 people.

DC is not even in the top ten US cities.

In 2014, US Federal, State, and Local governments spent 35.5% of GDP. Compare with 31.6% of GDP in 2000.

You can, as a Dish subscriber, view any channel right now over the Internet.

As a "Dish subscriber" you can stream on authenticated devices, but not as a "Sling TV subscriber". That would require another contract between Dish and content providers.

OPEC doesn't set the price, just output levels.

For a long time, it has been unclear that OPEC can actually "set output levels". Cartels are notoriously hard to keep together when every member can do better for themselves by cheating.

Dish already has the right contact list from its DBS business.

Dish may have the "contact list", but certainly it does not yet have the rights to stream broadcast television stations on the Internet without entering into an agreement with those stations (which likely would mean additional retransmission fees).

Of course you can already watch broadcast stations for free over the air in actual HD quality, as opposed to the very likely lower quality streaming unless you can keep a 10 Mbps H.264 stream going continuously over your Internet connection.

The easy solution is to make highrise apartment and office buildings illegal through zoning.

Or make high-rise apartment buildings LEGAL so that more people live closer to their job instead of in the suburbs.

LA has too many parts of its "urban" area zoned as single-family residential (compare with Manhattan).

My brother and I were actually heading down to the Sunset Strip a couple weeks ago for a concert and my brother decided to try the Waze route.

raining hard

Dude, when it is raining hard, the 405 Sepulveda pass and the 110 Cahuenga pass became parking lots. If Waze took you over the hills, I'm sure that was the fastest route, even if it seemed like it was long!

"Waze has caused trouble for LA residents by redirecting traffic from Interstate 405 to neighborhood side streets paralleling the interstate. "

Exactly, that is why I use Waze, so when the highways get backed up, I can go around them on the surface streets!

If you can't take the traffic, move to the suburbs!

The Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM) contains uncompressed audio and video, but timed text elements like subtitles are stored in XML.

DCDMs are turned into the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) for distribution to theaters, which is an encrypted file of JPEG 2000 video at a max 250 Mbps.

These days, when you hop into an Uber X, it's a less consistent experience. Sometimes it's a lost out-of-towner

I find this in "normal" taxis in New York and Chicago. The drivers are asking me where things are. I'm thinking "do you know what a GPS is?" Then they don't take credit cards (or the credit card reader "isn't working") or they do so by rubbing a pencil on a piece of paper on top of your card and you see the charge a month later.

Because the walk from Bellagio to New York New York is complicated by City Center, it's a pain in the ass 20 minute one-mile hike

That is a failure of Bellagio, New York New York, and City Center, not of taxis. Next time, let your invisible hand direct you to a more walkable area like downtown Vegas.

I don't mind Starbucks not paying taxes in the UK, as long as they pay a fair share of taxes somewhere.

In 2012, Starbucks had operating income of about $2 billion and paid $674 million in income taxes.

In the last 12 months ending Sept. 27, 2014, Apple paid $14 billion in income taxes on $52 billion operating income.

Of course both of these companies paid significant amounts of sales taxes as well as income taxes.

Say they do 6% of their global business and revenue in my country. OK, then whatever profits Apple makes world wide throughout their empire throughout all associated companies, you've got to pay tax in my country on 6% of it.

So if a company can't make a high profit in your country, they simply would never invest in business operations in your country if you are going to tax them on revenues instead of profits. Sure, that is one scheme.