This is just PR for Elon Musk and Tesla. This is not the future. The plug-in EV is not the future of transportation.

I work for a major university system in California. Our job is to get scope 3 commuter emissions to zero by 2050. We finally had the real-life conversation about the viability of plug-in EVs being the savior to our conundrum and, boy, was everyone happy to say what they had researched and observed...

The first thing you have to realize as a workplace who wants to support plug-in EVs is that, in doing so, you are becoming a refueler-- a gas station. You're entering another business with costs, time demands, enforcement requirements, and drama.

Each of the campuses has 5-50+ EV chargers throughout their 5,000-40,000 parking stalls. They cost $5,000 -$9,000 on a good deal plus the cost of installation, power trenching, etc. Consider the cost of converting an entire parking system to being plug-in EV-compatible. Or even half the parking system and allowing only 4-hour charging ("top off"). And then there's the new electric substation. Oh, and plug in EVs aren't zero emissions. We're still on the hook for the power generation emissions that result from the electricity demand.

Finally, there's a major equity issues. The vast majority of EV buyers are rich and/or college-educated. Why? Well they have the disposable income with which to take advantage of temporary federal subsidies, but more importantly, they have garages in which to charge their EVs overnight. The low-income population by and large lives in apartments whose landlords are not even considering installing EV chargers.

And these Type 3 superchargers can only be worse. The faster you charge an EV, the more waste electricity. The more waste electricity, the more cost and the more emissions. It's great PR. It's really neat for a niche, nascent, and temporary market, but the future is in either hydrogen fuel cells or battery-swapping EVs.

You are required to drive safely. Too fast or too slow is unsafe. The trick is in the "too". The cop may cite you over for driving 1mph over the limit. You can try to fight it in court (as countless thousands do every day) with the excuse that you were "going with the flow of traffic", but if you're traveling in the rightmost lane, you are not required to travel as quickly as those driving in the leftmost lane, but you should probably be driving no slower than 5 under the limit on a freeway.

The unfortunate issue is that drivers have a really bad habit of justifying their speeding habits with bad or misinterpreted science. Some will say "speed doesn't kill, the speed differential kills" -- but that can be used to justify everyone driving at the speed limit just as easily as driving 10mph over the limit.

Or can it?

Actual research shows that the faster you go, the more likely you are to crash. This is due to infrastructural imperfections, hardware failure, or just driver failure. It's safer to drive slower. From the AAA report on the American Culture of Speed: "When travel speed increases by 1%, the injury crash rate increases by about 2%, the
serious injury crash rate increases by about 3%, and the fatal crash rate increases by about 4%."

When some say that "slow drivers cause accidents", they use the "cause" term incorrectly. In almost all instances, the slower driver didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere. Instead, the slower driver was ahead of an impatient driver and the impatient driver did something stupid.

So please, don't feel like you have justification to drive faster than the speed limit because some interpret the law beneficially to their own habits. Please remember that in 2012, there were 33,561 traffic deaths and in a full 30% of those deaths, speeding was a factor. (http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/overview-of-fatality-facts#Speeding)

The problem is the in the pendulum swing. The harder it swings, the less rational the reactionary force has to be. As it pertains to sexism, the historical weapon of chauvinists and the established patriarchy, those riding that pendulum to its furthest extent don't like to (no do they need to) have any introspective dialog regarding any double-standards or hypocrisy in their missions.

For the social reaction to sexism, the pendulum is swinging hard. Consider some of the issues wherein men are currently ridiculed for their interest and/or sensitivity:

Post-divorce child custody -- Still heavily biased toward the mother.
Post-divorce alimony -- A patriarchal concept still being fought by males, but rarely a peep in protest comes from the sex that benefits the most.
Male Circumcision -- Sometimes called "male genital mutilation" in an attempt to garner the same disgust as female genital mutilation, the fight against automatic male circumcision at birth is derided.
Rape -- While all of the western world vehemently fights to reduce the occurrence of female rape, man-on-man rape is thoroughly facilitated mass incarceration centers.
Gender Studies -- Most research universities have a Gender Studies department, but the research and education provided are typically "women's studies". There is little in the way of researching the history and evolution of masculinity (especially in the light of the equalization of rights).

Those riding the pendulum will say, "Oh, too bad! Sucks to be on the other side, doesn't it?" without consideration of who actually ran the patriarchy.

For males that grew up as part of the institutionalized patriarchy, these don't seem like a big deal. However, for the massive number of young males that grew up being taught that males and females are genuinely equal in most ways and should be treated equitably in all things, these double standards are unacceptable. These, amongst other issues, are the problems that young males face, despite not being part of the gender-biased systems of the past.

I'm OK with this. How can I get you on the Google Car sales team? ;)

You are correct about the Driver's Handbook and and the state law in regards to unsafe speed, but I think you missed the point. Why is everyone allowed to uniformly break the speed limit in the first place? Why not do some proper enforcement to bring the speeds back down?

If you're programming a module to complete a task and find that it needs to be written in such a way as to break existing rules to facilitate the rules being broken by other modules, don't you try to fix the problem from the ground up?

Additional question: I know most people are thinking about doing 75 in a 65 and thinking "whoopty doo, big deal". But what about 35mph in a 25mph school zone?

You are "driving" a Google automated car. You get pulled over for doing 10 over the speed limit. You didn't tell the car to do it, the programmers did. Who gets the ticket?

If you do, then that suggests that you have liability for the control of the vehicle. If that's the case, you probably shouldn't allow the car to make the choice whether or not to exceed the speed limit without your input.

If the programmer has liability, then say good by to automated automobiles! No one wants this liability.

Thus, Google cars will not automatically speed... but they may allow you to tell the car to exceed the speed limit... thus reducing the safety of the product overall.

If the speed limit is unsafe, that means that too many people around the car are traveling above the speed limit. This, in turn, means that there is insufficient traffic enforcement. I see two solutions...

Solution A: Allow automated vehicles to routinely exceed the speed limit thus contributing to the unsafe environment.
Solution B: Implement appropriate traffic enforcement and raise city revenue on the reckless habits of traffic offenders.

Why the hell is Solution A even being considered?

If the speed limit is unsafe, that means that too many people around the car attempting to travel at "only" the speed limit. This, in turn, means that there is insufficient traffic enforcement. I see two solutions...

Solution A: Allow automated vehicles to routinely exceed the speed limit thus contributing to the unsafe environment.
Solution B: Implement appropriate traffic enforcement and raise city revenue on the reckless habits of traffic offenders.

Why the hell is Solution A even being considered?

Yes, just like this. Browse at "0" and you see stuff like this. Thank you for being a great example to pla's post!

My partner and I have been together for almost 13 years. We have one of those very good relationships where we talk about problems instead of getting to the point of yelling, etc. She has a very audacious sense of humor and feels comfortable joking about spousal abuse (amongst other things) because she knows that spousal abuse is such a foreign concept in our relationship. ("I know I said I would cook tonight, but I'm ordering pizza. Please don't beat me...") I say the same back.

If someone didn't understand the context and overheard us joking in this way, they might think there was an actual issue with violence in our household. And I think this is the impetus with the new censorship rule on Fark. If you're not a frequenter of Fark discussions and stumble across one of many memes without the historical context, you'll think everyone there is a rape-shrugging, gay-bashing, general hater. And you would be wrong.

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Let's talk about a couple of the memes:

40 lbs. Box of Rape (http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2Z7SafOiCXM/hqdefault.jpg) - If you simply read someone threaten to "send a 40 lbs. box of rape" to another person, you'd think that was a horrible concept. Boxed rape!? The idea alone is atrocious. That is until you figure out that someone took a photo of a box of rapeseed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed), considered the homonym audaciously humorous, and put it online. The internet went wild with the hilariously outlandish concept of "boxed rape" (the action, not the seed) and it has since been part of tongue-in-cheek, context-driven discussion.

Blazing Saddles references - The Mel Brooks movie 'Blazing Saddles' is synonymous with audacious humor and if any one work of artistic endeavor was to embody the spirit of Fark, it would be this movie. It addresses rape, penis size, stereotypes (beneficial and detrimental), racism, homophobia-- nothing is so sacred that it cannot be laughed at. But consider the actual context-- Mel Brooks projects absurdity upon each of these ideas by making their offenders look absolutely ridiculous. And for the most part, Fark feels and acts within the same vein.

Glenn Beck's mythical crime in 1990 - Fark is one of the grand purveyors of the myth that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. They publicized the hoax not as a means of directly implicating Glenn Beck in a crime that never happened, but to demonstrate the effectiveness of the political messaging system that was/is constantly making extreme accusations in the form of inquiry. So Fark (amongst others) shot back. "Why hasn't Glenn Beck denied...?"

'Legitimate' Rape - A couple years back, a conservative politician stated that abortions do not need to be available to women because in the case of 'legitimate rape', the female body has a means of preventing any impregnation at all. This, of course, is absolutely absurd... which is why Fark latched onto it. It's demonstrative of really, really stupid politician commenting on thing about which he knows little and Fark thrives on such snafus. So when a story comes up regarding rape, you're likely to see the idea of "legitimate rape" be brought up-- not because they're suggesting a distinction, but because they're restating the absurdity of this concept.
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If you are under the impression that Fark users tell jokes that promote rape, sexism, racism, or discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation, then you don't know Fark. Farkers celebrate every gain in the realm of gay rights and attack heinous acts with derision.

If you don't understand that Fark's use of rape, sexism, and homosexuality in their humor comes from a Mel Brooks-style commentary on the absurdity various ideals and actions, then you don't understand Fark. It's disappointing that this kind of humor will no longer be tolerated as it pertains to these specific topics because it's a cathartic outlet for audacious humor in a good direction.

Personally, I never liked PvP games. Invariably, the loser gets sick and tired of the game, sometimes offended, and what started as a fun idea ends with anger and discontent.

I'm more of a PvE gamer. Give me something that I and a couple friends could do with an external enemy or a joined goal and everyone comes out happier at the end.

The big pain in the ass here is that AB32 trickles down to California businesses and state-run entities. Everyone has to do their part to reduce California emissions back to 1990s levels (NOT per capita... raw GHG tonnage per year). That's easy for some, but not so easy for others.

If your organization was a big time polluter with little employee growth since the 1990s, you can switch to plug-in hybrids for your fleet, swap out incandescent bulbs for fluorescent/LED, put in new thermostats, disallow hot water in the bathrooms, adopt roof-top solar, and, if necessary, buy bio-methane energy credits. Reaching your AB32 goals would be easy.

But what if you were one of the model organizations in the 1990s that was at the forefront green tech but have since doubled in size? Ya, you may still have a fantastic per capita GHG emissions rating, but you've doubled in size! That means you have to cut your per capita in HALF to get back to your 1990 emissions level. Organizations with this problem are actually going back through their numbers and hoping to INCREASE their back-casting GHG emissions. They want to be seen as having been bigger polluters than they were because, with AB32, if you weren't a big polluter, you're going to have to invest beyond the diminishing returns curve to get anywhere near your state-mandated goals.

If AB32 could be amended to require going back to 1990 PER CAPITA emissions, my organization would be sitting pretty. Hell, we'd be able to sell off the credits from our being BELOW our 1990 per capita emissions. But that's not the case... so we, as one of the lowest per capita polluters in the nation for our industry, will end up paying more in cap-and-trade fees and offsets than actual big polluters.

And that's the way it's supposed to be. The big funding, risk, and genuine exploration is done by the bloated, but driven, government. Once all the basics have been proven, once all the risks have been measured, and once a potential business model evolves from that exploration, then private business comes in to profitize it.

When the government loses the drive to continue exploration, private industry moves in to profitize and expand until they can no longer profitize. Then government comes in, uses what private business learned, and then does big exploration all over again. Etc.

All big exploration starts with governments. The private sector comes in only after the risky, heavy lifting is done. It's a symbiotic relationship.

This would be great to use in sweatshops! You'd need fewer armed guards and you'd be able to see who is too relaxed (AKA slacking off)! Oh, panoptic society, I thought you were just a fantasy!

Wait, 1984 wasn't a guidebook? Well, then why have been working towards all the same tech? Oh... we're idiots. Got it.

I've spent my entire life in the hustle-bustle. I want to go on a cycling tour of villages, towns, and nowheresvilles.