Education is also a heavy factor here. Having early and effective education with a focus on birth control - and making these available - is a lot more effective than sweeping this under the rug and teaching abstinence.

Not only that... but when I read stories in the media of a tyranical state executing those who they allege have committed crimes against their culture or religion I usually think ISIS and some guy with a sword, gun or flamethrower -- yet once again, this time, it is the good old US of A who plans to engage in such an act of barbarism.

How sad it is that the USA stoops to such hypocrisy while on the one hand condemning ISIS, Al Qaeda etc, yet on the other, engaging in exactly the same acts of cruelty and disregard for human life that they do.

ISIS and Al Qaeda kill innocent people by way of suicide bombings, executions etc. The USA kills innocent people (and call it collateral damage) by way of drone strikes on people they merely "suspect" of being "insurgents" and engage in executions of those who they find guilty of breaching their legal and moral standards.

Those who deserve to lead do so by example -- not by saying "do as we say, not as we do". Sadly, the USA doesn't have the testicular fortitude to do so and prefers instead to preach from the bible of hypocrisy.

Tragic.

My sympathies to all US citizens -- your government and your judiciary is making you look bad.

Far better to lock this guy up for the rest of his natural life so that you can retain the "moral high ground" -- whilst also ensuring that he does suffer for his crime, for a lot longer than a few minutes on a table or in a chair.

Yep, "it idles" woohoo!

Not only that but the parts I saw being modeled and printed were low-stress components such as the stand (wow!) and the exhaust tube.

Were the compressor and turbine wheels printed? Those are the crucial parts and the ones exposed to maximum stress.

A great proof of concept but they tell us that this was made using materials "not available to the hobby industry" so why does it perform so poorly, especially since they claim to have enhanced the design.

I smell marketing department hype here ;-)

No-fault is about taking money away from lawyers, who used to litigate each and every auto accident as a lawsuit in court before the insurers would pay. Eventually the insurers decided that they spent more on lawyers than accident payments, and they had no reason to do so.

If you want to go back to the way things were, you are welcome to spend lots of time and money in court for trivial things, and see how you like it. I will provide you with expert witness testimony for $7.50/minute plus expenses. The lawyers charge more.

In general your insurer can figure out for themselves if you were at fault or not, and AAA insurance usually tells me when they think I was, or wasn't, when they set rates.

Yeah, I watermark my videos but on several occasions these script-kiddies have copied my *entire* channel -- every single video!

In that case I can't see any upside to what they're doing ;-!

And in those cases I had filed over 24 copyright strikes against each channel -- and all that YouTube did was remove each video as I flagged it -- but the channels were still operating -- until several weeks later -- after I had *laboriously* filed even more complaints about the remaining videos. That's a hell of a lot of work so I ask again... what happened to the 3-strikes policy in such cases?

What's a "3rd party block"???

That's what Google *claim* but, as I mentioned in a previous post, there are some channels against which I've filed up to a *dozen* copyright complaints against and they're still there -- still carrying content for which they do not have copyright (ie: stuff from other channels they've downloaded and then re-uploaded without permission.

They seem *VERY* selective about when they actually enforce their copyright strikes in my experience.

Here's another of the script-generated channels that are being created by downloading and re-uploading other people's popular YouTube videos

Mavi Kocaeli

Now you *KNOW* that this channel has been generated by a download/re-upload script and people will file copyright complaints but chances are that it will still be there in a month's time and by then the videos will have been monetized and earning the script-user a small but useful amount of cash -- money that should have been going into the pockets of the original creators/uploaders.

And here's another one that is already monetizing other people's re-uploaded videos: Kasandra Sahr.

Where's the "three strikes" policy now?

And why hasn't YouTube automatically flagged new channels that upload large numbers of videos within a few hours -- because most people don't do that -- only scripts do that.

And how are they going to collect this GST from overseas companies?

There's no way to ensure that every mom and pop online business selling digital media/games over the Net into Australia will comply with a "request" from the Aussie government (because they have no legal power to force them) to collect GST on their behalf for free.

Will they be asking credit card companies to automatically levy the GST on overseas purchases? If they do then they're opening a pandora's box that they really ought to keep closed.

I could see Bitcoin getting a new lease of life for Aussies :-)

If we don't have more than two children per couple, the human race would've died out a long time ago.

I think the proper way to state that is "If we didn't in the past", not "If we don't". If we were to have 2 children per couple (approximately, the real value is enough children to replace each individual but not more) from this day on, it would not be necessary to adjust the number upward to avoid a population bottleneck for tens of thousands of years.

The Northern California Amtrak is actually pretty good for commuting from Sacramento to the Bay Area and back because the right of way is 4 tracks wide in critical places and it has priority over other trains for much of the time.

Acela in the Boston/NY/DC corridor is also good, because the right of way is 4 tracks or more for most of the way, and it has a track to itself along a lot of the route. Other railroads run on parallel tracks.

For the most part, though, Amtrak suffers from not having exclusive track. It runs on freight lines that host cars so heavy that the rail bends an inch when the wheels are on top of it (I've seen this first hand).

And Germany is a nation the size of New Mexico with an economy the 5th largest in the world. Starting pretty much from zero 70 years ago.

Maybe having good trains is part of that.

No. If anything, I assert that good trains are a hallmark of the set of good economic policies that lead to the general well-being of the citizenship.

Poor people are poor because they can't get jobs. One of the reasons is that they can't get to jobs. Can't afford a reliable car and insurance and gas in the US? Can't work! Too often, that's the equation.

The other reasons they are poor are that we were equally bad in investing in other things we should have spent more upon publicly, like good primary education. This is caused by more wealthy folks not wanting to pay the necessary taxes.

I have a lawn and there are turkeys and quail in the front yard today and we can hear the coyotes howling some nights (that's on the edge of Berkeley where it meets Contra Costa county). If I want to be in San Francisco, I have to get to the train station, which is a mile away (convenient, by the way, to lower income homes). And then it's all train from there, under the Bay, out again in the middle of the city.

In two more years, I will be able to get to San Jose that way. Right now, that is an hour and twenty minute drive if I start at 6 AM, and two hours if I start later. It will be a shorter time on the train, more relaxing, a hell of a lot safer, and will allow me to work on the way.

This is what railroad transportation can mean for people with lawns.

Well, I am not convinced by the auto ownership report that failed to include the purchase price (really!)

I think there's a lot about European behavior you're not taking into account - like the kind of car they actually buy (really small compared to ours) and what they use it for (often, just getting to the railroad station), and the clear indication that car ownership was because of their larger middle class which is itself an indication of better economic policies - like having good mass transit.

I think you have the tax picture wrong, and it's still the better-off people who are contributing the most to mass transit through their taxes.

Regarding the bus, I'm not convinced. The biggest problems are that it can't be connected to electricity efficiently (San Francisco's catenary busses can't exceed 40 MPH while on the wire, and rarely approach that speed because they share the route with cars), it is labor intensive compared to rail, and it has the traffic and safety issues of an automobile. And too often light rail is little better than a bus. It's only when there's an exclusive right-of-way that you get efficiency.

And ultimately there may still be people who vote against mass transit, but they are shooting themselves in the foot.