Knowing how far a car is behind you and how fast it is approaching can give you some idea whether or not you can move over to make a left turn. And as more electric cars end up on the roads, you may not always hear them coming depending on what other sources of noise there are. I frequently ride through an area near an airport. I'm not going to hear a car approaching over the roar of a plane taking off.

I'm not sure I'd trust it vs taking a look over my shoulder. That would be my main issue. I've tried various rear view mirrors and never much liked them. Too small a field of vision. Too much moving my head around to see what I wanted to see.

I'm not sure what your point is exactly. If by "look in the mirror" you mean that I'm paying for those externalities, I agree. We pay for them through higher taxes, higher health care and insurance costs, among other ways.

And for the record I don't mind spending money on necessary defense. I do have trouble with the idea of propping up unpopular leaders of questionable ethics in exchange for short term stability and cheap gas prices. You can argue that it's necessary but either way we still pay for it. It's still an additional cost related to fossil fuels.

If you're implying that I'm part of the problem as a customer of a utility that primarily generates power via fossil fuels, I'll remind you that most of us don't have a say in where our utilities get their power from, - which is why it is good that states like California gives breaks to those who want to generate their own power using solar energy. I'm not even blaming the utilities entirely. Many of them are trying to generate electricity using cleaner sources of power and spend significant money on energy efficiency programs.

I'll also add that I'm typing this on a laptop provided by a non-profit energy efficiency organization (along with a salary) in exchange for my services. A laptop that I transport to and from work... on a bike.

We subsidize other forms of power generation constantly buy forcing the public to pay for all the externalities. If the power companies had to pay for all the costs related to mining, drilling, transporting, and burning fossil fuels, renewables would make a lot more economic sense even without the incentives.
What has it really cost us to keep the oil flowing out of the Middle East? What about the environmental and health impacts of burning fossil fuels? Who is paying for that?

I don't think istartedi was characterizing property ownership as hoarding at all. Hoarding would be buying up a ton of property with no intent to do anything with it. This would drive up property costs for anyone else wanting to buy in the area. Without property taxes, one or two people with enough capital could buy up most of the land in a region and then charge of whatever they felt like to other potential buyers. Or they could basically price things out of anybody's reach and rent out the property instead, - again at inflated rates. Any land that sits idle costs them nothing anyway so there's no disincentive to hold on to it.

Where property taxes can be problematic are when people on living fixed incomes. Rising property taxes shouldn't be allowed to force anyone off a property that they've had for decades.

A community provides benefits to those who own property there, - whether its schools, police/fire service, or whatever. Those things need to be paid for somehow.

So some people playing the minority card means that there aren't any talented minorities out there that are being held back by their circumstances?

You know what I have seen first hand? A hiring manager rejecting a resume solely based on the ethnicity of the name of applicant. In fact they had rejected several resumes for exactly the same reason. I couldn't believe that this stuff still happens but it does. And that's just an overt case. I'm sure minorities are passed over for more subtle reasons that have little or nothing to do with their actual qualifications.

Once I was literally told to think long and hard before offering a job to a black candidate we were interviewing by somebody who wasn't even involved in the interview process. This was for a business unit of a larger organization that prided itself on its diversity record. When I first started working in that unit I'd actually been a little surprised at how lily white the staff was compared to my previous job in the company. After awhile it became very clear that it wasn't exactly an accident.

Aren't all youth cultures in the US part of the society as a whole? Doesn't one culture affect another? To me these things are all related, - all connected. You can't simply say that the problem is for the parents and kids of minority communities to fix, - although it's a very convenient solution to suggest for those outside of those communities. And also I can't think of any parent who doesn't want their child to achieve academically. You may have young peers who value other skills more, - regardless of ethnicity.

As to Facebook's concern those are legit as well. Don't you ever get spam from a non-english speaker trying to get you to do something or another and entirely missing the mark? They do so because they don't understand the language and the culture enough. Same with Facebook or anyone of these companies trying to appeal to a wide audience. It's not that I can't write software for any particular audience but I'm smart enough to know that what appeals to me and people like me may not appeal to people living under different circumstances or different cultures.

Have you ever considered that our whole approach to developing software has been largely created by white men? Perhaps that's part of the reason so few outside that group do it.

http://www.tidesport.org/racia...

I happen to have a phone number at work that is almost identical to the one people call for energy assistance. I get calls on a regular basis from people who can't pay the gas bill or electric bill. Do you think they can afford DSL?

Every company I've ever worked for at the very top level of management says all the right things. At the same time I've personally witnessed hiring practices that excluded people who didn't fit the mold, - some applications being rejected based solely on fact the applicant's name wasn't "American" enough. The latter was for a technical position. I reported it and soon left. I doubt much was done because the hiring manager was on the fast track to move up in that organization.

I don't think a company's level of diversity has to exactly match the larger community's but clearly the numbers at these tech firms are completely lopsided. I'm not blaming them necessarily but yes I think they could and should do more. That doesn't mean hiring people who aren't qualified but it might mean doing more than looking at the pool of applicants that comes to you, you may have to find them. For example, they could start apprenticeship programs to train people with potential rather than only choosing from among those who could afford college.

On the bright side many of these same companies are promoting programs to get a more diverse pool of people into the necessary academic training.

If we as a society don't do these things, zip code, ethnicity, and even gender will play too a large a role in determining who becomes a "have" vs a "have not"

Unfortunately it is not irrelevant. Few people believe that a black person CAN'T do software development (for example). However it's a hard road for many, many black people to take, - especially if they are poor, which black people disproportionally are. What you have to realize is that even though the legal barriers have fallen, the social and economic barriers are alive and well.

I'll give you an example. I don't know if you're familiar with the radio show "This American Life". Anyway, on one episode they interviewed a number of talented but poor college kids that were given scholarships based on their academic achievements along with their lack of ability to afford college.

One of the kids was black and got an scholarship to MIT for some technical degree program (which I don't remember). He talked about how much he loved the classroom and lab work but how hard it was for him at the school. He felt like he didn't fit in. There were few other people there that shared his background. He felt like he continually had to prove that he deserved to be there. He had to dress better than most of his peers, and he had to behave better than most of them as well. His high school academic training had been woefully inadequate in some areas so he had to take additional classes to make up for that.

It was almost worse for him at home. While his family was proud, many of his old friends didn't want to hang around him, - accusing him of acting "too white" and selling out. Even the friends who stuck by him were on different paths and he couldn't share with them what was going on school and have them understand.

The other students told very similar stories. The point is that the inequalities in our society are deeply ingrained and won't go away simply by making it illegal to not hire somebody based on gender or ethnicity.

When you have certain fields dominated by a subgroup of people you have to ask the question why. In this case the question is why are well paying jobs in high tech companies going mostly to white men? Is it really because that genetically white men are more likely to have the necessary skills? I highly doubt it, at least not in the proportions we are seeing reflected in the hiring of technical talent.

So where is the problem? Many would argue that it starts well before Google and others make hiring decisions. I think it does too but I also think that having so few women and non-white males getting these positions helps perpetuate the problem. If you're a young child, knowing and seeing other people like you holding technical positions like that makes it more likely that you yourself would entertain them as an option.

As much we'd like to say that color and gender are no longer barriers, it's just not true. We don't treat everyone the same way.

Pro-baseball was brought up as an example. I don't know that it quite works as an argument in the way it was intended but sports is just one way I see people pigeonholed all the time when it comes to race or gender. My son loves football. We spent last year looking at different options for high school for him. Now, my son is not nearly good enough to make a career out of football and most of the criteria we were using for choosing a high school had nothing to do with sports. However, he's good enough to at least play at a high school level. I did have one friend seriously say to me that if my son wants to play varsity football he should stay away from school "x" because a lot of black kids go there and he won't have a chance. Seriously? He'd never even seen my son play football.

Part of the problem happens well before Facebook or anyone else has a job opening. Not everyone has equal access to the education required for many of these positions.

Another part of the problem is the hiring process itself. An initial requirement for one position I've taken in the past was a Masters degree in computer science or related field. Nothing about the job required a Masters degree and they got no applicants. The reason for the requirement? The hiring managers all had MBAs. There is a tendency for people to hire people like themselves, - people who fit their stereotype.

I've also witnessed more direct discrimination. At a former company we were trying to fill several tech positions. Several of us were going through resumes when I discovered that my boss had tossed out a few of the candidates I had thought had potential. When asked why she said that their names weren't "American sounding" and she just wanted to hire Americans. She was at least honest about it. Many aren't or don't ever realize why they're excluding people.

Because auto/truck accidents are normally limited to streets and highways where people know to tread with caution. In order for a drone to deliver to your home it's flying over sidewalks, lawns, homes. etc. They are definitely big enough to hurt somebody. They are a bad idea for the same reasons that flying cars are a bad idea.

Even if they are safe I don't want them buzzing around my neighborhood.

And to be clear, I wasn't talking about the frequency of murders, violent crime, or criminal activity in general. I was talking about incidents like the one in Isle Vista: Mass Shootings.

I never said that crime must be getting worse.

You don't have to look any farther than the article you posted and the research that Mother Jones did. The author in your article didn't like Mother Jones' criteria for defining mass shootings but they used basically the same definition used in this report from the Congressional Research Service:

http://journalistsresource.org...

Apparently the FBI uses that definition as well.