Oh, and nice assumption. Suburban soccer mom? Nice one kid.
I wasn't aware that I'd grown ovaries and acquired children and a decade in age overnight. Who knew!
Time to pop some kids out and buy some mom jeans because I disagreed with someone on slashdot. Man, you have to be careful about this shit.
How servile and feeble minded.. "bu bu but the sign said!"
Are you stupid, trolling, or just argumentative?
If you cannot honestly see how sticking a 20-25 mph zone in the middle of an arterial (that has speed of 45) is somewhere between a feel good policy (IE, think of the children!) and existing entirely for revenue generation, i really don't know what to tell you.
Further, if you don't 'get' how it could be more of a safety risk to focus on dropping your speed in half, watching out for kids, the jackhole behind you who doesn't get what a 'school zone' is AND of course the cops who hunt motorists who are over the limit by even one MPH in such zones (the fine is double of course, go figure) -- someone should really break your fingers to give you a mandatory 6 week no-typing vacation.
People like are you (suburban soccer mom perhaps?) are the reason we don't get nice things. As soon as someone trots out anything safety related, logic and risk assessment go completely out in the window in lieu of fluffy feel good nonsense. Never mind the ACTUAL FUCKING EFFECTIVENESS OF WHAT YOU SUGGEST.
Wow. Who pissed in your chips?
Your argument was that you'd be "too busy checking your speedometer" (quote) to look out for children. I'm saying that if such a task is so distracting that you can't look at the road ahead then you're a poor driver and would likely fail a driving test.
If the speed drops by half on a road, with posted signs, and you think that's dangerous then we're clearly not on the same page at all. These sorts of things are common in the UK, for example, (and I'm sure in many countries that have roads) where an arterial route goes from the high speed limit (60 mph in the UK on non-motoways) down to 30 mph when passing through a small built up area. The signs are clearly marked, and there's plenty of warning.
When you see those signs you change speed. The obsessive checking of your speed to the exclusion of all other road perception is just nonsense. Roads have speed limits. Being able to drive your car at or below those limits without tunnel vision on the speedometer is one of the primary skills necessary to operate a vehicle safely. If you cannot do this (such that you feel you wouldn't be able to look out for children in a crossing while also being able to drive at the posted speed limit) then you have no business driving a car.
Of course what you're really angry about is that cops bust people for speeding.
If you can't drive a vehicle at a specified speed (designated by road signs) without being so distracted by the speedometer that you might crash then you should not have been issued with a driving licence and have no business operating a motor vehicle on a public road.
In the UK all the money from speed cameras and speed traps is used exclusively for public safety; digital speed warning signs, traffic calming, improvement of crossings etc. It's not used as a general police revenue source.
If you're looking at things like the weight of a solenoid capable of actuating a transmission as a significant impact on mileage vs an otherwise identical manual transmission then you're just reaching for things to support your original argument in the face of new evidence.
The difference in mass between different drivers is going to vary far more than the delta between a modern "manumatic" and a manual.
They're not the big heavy oil-filled lumps that they used to be.
When was the last time you looked at the technology behind an automatic? They've come on a long way. Many modern autos share more in common with manual transmissions the autos of old.
The automatic transmission on a Honda Jazz, for example, is a mechanically actuated manual box. The stick is replaced by a set of servos that change gear for you - the underlying mechanics are the same.
There are a whole host of other designs out there that have ditched the torque converter. Modern autos are at least as good as a modern manual transmission for drivetrain efficiency. The majority of the fuel saving is down to the operator between the pedals and the wheel.
Rich white male privilege exists. Homeless white male privilege doesn't. Addict white male privilege doesn't. Mentally ill white male privilege doesn't. White male abused by authority figure of either gender privilege doesn't. Divorced white male wanting custody of his kids privilege doesn't. How many white men with obviously shit lives does it take for the new left to realise that life is a damn sight more complex than white man bad everyone else good.
Only you are trying to make the argument "white man bad, everyone else good". My past several comments clearly don't say anything like that. I have specifically addressed that it is clear that not every white male is better off than everyone else, but my point is that despite the many exceptions you raise (and that I also have mentioned), society is *still* strongly biased in favour of white males in myriad ways that make living life as a white male starting the game on easy mode. This still means that some people will be shit at the game despite it being on easy, or still have bad luck. Overall though, white male privilege exists. Less than it used to (witness, for example, the vastly shrinking gender pay gap over the past several decades, or the advancements of the civil rights movement for non-white citizens).
To put it another way, would you argue that the problem of racism doesn't exist because there are successful black men? Or that homophobia is a sorted problem because most gays are leading decent lives that are better than some heterosexuals?
Males are not considered to be virtuous at all irrespective of colour. Try being anywhere near children as a man and see how 'virtuous' the man is considered to be. Men get shit for all the problems of society (even though we suffer from them too) and none of the credit for all the benefits. As to the pay gap, given that it's illegal to pay women less for the same job, can you give me some examples.
White male privilege might exist for Harvard graduates but for ordinary men they can have their home and children taken away from them on the event of a divorce, can be forced to fight in wars, are more likely to go to prison and the prisons are far more dangerous, are just as likely to be assaulted by their partner but are more likely to be arrested of they report it and are widely portrayed by the media as witless buffoons.
I see that's you're blinkered and looking for exceptions again. I rolled it all into one paragraph because I assumed you'd be able to see that *on the whole* white males are very privileged, but there are obviously situations where this is not the case.
Let's look at some examples.
Employment chance of equally qualified white male vs white female.
Employment chance of equally qualified white male vs black male or female.
Subjective trustworthiness of white male vs black male.
Actual salary figures for white male vs equally qualified white female.
Actual salary figures for white male vs equally qualified black male.
Incarceration rate as a function of population for white males vs black males.
Pervasive culture of "what did you do to provoke him?" victim-blaming in domestic abuse cases, sexual assaults, or discussions of the objectification of women. (note: this does not mean I am unaware of males as victims of sexual assault, domestic abuse and bullying).
But, yes, males are considered occasionally to be automatically sex offenders. Woe is them, white male privilege must not exist! (note: I am not condoning that, just to be totally clear).
It may be illegal to pay women less than men officially but this doesn't reflect reality. Simply making it illegal doesn't fix the problem unless something is actually done about it. There are many studies done on the wage gap. You might want to start at a non-primary source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap) and follow links from there - it's a pretty heavily cited article featuring a number of competing viewpoints, but the overall take-home message is that while the gape has narrowed in the past few decades, it still exists.
What privileged position does an ordinary white male occupy? There are plenty of poor white men and plenty of rich privileged white women. Not every white man is Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch.
That's the point - the average white male doesn't realise how good he has it. It's not about just wealth. It's about the assumptions that go with being white males. They have better opportunities, they are assumed to be more virtuous and productive than anyone who is a non-white, non-male (or any combination of those things).
This is why there's a pay gap between men and women of equal skill sets, and why less-qualified men are often promoted over more qualified women, or why less qualified whites are promoted over more qualified non-whites, or why non-whites viewed with more suspicion than whites.
Boiling this down to purely a money thing is too simplistic.
Our society is built on certain ingrained cultural assumptions that everyone has, conscious or otherwise. Some of them have fallen by the wayside as we have gone on, but the position as the white male at the top of that tree is the ongoing constant.
This doesn't mean that because there are examples of white males who are worse off than others that the system doesn't hold. You have to look at it on a large scale.
Now, what to do about that is a cause for some debate. I don't really have any answers, or feel like some of the proposed solutions are really adequate (for example, there are pros and cons to solutions like affirmative action that seek to address the ingrained hurdles that black people have when seeking employment that make such a system good in theory but at odds with a meritocracy in practice), but acknowledging that white male privilege exists is not controversial.
In your opinion that is what SJW-types think. Based on what I have seen they generally don't claim that the privileged "don't deserve protection from the oppressed", and in the majority of cases they argue for equality above all else - in fact, I think that's a pejorative argument used against them in this very thread - that an equal rights campaigner wants a ramp for the disabled, but a SJW wants to just ban everyone from entering the building lest someone be offended that they can't use the stairs - either you lampoon them for being aggressively egalitarian or you lampoon them for "allowing" the oppression of those they see as privileged, it can't be both simultaneously.
It's almost as if the characterisation of an entire group who all have vaguely similar ideology is difficult somehow because it contains individuals.
Nah, can't be that. They're all exactly the same!
I'm not the original commenter. I was just commenting on the amusing situation of a brave AC calling another brave AC a lazy twat after making an assertion with no evidence and being told that the burden of proof is on anyone who questions that.
Given that they've all bravely forgotten to log in, it might be one guy arguing with himself. Who knows.
No, I'm saying that the existence of white male homeless people doesn't mean that other white males (the vast majority, compared to white homeless males) are in a position of privilege in society.
I know you're going for the cheap joke, but I think your implication that these "rich white women" are making a fuss over nothing doesn't hold water.
Every time I pass a white male homeless person (by far the majority of homeless people in my city) I tell him to check his privilege and they are most grateful for my concern about social justice and the oppression of rich white women.
Is that man made of straw? Sure looks like it.
Actually, you (assuming you're the same AC who bravely 'forgot' to log in) made the original claim about her ruining an event. Where's your evidence for it?
There's a difference between critical peer review and character assassination. The lawsuit alleges the latter, not the former.
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."
