If you did that, then some stupid pedestrian would walk too close to the road, not see the signal change, get hit by a car and sue. Then the blinder would be removed again.

Or, even if that wouldn't actually happen, the excessively-risk-averse legal department (either at the signal manufacturer, or at the jurisdiction controlling the intersection) would still use such an argument to nix the idea before it would ever get installed.

We're not talking about cars sitting at the stop bar, we're talking about cars who have a green light who are approaching the intersection. The difference in angle between a pedestrian on the sidewalk and a car in the lane 15 feet to the side and 300 feet back up the road is only about 3 degrees.

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|<-15 ft->| [car]

there is no excuse for hitting a pedestrian in a cross walk or for a car to hit car at a cross walk

Of course there is! If the car has the right of way and is coming through the intersection at speed, but a pedestrian steps into the crosswalk against a "don't walk" signal when the car is too close to stop, then the resulting collision is the [now ex-]pedestrian's fault.

You can enter the intersection on yellow, and (legally speaking) it doesn't count as running the red even if it turns red while you're still in it. The point of the yellow light, however, is that you "shouldn't" enter on yellow unless it's physically impossible for you to stop. (But "shouldn't" is unenforceable.)

What they were thinking is that the phase needed to be longer to let all the vehicles through.

In other words, the minimum length of the green phase is determined by two factors: the time it takes for a pedestrian to cross (starting as soon as the light turns green) (X seconds), and the time it takes for the maximum design-capacity number of cars to cross (Y seconds). If Y > X, the light stays green after the pedestrian countdown ends.

And what if they don't? You're gonna deck them?

The problem is not drivers looking at the pedestrian signal for the crosswalk perpendicular to the, the problem is drivers looking at the signal for the crosswalk parallel to them. If I'm a driver with a green light, and I can see that the ped countdown timer for the same direction currently reads "7," then I know I have 7 seconds to get to the light before it turns yellow.

In contrast, looking at perpendicular pedestrian countdowns is useful when you're at a red light and wanting to know when it will turn green, although that's less reliable because you also have to know whether there will be any left turn phases.

(This assumes the limiting factor on the phase length is pedestrian crossing time, which is often the case.)

And the worst part is when there's a "courteous" dumbass with a gap behind him and then a platoon of cars behind that. If he just went immediately then I could pull out behind him. But because he tried to wait on me instead of just getting out of the way (but then eventually went when he realized that I refused to go out-of-turn), the gap behind him closed and now I have to wait for the whole damn platoon. Thanks, dumbass!

Adding a pole for the near side would add cost.

You already need a pole there for the button (unless your signals are unactuated and operate on every cycle).

On the contrary, I think he's saying we should give up "foreign" foods like pizza and hamburgers and eat more tacos, sopes and tamales instead!~

Of course, the reality may be that there's evidence of further illegal activities that he hasn't admitted to in the encrypted files. That might make the case for self-incrimination.

But in making such an argument, wouldn't he then be admitting them, thus invalidating the case for self-incrimination? Sure, it's a catch-22 (and therefore should not be true), but the judicial system doesn't seem to care about that anymore...

(Also, side-note, where the hell are the procedurally generated maps for the FPS genre? Why hasn't this happened yet?)

I have a suspicion that in that context, procedurally generated is a synonym for "boringly symmetrical," "unfair and exploitable," or both.

Some people might suggest that you could just make it bigger, but that's often not a feasible idea, even if it is lighter than the usual materials. For one example is why skyscrapers are not made of brick. It doesn't matter how wide your walls of brick would be, after a certain point, the weight of the bricks would crush the lower ones, and then the whole building collapses. The steel reinforced concrete we use can sustain much larger loads, and so is used for tall and heavy projects instead of bricks. Of course tethered satellite has to withstand much greater stresses, whether it's crushing down, pulling up, or swaying to the side. That's why super light but otherwise more conventional materials won't work.

Your own example disproves your argument: if the bricks in your skyscraper weighed much less (but had the same compression strength), then you could stack many more of them on top before the bottom brick would be crushed, allowing you to build a taller skyscraper.

Look, if you're so partisan that it blinds you to the blatant problems with this situation, then nothing I could say will convince you. I, however, can see that Republicans abusing their 501c3 status and Democrats corrupting the IRS to pursue a witch-hunt are both entirely possible. I don't know which of those happened -- cynically, I suspect both -- but I'm not going to pretend anybody is squeaky-clean just because they're on "my side!"

There is a saying: "once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." Even if each thing could plausibly be a mistake due to incompetence when considered individually, the combination suggests that somebody is acting in bad faith.

Unless you consider it gross incompetence to allow users to delete emails. Even the cat joke ones.

Disk space is cheap, and the Federal Records Act (etc.) says that stuff should be FOIA-able. So yes, I think that if somebody FOIAs the cat jokes then the IRS should be able to provide them!