I think the union just acknowledged that nobody is safe with their drivers, no matter what. Shameful that they are pressing the attack in light of the fact that one of their drivers is responsible.

No I am using the term "drivers" divisively. If they truly were engineers, they would be demanding safety protocols to be implemented and equipment to be installed.

That's true - olympic medals are only required to contain a minimum of 6 grams of gold, and at least 92% silver. Even still, it's a an incredible price

$9.4 billion for a 28 mile road. And we're not talking through an urban area, just simple new constuction. 4 lines. 28 miles. 45000 meters long with an actual driving width of... oh, let's say 3,5 meters per lane? Not sure what's typical. So about 157500 square meters. $60k per square meter. I mean, seriously, just think about that. You could stack $1000 Louie Vitton handbags 5 layers deep across the whole road for that money. $9.4 billion for 28 miles? You could pay Russians $3 an hour to carry passengers on their shoulder at 3 miles per hour and carry 50 thousand passengers per day every day and it wouldn't cost as much as the road for nearly 20 years.

Really? That's your example of something comparable to Roscosmos embezzling 10% of its annual budget? Operation Lightning Strike which turned out to be a big entrapment op that spent years trying to convince non-key players to commit crimes that they never would have otherwise, and a link that's anything but an endictment of NASA?

This is, after all, the same country whose 28 mile road to the Olympics cost more than if they'd covered the whole road with gold medals two layers thick. ;)

Concerning this privatization, the only question that remains is, which friend of Putin is going to get to "buy" the space agency at a " fair market value" ;)

Telling the users it's time to crap is the Apple watches killer app.

Apple users rectums being somewhat desensitized by all the pounding they take.

Nuke all known mosquito habitat from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

A significant mistake will permanently cripple a young scientists career, if not outright end it.

We're not talking about fucking one of your committee members slutty daughters.

That problem isn't the taxi's problem, it is a train problem. I could design a bus system in New York that would Eliminate the need for Taxis.

Setting aside the sheer depravity of this argument, we have ample historical context for what happens when society cuts off the neediest. France, Haiti, Cuba, China, Russia, Algeria, Egypt, India, Scotland, The Phillipines, Mexico--just to name a few places where social and political inequality have driven massive, bloody revolts.

Wealth and political power calcify with the already wealthy and powerful. The middle and working classes slowly lose what wealth they have through attrition. Poverty becomes a virtually inescapable sink of destitution. Eventually, enough people end up having quite literally nothing to lose that you get vicious, deadly, destructive revolutions that take generations to recover from.

If you insist on taking a "pragmatic" view of not even bothering to -try- to improve the lives of the impoverished, try to at least understand the historical ramifications of what you're arguing for.

So you're saying that our educational system should focus on not leaving any children behind? What a startlingly original idea - I can see no flaw in that plan!

You'll be seeing the bats soon enough...

The hard part is getting the bats to draw lots to see which one gets beat to death by the remaining 9/10.

What? You only wanted to go back _one_ previous definition of decimate?

I think that mixing the smart kids in with everyone else is just misguided in the first place - that it's a passing symptom of the "participation trophy" culture (which has IMO passed it's peak and already started the other way). Do you think the old-school system would work well if it were all smart kids?

IMO it would - it would in fact let you socialize properly with people smart enough to get your jokes (or at least, that was always my problem). And the nice part is: it scales down well - for smaller schools who otherwise couldn't make a gifted&talented program work, combing a few grades just might. I know I was greatly held back because I didn't have other smart kids to mentor me - my parents gave 0 fucks about my education, and before the internet, in a small town with a crappy library, well, self-education sucked.

We've had the old system in place since the dawn of the Industrial Age. It no longer suits our needs because we don't need Industrial Education. YET, we are fighting to keep it, rather than use the metrics we have available under the information age to have appropriate education for every student at all times. We no longer need Teachers, but we rather need facilitators, to help kids maximize their potential at the time they can attain it. The methods of Industrial education do not afford us the ability to teach the smart kids like they are smart, and the slower kids like they need.

This is going to require a huge shakeup of status quo.

So you point us to a book of propaganda?

It is a good example of someone trying just what you describe.