But only if you pass on the donut. It's a problem when people choose the donut and the car, such poor choices could lead to an obesity epidemic.

Yes, I intend not to waste this gift called life.

Riding a bicycle is about 3 times more efficient than walking. Electric bikes are less energy efficient than normal bikes, but they're also easier for unhealthy people to ride.

At least it wasn't modded troll. Electric bikes are nice, normal bikes are more efficient, but for maximal efficiency the vehicle of choice is a velomobile. The human powered speed record on flat ground is over 80 mph (128 kph), in a velomobile.

Really heavy stuff should be transported by a truck, ideally by a localized freight/home delivery service. But this isn't really an argument against cars, because the majority of cars are rarely used to carry heavy things, and many heavy things (furniture) won't even fit in the typical sedan. If it's raining or cold, put on a coat. If it's hot, wear athletic fabrics and carry some insulated water bottles with ice water. If it's more than a few kms, stop being such a lazy ass--I rode my normal pedal bike over 6000 kms across the US. I ride my e-bike 5 kms to school every day, and do it faster than I can in my car. A bike can not do everything a car can do, this is true; just the same, a car can not do everything a bike can do. For any trip under 50 kms with less than 20 kgs of cargo (ie most of them), the bicycle is the most efficient option.

Put on a coat. The only weather that makes riding a bike impossible is several inches of snow, which usually precludes driving the average sedan as well. There are plenty of ways to carry groceries: a roomy backpack, an extracycle, a trailer (cargo or child), etc. As for kayaks, I've never seen it done but a kayak is certainly light enough to be towed by a bicycle.

An electric car is still a car--an absurdly overweight waste of energy. If you want something that can really make a difference, get an electric bicycle: cheaper, cleaner, healthier, and ~1000 mpg equivalent.

I'm sorry if you were offended, that wasn't my intention! I definitely agree that your English writing is decent, especially as a second language--not just that, I think your writing is amazing in light of that fact. But as former chief editor of one of the premier English literary periodicals, I think it's safe to say that Mr. Hodge's writing is several orders of magnitude better than most everyone capable of writing in English, myself included. There's no sense in being offended by facts.

If anything, I think the fact that your mind has independently arrived at the same conclusions of someone with such intellectual esteem should be taken as a high complement. Notice that I did account for the possibility that you actually reached these conclusions independently.

I try my best not to insult people, I'm a loving person who dreams of humanity living in harmony; naturally I do what I can to make that a reality, which precludes insulting random people. But, and I know I'm not the only one, I've noticed a strong tendency for the starkness of terse fixed font textual communication to enable drastic misinterpretation of the emotion behind the words. If this conversation were undertaken IRL, I think it would have been very clear that I didn't intend to offend.

Is that you, Roger D. Hodge?? If not, well, I would figure the probability of such a precise summary of his excerpt in this months Harper's arising by random chance rather low. I'm always happy to stumble across a Harper's reader (since it is the singular and most incredible source of actual journalism on Earth), and I commend your swiftness in reading and recognition of applicability, with a C for comprehension, but c'mon man! Give credit where credit is due!

"In January, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court held that restrictions on independent corporate expenditures in political campaigns are unconstitutional infringements on the freedom of speech. Much of the judicial literature on the subject, including Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Citizens United, simply substitutes the words "speech" and "speak" for the words "spend" and "buy." [...] It is a curious metaphysical doctrine, is it not? Corporations are artificial beings, theoretically immortal, which come into existence by means of state charters and reproduce like amoebas by splitting into subsidiaries; midwifed by lawyers, they combine in bizarre mating rituals called mergers; they are owned, like slaves, by shareholders who buy and sell their chattel daily; and they possess constitutional rights. Oddly, however, our corporate citizens are denied the right to vote. By what logic can a corporation be granted personhood and the constitutional right to speak money, yet be denied the constitutional right to vote? How can our system permit these corporate persons to be enslaved through ownership? [...] The Democratic Party's lamentable DISCLOSE Act, which this summer failed to muster sixty votes in the Senate, would do nothing, if passed, to curb the flow of cash and the further disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the citizenry. It is no great burden for large corporations and wealthy individuals to hire more clerks to file additional disclosure forms, and under current law we already know a great deal about who buys and sells our commodified rulers and their derivative legislation."

I take it back, there's no way you're Roger, his writing is several orders of magnitude better than yours. Moral of the story: everybody subscribe to Harper's, srsly 1 year for ~$17.

Sober Utah isn't as bad as one might think, or at least not for the reasons usually assumed; SLC is 55 to 66% non-Mormon and has one of the highest population of gays per capita in the US. Utah is also the 6th most urbanized state, with the highest proportion of income given to charity and the highest rate of volunteerism. Naturally, however, wet Utah is even more fun. We have a good array of fantastic local microbreweries (Squatters, Red Rock, Wasatch, Uinta, etc.) and access to some of the really excellent wee...err beer coming out of Colorado and California. The liquor laws can be a bit asinine, but mostly end up as minor inconveniences; regular strength beer can still be purchased.

Indeed, I still own my iPhone from 2007, which was used up until a few months ago; I had my iPhone before the app store came into existence. Sure there's the youtube app which will most likely have the video you're looking for, but it's not streaming a video on the full youtube.com page that you'd normally see. Not to mention there's a few other video streaming services that don't have apps.

Not only does my nexus one readily load flash content, the dolphin browser allows one to spoof the browser identity--quite handy for getting around mobile paywalls or into iPhone specific pages. Of course the true power of this new phone probably has more to do with the public existence of what resides at android.git.kernel.org

Yup, just remember that you wouldn't ever want to browse any web/video/picture/music/e/t/c sites that make use of Flash, like, oh man I can barely think of one... I guess youtube kinda counts, but who really wants to visit a dirty smelly wretched Flash site like youtube? See, that's the point, the iPad is SOOOO amazing because Flash is BAD. It's just so obvious that overpriced, locked down media is better than free Flash-based media, because, duh, battery life and stuff.

The summary states:

The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used.

Clearly then the sample isn't a random subset of 'all torrents' but instead of 'popular torrents on certain trackers.' This does not justify the proposition in the title "Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal."

That aside, fat chance I'm going to trust The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory to keep their science unbiased in this regard. Seriously, for whom would a sample size of 1,000 torrents seem even close to enough?

When most people see my Nexus One they ask if its a Droid. I'm a little tired of explaining that Droid is a hardware series (with an incredibly huge marketing budget) and Android is an OS.

This. I get very frustrated very quickly when I'm forced to use a mouse that doesn't have back/forward buttons. It makes navigating the FS a lot faster too.