It's a jury of one's peers, not the government, that finds a person guilty of a capital crime. And, complaining about ObamaCare? That's not complaining about the government "healing." It's complaining about a strictly partisan law (rammed through without anything like a proper vote, and with nobody knowing the full consequences) that results in massive new debts, new and higher taxes, huge growth in bureaucracy, new ways to be guilty for doing nothing, hundreds of thousands of people a month getting insurance cancellation letters because the policies they've held for years are suddenly no longer good according to the administration, employers cutting back on full time jobs, doctors refusing to take on new patients and running away from people using existing programs like Medicare, people getting their monthly rates doubled or tripled (ours more than tripled, and we went from a $1000 deductible to a $6000 deductible), and a host of other things that have exactly NOTHING to do with anyone being "healed."

The government is chartered, in the constitution, to provide law enforcement. Not to force post-menopausal women to buy insurance that covers infant care. Not to send the IRS in to garnish your wages if you don't like the plan, or to send the new bill for all the people that will be subsidized along to middle-class and above taxpayers (once those poor people cough up hard cash for their brand new multi-thousand-dollar deductible).

If you think it's suddenly the government's job to make sure that everyone has health insurance (though the estimate is that even if they get all of the sign-ups they're wishing for by young people who at the moment are unable to even get a person on the phone, let alone use total failure of a web site that the administration put together), there will still be thirty million people who won't have insurance.

The complaint is that the entire concept was a deliberate, bald-faced lie. And that every promise made about people being able to keep their insurance, their doctors, their privacy, and more of their money was a purposeful deception. Deliberate falsehood. Fraud. Willful deceit.

Yes, there is a savings, but how much is it going to cost NY taxpayers up front ? Would a better strategy be to replace the sodium lights with LED style lights, as they wear out?

Upfront costs don't matter much; the cost is in the labor getting to these lights. Every time they replace one, the future labor cost drops.

It only helps if somebody pushes at the correct time; but if the fixtures are being reevaluated in anything resembling a serious way, that's your best chance to get action on things like fixtures that point upward, ill-designed fixtures that don't target their output very well, and all the various other dubious lighting decisions that help add up to light pollution.

Unfortunately, the major impact around me is that our streets are now incredibly bright at night...they used the extra efficiency to make everything brighter, not use less power. God help you if you've got a bedroom that falls within the cone the new LED lights throw, too. My bedroom became lit like a supermarket, even with the shades down. It took four calls to the city before someone came out and re-tweaked the light.

Really, I wish people would pay attention to the studies that show that brighter != less crime/safer.

It also explains why Fred and Barney were always cooking up colossally dumb ideas.

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Citation? You won't find one. Because it has to do with federal regulations making it nearly impossible to set up production for it in the US.

Oh, come on. Even you know those are completely different issues. The whole point of having some monstrous serial-child-raping-killer put out of everyone's misery is so that such a person is prevented from ever again interfering in people's lives (in either repeating the crime, or still breathing and having breakfast every morning even as the family of a murdered victim gets to wake up, permanently, to the absence of the person killed, and to pay taxes every week to buy that guy his breakfast).

Law enforcement, used to protect people from and to punish the likes of unrepentant violent killers, is exactly in keeping with the expectations of a rationally-sized, constitutionally sound government. Complaining about the hiring of 20,000 new IRS agents who are assigned to track and punish folks like 50-year old couples who don't buy government mandated health insurance that forces them to purchase pre-natal care they'll never use is not irreconcilable with preferring a stone cold killer to be stone cold dead instead of outliving his victims by decades.

You really think that killing someone else for their food is OK? There are always other options.

Many convicted killers say they'd rather die (sooner, by execution) than live out their lives in prison. So if we're talking about horrible things to do to people, should the jury that sends a 20-something person away for decades or for life have to be the team of people that guards the convict in prison? How else would a juror really show that the murderer deserves it, right? When someone is locked up for life in a place that's almost certain to drive them somewhat (or very) mad, could quite likely get them raped for decades, and which certainly would make any normal person utterly miserable ... are you letting the juror who helps to make that happen off the hook? No? Yes? Can't have it both ways.

US Executions Threaten Supply of Anaesthetic Used For Surgical Procedures

HIGHLY misleading headline. I read the headline and thought, "wow, so many executions are occurring in the US that there's not enough of this drug for non-execution purposes"... which is a much more straightforward interpretation than what the article eventually gets into, which is that the use of the drug in a single execution would make an EU regulation kick in.

BOOOOOOO, slashdot editor. Boooo.

It's an example of how 95% of cyclists in my city and many others ride.

ANECDOTES ARE NOT EVIDENCE. You used it to support your claim that all cyclists are law-breaking, reckless, and cause their own injuries.

Cyclists are not reckless compared to anyone else using the road, and their behavior is substantially less reckless given that when they commit the same traffic infractions, they only endanger themselves. NYC counts cyclist-on-ped injuries and they account for less than 1% of total pedestrian injuries; the other 99% are motor vehicles.

Further, your claim that this reckless behavior equates to causes of injuries and deaths, is also bullshit. There are numerous studies and reviews that disprove this myth.

Again: just like women who blame rape victims for getting raped (she was drunk, she was dressed inappropriately, she shouldn't have been on that street, she shouldn't have been alone, etc) you're constructing a myth to convince yourself that you're better, and won't get injured or killed because you're better. You're doing it again, sanctimoniously talking about sport/recreational riders now (what does their clothing have to do with it?) Some day, a driver is going to do something illegal, you're not going to be able to avoid it despite how amazingly awesome a perfect bike rider you are in your non-spandex shorts. Then you'll get to witness first-hand the victim-blaming crap I've experienced.

Here's some real facts and studies:

Australian helmet cam study: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/study-blames-drivers-for-bike-crashes-20101122-18330.html

London study: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/drivers-to-blame-for-twothirds-of-bicycle-collisions-in-westminster-8602166.html

UK-wide study: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study

Toronto study which found cyclists at fault in TEN PERCENT of crashes: http://www.examiner.com/article/study-claims-cyclists-at-fault-only-10-percent-of-crashes

Perhaps I should have clarified - in my town, cyclists over the age of 18 are considered motor vehicle operators and thus, legally ineligible to travel on the sidewalks. Therefore, any incident of a cyclist hitting a pedestrian on a sidewalk in this city is automatically ruled to be the cyclists fault.

That doesn't change the nature of your claim that cyclists hitting pedestrians - anywhere - is a significant problem.

Call your local police department and ask them for how many pedestrians were hit by motor vehicles this year. Then ask how many cyclists hit pedestrians.

It's liable to be a 99%/1% ratio, or thereabouts.

Separately: there's nothing like criminalizing a behavior people do because they feel safer. The reason people ride on sidewalks is because they're terrified to ride in the road. And why is that, exactly, hmm?

I have an older version, but effectively the injury/death rate is mostly effected by poor decisions by the cyclist, not the car.

First off, "the car" doesn't do anything. The driver does. You're attributing behavior to an inanimate object, something I see people do constantly.

Second: several decades of research proves your claim wrong. Most collisions are due to the driver doing something illegal, sometimes simply failing to yield because they think they have right-of-way over someone on a bicycle.

Australian helmet cam study: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/study-blames-drivers-for-bike-crashes-20101122-18330.html

London study: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/drivers-to-blame-for-twothirds-of-bicycle-collisions-in-westminster-8602166.html

UK-wide study: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study

Toronto study which found cyclists at fault in TEN PERCENT of crashes: http://www.examiner.com/article/study-claims-cyclists-at-fault-only-10-percent-of-crashes

The list goes on. Keep in mind that studies which are based off police reports that aren't carefully analyzed are typically faulty because police very often incorrectly side with motorists, don't interview cyclists, witness statements are wrong, etc. It's common to review a report, see obvious signs that the motorist did something illegal, and police do not cite them, and often cite the cyclist.

This guy was hit and two witnesses and the driver claimed he ran a red light; police tried to give him a ticket for running the light. He knew he hadn't. He found video from a traffic camera showing very clearly that he was cut off by the driver - what we call a "left cross": http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19284/it-must-have-been-your-fault-cmon-you-are-a-biker/

It should make you stop and think to consider that many cyclists ride with helmet cameras. There's a reason - drivers lie, police don't believe us (or very often we're incapacitated or otherwise unable to defend ourselves), and witnesses are discriminatory towards cyclists or simply don't understand traffic laws or think they saw what they didn't.

It's caused a lot of tension between drivers and cyclists because there's a sense amongst drivers (and pedestrians too, for that matter) that we're spending millions of tax dollars catering to a group who a) don't follow the rules of the road and b) feel that the rules don't apply to them.

If we applied that logic, we'd stop building roads entirely.

In my city, I routinely see people driving down the road with their headlights off in the middle of the night. Cops don't care.

Crosswalks? I stop at crosswalks on my bike for peds; drivers frequently blow by me, even when I intentionally swing further out into the lane to help the ped cross.

Despite an anti-texting law, drivers are constantly staring at their phones, and it's quite common to see a light change, and they just sit there, staring at their phone. I've watched driver sit through an entire green light cycle if there wasn't someone behind them.

Our red lights can't be taken at face value because there's a good chance for up to several seconds after the other direction has had a red light, some asshole will fly through the light above the 30mph speed limit; you have to look both ways before entering an intersection with a green light these days. Sometimes people just drive through lights that have been red because they don't see any other traffic.

That represents substantially more of a threat to public safety than someone on a bike going through a red light, where they by and large only place themselves at risk (and thus have a vested interest in crossing safely.)

The only reason you think cyclist-red-light-running is such a problem is because you're used to drivers doing it constantly, cyclists are a minority, and you're a driver.