I think as part of the settlement the cop should be subjected to being tazed by the 10 year old that he tazed. Also, the kid will be awarded a new car, and the offending FORMER officer will be required to wash it, with his tongue.

>> ^Hive13:

>> ^alien_concept:
What about all those people who work every day of their lives and can't build a decent future and don't have enough to pay the bills or have anything extra? I don't really understand how anyone can still believe in the American Dream...

I honestly still believe that the American Dream is still alive and well. There is a difference between working everyday to sustain versus working everyday to be better the next. You can't be comfortable in your life, no matter how successful or financially stable you are. You need to work hard to better yourself every day. The American Dream, to me, means a lot of hard work, dogged determination and a little luck. I honestly believe that ANYONE can be better today than they were yesterday.
I was kicked out of my house at age 17. I worked three jobs to have a shitty apartment and a car that barely ran, but I did it and life was pretty good. Then life reared its ugly head and it all came crashing down. I picked up the pieces and headed off to the Army. I had a great 6 years serving this country with lots of unique opportunities. It ended on a high note with me getting married and having my first child.
I started a new career, yet again, at the bottom eventually working my way up to project lead in charge of over 80 people through hard work, sacrifice and determination. It came crashing down again when my wife and I divorced and that company was closed and relocated.
I moved back home to Texas and literally started over from nothing at age 30. I took whatever jobs I could, eventually landing a six month contract deploying a software package and providing training to a worldwide engineering firm. At the end of the six months, I was given a three month extension to help overhaul the existing IT department and provide support to the existing IT staff and IT director. Again, through hard work and dedication, within 2 years I had saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in IT expenditures and was hired on as the new IT director. I am now remarried to my amazing wife, I have 4 amazing children, a house in the suburbs, a shiny new car and we have enough money to enjoy life and still put some away for our later years. Life is good.
I am not any better than anyone else. Anyone could have done the things I have done if they put their minds and hearts into it. That's the American Dream as I have lived it personally.


What about people with moderate learning difficulties, or disabilities? They're able to work, but not a chance in hell they could go into the army and take advantage of what they have to offer, or work in an IT department. I think the only people who believe in this dream are the ones who are lucky enough to have had it happen for them. Not everyone is in the same position as you were or are now. Some people will never be able to have a good job, because they just aren't able.

>> ^alien_concept:

What about all those people who work every day of their lives and can't build a decent future and don't have enough to pay the bills or have anything extra? I don't really understand how anyone can still believe in the American Dream...


I honestly still believe that the American Dream is still alive and well. There is a difference between working everyday to sustain versus working everyday to be better the next. You can't be comfortable in your life, no matter how successful or financially stable you are. You need to work hard to better yourself every day. The American Dream, to me, means a lot of hard work, dogged determination and a little luck. I honestly believe that ANYONE can be better today than they were yesterday.

I was kicked out of my house at age 17. I worked three jobs to have a shitty apartment and a car that barely ran, but I did it and life was pretty good. Then life reared its ugly head and it all came crashing down. I picked up the pieces and headed off to the Army. I had a great 6 years serving this country with lots of unique opportunities. It ended on a high note with me getting married and having my first child.

I started a new career, yet again, at the bottom eventually working my way up to project lead in charge of over 80 people through hard work, sacrifice and determination. It came crashing down again when my wife and I divorced and that company was closed and relocated.

I moved back home to Texas and literally started over from nothing at age 30. I took whatever jobs I could, eventually landing a six month contract deploying a software package and providing training to a worldwide engineering firm. At the end of the six months, I was given a three month extension to help overhaul the existing IT department and provide support to the existing IT staff and IT director. Again, through hard work and dedication, within 2 years I had saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in IT expenditures and was hired on as the new IT director. I am now remarried to my amazing wife, I have 4 amazing children, a house in the suburbs, a shiny new car and we have enough money to enjoy life and still put some away for our later years. Life is good.

I am not any better than anyone else. Anyone could have done the things I have done if they put their minds and hearts into it. That's the American Dream as I have lived it personally.

>> ^PancakeMaster:

> But just how much can you realistically reduce your emissions by through changed behaviour?
More than you can by buying a new car and continuing your status quo.


You'd be surprised. People have to eat and work. Most of their emissions are from food, and getting to work and back. You can't take a city like New York and just get them to start buying their produce locally, unless you want them to starve, it's gonna take more than the surrounding 100 miles to grow the food they need.

Buying a new electric car and having your produce delivered by electric truck or train would do more. Producing that electricity from nuclear would be radically more.

Large urban centers just aren't able to cut emissions in any of the ways you previously mentioned, it just doesn't work without transporting food a long ways, and the only way to get that off oil is electricity right now.

> But just how much can you realistically reduce your emissions by through changed behaviour?

More than you can by buying a new car and continuing your status quo.

>> ^PancakeMaster:

So the land development, building and fueling/mining of a nuclear power plant is free of emissions? What about waste disposal and decommissioning? Bremnet speaks the truth, albeit in a markedly sarcastic way. Car emissions come from energy production. Electric cars simply have their energy production out-sourced. Things become interesting at a local level with electric transport because you can potentially choose how your energy is produced. But you'd better believe that coal and oil is still powering all things electric in the majority of households, including recharging batteries.
I am a huge proponent of nuclear power, though I really wish LFTR's would come into production especially considering it's organic safety features and relative fuel abundance.
Since we're on the subject of electric cars, don't forget that the production of batteries and electric motors is very expensive. I'm not necessarily talking about monetary costs, but rather cost in resources and energy. Again, I support the development and usage of electric vehicles but dare not ignore their true cost.
>It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits.
You have so much more power to control your resource usage than the government. Don't rely on them for a solution. You can choose what you eat (agriculture is a huge resource spender), how you travel (walk or take public transport), what and why you buy (industry is another big spender), and your home resource usage. Don't pass the buck and blindly empower the government when it's our responsibility.
Now if only the planet was run on pancake power. Then, surely, I would be the true master of Earth.
edit
BTW, great video and awesome car. Would love to give it a go (as with all Audi Rx cars
>> ^bcglorf:
Well, nuclear is there to make electricity and vehicles emission free. If the greens hadn't worked so hard to ensure that nuclear power was stopped the 41% for electricity and whatever chunk of transportation is vehicles would all be gone.
But fine, is you wanna be sarcastic how about you chime in with a better solution. You hear plenty of chicken little's running around crying it's time to panic. You hear plenty of talk about reducing our emissions. You don't hear nearly so much about how to do that. It seems the only answer that comes up is carbon credits and absolute emission limits. Without nuclear power for electricity production and switching large parts of transportation over to electricity, what is left? Are we just to stop using transportation and electricity all together I suppose?
>> ^bremnet:
Yes, so true. Just look at all of the countries signing up for new nuclear power plants. Oh, and of course, those who generate their electricity today with that peskily cheaper natural gas from shale gas will likely just shut that down. Forgot to ask, how do we generate the electricity to charge our batteries? If you say anything that involves rubbing balloons in ones hair, well that's just too clever! Let's see - in 2009, 41% of global CO2 emissions were from the generation of electricity and heat, and only 23% for transport per the IEA report (that's all transport - cars, trucks, buses, seagoing vessels, trains, planes) so let's call your 30% a rounding error. By 2015, it is estimated that the total CO2 emissions from seagoing vessels will surpass that for all land based automobiles, so can we get a video of an electric cargo ship instead of this car? Pretty sure they have those, right? If we have electric vehicles, and have to generate more electricity ummm... (head explodes). Top marks for enthusiasm, but I'm afraid we're going to have to keep you back for another year to re-teach math and energy balance.




But just how much can you realistically reduce your emissions by through changed behaviour? I doubt even 50% is realistic. Now, how about getting our entire society to do the same, are people gonna voluntarily give up everything they need to drop 50%? Not a chance.

If electric cars can be improved enough to be desirable over gas, then a switch over to nuclear for electricity production can drop emissions nearly 50%. More importantly, it happens by consumers buying something new because they simply want to, and government/corporations making money off selling nuclear energy to run everyone's new cars.

Short of putting guns to peoples heads and telling them what they can and can not eat, how far they are allowed to travel in a year, and enforcing that across the globe, emissions ARE NOT going to be lowered. Electric cars and nuclear power are the only viable options out there and they are either ready now(nuclear) or will be very, very soon(electric cars).

Good news everyone. The climate change problem has been solved!

Seriously, with electric cars so near to eclipsing gas we are very close to a landslide change of technology. Batteries are getting good enough that electric cars will very soon be better than gas in every way. Once that happens, gas and therefore oil, consumption will drop near to zero. Human CO2 emissions will drop by almost 30%, and for no other reason than people buying that new car they want. Any nation willing to adopt nuclear can at any moment drop off another 80% of what is left.

The technology stop human CO2 emissions is coming or already here, and people will adopt it without needing to frighten, scare or coerce them into it.

>> ^Payback:

>> ^spoco2:
We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).
Aaaanyway.
When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.
Now I know <img class="smiley" src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">

Here is me, NOT telling you it was a cheap fix, even if the engine seized from overheating after you ignored the "check engine" warning light. I also won't tell you that if it didn't come to a screeching, banging, violent halt, you probably could have "nursed" it home/to mechanic by waiting until it cooled down.
No sir, I REFUSE to tell you any of that.
I will tell you that if the reason it couldn't be pressurized was "a warped cylinder head" then ya, the engine is boned, but I'll avoid saying it would be about $2500 for a motor out of a auto wrecker (junk yard, used parts lot, etc) or even around $300 for a new cylinder head.


Well that's good to know (sort of). My wife was driving it at the time, and the check engine didn't come on, but it did come to a screeching, banging halt, with steam pouring out of the engine bay. To get an engine from one of these old ones rebuilt is around $4K (Australian), and that's about all the 2002 carnival is worth now, no-one wants to touch them. There's no point getting a 2nd hand engine from anywhere as there's not many to begin with, and they're just not reliable enough to spend the money on anyway.

So it was either a scrap yard for $500, or a trade in for $600. We had to be able to drive it in. Limped it in (still no check engine light on), handed it over, bid them good luck with it. We had told them the engine had blown up, but they were 'well, if you can drive it in, we'll give you $600 for it'. So it's not like we lied to them about the condition of the car. They'll scrap it for parts anyway.

>> ^spoco2:

We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).
Aaaanyway.
When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.
Now I know


Here is me, NOT telling you it was a cheap fix, even if the engine started to seize from overheating after you ignored the "check engine" warning light. I also won't tell you that if it didn't come to a screeching, banging, violent halt, you probably could have "nursed" it home/to mechanic by waiting until it cooled down.

No sir, I REFUSE to tell you any of that.

I will tell you that if the reason it couldn't be pressurized was "a warped cylinder head" then ya, the engine is boned, but I'll avoid saying it would be about $2500 for a motor out of a auto wrecker (junk yard, used parts lot, etc) or even around $300 for a new cylinder head.

We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).

Aaaanyway.

When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.

Now I know

>> ^MilkmanDan:

If somebody double-parks you in like that, I think it is basically reasonable to give them a "nudge" if it will buy you enough room to get out. But as mentioned by @Payback, it looked like there was likely enough room to squeak through at the correct angle either without hitting either car, or certainly after a light push or two of the offending car.
Being pissed off makes us take things further than necessary, but I'd still say that is not much of an excuse for when he tried to do a sustained push and the rear end slid around into the innocent bystander car to the right.
I kinda miss the good old days, when cars had bigass bumpers and weren't afraid to use 'em. My first car was a 1979 Lincoln Continental. That thing had a huge bumper with thick rubber pads at the contact points, not to mention what seemed like a 20' long hood (that was 60% empty, not like modern cars where the machinery fills the entire hood). In that car, high mass + thick bumper = anything blocking your path wouldn't stay there for long.


Yeah, also meant that in a crash you died.

Seriously, crash in a new car compared to an old car and you are umpteen times more likely to walk away from the accident. I think more easily dinted bumpers is a small price to pay for being alive.

So many mixed messages in there.

I think a large amount of the population is running at bare minimum as it is. When I was young, we used to go for "Drives" and do "road Trips" just for the sake of it. Now we can't afford it.

We have to budget our trips into town so we do as many things as we can in each trip. We don't make extra trips to friend's places that live more than a few kilometers away, We don't even drive into town to shop at the mall or go to Costco or whatever.

It seems like freedom of movement has just taken care of itself. We can't move around if we can't afford it. And we can't afford it if they keep raising the prices on us.

15% less? I already use around 50% less than I did 15 years ago and the prices still go up.
Modern SUVs are still more economical than the Boats we used to drive 20-30 years ago.
15 years ago, when we bought our new car - we were exited that it only cost $22 to fill the tank. We now pay $70 - Can that be right?

>> ^Fusionaut:

Is "crapload of shit" covered by insurance?


Only the rear window and a "deluxe" car detail.


Personally, I would sue to get a new car AND move me to a different town.

Odd, I want a new car. I don't even drive!

@Grimm - At the risk of stating the obvious, don't you think it's more logical to believe that Reagan's loyalty to big money (and ALL of his predecessors) might have played a dominant role in the degradation of American public education, rather than the fact that a Department of Education exists? Boise laid out a number of deliberate poison pills in his comment. You've merely asserted your claim without any rational other than an arbitrary number of trips around the sun.

Let's say you buy a new car, and I tell you I hate it and intend to pop the tires, break the windows and light it on fire after you go to sleep. If the next morning you wake up to find your car on fire, with popped tires and broken windows, would you take it back to the dealer and claim the car was faulty? This, in essence, is what you are doing here.

If I were you, the logical counter argument would be, "well there you go, you've made my case, a malicious or subservient (take your pick) president was able to have a hugely negative effect on education nationally. Had it been left to the states, our educational system would be a utopic wonderland."

To which I would respond, "If big money can compromise a huge government, what makes you think they couldn't eat a state house for champagne brunch?"

The problem with libertarians is that they are unwitting allies of the corporate state. They believe that getting rid of government would end authoritarianism, completely failing to understand that the kind of authoritarianism that haunts our country would prefer to be unrestrained by government too. Right libertarianism, if enacted, would indeed provide more liberty to a handful of wealthy and powerful people, but it would come at the cost of liberty to the vast majority. 1% vs 99% if you will. Sound familiar? I see no clear difference between libertarianism and social Darwinism. If you respond to any of this, I'd most like to know how you differentiate libertarianism from social Darwinism.

I think a vast amount of people would prefer the liberty of healthcare, education, roads, fire departments, police departments, schools and libraries to the liberty to dominate a labor force, the liberty to pollute the environment with impunity, the liberty to manipulate the banking system or the liberty to build bloody corporate empires on foreign shores. What makes you think the business men that took us to war in the middle east wouldn't be twice as brutal without a single shred of oversight or transparency? What makes you think deregulated labor markets wouldn't revert back to pre-regulation era slavery if given the option?

If social Darwinism is what you truly desire, then we have nothing more to say to each other. However, if you want to stop authoritarianism, then stop trying to make it easier for authoritarians to thrive. Ron Paul is a nice fella and all - an adorable little grandfatherly gnome even - and I take him at his word when he says he believes his economic hypothesis would create liberty. Unfortunately, reality begs to differ. And, sincerity is no excuse for bad ideas.

Good debate. Peace.

You can join the convo too if you like @GeeSussFreeK