These guys are idiots. They should be operating from a ladder placed ON the roof in case there is a collapse.

The gear they have will protect from ambient heat for a while, but only for a very short time in direct flame. The face masks, for example, are made of acrylic. If the heat gets much over 400ish degrees, and they will start to melt. If any of these guys fell trough the roof into a fully involved fire, they wouldn't have much time. And those suits aren't very mobile.

Back when my dog was still with me (put to sleep at 17yrs for congestive heart failure, btw) when we went out in my convertible, and had to park somewhere, I brought along a big golf umbrella and left the roof down so he'd have some place out of the sun and still get cool air.

Would of been cooler if painted orange with a Confederate flag on its roof.

Lmao. You're so ignorant it hurts.

"All was cool".. BECAUSE YOU'RE WHITE! Duh.

@_@ omg it's not that difficult a concept to understand.

Let's play a game. Spot the difference:

Sandra Bland - a black women - was violently detained.

Her head smashed into the ground & held down with a knee in her back by two officers. She was held in jail for 3 days before her mysterious death.

Her crime? Failure to signal while changing lanes.

The Charleston shooter - a white male - was detained & arrested without incident.

He - a wanted, armed & dangerous criminal - was handled gingerly.

Approached calmly by officers who almost immediately holster their weapons.
He's politely removed from the vehicle & arrested.
He's even brought fast food as to not violate his rights.

His crime? The hate-based mass-murder of 9 people.


Tell me, Bob.
Can you spot the difference?

Do you really think the media or 5-8% of blacks & their behavior "influenced" the cops in Sandra Bland's arrest?

If so, why didn't the 5-8% of lazy stupid savage whites influence the arrest of racist roof?

Do you really think that white people have absolutely NO advantage in: getting a job, a loan, or not being immediately brutalized by cops?


It's okay. Your stupid, racist, circular-logic answer doesn't matter.
Just want you to think about that for while.

They forgot one from the neighbor's roof, and one from the drone flying above....oh and one from the backboard...

I love how the car just drives on and pulls over. Fair enough, no idea you now have a guy on your roof, but so bizarre.

Lets be honest.
Most of didn't know anything about the flag when we were kids.
We all knew it as the flag that was on the roof of the Duke boy's car.
We thought it was cool, becuase it symbolized the General Lee "CAR" Don't forget the horn blast.( https://youtu.be/zAKksqKR3pI )

As we got older, we started to learn more about the flag, and what it represented.
But it's hard to let go of the happy childhood memories of watching the Dukes of Hazard every week and loving the car and the flag. And that is part of what stands in the way of us seeing what the flag symbolizes.
For most of us, we've imprinted a new meaning on the flag, so we don't always see it at a hate flag.

For those who view the swastika, we don't always see the symbol of peace it was for decades before the Nazi's appropriated it. We now only see it for the hate that redefined it.

Just some interesting thoughts....

Edit: I'm not defending the flag and it's use.
I don't celebrate tradition for tradition's sake - I think that's a poor excuse for flying the flag. It does represent bigotry in the Southern States, anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
I'm up in Canada, very detached from the bigotry down there, to me, it's the flag that was on the Duke's car.

Idiot. Should have painted a Confederate Flag on the roof. Improves the ballistic properties.

Anyone notice how crime in Baltimore has shot through the roof since the police have been shackled?

Proves that the cops are preventing crime there, at least they were until the gov't got everyone riled up.

Now Baltimore is a self-cleaning oven.

Wow, this dude has serious mental problems.
He thinks he heard Michelle say that? Odd, I didn't hear any of that when I listened....in fact I heard her say clearly 'that's not an excuse' repeatedly. I also heard her say repeatedly 'we' can overcome those obstacles, not 'we need government to overcome those obstacles'.
Hilarious, "what makes the tension die down is getting out there and using your 'god given talent' to be of good service to each other" sure sounds a lot like 'when we channel our frustrations into study and organizing...we can build ourselves and our communities up', but this guy shouts one from the roof top, and shouts down the other. WTF?!?
Open your F'ing ears, jackass.
What outrageously insane, inflammatory, inappropriately infuriated BS.
*fail

The tax level in Norway has fluctuated between 40 and 45% of GDP since the 1970s. The relatively high tax level is a result of the large Norwegian welfare state.

You literally dwarf the US tax rate per person, almost by double the amount.

You have a VAT tax of 25%, among the highest in the world. My equivalent is sales tax, which is 8.25% on the dollar, and it should be 2.5% lower than that, but Austin is a super-left city that taxes extra to cover all their feel good plans.

To be clear, the average Norwegian household pays roughly $70,000 per year in tax. Including the state’s oil income, government tax revenue exceeds $100,000 per household.

Discretionary spending is kept to an extreme minimum, because you don't have much left after taxes. The cost of living and recreation in Norway is through the roof compared to other countries.

Workers come to the office, punch a clock, shuffle papers, and go home. There is no cultural drive to work hard and get promoted. Norway has created a system that makes it virtually impossible to pull ahead of your peers financially. In fact, culturally, there is a thing where you are NOT supposed to do better than someone else.

What major worldwide innovations or brands do we get out of Norway? None that I can think of offhand, but here is a list of some of their more important companies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Norway.

So, you get taxed a ton, cost of living is incredibly high, there is no incentive to do better than anyone else, and in return you get to have free stuff like healthcare and education. Not that it matters really, because once you get out of school you get to become a worker bee drone. Unless of course you move to another country and get to achieve something there.

So, yeah, enjoy your hive mind country. As screwed up as mine is, at least there is a chance to become something if you work hard and invest correctly.

It's quite amazing how people can walk away from a crash like that on their own two feet. hooray for car safety measures. Also, they were very lucky. If they had hit that tree with the roof above them, they were now probably dead.

It's kind of sad that the homeless in America can't even live in a shanty town, or under a bridge (they put spikes under bridges). I'd much rather my taxes went to putting a roof over their heads then say the f-35 or the new stealth bomber. Maybe they could live on the Koch Brothers yacht... you know the one trimmed with dinosaur bones.

Solar shingles will be much harder to pay for themselves, they cost more and produce less, but they do look less obtrusive if that's an issue.
EDIT: One thing they have going for them is you can trap the water off your roof for yard usage like a metal roof, where normal tar shingles contaminate the water requiring a filter/oil separator. Here in Ca, that's a HUGE benefit, we have a terrible water shortage.
I live in N Ca, where we get tons of fog, and my panels/system have paid for themselves in under 1/2 their expected lifespan...so now I'm set for 10-12 years of free electricity, even though I live where there's less sun than most places. I can't fathom why every home in Phoenix isn't covered in them...it makes no sense whatsoever that they aren't taking advantage of their sun.

I use slightly less than that myself on average, but we have solar water heating (supplemented with gas), so that's a good savings (especially since it also heats the hot tub), and we replaced all our light bulbs with led bulbs when they became feasible last year. Now, we usually read between 400 and 1000 watts during the day (depending on how many lights I have on, and if the refrigerator is cycled on or not.) That's running a big screen TV, computer, and often ps4 almost all day, every day. We also have electric stove and oven...and I weld, adding somewhat to our total.

Yes, my battery bank is only useful for power outages. It's enough to keep the lights on and the fridge from thawing, but not much else. We get about 3-4 hours out of it if I don't notice the power went out, but can make it all night if we conserve. Our system is grid tied, and first powers the home, then tops off the batteries, then sells any excess to PG&E. To date, I've never drawn the batteries down to zero...but we do have a small generator to supplement it when the power's out for days. The average home would certainly need more, but a 10kwh battery should be plenty to make it through an average night without AC (we don't have AC here).

My current system could not produce that much, but close. I live in N California, one of the foggiest areas in the US. Because we have a renter, an electric hot tub, dishwasher, and electric washer and drier, we use slightly more than we generate at this point, but my system is upgradeable to 6500 watts of generation (I have less than 1/3 of that now) when panels get cheaper...and when I can find space for more.

My system is not flat to my roof, and I have 2 strings of 8 panels. With the solar water tubes, it takes up most of the south 1/2 of my roof (1200 sq ft home). I could maybe fit 4 more panels up there and still be able to walk around them to clean them, but any more and I'll need some mounting structure. I really want to add a small wind turbine to generate at night or when there's a storm...solar doesn't work in the dark.

In America, we still have some rebates for people adding solar to their homes, but they are drying up fast. 15-20 years ago, you could almost do it for free if you got every rebate available.

We used to have about 1-2 weeks of power outage where I live per year, and that was part of why we did they system. We hated having no power and losing food every year, and also hated paying the ever rising cost of electricity. Before adding our system, we had $4-500 a month electric bills, now we have <$100 in winter and sometimes a negative bill in summer...we pay our bill once a year now, lump sum at the end of 12 months.
On to your second post....
I often think...electric cars were popular and the norm in cities before Ford came along. It's still astonishing to me that it was basically dropped for a century as a technology (with minor exceptions). I'm glad someone had finally gone back to it and is trying to fix it's issues. If I could afford a Tesla, I would have one.

I also agree, people won't adopt the technology as long as they have to sacrifice lifestyle for it. I said the same thing, but I found that I don't change my lifestyle at all with my solar system, I just pay lower bills. I determined that buying a system would pay for itself in under 10 years, with the lifespan of a system being about 20 years, that's 10 years of free electricity! That all assumes electric rates didn't go up, and they certainly have gone up...but not for me. You just need to be sure you install enough panels to supply all your power, and you're there.

The battery thing is really mostly for non-grid tied systems, or emergencies. Most people don't use batteries at night, it's simpler and cheaper to just sell power to the grid during the day and buy it back at night if you can, using them as your battery. Perhaps this battery will change that, but with lead acid, it's hard to make them worth the cost.

Panels aren't that expensive, really. In many areas, with rebates, they can be near free. (some companies will even give them to you and split the power generated off your roof). It's a myth that solar is expensive...when compared to non-solar. Mine are paid for by bill savings already (8 years + in) so I'm saving money with them now, and my lifestyle has not suffered in the least. I have lights on if its dark, I watch TV all day, and use the computer all day, have tons of electric devices I use, and soon will power a pond, etc. I often think that my life is a much better example of how you can be 'green' without much change than Gore's. He really doesn't seem to walk the walk, but he can sure talk the talk.