A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Fuck. A goddamned client.


While I lick your dog's belly, can you please tell us more about your fascinating years in Japan, Mr. Spanky?

I don't own a dog, but I do own some cats. Do you lick cats? I am sure mine would love to have their bellies licked?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Spanky
I don't own a dog, but I do own some cats. Do you lick cats? I am sure mine would love to have their bellies licked?

Anyone else want this softball? No? Okay, I gave up cat licking for lint.

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Spanky
Nothing that glamourous. They are political fundraisers. Fashion Board? Pee Wee herman has more fashion sense than I do.

The Fashion Board here at Lawtalkers is not really about fashion. It's more of an online cocktail party. Or, maybe more accurately, it's like a high school lunchroom.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop


I don't doubt that CAFE standards are ineffective. If you want to discourage people from driving, you need to make it more expensive.

I suppose there are two questions.

1) Have CAFE standard contributed at all to a reduction in gasoline consumption.

2) Are there less socially expensive ways to achieve a comparable reduction in gasoline consumption.

While 1 may be in dispute, 2 is not--there are far better ways, but they piss of fringe because she thinks it's the Man sticking it to the poor commuter.

BTW, CAFE does not make driving more expensive--precisely the opposite. It lowers the marginal cost of driving, which means greater consumption. The only expense it raises is the fixed cost of starting out, but as you know that has no effect on marginal cost of consumption.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Spanky
Seriously - That is a good question? What is the difference between asphault, pavement and cement. Are there different qualities to the stuff you pave the roads with? Cheap stuff that doesn't last as long and quality stuff that lasts longer? Anyone know about this stuff?

There are differences, but they relate more to the conditions in which they are used and their respective costs. Cement lasts longer, but is more expensive. Pavement/asphalt don't work as well in hot climates (cement is worse in cold climates), but is cheaper, and also more easily patched. Anyway, there are a host of variables. States have an incentive to get the most bang for their buck, since they money is fixed. Arkansas for years had the shittiest roads--they got fixed because Clinton was president, not because they got more money for shitty roads.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
There are differences, but they relate more to the conditions in which they are used and their respective costs. Cement lasts longer, but is more expensive. Pavement/asphalt don't work as well in hot climates (cement is worse in cold climates), but is cheaper, and also more easily patched. Anyway, there are a host of variables. States have an incentive to get the most bang for their buck, since they money is fixed. Arkansas for years had the shittiest roads--they got fixed because Clinton was president, not because they got more money for shitty roads.

Decisions made by state governments about which road contractor to use are often -- surprisingly -- made on the basis of who knows whom, rather than who will make the bestest, cheapest roads.

Relatedly, the low-income housing that became the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago was built as high-rises at least in part because more of the program costs would be construction costs which could be slated to the right companies. And yet pointy-headed landscape architects get the blame.

(eta: My source for this, btw, is Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land.)

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
I suppose there are two questions.

1) Have CAFE standard contributed at all to a reduction in gasoline consumption.

2) Are there less socially expensive ways to achieve a comparable reduction in gasoline consumption.

While 1 may be in dispute, 2 is not--there are far better ways, but they piss of fringe because she thinks it's the Man sticking it to the poor commuter.

BTW, CAFE does not make driving more expensive--precisely the opposite. It lowers the marginal cost of driving, which means greater consumption. The only expense it raises is the fixed cost of starting out, but as you know that has no effect on marginal cost of consumption.

I'm actually OK with gas taxes, but there should be more/better public transportation. Fucking people who want to fucking live out in the middle of fucking nowhere have to pay the price, Man.

re: asphalt/cement -- it's not just an asphalt vs. cement (wtf is pavement?) issue. There's a whole infrastructure to roads, and tons of considerations. This is where "engineers" come in. Just as examples: maximum speed at which you anticipate vehicles will be traveling; weight of vehicles traveling; what kind of land is under the road; climate of area the road is in (does it freeze? does it get really hot? how quickly do temperatures change?). I think that a road that would hold up really well in Houston would not do so well in MN.

ETA damn you, Burger. Also they were saying on NPR last night that some states get more of the highway trust fund than they put in (big, unpopulated drive-thru states) (which means other states, like CA, get less than they put in).

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Christopher Hitchens has an article in this month's Vanity Fair (which can be found here) about voting irregularities last November in Ohio that's worth reading. A sampling of the odd events:

• In Montgomery County, two precincts recorded a combined undervote of almost 6,000. This is to say that that many people waited to vote but, when their turn came, had no opinion on who should be the president, voting only for lesser offices. In these two precincts alone, that number represents an undervote of 25 percent, in a county where undervoting averages out at just 2 percent. Democratic precincts had 75 percent more under- votes than Republican ones.
  
  In Precinct lB of Gahanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up. Once the “glitch” had been identified, the president had to be content with 3,893 fewer votes than the computer had awarded him.
  
  In Miami County, a Saddam Hussein-type turnout was recorded in the Concord Southwest and Concord South precincts, which boasted 98.5 percent and 94.27 percent turnouts, respectively, both of them registering overwhelming majorities for Bush. Miami County also managed to report 19,000 additional votes for Bush after 100 percent of the precincts had reported on Election Day.

And, by Hitchens' account, the irregularities overwhelmingly benefited Bush.

I had heard complaints about this stuff before, but always discounted them as the likely work of crackpots and wingnuts. Hitchens may be a crackpot -- a discussion for another day -- but he was a Bush supporter with no love for Kerry, so his account cannot be dismissed as sour grapes or partisan.

Of course, Ohio law provides for a recount, "which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many “vote hops” the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed." That Ohio's Secretary of State was the co-chair of the state Bush/Cheney campaign, and that Diebold's chair is a prominent Bush supporter "who proclaimed in 2003 that he was 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year'" -- these things certainly do not inspire confidence in the recount.

All of this is corrosive for democracy, and for the legitimacy of the government. There are many reasons for election glitches: Elections are complicated affairs, with lots of moving parts, and they take place episodically under the supervision of elected officials. Some error is inevitable, but what Hitchens describes is another thing altogether. There should be a serious, credible investigation of what happened, and -- no matter what an investigation reveals -- that reforms are needed to protect public confidence in voting.

Who can argue with this? On principle, it's hard. Although few seem to want to say it outright, Republicans don't seem to want to look very hard under these rocks because they've been winning recently. But that's exactly why they should care the most. Without antiseptic measures, these problems will fester and grow worse. And if Republicans are presiding over the government hit by the inevitable crisis of confidence, they will have the most to lose.

Feel free to comment here if you like.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
(wtf is pavement?)

bricks count. so do cobblestones.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Decisions made by state governments about which road contractor to use are often -- surprisingly -- made on the basis of who knows whom, rather than who will make the bestest, cheapest roads.

Likely true, but that also means they're not selecting them for the crappy quality they would build it.

There's a major agency problem with public contracting. No surprise quality is not optimal. I'll tell you where quality was optimal, but I'd be kicked off the board or something.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
bricks count. so do cobblestones.

Excellent point. Both bricks and cobblestones are generally considered not to be optimum motor vehicle driving surfaces, particularly for things like interstate overpasses.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Not Bob
The Fashion Board here at Lawtalkers is not really about fashion. It's more of an online cocktail party. Or, maybe more accurately, it's like a high school lunchroom.

Dissent. At my HS we kept the SPEDs in their own lunchroom.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Dissent. At my HS we kept the SPEDs in their own lunchroom.

Politics is more like a pretentious college's dining hall.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
I'm actually OK with gas taxes, but there should be more/better public transportation. Fucking people who want to fucking live out in the middle of fucking nowhere have to pay the price, Man.

What price? I thought my decision to live in suburbia would be paid for through the gas tax, or tolls.

[mmm3587]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
I'm not really knowlegeable about Harleys, but surely they don't come factory-equipped without better sound control.

I have read that all Harleys come from the factory with nice, quiet, non-polluting legal exhausts which meet federal standards, which are then immediately removed and discarded by the dealers in favor of the loud, polluting exhausts that people actually want.

Anwyay, emissions and noise laws are for asian kids in Civics, not white people on domestic motorcycles, donchaknow?