Posts by BenWilson
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Chaos, it's not a perfect measure but it's definitely relevant. p2p is effectively the black market of music, but unlike most black markets it's able to give us real information back about what is popular.
Yes I download stuff and find I don't like it. But I usually don't repeat it with the same artist, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. So it's gotta be relevant.
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Bookshelves definitely are a fashion statement, rather like gym equipment. Whether they actually get used is another matter....
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Yes, the banks don't push them because they can't lend money to crazy young people at usurious rates. But I'm glad to hear we've got them. I'm tempted, just for online stuff and security.
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I'm kind of surprised VISA debit cards haven't caught on here. VISA cards with zero limit, that is, where you have to put money in to use them. Kids can have them, since they require no credit checking. My first card ever, signed up in Ozzie, was like that, and was solely for the purpose of online shopping.
I wish I'd stuck with it.
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Choose remote non-volcanic island in NZ? Good luck.
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Stephen, I'd say it's a major factor, for sure. I've also heard the idea that the US style of dispersion is actually a generalized defence policy against nuclear war, and their road layout is similarly military in inspiration, with the insistence that aircraft can land pretty much anywhere in the whole country. Similar inspiration to the design of the internet. Decentralization and massive redundancy.
Of course the Russians just made more nukes so they could just flatten the entire place, and even if the US did come out of nuclear holocaust with more survivors it's still a fuxored scenario, and the end of their global dominance, and possibly the whole species.
I'm inclined to think most changes in human behaviour are primarily driven by technological changes. Which means it's almost impossible to predict the future, unless you also know the future of science. Since scientists don't even know that, I'm not optimistic. I mean this whole energy debate could be made obsolete by fusion power, and future people will just laugh at our doomsday peak oil predictions. There could be quite simple solutions to global warming that some bright spark will find. So many major issues may have 95% technical solutions.
Unfortunately we can't plan around what we don't have and don't know, so we have to go with existing tech in all our plans.
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Bart, I definitely agree that cycle ways should have higher priority. They are so cheap to make, for starters, and they dramatically improve road safety for cyclists. If we had a lot more of them perhaps the stackhat laws could be softened a bit too, which would get more women who don't want their hair fucked up onto bikes.
I don't think they should really be eating into existing road space though. Footpath space perhaps, as in Europe, or roadside parking space. You soon get over the umbrage at bell ringing eurofascists yelling at you to get out of their way, after having one of them slam into you.
I do have to say my experiments with electric power assisted cycles have been a total flop so far though. One of the points of a bike is that they are cheap and simple, and thus reliable. And you can thraaaash them. But E-bikes are none of those things, expensive, complicated, unreliable and very sensitive to jarring. For the sweet-fa extra power they give, it's not worth it.
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Steven and Rebecca, I have actually lived in Melbourne, and for a year I didn't have a car. In the end I bought one because it sucked arse not having one. Sure trams are great and Melbourne, being a flat city, wisely chose to make the roads wide enough to accomodate both cars and trams. In the few really old parts of town where they didn't, you can see why Auckland dropped them - there's nothing cool about driving along a 10 km road behind a tram that stops every 50 metres and you're not allowed to pass it because of disembarking passengers. So the traffic flow there is absolutely rotten, and the streets mostly empty (ie underutilized) for miles in front every tram. Also, I actually witnessed a tram crash and it was pretty scary to see a car shunted 25 metres sideways and the passenger crushed.
I commuted on them every day for about 3 years, and I will say they were more enjoyable than buses, but nowhere near as much fun as the motorbike I eventually replaced that with, nor as cheap, fast or reliable.
So why did I want a car? Because anything outside of a carefully regimented set of routes I had mastered for relatively short trips was just a pain in the date. Shopping was especially painful. Seeing friends/girlfriends spread around the vast city that was Melbourne was a pain. Going anywhere outside the city was a REAL pain. Transporting anything was a pain. And truth be told, even the stuff that trams were good for were still more of a pain than the equivalent car trip, like long commutes.
Steven even when petrol costs an hour's wage, I'll still use it if it saves me an hour. I anticipate that we'll be getting a lot more miles for a litre progressively anyway. I'm not especially hooked on petrol, just self powered transport. If cars are electric they'll still be damned cool. Can't wait for the hybrid muscle cars that Toyota are making.
Not that petrol will ever get that expensive for me given my hourly rate. Biofuel puts an upper limit on the price fuel can ever reach and it's waaaay less than an hour's wage for me per litre. Plug-in-hybrids already have absolutely fantastic fuel consumption, and that includes the fuel at the power station. We're talking 80km/litre or so. Less smokey and noisy too.
Rebecca, it is true that cars kill more people than guns. But they also do a lot more good than guns. I still think those who hate cars are total ingrates. It's like hating penicillin because maybe it undermines natural selection. Penicillin can kill you too, if you are unlucky.
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I was wondering what it would take to kill this thread!
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Victor, I think that insulation has also been accompanied by the cars actually becoming safer. Which I'd say accounts for the majority of the improvement in accident stats - along with improved roads.
Finn, missed commenting on your 'change your lifestyle' point. Having to deal with becoming a human horse is only a small part of it. Without a car there'll be no frivolous trips anywhere outside of feasible public transport range. I personally like Piha and would miss it if adding 4 hours worth of pissing around just to get there was added. Similarly with numerous other entertainments. OK, I can give up catching up with my family and friends scattered around the country, going to the beach, going for drives around the city, picking up relatives from the airport, shooting out to other shops that I go to on a daily basis, giving up my plan of going to University in my spare time, getting rid of my boat since I'd have no car to tow it with, stop the wife going to work since I wouldn't be able to drop my son at daycare, give up the games of pool I have on weekdays, buying things secondhand off Trademe, going skiing, helping people out who also need lifts, stop my wife seeing any of her coffee group, etc
You've convinced me. My entire life is frivolous and I should live in a city apartment and concern myself only with things that maximize the city's ability to resemble Somewhere Bigger. Because having Auckland resemble Somewhere Bigger is a need, not a preference. And simply going Somewhere Bigger is just not an option.
Enough parody. Surely you get my point that you're asking a lot if you want to take my car away. Similarly with kids. Which brings us to the relevant matter. You say:
"You seem to think that the only interest in play is whether people want to drive, not the negative impact that them driving could have on the rest of the population"
Not at all. All interests need balancing. I just happen to weigh the interests of 15 year olds higher than you do, and I weigh the costs much lower.
"We wouldn't trust a fifteen-year-old with a job in air traffic control, or in a key role in a medical environment, unless they proved themselves to be seriously exceptional."
No, and I'm not suggesting that we do. I think the accident statistics are pretty good, especially since they are coming down steadily. For all the rewards we get from driving, the minuscule risk of an accident is, in the balance, worth it. The empowering of hundreds of thousands of children is well worth the few extra lives it costs.
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