This little article interested me because we're probably going to get a new car in the next year.
That will set off our family tradition of hand-me-down cars to various family members.
I thought the cost calculator which is also linked below was interesting and seemed useful...

LA Times
Dan Turner
10/5/12

Does $5 gas = buy a hybrid or electric car? A cost/benefit analysis
VEHICLE COST CALCULATOR

Attachment 41071

hand me downs like this?

V, that's really interesting... and it is like our family

One of my G-sons is driving a Subaru (>120k miles) that started with my wife, and over to our daughter.
Another G-son and a G-daughter are driving cars that started family life with their mom and her S.O.

But it wasn't a matter of size, but of opportunity and need.

It's about Goldilocks, "just right", not only about size. :-)

The vehicle cost calculater make too many assumptions that are out of whack.

How I view that chart:

Attachment 41239

Climate change skeptics sometimes say that temperatures are actually decreasing. They do this by picking a small span of years where there was a downward trend, while ignoring the long term upward trend. When there's a new record high, they start saying that temperatures are actually decreasing since that new date.

I saw that post and I am bothered by it. What are all his data points?

Here's the graph at Wikipedia's global warming page, which is similar but more understandable:

http://cellar.org/2012/Global_Temper...10_(Fig.A).gif

Annual mean, that seems like a sensible way to go, since that's all four seasons. Dude's got like twenty data points every 5 years, what is that data?

So... why did he start his graph in 1973? When you look at the annual mean on Wikipedia's graph, 1973 is the end of a three-decade period of no warming, and the beginning of three decades of great warming.

He has cropped the data to fit his narrative, doing exactly what he's accusing the skeptics of doing but on like a century scale rather than a decade scale.

Am I wrong? Tell me where. And how far out should the graph go before we understand what's happening?

Here's the source.I don't see any starting point on Wikipedia's graph that whould have changed the narrative much, should they have cropped it differently. A line would still go up. Maybe a curve would fit better if they'd started it in 1940, but the curve would still go up.

I searched for "global warming 1973" on Google, and one skeptic also picked 1973 to do his analysis. His reasoning was:Perhaps similar reasons were chosen for the 1973 cutoff on the original graph as well.
As far as possible, I suppose, depending on the type of data being included.

A line would still go up, just wouldn't look so pretty and convincing.

I like this 1973 notion because, maybe that's it; there has been warming on a geological scale -- since glaciers covered NY State in 20,000 B.C. -- and man-made causes may have accelerated it post 1973.

It has always bothered me that the warming on some graphs goes back to 1830. Mankind wasn't doing anything much at that point. There were only 1B people on the earth, as opposed to the 7B today, and those 1B were still mostly digging in the dirt.

Something to do with the industrial revolution, maybe?

I don't believe that man's contribution began when the only way to get carbon out of the ground was having child labor drag it out from filthy mines. It was a revolution to have trains cross a few countries and to power ships by steam, but to have enough activity to change the environment of the entire planet surely took longer.

I was awed by the sheer number of data points.

I think you are pretty awed already, but I don't want to make a point of it.

"but I admit I only know this one from Risk"

:lol:

I always like the maps after an election. Here's an excellent site that takes us through the breakdown of the vote and how the country really looks.

The most accurate map is this one:
Attachment 41616

It doesn't look much like the US because it's broken down by county, and each county is sized to reflect the actual population. Then it's colored to reflect the vote of the county. Most counties are purple because they are split. Some are really red, because they are mostly Republican, and some are really blue, because they are mostly Democrat.

Clearly, we should look at this and realize that we are not the divided country as shown in the state electoral college map.

Ummm, XKCD dude.

D'oh!

Here's the full link.

http://cellar.org/2012/cohen_singlemomchart.png

http://cellar.org/2012/cohen_singlem...590-106252.png

from

it looks like there is no correlation between single moms and violent crime.

Why don't they do a plot of the number of houses with geraniums in window boxes vs. violent crime? That might be more telling.

Take that, Dan Quayle! </MurphyBrown>

From Wikipedia

I was watching Adventures in Babysitting over the long holiday weekend. I remembered it fondly and wanted my kids to see it. It's still a fun movie, but there's more swearing than I remembered. And Playboys.

Anyway, a major plot point of the movie was that they were going into the scary "city" at night. And they encountered all sorts of scary people there. I thought it was laughable, because I remember being afraid of the scary city when I was a teenager, but I'm not afraid of the city now. I mean, I brought my kids to a downtown club a month or two ago to catch a fun band. I kind of forgot that there was good reason to be afraid of "the city" back when Adventures in Babysitting came out. There was a tremendous amount of violent crime back then. It still exists in pockets today, but nothing like back then.

I was just thinking about that movie the other day and wondered if my nieces would like it. I always liked it a lot.

"No one gets out without singin' the blues."

Did you see Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey? It's basically the exact same movie. I didn't realize it until this weekend when I saw Adventures again.

Adventures is still good. But it has some swearing and teenage boys talking about sex. One of the running gags is that Elizabeth Shue is a dead ringer for that month's Playboy Playmate. I think kids today have never heard of Playboy. Magazines are so 1980s. So you might be explaining what that fold out page is.

.

Is that a violent crime in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Try the buffet; it's a one-liner.

There are somewhere around 200-, 250-, and 300-million guns in the US, depending on who/what you read.

Here's a pic graph of the distribution of guns in the US, by State.

Attachment 42723

But sometimes it's hard to get a visual image of large numbers, like how many is 250 million ?

It turns out there are about 250,000,000 automobiles currently registered in the US.
So for every car you see, there's a gun out there.

On that chart, is Louisiana the only one with over 20 deaths/100 grand people? Maybe Nevada too but it's hard to tell with the lines.

Louisiana is SCARY. Geez Louise, you're the shootinest tootinest state East of the Pecos. :D

"Louisiana is SCARY"
 

HA!

Yeah, we're all packin' down here.

For example: lil old ladies (to keep from gettin' mutilated) got holdouts tucked into dainty handbags (along with used tissues, heart medications, and pocket rockets).

:lol:

What in Sam Hill is a pocket rocket?

They also have those foldy uppy little plastic rain hats, that are about the size of a matchbook 'til you unfold them. Magic!

http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...ocket%20rocket

#1 and #4


Foldy rain bonnets: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I read "tootinest" as "toothless", which is also appropriate.

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/hea...-natural-teeth

Teeth? We don' need no stinkin' teeth!

Here, in Looseeanna: we're all fat, stupid, drunk, and toothless.









The truth is: the above is not terribly off the mark.

In my work, I get about (far and wide)...really: there are a god-awful number of fat, stupid, drunk, and toothless folks in this state (not so much in the north, but, in the south: overflowing).

Me: scrawny, sober, and toothed (stupid: debatable).

a flow chart actually. higher res version:
http://topcultured.com/wp-content/up...Drink-Beer.jpg

That's actually pretty good. My only complaint is that they don't have my beer.

'Do you have access to the Stargate?' *snort*

Me too. Moose Drool is my regular fare

Fosters???!!!

Pfffft. Would not lower myself to wash my feet in it.

Have we had this yet?

Attachment 42744

Australian Budweiser for when you're trying to seem worldly :eek:

For a bigger kick from your mixed drink, use diet soda.

This site has a shitload of charts and graphs of information gleaned from census data, from 1790 through 1890.

Where they were from, what they did for a living, how much they made, how many kids, and dozens of other measures. How many Irish in New York, how many single vs married in Austin, how many negro vs white in Mississippi.

http://cellar.org/2012/college.jpg

from here

That graph pisses me off

Yep, me too. Things are broke.

The cost of a degree is crazy. We had more than $100K into my daughter's degree before she quit. It's looking like, even though her grades are respectable, she just isn't into university-level education. Wish she'd been honest at the start, or sooner at least. (No, we didn't push for university over a trade school.) She wanted to do what two of her older brothers did and had blinkers on.

Dare I say it? Maybe university should go back to being the province of those destined for academic careers, and community colleges/trade schools should provide the majority of people with a marketable skill.

I don't know. I'm all in favor of as much education as everyone is willing to absorb, but college has degenerated into frat parties and football. So while that's education of a sort, I suppose, it's not university education anyway. What about college sports? Well, what about them? They certainly aren't academics. As far as I'm concerned they have no place at university beyond intramurals or very local, amateur leagues. :bolt:

you have to go low end these days and go-to teck schools...

Or just regular school...then you'll be able to spell.

or medical school so you can treat yourself and not have a bunch of mad scientists stareing over you for the rest of your life....

JBK, I've been reading a book about parents relating to their children who are dramatically different from them in some way, and I recently finished the chapter on schizophrenia. It was pretty interesting, and helped me understand your art and poems a little more, I think.

One of the more telling parts of the chapter was the number of people who discovered that they had schizophrenia when they took LSD and nothing changed, and only then did they realize that not everyone's brain was like that every moment of every day.

That would scare the crap out of me.

Oh, and that graph? I hate its disingenuousness. disingenuous-ness? The relationship between the length of the line (years) is on a different scale from the height (dollars). Although there are 10 years and 10 ten thousand dollar increments, the ratios are different. The way the graph is drawn makes the cost increase seem more dramatic than it is.

And it takes one cost and doesn't compare it to other economic factors, like inflation. It's meaningless.

College education these days is pretty piss poor and that could be a whole 'nother thread. I taught a college for "dumb poor kids" and a friend of mine taught at a college for "dumb rich kids."

My wife taught for years at Fordham, a fairly respectable school, and she'd tell me about her students who would say they missed class because they had the 'flew.'

The graph should look more like this:

It's like we both know the stop sign is red, but I've no idea what you're seeing. I don't know what's going on in your head either, how you process input, or form your thoughts.

Of course what goes on in my head is normal, the standard...



just like everyone else. ;)

The vertical axis is not in $10,000 increments, it's in percentage change from the 2000 figure.

And I think the comparison is very meaningful. The reason for paying that tuition is the return in salary. Tuition is going up - faster than CPI - and salary for graduates is falling. Soon, if not already, it will be a financial mistake to go to college (for *many* degrees, says the philosophy gradaute, coughing nervously... engineering and medicine are probably still worthwhile).

Oops. Never mind. In that case, it does make sense. I need to follow links and read.
I agree with you about it being a financial mistake to go to college with the idea that college will somehow increase your earning potential. (With the exception of subjects like engineering and medicine and so forth.) As for liberal arts, *cough*fine arts*cough*, and what's that thinking cure called? Philosomething? College should be regarded as the very expensive 4 year vacation that it is.

At big companies I've seen a ton of jobs that require a degree, but they don't care what in, or where from, because they're going to tell you what to do, and exactly how they want it done.

A -That's a sharky looking graph

II - While a bachelor's degree might not pay for itself, it's the ticket in the door for many jobs. Even if a social worker makes the same as a garbage collector, I think I'd rather get the degree and be a social worker.

3 - If there is a trend to forgo college, the drop in enrollment should cause a reduction in tuition.