Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 395 Editor's Choice: 41
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@Hammerbutt
[Read the article: How to get better gas mileage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not about the size of the farms, per se, it's about the fuel used to transport food from a few megafarms to places 100's or 1000's of miles away instead of promoting local farming. And the associated pollution from transporting it. Smaller farms can only serve a smaller area, so there would be less need to move the produce long distances.
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That's not efficiency
[Read the article: How to get better gas mileage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Saying that Bob's ride is more efficient than whatever the other person's name was because he uses less fuel is wrong. Efficiency is the ratio between work performed and energy consumed, and Bob loses there. You have to normalize one of the variables to make a valid comparison.
And to the previous poster who seems to think the solution is to bring back bad engineering... wow.
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It's because they are stupid, Guinevere
[Read the article: How to get better gas mileage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and not inclined to let the fact that we have spent 60 years building infrastructure around the automobile stop them from telling us how we should be doing things differently.
They are also not inclined to view this as an infrastructure problem, which is what it is when you get down to brass tacks, because what they want is to make themselves feel good while making others feel guilty - actually solving the problem isn't anywhere near their agenda.
Fixing infrastructure is hard. Pointing fingers and bragging about lifestyle changes that make almost no difference at all is easy. Taking on corporate interests is hard. Blaming individuals is easy. Solving probelems is hard. Promoting farm subsidies (E85) and telling yourself you've solved the problem is easy.
God save us from these people, and God help anyone who ever lets them have the authority to make important decisions regarding our environment.
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There is a line, somewhere
[Read the article: The year in celebrity scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A lot of the time, when the papparazzi see a celebrity somewhere and generate lots of material for the blogs and TV shows and magazines, its because said celebrity went to where the papparazzi are. Britney and Lindsay and Paris may get followed around, because they are guaranteed to do something stupid if you wait long enough, but for the most part the celebrities do seek this kind of attention out. There really are more than 3 restaurants in LA.
Mostly, I think this is the result (or maybe the cause) of fame without a corresponding amount of talent. When's the last time you saw Kevin Spacey or Meryl Streep on one of these dumbass shows? People with talent don't need publicity to get work. Paris Hilton wouldn't exist without it. Neither would Britney or Lindsay.
Harrassing people who are doing nothing more than trying to get something to eat is ridiculous, no matter what they have chosen to do for a living, and it should be made against the law. Simply by prohibiting someone from profiting from the sale of a photo taken without permission we would raise the national IQ by 15 points.
If these so-called "reporters" would invest half the energy they spend informing us about what people of no real consequence do in their free time into informing us about what elected and appointed officials do while they are at work, this would be a much better place to live.
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Smart roads
[Read the article: How to get better gas mileage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Posting notices on freeways doesn't work very well around here. We use the amber alert system to warn about congestion ahead, but there simply aren't enough viable alternative routes to make it useful beyond telling you how late you are going to be to work.
Surging is caused by a lot of things, from left hand exits to rubberneckers to people who stop in the middle of the road or cut across traffic to avoid missing their exit to people who simply shouldn't be allowed to drive on the freeway because they are too afraid to maintain proper speed. Drive right, pass left would fix a lot of these issues if it were made the law everywhere (the governor actually vetoed it here in Florida after it passed through legislation and referendum, god knows why) and actually enforced (which is never going to happen).
Telecommuting really is the answer, but we are stuck with a 20th century industrial complex even as we plunge headlong into a 21st century information economy. Having a significant portion of your workforce reduce their commute from 15 miles to 15 feet would all but eliminate the highway issues you point out, and really impact the consumption of energy and the production of toxins, but lip service is the approach we are going to take until this turns into a genuine crisis.
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The bigger issue
[Read the article: The FCC examines Comcast's traffic-blocking plan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The one that should land someone in prison, really.
Comcast does this with encrypted traffic. Which means they are decrypting your traffic, since you can't tell what's going on just by looking at source and destination ports, and decrypting traffic is against the law.
They do only do it to manage network traffic, I believe, because performance on PTP networks sometimes picks up dramatically in the wee hours. I've seen it jump from 12k to 400k. But my contract doesn't say I can get up to 15 meg only on traffic they specify.