Tag: roads

Cops Are Always DWI

Kent McManigal

There is no such thing as a police officer driving without being impaired. Not ever.

They are always under the influence of their imagined “authority“. It’s a powerful drug and it causes them to drive erratically. Their permanent condition of intoxication kills innocent people– and some of the guilty cops, too.

It causes them to engage in high-speed chases. But when the cop kills innocent people he and his gang– The Blue Line Gang– will blame the person they were chasing. This is a filthy lie.

It causes them to make U-turns in unsafe conditions– one of the local cops wrecked the cop car he drives (pictured above before the wreck) and seriously injured a random motorist a year or so back by doing just this in order to catch someone “speeding” a little– something much less dangerous than what the cop did.

It causes them to believe they can text, make phone calls, and use their onboard computer terminals (to try to find reasons to stop and molest other motorists) more safely than lesser people like us. They can’t. Their “training” doesn’t make them superhuman.

Every cop is a junkie. No cop should be behind the wheel of a car under any circumstances. Never. But most certainly never under the excuse of “policing traffic”. They are worse than any problem they pretend to fight. They are dangerous hypocrites. Get them off the roads, and keep them off the roads.

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When Will the Media Admit …

Kilgore Forelle

Nobody asked but …

Some wishful thinker the other day, on Facebook, wondered in a post “When will the media admit … [blah blah blah]?”  The answer is … NEVER.  “The media” is not a sentient being.  In fact, the media can be relied upon to go for the lowest common denominator.  It is the height of foolishness to expect any such formless blob to save us from another formless blob, politics.  In another column, I stated my belief that out of 45 instances of POTUS, we have had exactly 0 (zero) who could be counted a success.  As impossible as it would be to have an admirable POTUS, it is even more impossible that the ink-stained wretches would save us from a single bad president.

The current installment of POTUS is merely a continuation of a long line of jackasses.  This is a situation that is entirely consistent with the statist glories of every other civilization that has risen and fallen (taking their roads with them).  Checks and balances — Phooey!  Rather than checks and balances, the inevitable force is impermanence.  And the politicians and the pundits are the agents of social erosion.

— Kilgore Forelle

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Which “Minarchy”?

Kent McManigal

I understand the appeal of minarchy. After all, it’s where I came from; what I used to advocate. Even though I knew I was an anarchist personally, I used to imagine minarchy as the most practical way to be as liberated as possible.

But minarchy– keeping a little bit of cancer around and under control to prevent a different cancer from getting a foothold– is an unsustainable Utopian fantasy. Much more so than anarchy could ever be.

And, it’s confused.

As a minarchist, which “minimal government” would you pick? Only things such as government fire protection, government policing, military, government-controlled roads, and government courts? Other minarchists might have other preferences. Some would include “securing the borders” or other Big Government welfare programs. Any version includes the “taxation” to pay for it all, along with the bureaucracy to collect and distribute the money and find and punish the opt-outs.

Does every minarchist get to impose the particular flavor of “minimal government” they want? If so, it is no longer “minimal”.

Do you use v*ting to decide which bits of government you get to impose on me? Then it’s mob rule– “might (through superior numbers) makes right”.

Through v*ting and “taxation” you’ve cut the brake line on anything holding back government growth.

As I say, I understand, but a “little bit of statism” is still evil.

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Lies of Omission

Kent McManigal

There is a disturbing trend in government schools and other youth indoctrination institutions to teach kids how to survive an unwelcome encounter with a cop. (And notice that comments are disabled on the video example– truth offends these monsters. And the number of downvotes is also hidden from view.)

This “information” is, unfortunately, helpful. But it stops short.

You don’t teach kids how to survive encounters with fast food counterpersons. Or even with other government employees like theft-funded librarians. Only cops.

Teaching kids how to survive encounters with cops is incomplete without the information that the cops are bad guys committing acts of enforcement– krimes.

I know that since government indoctrination camps, kinderprisons, are on the same team as the badged vermin that’s not going to happen. But by excluding that bit of reality, kids are being lied to. They are being trained that if they don’t survive a roadside molestation it’s their own fault for making the bad guy feel unsafe. The problem is giving the power of life and death to unaccountable paid cowards, not how compliant and nonthreatening you make yourself appear to those parasites. Never a hint that the bad guy is a bad guy.

Lies of omission are still lies.

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Evolution by Learning

Kilgore Forelle

Nobody asked but …

Remember, if you are making decisions about the education of the next generation, you are not just making choices for yourself, nor are you only selecting the outlooks of youth.  You are taking part in the evolution of your species.  You are putting in place binary options (two roads diverged in a yellow wood) that will lead to survival or non-survival of an element in the flow of this species’ evolution.

It is well that we understand the process, the risks, and the stakes.

Any person has two sources of stimuli by which she gains knowledge, the experiential and the referential.  And in both sources, there are granules of true or false information — code versus noise.  Real education is built from the success rate in separating true from false by each individual learner.  Real advancement in an evolutionary sense is built by the same dynamic.  It is clear that these are compatible with the two foremost natural instincts with which we are endowed — self preservation and preservation of species.

Self preservation drives the search for knowledge from the moment of birth (and perhaps before that moment, we are each given DNA which contains vast amounts of information).  Then over the next 5 years, we are each naturally tasked with making the most of experiential learning.  We are also bound to first-remove, referential learning, from parents, siblings, and close associates of our family unit.  If any of the players in this vivid drama are spreading falsity, then the amount of damage or advance in the trains of knowledge is dictated by the importance of the relationship between the learner and the player.  Unfortunately, today, players that have too much influence are the television and the media.  Isaac Newton pointed out, “if I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders [sic] of Giants.”  Newton gives himself too little credit for separating the true giants from the pretenders, and he gives too little recognition of the randomness by which he was given the opportunity to select the shoulders.

As a society, humans honor random acts of kindness, but these acts are intentional — not random.  The acts of kindness we should value are all of those where we make a choice that reflects in our own education, in the education of our network, and in the education of future players.  Real acts of kindness consist of not littering the paths forward with falsities.

— Kilgore Forelle

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Use Better Tech (Not Laws) To Reduce Texting and Driving Deaths

James Walpole

In the past year or so I’ve started to notice a new feature on my phone: with simple artificial intelligence the text messaging app is able to auto-generate simple, relevant replies to text.

So if someone says “hi”, you can say “hi” right on back. But it’s actually more sophisticated than it sounds. It can detect, for instance, if someone is asking you to do something. All I have to do is click on the response I want to send and it flies out to my recipient.

Besides being a nifty feature, this sort of small innovation could save lives.

We all know (to varying degrees) the danger of typing on a phone while driving. Most of us assume that texting and driving might only be ended by an all-out ban. But it’s still inconclusive whether these laws really prevent people from texting. These laws also wrongly impose punishments for “offenses” that don’t have victims (texting – while risky – has no victims; a proportional punishment is only in order for hurting people).

Texting and driving is a serious problem, but what if laws aren’t the answers? Assuming people want to text while on the road, how could we prevent texting and driving deaths through other means? We could 1) replace texting with something better, 2) make texting safer on the road, or 3) make texting unnecessary.

All three are valuable ways to think, but the solution on my Android phone (likely without designed intent) uses technology to take the second approach. By automatically generating most replies, it makes replying to messages far easier. Now to be clear, I’m not saying you should text and drive. But if you were dead set on doing it, this pre-generated, one-tap message would be the one to use.

Every second the messaging app saves you is a second you can keep your eyes on the road and watching out for cars and pedestrians. That’s real incremental progress toward safer roads and drivers – and safer messaging on the road.

This small feature illustrates again how user experience (UX) product designers – like the ones at Google who made this texting update – understand human behavior far better than politicians . Politicians mandate a certain way of doing things and force that mold onto others. Product/UX designers pay attention to what people want and design paths to channel those wants better.

We live in a great race between user experience design thinking and top-down central planning. In our world, both are popular ways to solve problems. I hope that the UX guys win – not just for the sake of human freedom, but also for the sake of real improvements in human safety.

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