"So exactly why are cars like this so unpopular in the US? Is it the
felt need to chauffeur around a stack of kids in something that feels
"protective"?

With all this talk about the different cars available to the US and European markets, its important to take a look at the driving habits of US and European markets as well. Europe has approx 4 times the population density that the US does.

http://www.bized.ac.uk/stafsup/exams/eu/popn.htm

Given that, US drivers will tend to need to drive longer distances on average than European counterparts and will probably tend to prefer cars that make that more comfortable. I am sure this is only one of the numerous reasons for the different driving styles / habits / preferences of Europeans and Americans, but it is an important one to note.

Michael

Response to nuclear comments

Michael wrote to K:

> I understand how your close proximity to this event could give you a
> particular point of view on it. But again, what about the 3 million
> people who are dying every year right now? What if they lived right
> next door to you? What if these 3 million people were everyone you
> knew, and everyone they knew? Will their families feel consoled by
> your concern about the vegatables being destroyed in Munich?
>
### I was even closer to Chernobyl when it happened - in southeastern
Poland. While of course I was angry at the communist regime for trying to
stall with informing the public, and I was appalled by the sloppiness shown
by Russians, I also know that most, if not all, of the "losses" of
agricultural produce outside Russia were due to ill-informed scaremongering,
rather than rational assessment of the situation. The amount of fallout was
minimal, well below level which can produce measurable health effects, most
of it in the form of short-lived isotopes, and therefore amenable to a
quarantine. The hysteria was fanned by the EU farmers, who saw imports from
the East as competition to their outrageously overpriced, heavily subsidized
produce.

This said, nuclear power plants in the heavily populated Western Europe
would act as a force multiplier for any attacker or terrorist smart enough
to blow them up, so European reticence about placing them in (almost
literally) their backyards, is somewhat understandable.

R

Response to my comments on a nuclear industry

Michael writes

> I am still not seeing how [Chernobyl] is worse than the 3 million people who
> are dying every year, right now. Do you feel that this number is perhaps
> inaccurate? You lost some veggies and some lambs, while 3 million people
> every year lose there lives.

I've always thought that figures such as these---three million---do
need to be adjusted for "expected number of years of life lost".
That is, although it's still a tragedy, the loss of an eighty-five
year old ought not to be regarded with the sense of loss as a
fifteen year old. Their deaths (on the first reading) cannot
be equated because the eighty-five year old is nearly certain
to die anyway shortly. And, if I recall correctly, your figure
did pertain to the elderly or already very fragile.

(That being said, of course, it's still always important for
extropians and cryonicists to emphasize that so far as we
know, all deaths today are needless. The technology currently
exists to banish death (again, so far as we know). Hence, from
this point of view, one can consider the death of an 85 year
old to be an even *greater* tragedy.)

So concerns about the safety of nuclear reactors which could
kill hundreds---or of coal mines which presently DO KILL
hundreds---should be compared to traffic accidents, or other
statistics which automatically take into account natural
lifespan, it seems to me.

Lee

P.S.

> Citing Chernobyl as an example of unsafe nuclear reactors is like citing the
> titanic as a reason to think cruise liners are unsafe.

Yes, good point!

End in sight for reading glasses
================================
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2712547.stm

BBC - Millions of middle-aged Britons could soon be able to throw away
their reading glasses. A new treatment, which reverses the damage caused
to the eyes by ageing, has now become available in this country. The
painless procedure, called conductive keratoplasty (CK), uses radio
waves to reshape the eye without surgery. The treatment lasts just five
minutes and costs between £1,000 and £1,500.

News in Aging research -

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993337

New Scientist - Old people can expect to die sooner if they have shorter
telomeres, pieces of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes.
Researchers have long suspected that telomeres act as molecular clocks
governing the process of ageing in cells, but until now nobody has
proven the link.

More on nuclear power conversation

-----Original Message-----
From: KB

> Not a loony, simply a knowledgeable, concerned person who lives a whole
> lot closer to Chernobyl than I do..

"The effects of Chernobyl where significantly, even though we are >1500km away. I've found a quote that describes the most important effects: "A large amount of agricultural produce in Europe had to be dumped due to contamination from fallout. For instance, most vegetables in the region around Munich were destroyed because they had become contaminated with iodine-131. The southern portion of the former West Germany was more contaminated than the rest of it. There were also severe restrictions on agricultural activities, including sales of meat from three million sheep and lambs in northwestern England and the neighboring portions of Scotland and northern Wales, which were affected by rain-out of radioactivity when the fallout cloud passed over them."[2]"

I am still not seeing how this is worse than the 3 million people who are dying every year, right now. Do you feel that this number is perhaps inaccurate? You lost some veggies and some lambs, while 3 million people every year lose there lives. Or is it perhaps that I now grace your kill file as well? I just have difficulty understanding how you justify the continued use of fossil fuel combustion, which you admittedly dislike, but there are no alternatives currently available that *wont* kill 3 million every year except for nuclear power. Do we keep waiting for an alternative, while millions die every year? Do we reduce the global energy demand to substinence agriculture levels so we wont need nuclear or fossil fuel power? Not a world I would want to live in nor one that would be conducive to bringing about the singularity.

"If we would have just one accident like that in western Europe, we could only shut down everything and look for another place to live."

So, if a Chernobyl like accident occurred in a Chernobyl like plant in western europe devastation would occur. Solution, A) don’t build chernobyl like plants and B) don’t build them in western europe

Citing chernobyl as an example of unsafe nuclear reactors is like citing the titanic as a reason to think cruiseliners are unsafe. You are blaiming nuclear reactors for an accident that cost dozens of short term deaths, hundreds of cases of cancer and thousand or premature deaths, and some bad crops and lambs, instead of the corrupt murderous government that built, operated, and maintained said facility. A facility which would have never been built in any other nation. Chernobyl had no actual containment structure (as opposed to three unique independent ones most western reactors have) to prevent release of contamination. Such a design could not be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in this country, nor in most countries of the world. Had a chernobyl like accident occurred in a western reactor it would have been contained, but would have no chance of occuring in the first palce anyway. If there is anyone to blame for the horrors of Chernobyl, it’s the soviet government (which had allready killed some 10 million of its own people) NOT nuclear reactors. I am sure the Soviet Union killed many more in its thousands if not millions of faulty state products, wars, and famines. Do you blame those products for those deaths, or the government that sanctioned them and forced them on their people?

Does my making a beach ball that randomly explodes make all beach balls unsafe? Or just the beach balls that have hand grenades inside them?

I understand how your close proximity to this event could give you a particular point of view on it. But again, what about the 3 million people who are dying every year right now? What if they lived right next door to you? What if these 3 million people were everyone you knew, and everyone they knew? Will their families feel consoled by your concern about the vegatables being destroyed in Munich?

Michael

The Chernobyl Reactor: Design Features and Reasons for Accident

From - http://www-j.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/reports/kr79/kr79pdf/Malko1.pdf

"According to the Soviet experts the prime cause of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP was “…an extremely improbable combination of violations of instructions and operating rules committed by the staff of the unit” [3]. This conclusion sets a full responsibility for the accident at the Chernobyl NPP on its stuff. Participants of the Post-Accident Review Meeting [2] also accepted the Soviet version. However, it was incorrect. This was demonstrated in 1990 by the commission of the State Committee for Atomic Safety Survey of the USSR which concluded that the main reasons of the Chernobyl accident were serious shortcomings in the design of the Chernobyl reactor as well as inadequate documents regulating a safe operation of the reactor [4].

"Conclusions - The main reasons of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP were sever shortages of the design, severe infringements of the safety regulations for construction of the reactor as well as low safety culture in the USSR preceding the accident."

Fear's just bad for business
Interesting commentary from - http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/humanity/fear.html

"There was a difference in attitude that went into the design of ChernobylD compared to Three Mile IslandD, and its roots could be found in the social ethic of each government in power at the time. One believed that profit was not important to motivate workers, while the other believed that profit was everything. As a result, one built a reactor with the cheapest design to save money, while the other spent a fortune and vastly overengineered. Guess which side built the cheap one? Yep, the Soviets. Not just because they wanted to save money, but because while they were busy dismissing profit as a motivator they also missed the importance of eliminating fear as a distraction."

"It's the impact of fear and worry on the locals which the Soviets disregarded, but the Americans held almost holy, and thus the big difference between Chernobyl and TMI. Chernobyl was based on a design that had a positive void coefficientD, which meant it was unstable at low power. The accident happened because the power level of the reactor fell unexpectedly, and the operator tried to compensate by removing the control rods and raising the power back to safe levels, only it got out of control."

"Three Mile Island, by comparison, was a story of poorly informed operators thwarting a heavily overdesigned system that was doing its best to safely shut down the reactor automatically. In both accidents there was an explosion of hydrogen. At Chernobyl it blew the cap off the reactor core and exposed hot graphite to oxygen, making it catch on fire. At Three Mile Island the explosion was completely contained, in fact it didn't even cause any undue stress to the containment building, which had 12-foot thick steel reinforecd walls. Chernobyl had no such containment building, only a concrete “bio shield”."

excellent article - Mike

In Praise of Roe v. Wade
Lee Daniel Crocker, January 22, 2003

from - http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=67;action=display;threadid=54666

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade has been
maligned by both sides of the abortion debate throughout the 30
years since it was issued on January 22, 1973. It has been called
a "non-decision", a "cop-out", "political weaseling" and much worse.
You've probably heard some of those opinions recently. Even though
many lawyers will tell you that in a civil case, a judgment that
both sides complain about is probably a good one, they nonetheless
will call this decision "cowardly" or "muddled".

But the facts are that the decision itself stands up remarkably
well to detailed analysis of the issues involved, and when we add
in all that we have learned about biology in the years since, it
can even seem prescient. I doubt that my words here will persuade
any of those who are truly commited to either side of this debate,
but I believe I can at least show that the justices really did know
what they were doing, legally, morally, and biologically.

First, let's make it clear what they really decided, since there is
confusion even over this. In a recent episode of ABC's series
"The Practice", for example, lawyer Eugene Young ridicules the
decision as "nine men in robes making a decision for the rest of us".
But Mr. Young's tirade is 180 degrees from the truth. The court did
not "make the decision" for everyone; they did exactly the opposite:
they said that the Texas legislature, despite being a group even
larger than the court and directly elected by the people of that
state, cannot make the decision for every woman in Texas. But the
decision was a bit more complex than that. They further divided
pregnancy into trimesters, and said that different rules apply to
each. In the first, only the woman involved can decide for herself,
and no legislature or court can interfere; in the second, the state
can regulate to some degree; and in the third, the state can step in
and even ban abortion outright if it chooses.

That three-part standard is what both sides complain about: those
who believe that all abortion is wrong don't like the court allowing
women that choice even in the first timester of pregnancy, and those
who favor absolute choice don't like the fact that the court let the
state step in before birth at all. Both sides refuse to recognize
any substantive difference between a first-trimester pregnancy and
a third-trimester one as far as fundamental rights are concerned.

So let's look at the issues involved, starting at the end: birth.
There is no question in our society that once a child has been born,
the umbilical cut and its lungs full of air, killing that child is
seen as a despicable crime. There have certainly been societies
where that was not the case: infanticide was tolerated and even
common in some cultures, but not here. Our culture, unlike many,
even assigns gender to infants: we call them little boys and little
girls from the moment of their birth, while most cultures only
separate men and women after puberty, treating all children as just
"children". Our attitudes are more in line with the facts. The
qualities that we admire, even revere, about people that make us
revile harming them are just as evident in an infant as an adult:
people think, and feel, and dream, and laugh, and love, and want;
infants do as well. Infant boys and infant girls have different
skills and different personalities that can be observed and
measured right from birth. Infants may not be be able to express
themselves as well as adults, but they clearly are /selves/,
thinking and feeling as whole people. In the past people have
asserted that infants didn't feel pain, or never remembered events
from their infancy, but we now know these beliefs are false, and
that infants do feel pain and joy much as adults do, and their
adult lives are affected by events in infancy, and even by
experiences before their birth.

The third-trimester rules of Roe acknowledge a simple biological
fact: that there is little fundamental difference in kind between
a child just before and just after birth. Hospitals are full of
infants born weeks early, and while they may need a bit of
assistance from modern medical technology, we clearly think of them
as "people" in every important legal and ethical sense, and whether
they are in a womb or an incubator doesn't much affect that
evaluation: they have thoughts and feelings and experiences in
either case, and the thought of ending their lives bothers us.
There is a person there, and it is reasonable for a state to step
in and protect that person from harm.

The picture at the beginning of pregnancy is very different. It
begins with the event of conception, though "event" isn't really
the right word because even conception is a complicated process
in many stages that can be accomplished in many ways. But for the
moment I'll concede the point. Once the DNA from the egg and sperm
have combined, the newly-formed zygote then begins to divide into
two cells, four, eight, and so on. At this point there aren't yet
any specialized cells: they're all stem cells, and will only take
on specialized roles as organs, nerves, and so on much later in
the process of development.

The process of development itself can take many turns. The
majority of the time, in fact, the process results in nothing at
all: most conceptions are simply flushed out with the mother's
next menstruation, and never develop, and the woman never knows
that any conception occurred at all. In those fewer cases where
the zygote does make it through the tubes to implant in the
uterus, its fate is still undetermined. It might develop into a
person, or two people, or three, or half. Identical twins, for
example, result when the multi-celled zygote splits at some point,
and both portions go on to implant and develop into fully formed
unique people (albeit with identical DNA). Identical triplets are
quite rare, but also possible. Another even rarer possibility is
that two different zygotes will merge at some point in their
development, and develop into a single fully-formed person with
two sets of DNA. These are called tetragametic chimeras, and are
often born with defects, but can also be born as perfectly normal
infants who may never know that they were the product of two
different conceptions.

This is where the "life begins at conception" argument falls down:
yes, a zygote after conception is living, in the same sense that
any of our skin cells or liver cells is living. They can divide and
grow (indeed, we can now grow skin and muscle tissue in vitro from
a single cell), and contain a full set of genetic material. But
the legal question is not whether the thing is living or not, or
even whether it is human. The legal question is "is it a person?",
in the sense of laws that make harming people an act of violence we
detest, or is it merely a collection of cells like the skin cells
we flush down the drain when we wash our hands, or blood cells that
we donate to the Red Cross? What is it about people that makes
them specially deserving of such protection? A good way to answer
that is to think of the twin case: why do we consider twins to be
two people, not one? It's simple: each twin thinks and feels and
dreams independently. Each has its own personality and its own
desires and fears. It is untenable to argue that the single zygote
that would later develop into these two people had any of those
qualities: it has no brain, no nerves, no eyes, no ears. It had
only the potential for developing those things--and we don't know
yet from the zygote stage exactly what it might develop into. It
might become a person, or two, or half, or it might not.

Likewise, there is nothing special about the type of cell that is
the zygote. We retain stem cells even into adulthood, and any of
them also has the potential to develop into any other kind of cell.
The day is not far off--if it hasn't happened already--when a single
cell from an adult human will be able to produce a cloned person,
just as Dolly the sheep was created from a cell of her mother.
Clearly, it would be morally repugnant not to grant that person the
same legal rights as other people, because she will have the same
thoughts and feelings as any other infant, despite the fact that she
was not the product of conception at all. Whether or not you
approve of cloning, the fact is that it demonstrates vividly the
fact that the concept of one-conception-one-person doesn't fly.

So the first trimester rules of Roe also reflect what we know about
biology: a few cells don't make a person, and it doesn't make sense
to arbitrarily grant them the rights of a person when we don't even
yet know what they may develop into. The mother, on the other hand,
is quite clearly a person, and her rights can and should be
protected. Laws against birth control, "morning after" pills, and
yes, even first-trimester abortion clearly do victimize real women,
and we simply can't legally or ethically justify that to protect
what is clearly not a person.

Lastly, there's the middle ground: the second trimester. The
justices here make another wise statement: we don't know. At this
point in the development of what's now a fetus, it begins to resemble
a person. Twins have already split, chimeras have already joined,
and it begins to develop a brain and eyes and ears. It might have
the beginnings of something like thoughts and feelings, or it might
not--we just don't know. And because we don't know, the justices
leave the issue for further debate by the people's representatives.

In short, the justices in Roe weighed the legal and biological
facts before them, and reached the right decision, despite the
fact that they had to decide decades before some of the biology I
mention above was known. I for one find that remarkable and
worthy of praise.