300M In Northampton ???????? (UK interest)

Nope, my info was out of date. We've slid to 15th and the downward trend
continues.

http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/A/IntlCompar.htm
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/ajphLetter.htm
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/data.htm
http://www.scienceservingsociety.com/

http://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/TRB_82/TRB2003-000742.pdf

Dr. Leonard Evans, after many years as GM's top safety researcher, is one
of North America's foremost traffic-safety researchers (
http://www.tsc.berkeley.edu/html/exp_evans.html ). He mentioned the US'
slide from far-and-away-safest country in the 1970s to 13th (15th today)
in his keynote speech to the National Academy of Sciences Transportation
Research Board in 2003. As I type this post, I am on the phone with Dr.
Evans.

Well, that's an interesting question with a complex answer. Seatbelt use
rates are still shitty in the US, around 67 to 70 percent compared to
nearly 100 percent in virtually every other industrialized country. Also,
the US (putatively) controls fuel consumption via CAFE rather than via
fuel taxation; CAFE has created a mix of small/light cars and large/heavy
SUVs on US roads; there is much less average disparity among passenger
vehicle sizes and weights in other countries. Also, improperly underposted
speed limits on limited-access highways, together with punitive and random
enforcement, has bred widespread disrespect for all traffic laws.

And, it's interesting to note that only *one* country higher up the list
than the US -- namely Canada -- permits vehicles with US-spec safety
compliance. All the others require ECE safety compliance (everything from
headlights and taillamps to mirrors, glass, seatbelts, airbags, then there
are suspension and brake tests that don't even exist in the US, etc.).
Driver training, road engineering and maintenance and law enforcement
tactics probably factor into it as well.

Dr. Evans' book is very expensive -- $100 -- but my copy is en route.


DS

 

This I disagree with. CAFE hasn't created that mix, it is people's choices
of what they are buying.

The vast majority of people who purchase SUV's do not need them. Rather
they think they need them. And they think they need them because they
have been brainwashed into thinking this due to the constant barrage of
advertising they get from the automakers who make more money on the sale
of large SUV's. And the fact the automakers can brainwash them at all
is because most of the people in the US blew off science in school in favor
of underwater basketweaving courses that were easy A's, and blew off
math in school and blew off critical thinking, debate, and anything else
that smacked of requiring a little mental exercise.

There is a reason that Dr. Evan's book sells at $100 per copy. It is
because
since the book is aimed at the educated people, it is aimed at a very small
market and the publisher cannot afford to sell it otherwise. Most of the
people in the US are not very educated. And this is by their own choice.
This is why books like Harry Potter that actually require you to not know
anything about science and math and how the world works - so that you can
actually believe in kids flying around on broomsticks - sell so
spectacularly
well in the US, and as a result are much, much cheaper. It is why
technobabble
shows like Star Dreck with impossible plots are popular. It is why the
current
presidential campaign is being run on 5 second slogans and sound bites
rather
than real discussion of the issues. The majority of voters wouldn't know
real
discussion from demagogery if they saw it, and wouldn't have the attention
span
to follow a 2 hour discussion of an issue even if they did.

You can argue all you want that fuel taxes or some other governmental
twiddling
is a better way than CAFE. But this is just ignoring the real issue.
Everyone in the
US that is of auto buying age has been exposed to so much information on the
oil problems and such that they should know damn well to make better choices
on
what vehicles they buy. But the fact is that the US auto purchasers are
deliberately
choosing to purchase like a moron purchases. No amount of twiddling is
going to
make people start wanting to be educated when they have clearly chosen not
to
be.

When the average new car buyer believes he's saving money with a lease, you
simply cannot make any argument about higher fuel costs amortized over time
being higher. He is going to believe what he wants to believe, damn the
facts.

Ted

 

There are some cross-cultural differences too: the school district where
we lived until near the end of last year was approx. 50% Jewish and
Asian, the remainder predominantly Anglo (Roman Catholic/Protestant).
The School Superintendent said the Anglo parents often complained that
their kids were getting too much homework, while the Jewish and Asian
parents kept complaining that their kids weren't getting enough
homework, weren't learning enough.

This was one of the best-performing school districts on Long Island, and
we (Gentile Anglos) didn't think that our son was getting much homework.
Last year, in a highly rated private school in the Midwest, he had even
less homework. This year he is at a charter school, so we'll see how
that works out.

MB

 

<snip>

Your post is a good example of "tangential thinking."

 

There is no coorelation between the amount of homework and how much
a kid learns. If the school lets the teachers get away with blow-off
activities
during the classroom instructional time, they are going to have to assign a
lot
of homework to make up the difference.

The Jewish and Asian parents that were complaining were making two
complaints.
The first was not enough homework. The second was not learning enough.
These
are two different issues.

But the telling thing is that the Anglo parents wern't complaining that
their kids
were learning too much, but only that they were getting too much homework.

All this is really beside the point though, because what matters to the
society is
the content and retention of what is learned, not the quantity. Society
needs
high retention of subjects like critial thinking and analysis, and the
ability to
retrieve, comprehend and manipulate information. It does not need a lot of
retention of rote memory - ie: we don't need a lot of people walking around
who have memorized the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and can answer all the
questions on Jeopardy, yet are unable to understand that a lease on a car
costs more money over the long haul than just buying it.

The sad problem with the schools is that since everyone's brain works
differently
everyone has to learn to think critically differently. In short, educating
people on
how to analyse and use the information in the world requires instruction
that is
customized to the student. By contrast, rote memory such as memorizing the
US Constitution verbatim, is easily done with an instructional program that
is
not customized, and is standardized.

Customized tutoring is much more expensive than standardized instruction in
a
classroom with a one-to-many instruction to student ratio. Since the U.S.
society
has a majority of uneducated people in it, the majority in society aren't
willing
to pay for the increased cost of a proper education program, and will only
pay for the rote-learning programs. Nor are the majority of people equipped
to
properly instruct their own children, being uneducated and non-critical
thinkers
themselves, they can hardly be expected to raise children who are critical
thinkers.

Ideally, parents would use the rote-memory learning school programs for
subjects like mathematics, music, language and a few other subjects that
are basically all rote memory. Subjects like science, history, government,
the ones that require critical thinking and analysis, these would be handled
by the private tutors. But, we are far from this ideal, and instead what
happens
is students, left to their own devices, choose subjects like history and
government which are the worst suited for rote-learning, because they are
regarded as easy A's, and ignore subjects like math and language, which are
the best suited for rote-learning, because they are regarded as hard. It's
no wonder we have an education problem in the country.

Ted

 

Well, thank you. Googling the term "tangential thinking," I see that
many educational programs have as one of their goals teaching people to
think tangentially, I guess I was taught to do it without ever having
heard the term (and maybe my tachers hadn't either).

MB

 

Well, thank you. Googling the term "tangential thinking," I see that
many educational programs have as one of their goals teaching people to
think tangentially, I guess I was taught to do it without ever having
heard the term (and maybe my teachers hadn't either).

MB

 

An otherwise interesting post marred by the fact that the poster seems to
have never studied music but feels qualified to comment on how it can
be taught... Having had excellent high school music teachers and gone on
to get an undergraduate degree in the subject, I feel qualified to say
that rote memorization won't help you compose a piece of music.

Apologies if you meant "music history" as opposed to performance or
composition, in which case this is fairly accurate at anything less
than a university level.

Dave

 

Nor math at any level beyond multiplication tables.

 

You're wrong. Daniel's point is that CAFE legislated the relative size of
those choices apart from the normal forces of the market. The number of big,
heavy cars was artificially restricted, and many people bought trucks
instead. Trucks weren't intially impacted by CAFE. Maybe trucks would have
become more popular anyway, without the CAFE effects on cars, we'll never
know. But there's certainly no reason to argue that now. The relative size
of cars and trucks now is still a safety concern, regardless of which is
more popular. Now that gas is going up, cars may be poised to make a
comeback in the states. There ought to be fewer women driving Suburbans, but
it's still going to hurt to hit one.

 

Actually, music the way it's generally taught to children is much less in
the theory and composition and much more in the rote memory - ie:
practicing a piece. As the kids get older and if they want to continue in
it,
of course you need more theory and composition in the education of it.
But unfortunately there's this idea (which seems to have primariarly taken
root in the minds of the anglo/white children) nowadays that you can learn
all about music without being able to play decently. Kind of like the
foreign
language classes where 3rd year Spanish students still couldn't carry on a
conversation with anyone in Mexico City. This idea seems much less
prevalent
among the children of Asian descent which is why they are out there winning
all the music competitions.

You probably will scream this but until you can play at least 1 instrument
your just pretending to learn about music. Getting the kid good at
playing an instrument should be the primary goal of grammer school music,
with theory secondary and composition third. Most people don't have true
musical talent anyway and many of the ones that do are too lazy to do what
is necessary to make it worth having. There's only a small fraction who
have
both the talent and the drive to beat it into something admirable. But then
again, only a small fraction of people will ever become doctors, so I don't
see anything really different here. We don't run everyone through medical
school, why run everyone through music composition classes?

How can you think that performance isn't rote memory learning? Sure, a
good performer isn't a rote player. But before a good performer can
play listenable variations on a piece they better know it like the back of
their
hand first. To many people are lazy and figure they don't have to know a
piece well and can just play something that sounds kind of like it and pass
it
off as performance variations. It's like fingernails on a blackboard to
anyone
who knows better.

Ted

 

Baloney. This is an argument made up by people that want to extend CAFE
to trucks. Which by the way I think is a good thing anyway, at least for
any
truck that is smaller than 300 hp. Nobody really knows how many people
bought trucks vs smaller cars because of CAFE. You assume that people will
always go larger if the size they want isn't available. Incorrect
assumption.

Sure, there's a lot of trucks out there. You don't know if people would
have
bought trucks anyhow even if big heavy cars were available. You might
consider
that the station wagon market collapsed when people started equating station
wagons with the Brady Bunch. A truck and a station wagon have similar
utility in being able to haul around a lot of crap that is inconvenient to
haul
around in a big heavy car. For all we know the reason the truck market
is perking along right now is that it's become the modern day replacement
for
a station wagon. Half the trucks on the road I see have tops on the beds
anyway, making them look even more like station wagons.

Hmm you start out telling me I'm wrong then lame out by saying there's
no reason to argue. Yah, right.

Yes it is, but as the anti-anti SUV people keep telling me, they didn't buy
their SUV's because their dicks were too soft, they bought their SUV's
because they -needed- them. (although generally they fail to come up
with many reasons they actually need them that hold water, but I digress)

Your going to have big vehicles because people need them for hauling
around God-knows-what.

Your going to have small vehicles because people need them so they
don't spend all their money on keeping gas in a vehicle.

Nobody has come up with a solution that will either get rid of all the
small vehicles, or get rid of all the SUV's, unless you ban one or the
other.

I've traveled before. In Europe people tend to live in a lot smaller area
and so mass transit becomes feasible, and a lot of people use it and don't
even own a vehicle. I would hazard a guess that because of this, they
aren't
runing out to Home Depot every weekend for a load of plywood to fix up their
apartment. I would also hazard a guess that in countries with a declining
population
that there's not a lot of families with a lot of kids that need hauling
around. In
short, there's plenty of sociological reasons that a large car disparity
doesen't
exist in other countries that are stronger than CAFE factors.

I don't holdout much hope for a long term (ie: 3-5 year) serious increase in
fuel
prices. There is just way too much proven oil reserves in the world for
that. The shortages we are having now are just as a result of a few people
who happen to live on top of some of the largest reserves, having the
mistaken
belief that they actually own them. But, our president George Bush has
shown
them who really owns all that oil, so I don't forsee any long term problems
getting it unless some whiny Democrat gets into office who actually thinks
that
people who live somewhere should be left alone!

Ted

 

Look at the UK. Gloat, gloat, gloat...

DAS

 

From what I have read over the years (not a huge amount, admittedly) I have
obtained the impression that car suppliers in the US meet average fuel
consumption at least to some extent by manipulating the range of cars/engine
sizes sold, rather than by working on fuel economy in general.

DAS
--
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
---

[............]

 

Yep, Ted, I think there was a lot of well-meaning generalisations...

For what it's worth I once spent a couple of months in a state girls' school
in a corner of central London that well reflected the huge social mix in the
vicinity.

There were largely 4 ethnic groups: white British, black British with
parents mostly from the Caribbean, Indian (Subcontinent, East Africa) and
Chinese. Though I could not say if the majority of Chinese and 'Indian'
girls were born in Britain (possibly, given that they were teenagers, though
it was in the late 70s, only about 10 years after tens of thousands of
ethnic Indians were thrown out of East Africa) there were clear trends in
attitude to work and willingness to learn.

To me there was little difference between the white and black British; they
were far less motivated than the Asian and Chinese-origin girls. I have no
idea about the religious affiliation of these girls but I am prepared to
stick my neck out and say that, as a group, the Chinese and the Indians were
quite different from each other. Nevertheless they were similar in
discipline and willingness to learn.

DAS

 

Also,

CAFE made station wagons extremely scarce and expensive. To blame the results
of that deliberate action on "people's choices of what they are buying" is
just plain dimwitted.

 

You're right that he's wrong, but it's not so much that he's dimwitted as
that he's simply ignorant.