Reason: because they've bought all new trucks with robotic arms that grab the trash cans and dump their contents into the truck. I have seen this new method in operation twice, now, and still can't figure out how do it know?
The truck pulls up to the curb, and the driver must hit a switch or lever or something; and then the arm unerringly reaches out, finds the can, grabs it, and dumps it. The big hand doesn't come straight out; it adjusts itself side-to-side before moving into contact with the can and closing its fingers. So is it the driver operating the thing, or is it robotic? And if it's robotic, how do it know?
I didn't see anything on the truck that looked like a camera for a "machine vision" application, but then again I was inside the house and the truck wasn't less than 50 feet away from me.
Perhaps the driver merely maneuvers the hand into contact with the can, then hits another switch, and the rest of the process is automated: the can is lifted, emptied, and put back in place without further human intervention. The driver then only has to wait until a light changes state in front of him, telling him the operation is complete.
What I do know is that it's obvious how much more efficient this method is than having a couple guys hang off the back of the truck and get off to manually dump cans inside. Or--as was the case before they moved to this new system--have the driver himself getting in and out of the truck all the damn time to empty the cans by hand.
* * *
Someone warned us about Best Buy. I remember this from the Christmas shopping season, and it didn't sound like good news then; this is the other side of the coin, isn't it?
What it means is that the Christmas shopping season wasn't all that damned great after all.
* * *
Conservatives are stupid! It's because they're all churchgoers and bitter clingers! These unscientific rubes all think the Earth was created in a week 5,000 years ago and that dinosaurs and humans were contemporaneous!
Vox Day on this:
...[T]he reason is obvious. Science as an institution is increasingly abandoning science as a method, so much so that it is often not even appropriate to refer to "science" or "scientists" when one is discussing some of the various quasi-sciences such as econometrics, the theory of evolution by (probably) natural selection, and what presently goes by the name of "climate change".Take, for example, the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia. "ClimateGate" revealed the pseudoscientific nonsense they were passing as real science--the made-up data, the attempts at changing history to fit their theories, etcetera--and Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph demonstrated that actual scientific fraud in climatology was going completely unpunished. Mann's fraud was quietly swept under the rug and ignored once it was shown to be nothing but pure invention; Mann himself is still taken seriously as a scientist in climatology.
Conservatives generally prefer to think for themselves; and plenty of conservatives are smart enough to know the difference between actual real science and make-believe.
* * *
Peggy Noonan Peggy Noonan has buyer's remorse.
AoSHQ comments.
Plenty of us are not surprised that Obama has turned out to be exactly what we expected him to be. Then again, we voted against him in the last election. Folks like Ms. Noonan were not, apparently, quite so perspicacious.
* * *
Liberals are shocked and surprised that ObamaCare has garnered such cogent and compelling arguments against it. As Ace points out, "Liberals just chose to ignore relevant information about the world they live in, and then call themselves sophisticated for having chosen to be stupider than God made them."
The thing is, to be a liberal you've got to do that all the time. Okay, you can't look at the abject failure of Johnson's "Great Society" and think, "Yeah, this worked!"
Unless, of course, you "ignore relevant information about the world" that you're living in.
You can't look at the living conditions suffered by those who are oppressed by communist regimes and think, "That's a worker's paradise!" without totally ignoring the fact that it's the exact opposite of paradise. Sure, your girlfriend doesn't have to worry about food or medical care or living space or-or-or...nor does she have to worry about what to think or believe. She eats what she's given, she wears what she's given, she waits where she's told to wait to see the doctor, she lives where she's told, and if she expresses so much as one contrary thought she becomes a criminal.
Liberalism isn't about what is; liberalism is about what ought to be. Medical care should to be free. Outcomes should be equal. Rich people should give up most of their incomes to pay for government programs. Poor people should live as well as rich people. Banning the legal ownership of guns should reduce crime.
It's all about attitude, not results...because if you look at their results you find that leftist ideas fail every time they're tried.
(See above: the Earth should be warming because of human carbon emissions. If it's not, making shit up to "prove" that it is doing so is perfectly justifiable, and it's just your conservative Jesus-clinging neanderthal Rethuglikkkan crazy stupid nazi attitudes that keep you from understanding!)
* * *
Headline should be "Democrats agree with GOP and refuse Obama's budget." Or maybe "House UNANIMOUSLY rejects Obama's budget." How about that? NOT SO MUCH AS ONE AFFIRMATIVE VOTE was cast for Obama's budget in the House of Representatives.
There were obviously abstentions: "The vote was 414-0." But abstentions are not "yes" votes.
The vote was "...forced by GOP lawmakers to embarrass Democrats" yet plenty of Democrats voted against the thing.
Anyone care to explain to me what's so wonderful about this budget that it can't get any Democrat votes at all? Not even from the lunatic left "safe" seats?
* * *
AoSHQ talks about a stupid race pimp.
Race pimp: "This is obviously not the central issue but Skittles' profiteering thanks to us buying it bc of Trayvon obviates some financial donation."
As much as I hate to quote Princess Bride, I find I must: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
Okay, first off, "Skittles" is not a corporation. "Skittles" is a product name. Mars is the company that makes "Skittles".
...those things are pure sugar, too. I like them. I rarely buy them because the last thing someone with chronic hypoglycemia needs is to give his pancreas an excuse to overreact by eating pure f-ing sugar.
Point is, "Skittles" is not "profiteering" any more than Mars, Incorporated is. Profiteering is when you sell a product at an outrageous markup because you can. (Example: Jason selling lemonade for $10 per glass after shutting off the house's water supply.)
Mars hasn't raised the price on Skittles, and people buying the product because Trayvon Martin got shot while beating someone up (while carrying some) is just plain stupid.
And as for the misused $40 word, Ace says it about as well as I could:
Obviates?A guy trying to sound a lot smarter than he actually is obviates a dictionary, dude! Shut up you raciss retard rethuglikkkan nazi!
He means "suggests" or "demands" -- that this situation necessitates that Skittles pay The Community or whatever some blood money.
Obviates means the exact opposite of that. "Z obviates Y" means that x makes y unnecessary or forestalls it or prevents it.
Dictionaries, how do they work?
And Karl Denninger discusses the reality of interracial crime in America.
We have a problem here in this country. We have black youth who think that handles like "NO_LIMIT_NIGGA" are cute names to apply to themselves on Twitter. We have youth that talk (and write) in language that is unintelligible, who wear "grills" made out of gold as some sort of indication of their gangsta "coolness" and walk around with their pants halfway down to their knees in "tribute" to the fact that if you go to jail the jailer will take your belt so you can't either use it as a weapon or hang yourself with it.The "thug culture" is amazingly idiotic.
* * *
Subway can't sell footlong sandwiches for $5 in San Francisco because it costs far too much to do business there.
"Apparently, the city's new minimum wage, raised to $10.24 as of Jan. 1, make $5 footlongs an impossible business model."
Oh, no, that's impossible. Liberals tell us that minimum wage increases do nothing of the sort! All they do is make it possible for the underpriveleged to earn a "living wage"! They don't make products more expensive nor do they increase unemployment!
...because, after all, it shouldn't! Right?
* * *
Michael Flynn talks about why science fiction rarely gets the future correct.
* * *
Well, today I'm hoping I might get the motorcycle seat finished and get the bike reassembled. It's good weather for what I want to do next, which is to sit down with a can of Ajax and a toothbrush and thoroughly clean everything.
I knew I'd have to do it someday. Today would be a good one for that.
* * *
Jon really enjoys a good cup of...whatever he's drinking:
