PencilAndPaper

LinkedIn is so creepy, and I totally resent people pressuring me into it. Kool Aid.

So the mic in your phone can be used as a bug when you arent using it?

Seems to me this would be easy enough to code yourself.... What am I missing?

I guess we were both lucky then (you more so than me, but thats just opinion at this point)!

Risk compensation also applies to drunk drivers, but no one argues that driving drunk is just as risky as driving sober. Yes, it plays a part in the whole equation, but it doesnt necessarily discredit the theory!

Just because other people take bigger risks while cycling with helmets on, doesnt mean that we should write off helmets. They can be very effective when combined safe cycling practices, and perhaps thats how that information can be made useful.

'you could think more deeply about an issue that is much more complicated than "it's bad to injure your head"'

Are you about to argue that head injuries could be considered good? Please enlighten this simple thinker.

diaspora

Its kind of annoying that most of the comments in response to this post are basically debating vague jargon

The word means many things to different people. This is an indication that people should start using different words to describe things if they want their audience to interpret them as intended.

YUP. I created a fake account with a new name and email. IT figured out who I was pretty shortly. Dont know how, but there are many ways they could do this. For one, I added similar friends, and used a similar name.

Its the facial recognition that really creeps me out though, and the fact that cops always are recording cameras at community events and protests. Supplier meet consumer.

The key word being "tries". they need to be a bit more effective with their trying (if indeed they are trying to do good things).

OK, I tend to make resentful comments about kids with trust funds or who still live at home, but honestly, they would be fools to not tap into the resources available to them.

>>However, getting nothing done for four of your most productive years is actually pretty risky.

This is how I feel about my post secondary education. I regret being herded into it and wasting all of those years parroting and memorizing so that I could learn "critical thinking"

Also...

I used to ride around for years without a helmet despite laws that mandate that I wear one. Interestingly, even after two tickets I still rode around without a helmet because I perceived that I was an awesome cyclist with perfect judgement and not prone to human error at all, a typical attitude for my age at the time.

A few months after starting to wear a helmet because people were being judgmental, not because I thought I would ever need it, I got into an accident where I went flying off my bike. Short story, it saved my brain.

Ya ya, this is anecdotal, but what was important about that experience for me, is it made me realize that my perceptions of safety were totally off. Our own control over the world is actually minimal, and even we fail despite how perfect we think we are at assessing the situation.

I was stupid. Being a cyclist wasnt experience enough for me to assess my safety, I needed a couple of near misses to realize how wrong I was. I needed to physically experience how my head deals with its momentum and pavement. I needed to experience how flying through the air face first with my arms extended to cushion the blow results in my back hitting the pavement followed next by the back of my head. Some people need to learn these things through experience.

If I were to assume everyone was as dense as I was at the time, I would counter with something like "until you've had enough experience being in accidents and thrown into objects, your intuition regarding the safety of that activity is suspect"

I didnt used to listen to people like me either!

Interesting point on the risk compensation. I can see that causing more recklessness.

The first study you mention is also pretty interesting, however it only is measuring the efficacy of legislation on safety and is not measuring the efficacy of helmet wearing itself. Im not sure if legislation on its own is a good proxy for helmet wearing and the authors do state: "While helmets reduce the risk of head injuries and we encourage their use..."

This would indeed happen if the issue of homelessness continues to be brushed aside the way it currently is in many places.

Interestingly, according to this study and others, it is actually cheaper to provide social housing for homeless people than dealing with the side-effects of brushing them aside.

http://www.homelesshub.ca/Library/View.aspx?id=55023

I think "free" is the wrong word for it. Howabout "fare free"? Someone is going to have to pay.

I like the idea of pushing the costs more onto the community as a whole, not just users. Make it kind of like most school systems: everyone pays through taxes whether or not they have kids or if they send their kids to private school.

I guess I am just curious as to why the study you indicated concluded that helmet laws didnt reduce head injuries. Perhaps people didnt change their helmet wearing behavior because some unenforced law? Not to be a citation jerk, but what is TFA and can you link to the study? I am genuinely curious because it seems so counter-intuitive to me.

perhaps the incidences of head injuries dont go down, but what happens to the severity of those head injuries when helmets are being worn. If you classify a bruise on the forehead and a severe cerebral contusion both as "head injuries", you are unlikely to see much of a difference between wearing a helmet and not in terms of head injuries

I had a friend who once speculated that if the government wanted to discourage driving, they could mandate that driver wear helmets.

Considering how dangerous and destructive driving is, maybe its a win-win.

I like my head.

Being a heavy object attached to your body by a thin, fairly weak neck, your head is very likely to hit the ground if you fall at speed.

Also, I live in a place that has social healthcare so, it makes sense to mandate safety since we all foot the bill.

Bicycle helmets are probably more equivalent to mandating homeowners to use insulated wire in their wiring than mandating everyone have a nuclear bunker which is very expensive and extreme ...unless of course your hair is the biggest deal on earth.

I dont have time to read the whole of this very interesting but LONG article to see if he mentions airbag helmets.

I am skeptical about how well these airbags protect one's face, but its an interesting new take on protecting your head.

http://www.hovding.com/en/how_it_works?/en/how

They also have airbag jackets for motorcyclists

http://www.bikebone.com/Air-Vest-Motorcycle-Airbag-Hit-Air.h...

This is awesome! I wonder if the algorithm is going to be open source as I could see it being very useful to budget-constrained organizations such as http://publiclaboratory.org.

Cheaper than indoor LIDAR?

Asking "Are you willing to work nights and weekends to get an assignment done on time?" would indicate to me as the interviewee that this employer might have had problems in the past abusing this particular privilege.

Maybe re-title the article "how to make your candidates weary"?

Has anyone watched Battlestar Galactica?