Duke87

(5417) For me it's not even experiencing what the locals experience, it's mostly checking out the infrastructure. I went and rode the subway in Cleveland not because it's what the locals do (if my experience is any indication, not very many of the locals do ), but because I like trains and wanted to see what that one was like. Of course it's even more fun visiting places where tourism isn't a thing and people are unlikely to travel there on business either. I love the weird reactions I get when I tell people Charleston WV is a cool city.

(5414) And also, more noticeably, as a stand-in for DC in the second Captain America movie. In one scene what is obviously the OH 2 Main Avenue Bridge features prominently. In another scene, a vehicle turns a corner and drives past a pair of signs for US 6 and US 322 - which could also be in Meadville or Conneaut Lake PA but based on the apparent size of the city is logically Cleveland.

(5411) I'd say Cleveland is actually rather underrated and there is plenty of cool stuff there. But then, my definition of "cool stuff" is nothing like a normal person's definition of "cool stuff". I don't particularly care what a city has in terms of things to do or tourist attractions, so long as it is visually interesting to explore.

I have never heard of a US police officer being issued a fully automatic weapon. Even the rifles SWAT teams carry are only semi-automatic. If someone was shot 16 times, there were 16 trigger pulls involved. One of the major problems we have is that there is a feedback loop involved in police violence and police trust. It doesn't matter how much you train the cops, if the cops and the community they serve are not on good terms with each other this sort of stuff will inevitably happen. Outbursts of violence like this are the direct result of the shooter seeing the shootee as hostile, a potential threat. Once basic reptilian survival instinct takes over, that is all that matters. If we want to stop the shootings, there are only two ways to do that: 1) don't let cops carry guns 2) build sufficient trust that the community and the cops see each other as allies, not enemies. Option 1 is quite problematic and would weaken police to the point of being unable to properly do their jobs. When the bad guys have guns and the cops don't, the bad guys win. Option 2 is a long difficult undertaking that will take time to achieve, especially given the racial aspect of much of this (the distrust is often between white cops and black citizens). This is one way in which racially representative policing can do a lot - whites make up about 32% of Chicago's population but about 49% of its police force. And this is relatively tame compared to some others. In now-famous Ferguson MO, at the time of Michael brown getting shot, the community was 29% white while the police force was 94% white. The other problem you get in cases like this is the commuter cops. How many of those 94% white Ferguson cops do you think actually live in Ferguson? It goes against the spirit of good policing to have this sort of thing. When cops live in the community they serve, they have a vested interest in keeping peace and building trust. When cops go home to somewhere else after their shift ends, their own best interests and the community's best interests are not in line.

This particular item appears to have been dug up by ITV News. And it reeks of tabloid speculation. The US State Department has not said why this family was denied entry, so we therefore do not know why. But, the human mind being what it is, we always without fail start making things up whenever we don't have actual facts. So, someone found this Facebook page and said "maybe that's why". Someone noted that one of the mean was previously denied entry to Israel and said likewise. And of course, there's the overarching theme the press is running with of "they were denied entry because they're Muslim". It must be kept in mind that absolutely none of this has been substantiated. The state department is under no legal obligation to explain why someone was denied entry, and unless Obama orders them to they probably won't. The homeland security apparatus, naturally, does not want to show their hand and reveal what the potential red flags are because if that information becomes publicly known, nefarious individuals can use it to avoid triggering any. It also, quite conveniently, shields the people responsible from accountability.

(5404) No one in my family was ever into it so I was never invited to do it growing up. Though I have witnessed other people doing it many times. The general impression I get is that I would rather watch paint dry. The problem is that patience isn't really my thing. Sitting there waiting for something to bite strikes me as extremely tedious and mind numbing. But to each his own. One of my hobbies is meticulously drawing detailed maps of entirely fictitious places, which I'm sure most people would not think of as a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

(5399) I know several people in the NYC area who do, so yes. Never been fishing myself but I'm not really an outdoorsy guy. Especially not when water is involved (I can't swim). The Ultimate Angler minigame on 3DS Mii Plaza is actually kinda fun though.

(5394) Big Bird is voiced by a man? Okay, that's... wow, I did not call that. I have always totally pegged the character as having a female voice.

(5390) Heh, thanks! Thing is, as someone who loves to go on road trips and dipsy doodle all sorts of crazy ways while doing so, I mean it quite literally as much as figuratively.

(5387) Spidey, what I can't get over is that you were someone from Ohio living in Japan. Big Bird would have been right if she had encountered you.

(5380) As I see it the key difference is that someone consuming alcohol is not much of a bother to others nearby unless they become unruly. Someone smoking, on the other hand, forces anyone nearby to choke and gag on the smoke flying in their face and deal with the stench. Rules limiting where people can smoke are more about making it easier for non-smokers to avoid having to deal with it than about marginalizing it on account of it being a bad habit. That, and alcoholic beverages have a significantly lower risk of starting a fire if mishandled.

(5376) Torch lighters are certainly easier to use than matches. But... matches definitely still exist and I don't see them going away anytime soon. Also, torch lighters are not effective at making a bathroom cease stinking.

(5370) Indeed, Micro Machines were not on quite the same scale as Hot Wheels/Matchbox and therefore could not be mixed with them... at least in the eyes of a kid who always had a lot of attention for detail. I had hundreds of the more "standard" die cast cars as well, most of them survived my childhood and are now in a box somewhere in my parents' attic. There were some that didn't survive, chiefly of the cheap all-plastic knock-off variety. Aside from Hot Wheels and Matchbox I definitely had some cars from a brand called Corgi, as well as Johnny Lightning (remember those?) One particular fact of note is that the Hot Wheels and Matchbox brands have both been owned by the same parent company (Mattel) since 1997. They thus are not actually competitors as one might think (though they used to be).

(5366) I have not

(5362) Greetings from the local laundromat. Yeah I got nuthin' else. :P

It's because people are scared. The game has changed substantially. During the cold war, our enemies wore uniforms, and while they had nuclear warheads, so did we. We were rivals on equal terms and the principle of mutually assured destruction was effective at preventing any heads of state from doing anything rash. Aside from the threat of nuclear armageddon, Americans did not have to worry about being harmed by Soviets in their day to day lives. With terrorism it's different. Terrorism does not have a flag or even a face. Terrorists don't have a civilian population they care about protecting. Terrorists are not dissuaded by any of our military capabilities and have demonstrated a willingness to attack us directly at any chance they get. Meanwhile since they are not a country it is impossible for us to retaliate directly. With terrorism, it's not a fair fight and we are at a disadvantage. Couple this with the rise of China as a major world power and growing economic problems at home, and America is scared because it realizes it is in decline. Unable to accept this, America flails and claws in whatever way it can in a desperate attempt to preserve its status. The American psyche was once in part defined by a philosophy of exceptionalism, that we were on top of the food chain and rightfully belonged there. If some part of it has been destroyed, it is because we have gone from being an empire in its golden age to being an empire that has begun to unravel. As for the story in question here, we have reached the point where mass shootings have almost become more statistics than news. A development which I actually encourage because I believe that, counterintuitively, it is for the better. The biggest reason mass shootings have become so popular is because how effective they are at getting attention. If everyone grows weary of them and stops caring, then a significant part of the motive to carry such crimes out goes away and their frequency will decline.

(5356) Time travel was actually already invented in 1985, but the machine was destroyed. That said, I was promised a hovercar and I feel cheated.

(5349) That's a plane trip.

(5346) Road trips are awesome.

An op ed on this general problem. It would seem the coddled youth have grown up and expect to continue to be coddled as adults.

The MTA would not do this because... well, because they're a government bureaucracy. The 42nd Street shuttle trains routinely get wrapped inside and out with advertising like this, but it is the only place in the system the MTA is willing to do that much. Bear in mind as well that this is very tourist-heavy territory, outright redoing everything as a mockup would probably confuse a lot of people. Another interesting bit of background here: there have been some people blasting the MTA for allowing these ads to run, but they have no choice. The MTA used to have a policy against ads that were deemed racist, sexist, etc.-ist. A few years ago they rejected some provocative ads referring to Israel's enemies as "savage" on these grounds and the group seeking to run them filed a lawsuit saying that their first amendment right to free speech/press was being violated. The courts agreed with them and told the MTA they had to run the ads and revise their policy. More recently the MTA attempted to block a new set of ads from the same group on the grounds they might incite violence, and the courts smacked them again. If the MTA had refused to run the ads for this show and gotten sued, they inevitably would have lost. Their hands are tied. The issue here is that since subway trains are public property, the government agency responsible for them is not allowed to block anyone from running ads which are protected free speech under the first amendment. If you can legally say it or display it on your property, you can legally run an advertisement in the subway showing it. As for the ads themselves, I do find it somewhat amusing that the version of the flag on the train used an iron cross instead of a swastika, in a cheap attempt to make it less overtly provocative by using a symbol that is not as widely recognized. And I don't see what the big deal is. The subway in New York has featured graphic and gross anti-smoking and anti-obesity ads which no one made them pull. If people can deal with that, they should be able to deal with a few Nazi symbols used in a non-Godwin's law context. Meanwhile, the ads have been pulled on King Governor Cuomo's orders.

(5342) If you have no internet at home, how are you posting here?

(5338) Almost nothing has ever been definitively proven to NOT cause cancer. When worrying about such things it is best to keep that in mind.

(5332) It IS all about the money, but on a micro scale, not a macro scale. Building roads in a way that they don't last as long certainly benefits road construction crews. But that doesn't make it beneficial overall, since money spent on maintenance does not enhance the value of the asset, it merely prevents value from being lost. Besides, even if the lifecycle costs of road paving go down, this need not mean less money is spent on paving. It can instead mean the construction of more roads.

(5327) There's also the alternative of paving roads with concrete. Which unfortunately doesn't happen as often as it should do to shortsighted budget decisions. Concrete costs twice as much to pave with but it lasts three times as long, so you save money in the end.