Melkart is my „real“ nickname. I took Melquart at first, because I thought – mistakenly – that Melkart was already taken.
Melkart is my „real“ nickname. I took Melquart at first, because I thought – mistakenly – that Melkart was already taken.
Trips by mass transit often contain frequent stops, which makes them slow, often slower than travelling by car. They also incur high costs to operators for the energy required to accelerate trains again after the stop and for the amount of rolling stock and staff needed. Furthermore the uneven loads of a train between different pairs of stops along its route increases costs, too, as the capacity of the train needs to be customized for the maximum load section. Eventually, the costs for building stations are increased by having to customize the length of its stopping bays to the maximum train length along the route, even if most passengers don’t board or alight there.
As all these costs are passed on to the passenger by ticket prices, trips by mass transit would not only be faster, but cheaper, too, if the number of intermediate stops could be reduced. On the other hand, as will be seen, different routing patterns often cause higher waiting times due to reduced departure frequency, or requires the passenger to change trains more often. Furthermore, different routing patterns may also require changes to the ROW, like passing lanes at stations or additional stopping bays.
In order to improve transit, one needs to look at different routing patterns. The most widespread concept is that every train stops at every stop along its route. This scheme has the above-mentioned disadvantages. Another concept is the skip-stop service pattern, by which trains skip certain alternating low-utilized stops along the route. The pattern is described here in more detail. It slightly reduces the line capacity on ROWs without passing lane by increasing the minimum headway.
Another service pattern is „zonal operation“, which is particularly suitable for operation between center and periphery. In this pattern all stations along the route are grouped into certain zones, depending on their distance from the center. Routes are then designed to serve a certain zone only, by traveling without stop between the center and the first stop within their zone, and then stopping at every station within their zone. Usually stations located at the border between different zones are assigned to both zones at once in order to allow interchange between different routes, thus allowing to travel between zones without having to connect at the center.
Further routing patterns are possible if trains are capable of splitting and joining during revenue operation. This enables trains to travel one section jointly, thus occupying only one timetable path, which is particularly useful where the capacity of the ROW is limited, and saving costs for staff, too, if trains are operated in human-driven mode, then to split at a certain station and from there onwards to serve different stops or even possibly different lines. If train units are capable of opening a passage way to coupled adjoining units, passengers could also change trains en route instead of at a station.
Many countries suffer from emigration. Many of their most capable and productive people leave, after having been raised, fed, protected and educated by their mother countries. A young person with a completed academic education and ready to begin his working life, can easily have caused his country costs of several hundred thousands €, before he contributed even a penny as a return of investment to his mother country. This problem needs to be addressed, a suitable policy needs to be devised and implemented.
It could be argued that countries would do better to make themselves more attractive as a permanent home. Of course they should do their best, however, there are limits to it which can’t be transgressed. Different locations, different amounts and quality of land, different climate, different population base and a different position within the international community set different countries into different situations, which can’t be changed at will, at least not easily. For example, some countries have dangerous enemies and therefore must spend more on national defence. Other countries must spend more in order to cope with a difficult climate while other countries again abound in natural ressources. By course of history some countries ended up with a less capable and productive population than others. Coming from different points of departure a country can try hard to do its best and still be less attractive as a permanent home than others. Therefore another policy addressing the problem of emigration must be devised.
I suggest to understand society like a family, giving support in times of need, but demanding contribution in better times, too. Therefore people can’t be allowed to emigrate without settling their incurred debt to society first. The state should be understood as a all-encompassing social security system, which raises premiums according to everyone’s individual capability and productivity and which keeps a financial account for every citizen. Onto this account shall be booked all paid premiums, but also all benefits which were received by the citizen, such as:
Membership in this all-encompassing social security system would be mandatory for every citizen and for every permanent resident in the country. Citizens who emigrated would still remain members of the social security system and would still have to pay premiums according to their individual capability and productivity. For determining their individual capability, taxes and charges of their host country have to be subtracted from and social benefits added to their premium. Thus, every citizen would still be free to emigrate and not be drawn on harder than citizens who did not emigrate, but at the same time, they could not escape their liability by emigrating to a country offering them better conditions.
People who emigrated and handed back their citizenship, would be allowed to resign from the system, but not before they adjusted all imbalances on their account. To demand them to hand back their citizenship is necessary because someone could emigrate to another country in good times and return back home in times of need, thus taking unfair advantage of his home country. A non-citizen can always be denied entry to the country while a citizen can’t.
The perfect transit vehicle runs on rubber tires, driverless on dedicated ROWs made of concrete or human-driven on ordinary roads, mixing with normal road traffic, and will therefore resemble a bus more than a train. However, it will be possible to couple and also decouple several units into a trackless train, even during revenue operation. Since all axles of all vehicles are steerable, a train consisting of several units will still retain the same small turning circle as a single unit and the latter units will follow exactly the traces of the unit in front, thus allowing for narrow lanes even in sharp curves.
Rubber on concrete is superior for passenger traffic compared to steel wheels on rails. Rubber-tired wheels are more lightweight and they dont require heavy bogies, either, because they don’t need rigid axles. For railway vehicles, the sine running requires this. Light weight saves energy particularly when vehicles have to stop frequently on their way, as is the case in transit. While it is true that today braking energy can be recovered, it is not possible to recover even near 100% of it.
Steel wheels on steel rails have the advantage of lower rolling friction. However, this is essential only for slow and heavy traffic over long distances. Over short distances, as between the stops of a transit line, the energy lost to rolling friction is outweighted by the kinetic energy of the vehicle, and for fast traffic, by the energy lost to wind resistance. Therefore steel wheels of steel rails are superior only for slow freight traffic over long distances which is heavy and doesn’t stop often on its route. Another, albeit minimal advantage of steel wheels on steel rails is the possibility to use the rails as return conductor for electric power supply by overhead wire or third rail. Rubber-tired vehicles can be powered electrically, too, but they require a double-pole power supply.
Steel wheels on rails exert a contact pressure per unit area orders of magnitudes higher than rubber tires on concrete. This causes higher maintenance costs for railways. The low adhesion of steel on steel makes railway vehicles unable to ascend very steep slopes. Rubber-tired vehicles can easily ascend steep slopes, even with only few of their axles being powered, and they can accelerate and decelerate slightly faster than railway vehicles. Furthermore, while the braking distance in normal operation is determined by the need of maintaining comfort and safety of the passengers, thus limiting acceleration and deceleration to approximately 1.3 m/s^2, the emergency braking distance is much shorter for rubber-tired vehicles. When coupling trains within revenue operation, this allows for the vehicle behind to approach the standing vehicle much swifter without compromising safety as there is always the possibility of braking harder should the approaching vehicle transgress its target speed for a given distance. Furthermore, a shorter emergency braking distance allows for a train following onto an occupied stopping bay to under-run the absolute braking distance for normal operation to the vehicle in front after the latter already departed, thus allowing to cut off another 8 seconds or so from the minimal possible headway through a station without passing lane.
On stations, ideally there should be at least a passing lane beside the stopping lane in order to maximize throughput of the exclusive ROW and in order to allow for trains to skip stops. Of course, the costs of providing a passing lane may be prohibitively expensive for underground sections although it allows for shorter platform areas at low-utilized stations, if these are to be served by short train consists only. At stations where several trains should be able to stop at the same time, stopping bays can be aligned either side by side or, length-wise, one after the other. The self-steering capability of the vehicles and the absence of rails allows vehicles to overtake each other at every location along the route, without requiring switches.
The possibility for coupling and decoupling vehicles within revenue operation allows to customize the capacity of the trains to the demands over different stretches of the route, without falling back to short-turning trips, which has the drawback of both reducing frequency at short-turned sections and causing uneven loads at the common sections of the route. Furthermore it allows for different routings of units within the same train consists, thus serving several areas at the end of a common line at once with a high frequency, as, for instance, at the end of a common ROW, and even for units to decouple from one train, serving exclusively a low-utilized station on a line and eventually coupling at the succeeding train on the same line, even if there is no passing lane at the low-utilized station. Ideally, after coupling vehicles in normal operation, the passage way between them should be automatically opened to allow for passengers to distribute themselves evenly over the whole length of the train. For this, both ends of each vehicle should be equipped with a roller shutter.
Ideally, the dedicated ROW for transit vehicles is equipped with electric power supply overhead wires or rails, thus allowing for vehicles to be powered electrically. For spur lines on ordinary roads, however, an electric power supply would be too expensive, therefore vehicles should be equipped with an energy storage, too, allowing to travel over short distances without electric power supply overhead wires or rails.
Transit systems running on customized ROWs only have the limitation of being unable to serve all areas without them. Since customized ROWs are expensive, such areas are plenty. By vehicles being able to drive on ordinary roads and mixing with normal street traffic, they can exploit the higher travel speed on dedicated ROWs while still serving areas away from them. In order to allow for driving on ordinary roads mixing with normal street traffic without taking away space for a driver cabin from the interior, the vehicles are equipped with comprehensive camera surveillance at both ends to supervise street traffic, thus allowing for drivers driving them with their visual input being communicated to them from the cameras to monitors in front of them at a remote office. Remote-controlled driving with visual input from cameras can’t be deemed to be any less safe than driving a tramway, since, in case of sudden failure of the cameras or of the communication link, the vehicle can still emergency brake, albeit only within its exact virtual track and therefore being incapable of evading obstacles. But neither can a tramway which drives on rails within street traffic and is still deemed reasonably safe.
I used to think that the way, how Paltalk works, was the future of chatting, but when I experienced it myself, I changed my opinion. Permanently having a mic open is just too distracting and people abuse it by being too self-indulgent. They talk for overly long times, are very redundant in what they say etc. It would be better just to post one or several voice and/or video messages to the channel, for everybody to listen to or watch it, only if and when they want to. These can then spark a discussion about them. For that, however, one needs a pin board to every channel, with larger space than the current „topic“ feature of IRC, and with easier functionality. It should be possible to drag and drop links and objects onto the pin board.
Does there already exist a possibility to implement this indirectly? Like a pin board web service, which could be linked to at the topic. IRC-Galleria maybe? A bot could automatically send the IPs of all channel visitors to the web service, which could then restrict access to the pin board to these IPs. Unfortunately dragging and dropping objects into certain areas of web pages hasnt caught on yet.
Anyway it’s a shame that Chat and Instant Messenging haven’t yet been fully integrated. With IM it isn’t possible to operate channels, with more than two visitors and these should have a pin board, too.
Is this the ultimate improvement in suspension? It would make a high-speed bus ultimately comfortable. Today there might be a disadvantage of road transportation compared to rail, particularly at high speeds, because roads are usually rougher than railways.
About this suspension is said on its website, that it consumes as much energy as an air condition. Naturally, lifting the vehicle up and down by linear motors consumes energy, and I presume the energy consumed increases with both the weight of the vehicle and the roughness of the road.
Furthermore, the German Wikipedia-Artikel about linear motors mentions a maximum achieved force of 30 kN. I don’t know if this figure is applicable for this case, but if it was, it might restrict the use of the Bose suspension to axles with a low weight and make it unsuitable for heavy-duty vehicles.
Most dating sites are technologically from the stone age. Admittedly, most of them are capable to narrow your search on certain „hard“ criteria, like sex, age span, geographical location, type of interest etc. But then they expect you to email every single one of the found matches yourself, which is extremely time-consuming and carries the inconvenience of being rejected multiple times and thus „losing face“.
Orkut has a feature called the „crush list“. You enter every person whose profile you have checked and whom you are interested in, in the „crush list“, but this list is kept secret. Only when there is a match between two people having entered each other in their own „crush list“, i.e. both people have a mutual interest in each other, then both people get notified automatically. This way the risk of being rejected and losing face is reduced to a minimum.
I suggest a feature to present all people matching said certain „hard criteria“, like sex, age span, geographical location, type of interest etc., with those people having entered you in their crush list getting presented preferably, but still hidden between people not knowing you, thus not revealing indirectly their interest in you. People who have seen your profile and decided not being interested in you, should be excluded from the selection. The presentation should be executed like a dia show, while giving you the opportunity, after looking at the profile of one person, to express with a mouse click if you are interested in them or not.
Furthermore, you should be given opportunity to enter a price for how much money you would be willing to satisfy the other person’s interest in you, if he or she was interested in you. This would make both the work of prostitutes and the selection process of their customers easier and more convenient, as the prostitute could easily deselect certain customers without rejecting them openly and the customers would not risk getting rejected.
So what is needed to implement this idea in the real world? I propose setting up a new service, where you can enter a profile, like at so many others and where you can also enter the „hard criteria“ for the people you are looking for. Furthermore it stores your „crush status“ about any other person, which can be either „want“ or „not want“. You may also set as an option that other people can inspect your crush status on them on request. The service lets you search for „hard“ matches, with people having a crush on you mixed in preferably. Last, but not least, it sends out notifications about mutual crushes, but lets members decide if and how they want to receive this info, in order to avoid annoying particularly popular people and possibly drive them away.
But how do people from the real world ever come to use this site? By use of a small button to be placed on profiles of people anywhere else to click on if they have a crush on you. This web button could be placed on personal home pages or profiles in web communities like orkut, facebook etc. or anywhere else on the web. The button has written „I have a crush on this person“ on it and one can choose between a „secret“ crush, and an „open“ crush, the latter being revealed on request to all people who want to know if you had a crush on them or not. The button would then send the info to the above-mentioned service. If the clicker hasn’t registered yet, he or she would be invited, too, with the option of not supplying a full profile but merely one single piece of info allowing to identify them, like their email-address. Members without a profile would then never be included in a presentation.
The concept of „crush lists“ has also been implemented by the site „Crush space“, but very poorly. This site seems mostly deserted now. It is easy to understand why: There is no connection to the outer world, no support is being provided for people who want to lure web surfers from anywhere else to this service, with one mouse-click. Furthermore people whom others have had a crush on, get always notified by email, which can be prohibitively annoying to popular members.
In the era of colonialization, states used to trade colonies freely. Sometimes together with their population, sometimes their population was forced to relocate. Of course, it also happened that states were forced to cede their colonies to another state as a consequence of a war. Now people could associate and together become players in this game, too, possibly purchasing land from another state or form an army or rent a private army and force another state to cede certain chunks of land to them. By this way, new states could enter the game.
These days, sadly, states are less open about selling chunks of their territor, because they take an too absolute view of the property rights of their citizens. Of course, those citizens owning land in that area might be against it being sold, but such an unconditional right need not be guaranteed by the state in the first place. Think of it as being similar to an expropriation of property taking place when building a right of way, e.g. for a highway or an airport. Then people get expropriated for the common good but compensated for their losses.
We are witnessing the process of Islamization, this time in Europe, which will cause the indigenous population soon to become a minority in the lands which formerly had been theirs. Now I am not against them reconquering their lands by force, but another option would be to found an association, which would collect capital for a potential land purchase or in order to rent or financially support an army. (The latter, for instance, was done by the Albanian population of Kosovo to support the Kosovo Liberation Army.) As long as the capital is not needed for the land purchase, the association would just invest it like an ordinary investment fund. And the leadership of this association would be accountable for it as the association would be a legal corporation seated in a state with a functioning legal system. All this just like the Jews did when they aimed to found their own state of Israel
After the new state got founded, the capital investors would be alloted pieces of land in the new territory, according to the amount of capital they contributed. This means that immigrants to the new state need not have been investors before, nor does it mean that people would invest only if they want to immigrate themselves. It might also be just an ordinary investment like any other, with the investor hoping to gain a high profit from later selling the land later to somebody else.
For examples, look at the investment funds and association which founded Jamestown and New England, from which the United States emerged.
On what common grounds would people associate with each other nowadays? The important factors are how well people get along with each other in common life and, most importantly, how they want their new state to look like, what legal system they want. It is similar to a political party, with its members sharing a lot of political views and ambitions, however, it need not be limited to it. Not only political views count, but also how well the people are able to abide by the required rules and meet the demands made to its citizens by the planned society.
How the state must carefully control immigration and procreation, I already clarified in an earlier post.
Meine Frage zum Thema Sauerstoff – in diesem Blog zuvor bereits auf Englisch gepostet – noch einmal umformuliert und auf deutsch. Diese Frage habe ich jetzt an das PM-Magazin gestellt. Hoffentlich erhalte ich jetzt eine Antwort.
Es heisst, der Sauerstoff in der Luft sei entstanden, als Organismen auftauchten, die Photosynthese betrieben, also mit Hilfe von Licht Kohlendioxid in seine Bestandteile aufspalteten. Der Sauerstoff wurde in die Luft abgegeben, der Kohlenstoffanteil gelangte schliesslich über einen langen Zeitraum in die Erdöl-, Gas-, und Kohlevorkommen unter der Erde.
Diese Vorkommen verbrennt die Menschheit gerade und erhöht dadurch den Kohlendioxidanteil der Luft. Bei der Verbrennung wird Sauerstoff aus der Luft entnommen und in Kohlendioxid umgewandelt. Durch den Einfluß der menschlichen Aktivitäten müsste sich der Sauerstoffanteil der Atmosphäre also verringern.
Nun ist der Sauerstoff aber angeblich erst durch die Photosynthese der Organismen in die Luft gekommen. Die Verbrennung ist nur die Umkehrung des Prozesses der Photosynthese. Durch die Verbrennung sämtlicher durch die Photosynthese entstandener kohlenstoffhaltiger Substanzen auf der Erde – vor allem die Erdöl-, Gas- und Kohlevorkommen – müsste also auch sämtlicher Sauerstoff aus der Luft verschwinden.
Die Menschheit ist gerade dabei, die Erdöl-, Gas- und Kohlevorkommen zu verbrennen. Der Sauerstoffanteil der Luft nimmt aber nicht merklich ab. Warum nicht?
location based service auf dem handy.
automatische erkennung des standortes
problem scheint derzeit noch zu sein: zu geringe verbreitung von
gps-empfängern in autos und vor allem: zu hohe tarife für ständige
(mobil)funkverbindung
es gibt auch ein system, mit dem die verkehrsnachrichten digital zusammen
mit dem radio übermittelt werden. damit könnte es evtl. gehen, vielleicht
sind es aber auch zuviele daten
vorteile: fahrtziel, fahrpreis kann übermittelt werden sowie weitere
bedingungen (nichtraucher, mehrere personen, gepäck). außerdem kann zu
kleinen umwegen (abfahrt von der autobahn) animiert werden. und
rechtzeitiges anhalten kein problem mehr (manchmal sind fahrzeuge zu schnell
und sehen anhalter zu spät)
Hier ein NOKIA-Forschungspapier, das die Idee genau beschreibt.
A step in the right direction is that carpooling sites like Mitfahrgelegenheit.de have introduced access to their data base by WAP, making it possible to use one’s cellphone to find a lift. However, offers by drivers must still be entered manually.
Just to set a few things straight about this subject. Most people plead for ignorance in this matter, the others just parrot the prevailing narrative and ridicule everybody who questions it, without being willing or capable at all of thinking about it on their own.
Public debts are supposed to be repaid at some time in the future. Their ever rising amount makes this rather unlikely, but okay. At the same time governments retain the monopoly of creating money, this means, that they could always just print any amount of money they want to, at will. Usually money is supposed to be backed by bonds, although this is not at all necessary, because the government’s currency is legal tender and taxes are collected in it, so it will always retain its value, if backed or not. If money is created only in exchange for bonds, this raises the question if the total amount of bonds has to increase forever and what to do in a shrinking economy. Deflation is harmful to the economy, because it leads to money hoarding which a creates positive feedback: The more the value of money increases, the more people will want to withhold instead of spending it, thus further reinforcing economic recession.
But back to public debt. Why don’t governments just print the money the need instead of borrowing it? Because that could cause inflation, as the potential lenders would still keep their money for potential spending. However, every government has the option of just taxing people instead of printing money. Presumably taxing is politically less popular. People don’t care about public debts as long as 1) the taxes are not going to raised and 2) there is no undue inflation. So just borrowing money does the trick to increase public expenditure while satisfying both conditions 1) and 2).
However, there is a catch: The government has to pay interests on its debt. The higher the public debt is, the higher the interest to paid, from tax revenues or from even more debts, because people want low taxation and high public expenditure at the same time and don’t care about the future.
Therefore eventually resolving the over-indebtedness by printing money or by not paying interests and/or repaying debts can’t be avoided. Now sane people would oppose making debts and public expenditures exceeding tax revenues in the first place, but then sanity is rare among human beings.
Curiously, the vast majority of people uphold the right for employees to strike. Somebody who puts this right into question, is quickly likened to Hitler.
Because I know at least a few people who don’t understand what the right to strike really means, I must explain it: It doesn’t have anything to do with the right to leave your job at any time, before your job contract ends or when your employer has unreasonable demands to you. You can always leave your job in violation of your job contract. Theoretically, your employer can sue you for damages, if he can prove that they were caused by your absence from work, but for most jobs this is most unlikely. You just get fired without previous notice.
The right to strike means the right not to work in violation of your job contract while your employer can’t fire you for it. This is the reason why in most legal environments strikes are judged as such only if labor unions have approved of them.
Now to maintain a right to strike doesn’t make an inch of sense for society. With every strike, wages are not being paid, deliveries not met, the economy gets damaged and economic creation of value is being prevented. There is always a net economic loss for the national economy as a whole. But furthermore, the outcome of the strike – the wages and work conditions to be negotiated between employers and employees – doesn’t depend on what’s just or what is best for the economy, but just by which party is stronger in this conflict.
Let’s imagine two parties were at odds and going to court against each other. Now the judge decides to have both parties literally fight against each other – with fists or guns or whatever – with the winnig party winning the trial, too. Does this make sense to you? Is there any justice in this kind of legal practice?
It doesn’t matter if you are on the side of the employers or of the employees. In neither case does a strike or the right to strike make any sense. If you want to decide about wages and labor conditions yourself or if you want only one of the concerning parties or anybody else deciding about it, then this could easily be implemented without the strike and without its economic damage.
However, most people always side with the employee, automatically and unconditionally, regardless of their demands. In their world view even highly paid employees, like air traffic controllers, are always the underdogs. It doesn’t matter to them that only some employees enjoy a position in which they can successfully defeat their employers by industrial action. These people refuse to understand that not their pay rise will not be paid from the employer’s profit, but from the prices the customers have to pay through increased prices. Employers can make a profit only by maintaining a winning margin over their competitors. But these very same people immediately understand this, when the increase of the production cost is not caused by a pay rise for the employees, but by a rise of VAT.
It just doesn’t make a sense that an organized group of people are given entitlement to hold a society at ransom. Of course, people with any sense left knew all this before. Still, the vast majority of people, as I said, liken anyone to Hitler who puts the right to strike into question. People…
I have a friend who fell for this libertarian bullcaca. This is why I want to attack libertarianism here:
„If there was no welfare state, rich people would donate enough money to private charity organizations who would then take care of the needy. Human beings are good by nature. Therefore the welfare state is not necessary. Nowadays the welfare state takes care of them and rich people assume that further donations are not necessary. Thus the welfare state discourages voluntary charity.“
Why not the other way round? Instead of dismantling the welfare state before rich people render it unnecessary by their voluntary donations, let’s dismantle it after they rendered it unnecessary. It’s not as if today rich people didn’t exist or didn’t have enough money. You claim, the reason why rich people don’t donate enough, is, because the welfare state takes care of the needy already. You could argue the other way round just as well: The reason why the welfare state exists, is because rich people don’t donate enough. Which is actually even true.
The argument that people are good by nature is also used by communists to argue why communism would work. You know how stupid this argument is when it comes from communists, but when it comes from libertarians, it’s just as stupid. On other occasions libertarians assume people to be selfish, mostly when discussing economic policies. Make up your mind!
„A welfare state easily leads to Fascism and Hitler“
Prove this. Prove, that a welfare state leads to Fascism and Hitler any more likely than a minarchist or any other kind of state. You can’t.
„People die of hunger. That’s life“
You have the choice between two governmental policies. The welfare state, in which everybody’s needs are met. And the libertarian one, in which some people die of hunger. You choose the latter and even claim that it’s the more moral one. So, according to your morality, it’s better if people die of hunger than if they don’t. There is something seriously wrong with this morality.
„The welfare state attracts masses of muslims, freeloaders and other parasitic people as immigrants. With Libertarianism only the good people would come, who are able to make a living on their own.“
It’s the other way round: Libertarian ideology explicitly forbids the government to restrict immigration in any way. If you want a different policy in this matter, it’s not a libertarian one. Without such an ideology you can restrict immigration as you like. Which is another argument for common-sense instead of ideology.
Libertarians uphold the right of individuals and companies to forbid any intrusion on their real estate property. Curiously, if it’s not a company but a state who wants to restrict immigration, it is deemed immoral all of a sudden.
Libertarianism, just like Multiculturalism, doesn’t recognize that states are not institutions which govern over masses of unrelated people who don’t have anything in common with each other, but that they are the very association or „incorporation“ of people who do have something in common and who are related. Just like in business. And they have a common business to attend, which is, to live their lives as they see fit. To make this possible is the very purpose of the state.
„The welfare state makes productive people pay for the dependent, thus hampering the procreation of the former, while fostering the procreation of the latter. This causes demographics to shift in favor of the dependent, causing Islamization.“
In fact, Libertarianism forbids any kind of procreational policy of the state. The state is not permitted to foster or to contain procreation of different population groups. Once again, a welfare state, ruled by common sense rather than by ideology, has more liberty about its policies and can therefore implement any kind of policy about procreation that is seen fit.
In Europe, many of the rich, productive people, who attack the welfare state, have no children. How exactly is Islamization prevented by taxing childless wealthy yuppies less and allow them to spend more money on sports cars?
From the Wikipedia article:
„The trottoir roulant rapide was an experimental high speed moving sidewalk in Paris, France, moving at a speed of 9km/h. Users first entered a slower tape, than a faster one, the two have metal rollers in between. It has produced some injuries, and is not handicap compatible. Today it is converted into an ordinary walkway running at a slower speed.“
This was an interesting innovation in transportation. It’s somewhat disconcerting that it failed only because very few users were unable to keep their feet still when being accelerated by the metal rollers to a speed at which it was safe to step on the walkway.

Two formulations of the same question. I sent the latter one to the „Last Word“ column of the New Scientist magazine.
Why hasn’t the amount of O2 in the atmosphere decreased significantly by mankind burning large amounts of carbon hydrates in form of oil, coal and gas? The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is reported to have been greatly increased because of human activity. But for every molecule of CO2 to be created, a molecule of O2 must be taken out of the atmosphere. If the amount of O2 in the atmosphere is far too great for burning carbon and carbon hydrates having a significant influence on it, what geological process does the O2 originate from? Common theory has it that it got produced through photosynthesis in a massive environmental change known as the „Oxygen revolution“. But if the process of photosynthesis is responsible for most of the O2 currently located in the atmosphere, then a similar amount of carbon and carbon hydrates created by this process of photosynthesis must be found somewhere on earth. Where is it?
This source lists all deposits of carbon on earth with their presumed amount of carbon in them measured in billions of tonnes. Those deposits which contain carbon which was produced by the photosynthetic process are terrestrial vegetation (610), soils and organic matter (1600), dissolved organic carbon (700), marine organisms (3), coal deposits (3000) and oil and gas deposits (300). Thus the total amount of bound carbon, produced from photosynthesis, can’t exceed 610+1600+700+3+3000+300=6213 Gigatons, according to this source. The mass of a carbon atom is approx. 12 u, therefore no more than 2*10^41 atoms of carbon can be bound in those deposits, which got produced by photosynthesis.
The mass of the earth’s atmosphere is estimated to be 5*10^18 kg, of which no less than one fifth is molecular oxygen. The molar mass of molecular oxygen is 32 g/mol, therefore one kg of oxygen contains 6*10^26/32 molecules, therefore there must be no less than 1.875*10^43 molecules of O2 in the atmosphere. So, there is far more molecular oxygen in the atmosphere than there is carbon-containing matter which got produced by photosynthesis. Where does the molecular oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere come from then, if not from photosynthesis?
It needs to be assessed if travelling of heavy duty vehicles at high speeds on dedicated roads is safe and by which measures it can be made safe. In the introductory post of this thread I already noted that a Car2Car communication system is necessary in order to rule out the possibility of rear-end collisions. Furthermore, all vehicles on the dedicated high-speed road should be equipped with an automatic lane keeping system in order to rule out vehicles leaving their lanes because of an inattentive driver and thus causing accidents. Such lane keeping systems already exist and are on sale.
Vehicles can also be caused to leave their lane by a tire blowout, by strong cross wind or by losing grip on a slippery road surface. Tire blowouts can be prevented by regularly checking tire profile and pressure in short intervals and meeting high safety margins. Using run-flat tires can further increase safety. Furthermore it must be ensured that no lost parts or other objects lie on the road’s surface because these can also cause a tire failure if the car collides with them. Therefore all vehicles must be tested that they can’t lose parts or that in case they do lose parts, they will immediately detect it and communicate it to the car behind so that it can stop in due time. In order to prevent people from intruding on the highway and possibly place dangerous objects on the road, the road should be fenced on both sides.
A slippery road surface can be caused by ice, snow or rain. Ice and snow rarely or never occur in most parts of the world and a high-speed road can be reasonably excused for failing to provide high-speed capability in these rare cases. The same holds for strong cross wind, which, by the way, can severely disrupt high-speed railway services, too.
Strong rainfall can cause aquaplaning. However, heavy duty vehicles are less affected by it due to their higher contact pressure per unit area. The likelihood of aquaplaning can be further reduced by running only tires with a high profile. It might be useful to build the road’s surface from drain concrete. These measures should be sufficient to deal with moderate rainfall. In case of very strong rainfall the speed would have to be reduced, just as on ordinary roads.
Altogether, by applying all these measures, a high level of satefy can be provided at a reasonable availability of high-speed capability. In very bad weather conditions safety will be provided by drastically reducing the speed, thus severly disrupting services, just like on an ordinary road. But such very bad conditions happen too rarely for justifying building a much more expensive high-speed railway or maglev just because of that, in most applications. High-speed travel on road has a reasonable availability of high-speed capability and still provides a satisfactory service level when the high-speed capability can not be provided. In case of broken down vehicles services are much less disrupted on a road because all following vehicles can go round it, albeit with a slow speed. In comparison, a high-speed rail track would be completely blocked for a long time.
German Autobahnen have no general speed limit for passenger cars and their accident record compares favorably to highways of other countries. Already today, a large part of all high-speed travel in Germany takes place on the Autobahnen, which proves that high speed travel on road is a viable alternative to high-speed rail.
I am now outlining a possible design for a high-speed bus which is supposed to run of dedicated high-speed roads or customized roads only. It doesn’t need to have the same small turning circle as an ordinary bus. I am therefore at liberty to make it wider and longer than a bus for present-day roads. In order to allow for a 3+3-seating arrangement in 2nd class, I want to make it 3.5 m wide. That’s almost as wide as the Transrapid, which is 3.7 m wide, I just think that 3.5 m are enough for a 3+3-seating arrangement.
The bus shall be 25-30 m long, about as long as a European passenger train car. With a part of the capacity being used for 1st class seats, in 2+2-seating arrangement, I estimate the total capacity of the vehicle to be around 120 passengers.
A present-day double-deck coach is 4 m high and has a headroom of 1.68 m in the upper deck aisle and of 1.8 m in the lower deck aisle. By removing the upper deck, increasing the headroom of the lower deck to 1.9 m, and accounting for the now missing floor between the upper and the lower deck, I arrive at a height of about 2.35 m for the whole vehicle.
The cross-section of the bus:

I estimate the gross vehicle weight not to exceed 40 tons. A JR 700 Shinkansen car is about as long and has an empty weight of 40 tons. This bus, however, does not need two bogies made from steel which alone account for about 10 tons of weight.
In order to calculate the fuel efficiency, I compare it with an ordinary bus of today, which is 2.55 m wide, 3.5 m high, weighs 18 tons overall and consumes about 25 litres at a speed of 100 km/h. Its drag coefficient is about 0.5, so I calculate a wind resistance of Fw=0.6*0.5*2.55*3.5*(100/3.6)**2=2066 N. Assuming a rolling resistance coefficient of 0.01, I calculate a rolling resistance of Fr=0.01*9.81*18000=1766 N. The total energy consumed per 100 km is therefore W=(Fw+Fr)*v*1 hour=(2066+1766)*(100/3.6)*1 hour=106 kWh.
For the high-speed bus, which is aerodynamically shaped, flatter and wider, I assume a drag coefficient of 0.35. Then its wind resistance at 200 km/h is Fw=0.6*0.35*3.5*2.35*(200/3.6)**2=5331 N, its rolling resistance Fr=0.01*9.81*40000=3924 N. This bus needs only half an hour for a distance of 100 km, therefore I calculate a total energy consumption per 100 km of W=(Fw+Fr)*v*0.5 hour=(5331+3924)*(200/3.6)*0.5 hour=257 kWh, which should result in a fuel consumption of about 61 litres per 100 km.
Given the higher capacity of the high-speed bus compared to ordinary buses of today, the fuel consumption per passenger is about the same. The effect of the aerodynamic shape, the lower height and the greater length offsets the effect of the higher speed. The overall fuel consumption per passenger for a fully-loaded bus is in the magnitude of 0.5 litres per 100 km, which is very low.
The bus should be equipped with a lane keeping system which would allow the high-speed lanes to be made no wider than just about 4 m in straight sections and a bit wider in curves, depending on their radius.
On a dedicated high-speed road with just a single lane, vehicles could easily run at a speed of 200 km/h in headways of only 15 seconds. They would thus run at distances from each other of more than 800 m. Already 400 m would be more than sufficient for braking in the unlikely event that the vehicle in front stopped dead and blocked the road, therefore there is plenty of buffer space in the „timetable“ for dissolving traffic jams after a potential disruption. With headways of just 15 seconds, there could be 240 buses per hour and direction on the road, thus allowing for a capacity of 28800 passengers per hour and direction which is far more than even the busiest long-distance traffic corridor in the world has.
It should also be noted that the lower top speed of 200 km/h is partly offset by the higher service frequency compared to many high-speed railways in the world. Many of them run trains in intervals of no shorter than 1 or even 2 hours, particularly in off-peak time. An interval of 1 hour causes the passenger an average waiting time of 30 minutes. High-speed trains typically have a capacity of at least four times the proposed capacity of the high-speed bus. Therefore, whereas a high-speed train would run at intervals of 1 hour, a high-speed bus would run at intervals of 15 minutes, thus reducing the average waiting to a mere 7.5 minutes. Running 300 km/h instead of only 200 km/h saves 10 minutes per 100 km distance, therefore on distances of up to 225 km the bus would actually be faster.