Disregard for People by FedEX and UPS

My comments prompted by UPS: Disrespect for People? by Dan Markovitz

I consistently see UPS and FedEx park in traffic lanes, in front of a fire hydrant, in no parking zones meant to provide pedestrians view of the traffic to cross the street safely... when there are available parking spaces less than 20 feet away (and actual loading zones not much further away).

It would seem they must do this hours every day (based on the level of abuse I see). I often see the illegally parked vehicle from UPS or FedEx, park legally, get done what I need to do, and drive away and the illegally parked vehicle is still there.

It is obvious that UPS and FedEx systemically violate traffic laws and make the roads more dangerous. The extent of the abuse make it obvious to me they design their work process with full knowledge that they endanger and inconvenience others for their convenience. I am not sure why such consistent intentional systemic dis-rearguard for laws is allowed to continue, but obviously it is.

Maybe in Manhattan parking in traffic lanes is the way things work, but that is not the case in most places. Only UPS and FedEx chose to systemically endanger inconvenience others for their convenience (well, and others such as chemical companies dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply, here I mean only UPS and FedEx do so with an obvious policy on how they use the roads). Society doesn't work when you allow those that just don't care about anyone else to do whatever they feel like and force others to suffer the consequences (for the actions they take based on their disdain for the rest of us). Ethics obviously have lost the ability to influence a significant number of people - whether they chose to park illegally hours every day or loot "their" companies. The government is suppose to enforce laws to punish those that have disdain for others rights. When that is not done everyone suffers so a few rude and disrespectful can do whatever they feel like.

Arguments like we have to break the law to deliver packages make no sense to me. If package delivery is important then buildings need to provide parking or delivery companies drivers drive around drop of packages to employees with carts to deliver a few blocks worth of packages then meet up with another truck... Or whatever else will work, I would sure hope a multi-billion dollar company can figure out better solutions than I can in 5 minutes. If you can't figure out how to meet a customer need without violating the law that means you don't have a viable business - not that you have to violate the law. You can't say, oh we dump the toxic chemicals in the river. Yes, it is against the law but, we have no other option but to violate the law so don't blame us for our disdain for those of you who must cope with our actions.

Related: Don't Excuse Immoral Looters - Manners - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - Violations tagged as ups were caught parked in a bike lanes around the world 50 times

Double Parked Delivery Trucks

I'd go with a carrot and stick system. I like the "FedEx" loading zone idea. Let delivery companies purchase a special parking permit (Ex:a "D" permit) that lets them park in any of these loading zone spaces and then put them in all the logical places with consultation from the delivery companies themselves. Charge a price that will keep those who don't really need one from buying one but keep it cheapish.

Then enforce double parking and escalate tickets for it. After the 5th ticket, they double, ad infinitum. If UPS starts getting some $12000 parking tickets, they'll rethink their strategy.

I Love xkcd Animated Clip

I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Awesome. The xkcd comic is great.

Related: What Makes Scientists Different :-) - Comic About Programming - Friday Fun: Correlation - Home Engineering: Reading in Bed

Create Instant Screencasts

Screenr - create instant screencasts. Looks pretty cool.

Wordpress Plugins: Super Cache and Bad Behavior

Wordpress is a great blog platform. I started with blogger but switched to using Wordpress for my blogs (other than this one) several years ago. One great advantage to Wordpress are the great Plugins that are available. I have continually had problems with Super Cache and Bad Behavior, however. Getting errors including:

Cannot modify header information

[function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/wp-cache.php on line 49

They are great plugins but seem to have not played together too well. They have tried to work out the problems and searches find explanations that this problem has been fixed. However I continued to have the problems when I upgraded a blog today. I tried various things that didn't help. I deactivated both and if I reactive super cache after bad behavior the errors seem to persist. However if I activated Super Cache and then Bad Behavior things seem to work fine.

Related: Gallery of Free WordPress Themes - 50 Wordpress Tutorials - Wordpress Admin Page Not Found - The First Blogger

Death at the Hands of Others Today is Actually Historically Low Now

Why is There Peace?

When the archeologist Lawrence Keeley examined casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers—which is the best picture we have of how people might have lived 10,000 years ago—he discovered that the likelihood that a man would die at the hands of another man ranged from a high of 60 percent in one tribe to 15 percent at the most peaceable end. In contrast, the chance that a European or American man would be killed by another man was less than one percent during the 20th century, a period of time that includes both world wars. If the death rate of tribal warfare had prevailed in the 20th century, there would have been two billion deaths rather than 100 million, horrible as that is.
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The sociologist Norbert Elias suggested that European modernity accelerated a "civilizing process" marked by increases in self-control, long-term planning, and sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others.
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Whatever its causes, the decline of violence has profound implications. It is not a license for complacency: We enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to end it, and so we should work to end the appalling violence in our time. Nor is it necessarily grounds for optimism about the immediate future, since the world has never before had national leaders who combine pre-modern sensibilities with modern weapons.

It is good to remember that statistically things are often much much better today than 100 years ago or 200 years ago. We still have much to be ashamed of. We need to do much better for the future of humanity but in many many ways we have made great progress.

Related: Leading Causes of Death - Global Cancer Deaths to Double by 2030 - Too Much Stuff - Water Wars Break Out in India

Still Young Contrary to Appearances

Great comic from the great xkcd comic. "I'm pretty sure I stopped growing up in my teens and have been faking it ever since"

Mountain Dew

I actually like Mountain Dew. That alone isn't worth mentioning but I like it enough to be tempted by new flavors. Now I know that likely these flavors will be lame. But I am tempted enough to try. Most sounded bad but I decided to try the orange Mountain Dew. It is as bad as you would expect. I was hoping maybe it would be good, but instead the odds (that any brand knock off add-on product is going to be horrible) turned out to be accurate again.

You would think companies could do better than this type of product addition. Granted sugar water is not exactly the hotbed of innovation. But this attempt to just slap a brand name on some slight alternative in the hopes it will sell seems pretty lame to me. And the items I have tried have disappointed far more than they have succeeded. I don't try them often but do occasionally.

I guess these ad-ons work though since we see them so often. I would think they will be bad in the long run as you create tons of bad products that you try to sell by claiming a tie to a liked product. Then people associate those lame products with your good product. But I can believe in the short run you get more of a chance to get people to buy your add-on product.