Don't Mess with Texas
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
This is also a very interesting story about the importance of diversity on a team. While TXDOT wanted to go with "Please Keep Texas Beautiful", this guy knew the kind of guy he had to convince wouldn't listen to that stuff. Brilliant.
There's another one (less successful though still successful) which I remember just because it's so catchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_It_or_Ticket . When I had family visiting from elsewhere you could just say "Click It or Ticket" and they'd get it. Sure the real reason I want them to wear the seatbelt isn't because of the ticket, but the slogan combined with the fact that I can outsource the argument to the state is great.
(Looks like it was short-lived [1])
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogans_of_the_United_States_A...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada#Pos...
1.2526% vs 3+%
Canada does join many more conflicts than it should. But sometimes doesn't have the equipment to get there/back to survive (wearing green camo instead of brown in the desert is a major disadvantage).
I thought last decade that dedicated stay-at-home path meant you ended up in Iraq or Afghanistan. In other words not so stay-at-home.
There was an article a while back about how the Guard used to be fat-ass weekend warriors with gear that was EOL or falling apart. After damn near 20 years of Afghanistan and Iraq most of those Guard units have been multiple times and are equipped and trained to something that resembles actually full-time line units. The Active Duty troopers still get better gear and training, but the Reserves & Guard are a completely different creature than a few decades ago.
Source: I’m an active duty Army veteran and have extended family in a guard unit that’s currently deployed OCONUS.
[0]https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/07/to-draw-...
I served with a dude who entered to be a diesel mechanic (even though he had no background/interest in it) because he got his GF pregnant and didn't have a way to take care of a kid at 19.
These are less of an issue in Canada, the UK, etc. where they have universal healthcare and better safety nets.
Basic training was the hardest exercise that I'd had in my life up until then. They don't want you dying from an asthma attack on the obstacle course or something similar.
Or, if you have a heart condition, they don't want you dying on the operating table from it when they go to remove a piece of shrapnel.
Sometimes I think people are just looking for a boogeyman.
So I guess I’m unsure about what was being clarified given the OP’s statement and then the following response.
> since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.
Implying the issue is a volunteer army. If that's the case, Canada would have the same problem as it's also a volunteer army.
If your argument is that it's not about being a volunteer army, it's about the scale of the military, you might be right... we'd have to compare the personnel number to recruitment budget ratio between NATO countries to get a sense of that.
My favorite memory of an airshow was seeing the SR-71 fly. Oh my gosh that thing was cool. It was so loud that its vibrations set off what seemed to be every car alarm in the parking lot. At the end of its performance, the pilot just pulled back on the stick and just flew straight up into the clouds. I don't know if this video is the airshow I went to, but imagine a kid with a love of military aircraft seeing this thing up close --https://youtu.be/aV82gbriMc8.
I also have fond memories of seeing an A/V-8B Harrier do a vertical take off and landing. The funniest memory I have was seeing the label on an Apache helicopter's 30mm cannon that said "do not aim at personnel on base".
My favorite first hand experience was getting to fly in a vintage WW2 B-25 Mitchell. I sat in the glass bubble where a gunner would sit at the front of the aircraft. This was in 2012. The owner said that all of the parts he ordered to keep the plane flying came in the original WW2 packaging. As of 8 years ago, somewhere out there was a warehouse full of WW2 era spare parts for 70 year old bombers!
Airshows are cool :)
Supposedly it's more like "Full Metal Jacket."
It's rare that I'm envious of anyone, but I'm literally drooling right now :-)
http://warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/memoriam-milan-mike-pu...
If you really wanted to try and take a flight on this plane, or a similar one, I could try to get you in touch with the guy. It's a friend of my Dad's friend.
Here's a video from 1992, which will give you a sense of what is event is/was like, too:
Edit: corrected the actual president. thanks ethbro
There were 'pre-movie' recruiting ads in Texas movie theatres with knights fighting dragons that turned into Marines that I though was really hilarious and pathetic, but it wasn't 'bad' just tacky.
There were some other ads something along the lines of 'They called me a loser High School, but now I'm doing this and this' or whatever - which is in some way ok (most people feel like 'outsiders' in HS and teens yearn for self improvement), but maybe a little sketchy.
The Army is really serious stuff, it's ok to hint at adventure, self-improvement, fraternity but at the core it must appeal to 'duty' and or kind of communitarian obligation/commitment or it's the wrong message.
The individual tactics used by some recruiters are kind of deplorable, I do think however recruiters should be allowed in schools legally, just like any other employer.
I also think more mundane army portrayals like this helps to defuse US separatist extremist groups while visor down or active combat portrayals fuel that fire.
On the other hand, portrayals of the army as merely builders and farmers in uniform would defuse their fears.
I don't know why people don't do this with environmental issues at large. In my experience, conservatives care about the environment more than anyone. They live in the woods and hunt and fish and enjoy nature daily. But it's become a partisan issue so they don't listen.
Surely someone can come up with a clever slogan to get convince conservatives to conserve nature.
Missed opportunities.
At the same time... in Vermont the Vermont Yankee[1] plant destroyed anyone's ability to reasonably advocate for safe nuclear power by repeatedly violating the public trust to make a quick buck and saddling the state with a heavy burden, specifically:
> In December 2014, Entergy submitted the Post Shutdown Decommissioning Report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This report estimated that the total cost for decommissioning the reactor would be $1.24 billion. The same document reported that only $665 million had been collected in the 42 years of operations of this plant for this purpose. Entergy hopes to raise some of the shortfall funds through "external financing".
The sorta TL;DR here is that nuclear power, at the tech level we had in the 70s/80s/90s is incompatible with capitalism and the greed that goes with it.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...
There is such a thing as over regulation though and the "green" issues get convoluted with political agendas on both sides.
I disagree with your assumption that conservatives need convincing to conserve nature. Texas is a great examples of green policies done in a practical way. Our wind energy will outpace coal soon.
The problem is people like to put people in a prison of two ideas. Either you believe in science/climate or you don't, which is ridiculously simplified, furthers no discussion, and usually results in insults.
The tax rate is adjusted to reflect the true cost of it. For example, an amount of CO2 emissions for the country per year can be set, and then CO2 taxes adjusted until that target is met.
Import tariffs can be added to reflect the amount of CO2 emissions the originating country is generating.
Unfortunately, any tax is another dollar toward government expansion. The madman should directly compensate his victims.
Keep in mind the maxim:
1. to get more of something, subsidize it
2. to get less of something, tax it
The CO2 tax proposal failed in Washington State because it was perceived as a money grab by the state. If it came with a corresponding reduction in the sales tax, it likely would have passed.
CO2 pollution is unique because the damage to private property hasn’t “happened” yet. But waiting for it to “happen” is waiting too long. If a factory dumps toxic waste in my field, I’ll sue for destroying my soil and crops. If a factory’s air pollutant gives me lung cancer, I’ll sue for assault. CO2 emitting factories hypothetically cause coastal asset depreciation, but what do the courts think?
And I chuckled at how they used the "Don't mess with Texas" phrase despite having much lower littering fines than most other states.
Like with everything else in this country, it's all about the marketing.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resour...
I guess my trip was probably biased towards states with lots of parks and forests, who probably had more incentive to protect their local environments.
Texas has amazing (and clean!) state and national parks as well. Definitely worth a visit, especially Big Bend.
Mostly I drove through Texas to avoid Oklahoma (one of my least favorite states), but the Guadalupe Mountains were very nice.
I'm not sure I'd call it 'clean' though; the air seemed awfully smoggy and I saw almost as many flaring wells as I did in North Dakota. But there were lots of open spaces and the people were friendly.
Washington, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Utah get my vote for the best places to do a parks/forests vacation, depending on your interests.
By the way, Texas has more acres of forest land than every state you mentioned as being nature-y and forest-y and having more incentive to care about the environment. The only state with more forest than Texas is Alaska.
Like someone else said, Texas is too big to make generalizations.
All of those states you listed have really lax litter laws...
In our version, The Eyes ended up in the kitchen watching Dinah. She was about to blow her horn, thus ending the mandate of The Eyes. We would plead for her not to do such a thing, for her sake, for our sake, for goodness sake! The Eyes would know.
https://www.eater.com/2018/12/11/18133776/heb-texas-origin-c...
I've always hated this one because there is a significant contingent of people who disagree with seatbelt laws -- even if they themselves always wear their seatbelts -- because it's a central example of a law that shouldn't exist when the role of criminal law is to save innocent people from bad people and not idiots from themselves.
And then the campaign feels like a direct attack on the people who don't agree with the law, which encourages defiance, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect. With the further effect of making people angry while they're driving a car, which dangerous in itself.
The cynic may also notice that such laws are commonly passed in order to generate revenue, in which case stimulating defiance could be fully intentional because more defiance generates more revenue.
> the role of criminal law is to save innocent people
e.g. Law abiding tax payers, companies that hired the people who didn't want to use seat belts, their families and anyome else who would suffer if they were injured
> from bad people
in this case careless drivers who'd drive without a seatbelt.
Not related to you but possibly mildly interesting and somewhat related to reckless driving and reckless behavior generally :
Around here I guess we are the spoiled brats of the world, so when quarantine laws went into effect employees in permanent positions who were quarantined still get full pay.
Then it turned out a number of people took advantage of even this, crossed the border into Sweden (who has a totally different approach, they still -last I heard - go for "herd immunity now" it seems)
After all, food is cheaper on the Swedish side and then you get a paid holiday, right?
So we recently changed the rules to make sure that wont work anymore ;-)
Seriously: some people amaze me in how little personal benefit they have to have see to put everyone at risk.
It's also essentially arguing that no one has a right to intentionally end their own life no matter how much they're suffering if their continued existence is beneficial to any third party.
You don't owe the benefits of your continued existence to anybody else, so whether risking your life is bad is a determination you get to make for yourself.
> So we recently changed the rules to make sure that wont work anymore
Naturally. But there are two problems with that.
First, it's not really analogous to seatbelt laws, because if you don't wear a seatbelt then you could die but if you get a virus and spread it to five other people who each spread it to five other people etc. then thousands of people could die.
And second, those people are then in a different country which is making its choice in a different way. They may be wrong, but they're sovereign, and it's the people who live there and intentionally go there who suffer the consequences. What you should do is not let those people come back without being quarantined.
I'll note though:
- In both cases one persons carelessness hurts others, only to a much stronger degree in the original version.
- I agree, and it is obvious to me that one persons relatives or employer cannot have a say in everything and that some risky behaviors should be allowed as for example skydiving might actually be healthy.
- I agree that maybe it shouldn't fall under criminal laws, I mean I see no reason why a person shouldn't get a visa or a gun permit because they were caught without a seatbelt, but I still want a way to make more people use it. (On a side note, I don't think seatbelt goes on permanent record around here.)
I also guess people with tax paid health care might care more than people who have individual insurances pay for their health care.
Regarding my other example:
the rules are for Norwegians that leave the country to buy cheap meat or booze and then come back - fully aware that they should self quarantine.
With the previous rules they would enjoy a complementary free holiday, paid for by their employers and taxpayers.
That won't be tolerated anymore.
As for the Swedes yes, I agree, they are free to do whatever they want and I think I was careful to not judge them, I'll wait with that until we see the end of this pandemic.
Assuming they want to be able to file a disability claim, because the problem is caused by the insurance to begin with -- if the problem is that people will be more likely to file an insurance claim then the solution is for those people to pay a higher premium if they want the insurance.
A lot of people hate that because it means people can choose not to be covered and then have a Very Bad Time when they can't file a claim. But it's not like they have anyone to blame but themselves.
> There's a cost to society (we have to clean up the mess) and to the family (if any).
The cost of cleaning up the accident site is de minimis. The cost to the family is an internal family matter -- if you care about your loved ones, get them to wear their seat belts.
Do you have figures to back that up or is this conjecture?
It's obviously basically impossible to measure how many of them respond to the campaign by not wearing their seat belts, but out of what would be something like a hundred million people who disagree with the law, do you really expect the number to be zero?
And the better campaign may in particular be more effective at getting the people who weren't wearing their seat belts originally and still don't under this campaign, because they're more likely to be the defiant ones to begin with, so they're more likely to be receptive to a less antagonistic campaign.
But the number of people who disagreed with the law to begin with is probably a pretty good approximation for the number of people who disagreed with a campaign which is effectively promoting the law.
Yeah, since you're arguing that the campaign was bad because people disagreed with it and stating it as a fact.
>But the number of people who disagreed with the law to begin with is probably a pretty good approximation for the number of people who disagreed with a campaign which is effectively promoting the law.
In what way?
It is a fact. I've met people who do this.
> In what way?
There are people who disagree with a law that orders them to do something they think should be a personal choice. There are people who disagree with an ad campaign that orders them to do something they think should be a personal choice.
If you had to propose a hypothesis about whether a correlation exists between these two groups, what would it be?
That's a nice ideal, but you have to contrast it with the systems-level view: people indeed are idiots, barely a step up from a chimpanzee, and absolutely need to be protected from their own idiocy. We all do, some to larger extent than others. We often don't notice it, because we've been born into a complex world, and have internalized many rules that protect us without even thinking about it.
Note that risking the lives of you and other people in the name of hurry is also a form of idiocy; a very common one with otherwise smart people. We're creatures of emotion after all, and the thinking mode that processes impatience isn't good at cost-benefit analysis.
Do these people also disagree with drinking/smoking age laws?
Related to that, in many countries there seems to be some expectation of the government looking out for younger people to at least a limited extent. Compulsory education and foster care come to mind among other things.
I guess what I'm getting at is that raising healthy children seems to be much closer to a serious public health threat (ex pandemic) than to engaging in a risky activity (ex white water kayaking) when placed on a continuum.
I think it would be better to discuss the "protecting idiots from themselves" angle using activities that harm only the people engaging in them.
Seatbelts increase the chance of remaining in your seat - and thus in at least partial control of your vehicle - mid-accident. That protects more than just the idiots - it protects any passengers, and it protects the pedestrian wheeling a stroller on the sidewalk, when the idiot's car goes flying towards them during an accident, by giving the driver a chance to steer elsewhere.
> And then the campaign feels like a direct attack on the people who don't agree with the law, which encourages defiance, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect. With the further effect of making people angry while they're driving a car, which dangerous in itself.
Wikipedia has references suggesting it's done more good than harm on at least seatbelt wearing rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_It_or_Ticket#Success
This doesn't measure anger induced traffic accidents, but anyone that easily angered on a regular basis will probably find some excuse to be angry no matter what if you ask me. At least if they direct their anger at a billboard instead of a fellow driver, they might be slightly less likely to get our of their car and start a fistfight?
> The cynic may also notice that such laws are commonly passed in order to generate revenue
This resonates with me, though, especially when prosecutors are... lax with evidence requirements.
Is this just speculation? Without a seatbelt you get thrown from the vehicle when you hit something, but by that point it's by definition already too late to avoid it, and then you're just in butterfly effect land. Maybe having someone in the car helps because they keep their foot on the brake and the car stays where it is, maybe that's bad because another car that hits the smashed car has to absorb a harder impact when the other car is held in place by the brake instead of being pushed away.
> Wikipedia has references suggesting it's done more good than harm on at least seatbelt wearing rates
This is not the right comparison because the thing to be compared is not seatbelt use prior to the campaign, it's seatbelt use under a different seatbelt campaign, e.g. one that emphasizes the risks to your life rather than the risk of a ticket -- which may actually be more effective regardless, because dying is a lot worse than getting fined.
> This doesn't measure anger induced traffic accidents, but anyone that easily angered on a regular basis will probably find some excuse to be angry no matter what if you ask me.
That's just a rationalization. Volatile individuals exist. Removing triggers for their volatility while they're engaged in a dangerous activity is an advantage.
Common sense / official government propaganda:
"In addition to protecting you from injury as a driver, seat belts help you keep control of the vehicle. If you are struck from the side or make a quick turn, the force could push you sideways and therefore you cannot steer the vehicle if you are not behind the wheel."
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/seatbeltuse....
For some reason there's a lack of double blind studies on the exact statistics of if low/medium-speed T-bone impacts disloge the driver more often with a seatbelt vs without a seatbelt, but don't let me stop you from volunteering...
> Without a seatbelt you get thrown from the vehicle when you hit something, but by that point it's by definition already too late to avoid it, and then you're just in butterfly effect land.
Many lighter side tbone impacts might simply throw you into your passenger's lap, or even just into the center of the vehicle. Are you really asserting that in such impacts, being behind the wheel of your vehicle is no better than leaving it up to chance? I don't think you're that bad of a driver!
> This is not the right comparison because the thing to be compared is not seatbelt use prior to the campaign, it's seatbelt use under a different seatbelt campaign
Fair.
> That's just a rationalization.
So is what I'm initially replying to.
Rear seat passengers not wearing seatbelts can directly injure front seat passengers who did not consent to the risk.
To argue that the seatbelt law impacts on personal freedom seems shortsighted to me.
New Hampshire: No adult front-seat passenger seat-belt law. Beltedness: 67.6%
Lowest beltedness (any law): Massachusetts (73.7%), secondary enforcement (i.e. if you violated another driving law then you can be cited for the seatbelt thing too)
Lowest beltedness (primary enforcement): Mississippi (78.8%)
Regardless of the paternalism angle (which I'm sympathetic to because I would like drug use to be permitted, etc.) this would appear as evidence that the defiance-effect is overruled by the compliance-effect. Certainly, it is sufficient enough for me to not look further into the subject.
Standard HN disclaimer so we don't get into some Internet war: Not attempting to refute anything you're saying. Just sharing my conclusions. Your priors and your weights to evidence may yield different posteriors. I do not require you to convince me and I am not aiming to convince you. The hypothesis I wanted to test may slightly vary from yours due to my interests being different and to aim for easier falsification. The existence of this disclaimer is not intended to be evidence that I believe you will engage in an Internet argument.
But you are also saving the idiots fellow passenger from the idiot when the idiot becomes a human missile in an accident.
There are SO many scenarios we don't think about when we go about our daily lives that others happen so see on a daily basis. I ended up going to a seatbelt class because I got such a ticket once. It was led by a nurse who got involved because she was sick and tired of having people come into the emergency room absolutely destroyed.
"The campaign is credited with reducing litter on Texas highways roughly 72% between 1987 and 1990"
So it seems to have worked very well!
While I'm on this train of thought. Most/many trucks in Texas had a gun rack with a rifle or two hanging across the rear window. Nobody wore seat belts until kids my age were taught to go home and nag their parents through PSA/Sex Ed/DARE style school lessons. It ended up being pretty effective.
So a good day for a story with this headline even if it is about littering.
He was strongly opposed to Texas secession and gave one of his most famous speeches in opposition to it.
For anyone interested, T. R. Fehrenbach's "Lone Star" is a great history of Texas and of Sam Houston (among many other colorful characters).
Edit: a source/explanation https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34622478
The only specific one I remember was a Texas Gyro combo with Texas fries and a coke.
The picture was of a gyro pita with like four kinds of sauce, and a giant bucket of fries.
It was good!
I thought that too, when I moved from the east coast to Texas for a few years.
Once I understood the real meaning, I felt my presumption was a reflection of my own biases, and quickly learned to judge Texas and Texans more fairly.
When it comes to stupid lawsuits I give the crown to New York City where they have tried to claim copyright on the shape of the skyline, the Times Square businesses have sued movie studios for digitally changing pictures of Times Square in movies, and the New York City Subway thinks those little circles with the train letters are their intellectual property and they send out nastygrams to other people using circles with numbers and letters in them. I’m surprised the latter hasn’t started a two ocean war over the windows dingbats font ;)
(The pledge is one of those weird things that looks like it comes from a far more authoritarian-collectivist society than the US)
It was promoted in a popular magazine (not to sell the magazine), and it in fact did come from a famous pair of socialists , Betch and Bellamy.
This article has a bit of a different viewpoint than the wiki page
Ouch.
“The name Texas derives from táyshaʔ, a word in the Caddoan language of the Hasinai, which means "friends" or "allies".”
There have been road safety signs along the same lines using w(anchor symbol) and a rooster (cock). Trying to market to punch through male bravado I guess.
This one ends with a personal threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2qIF3PL7lQ
And this one ends with another personal threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb-LPbUeiWA
Basically, "if you litter, we'll fuck your shit up." I love it!
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7879107, but no comments)
Got my attention.
Indeed.
I wonder how "Follow traffic rules and avoid blood pools" would fly in the US...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde...
This was the most shocking bit in the article for me. Trademark law was meant to prevent unfair competition, why would the government of Texas be worrying about the use of this to sell pro-Texas price merchandise? Seems like its the government itself going against the spirit of the law.
I'm sure a simple online search would show you examples of merch that, while funny, clearly isn't something a state level agency would release.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful
It’s gotten better over my lifetime but it’s not like cars come with a built in trash receptacle that you can get a standard bag size for to make dealing with it easy. That would be pretty nice.
https://www.amazon.com/Mason-Jar-Label-Llc-Shirt/dp/B07PK5FW...
https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Don-t-Mess-With-Texas-Oh...
(There is a Texas, Ohio, if that helps.)
Did a double take on that sentence, it's easy to miss the "while".
I vaguely recall us encountering trash bins at a rest area with this slogan emblazoned on them, and one of the kids in the group accepting the challenge, kicking over all of the trash cans.
Makes me wonder if such a slogan is a net win over just advertising stiff fines for littering. There will always be people who see such things like NO TRESPASSING signs as an impotent challenge.
Off-topic tangents are fine when they're unpredictable, but not when they change the subject to a more generic topic, and especially not a generic political one.