in keeping with Tiberius' observations about ill-informed voters comes this story from the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/scienc...c=rss&_r=0
No, Dr. Sivak, people have short memories about everything and almost no sense of pattern recognition at all.
We see the same principle where people go out and buy an SUV thinking - "gas prices are down and they'll never go up again."
We also see people living next to a river who get flooded out and say "glad that's over...guess I'll rebuild!"
We see people living on the Great Plains who watch houses get blown down by tornadoes year after year and never seem to think "maybe I should build a different kind of structure."
We see people living on the shoreline who think "why is flood insurance so expensive?"
We have people living in the woods who are sweating forest fires every spring/summer.
No, Dr. Sivak. People are just fucking stupid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/scienc...c=rss&_r=0
Quote:American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers
Quote:Falling gas prices have made big, heavy cars fashionable again, said Michael Sivak, the director of sustainable worldwide transportation at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. In fact, demand for trucks, S.U.V.s and vans has rebounded to historic levels after they dropped sharply in 2008, when gas was $4 a gallon.
“People have very short memories about the price of gasoline,” Dr. Sivak said.
No, Dr. Sivak, people have short memories about everything and almost no sense of pattern recognition at all.
We see the same principle where people go out and buy an SUV thinking - "gas prices are down and they'll never go up again."
We also see people living next to a river who get flooded out and say "glad that's over...guess I'll rebuild!"
We see people living on the Great Plains who watch houses get blown down by tornadoes year after year and never seem to think "maybe I should build a different kind of structure."
We see people living on the shoreline who think "why is flood insurance so expensive?"
We have people living in the woods who are sweating forest fires every spring/summer.
No, Dr. Sivak. People are just fucking stupid.
