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Abbathehorse

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Posts posted by Abbathehorse

  3. i'm so scared

    in Chat

    Posted

    No thief is gonna want your contact lenses. Just leave stuff like that out in your tent, not in a bag or anything. That way, if you are unlucky enough for some pikey to go in your tent (which is very unlikely), they won't steal them assuming they might be valuable.

  5. UPDATE ON WEATHER

    in Chat

    Posted

    Four legal approaches may be followed in attempting to channel technological development in socially useful direction: specific directives, market incentive modifications, criminal prohibitions, and changes in decision-making structures. Specific directives involve the government’s identifying one or more factors controlling research, development, or implementation of a given technology. Directives affecting such factors may vary from administrative regulation of private activity to government ownership of a technological operation. Market incentive modifications are deliberate alterations of the market within which private decisions regarding the development and implementation of technology are made. Such modifications may consist of imposing taxes to cover the costs to society of a given technology, granting subsidies to pay for social benefits of a technology, creating the right to sue to prevent certain technological development, or easing procedural rules to enable the recovery of damages to compensate for harm caused by destructive technological activity. Criminal prohibitions may modify technological activity in areas impinging on fundamental social values, or they may modify human behavior likely to result from technological applications—for example, the deactivation of automotive pollution control devices in order to improve vehicle performance. Alteration of decision-making structures includes all possible modifications in the authority, constitution, or responsibility of private and public entities deciding questions of technological development and implementation. Such alterations include the addition of public-interest members to corporate boards, the imposition by statute of duties on governmental decision-makers, and the extension of warranties in response to consumer action.

    Effective use of these methods to control technology depends on whether or not the goal of regulation is the optimal allocation of resources. When the object is optimal resource allocation, that combination of legal methods should be used that most nearly yields the allocation that would exist if there were no external costs resulting from allocating resources through market activity. There are external costs when the price set by buyers and sellers of goods fails to include some costs, to anyone, that result from the production and use of the goods. Such costs are internalized when buyers pay them.

    Air pollution from motor vehicles imposes external costs on all those exposed to it, in the form of soiling, materials damage, and disease: these externalities result from failure to place a price on air, thus making it a free good, common to all. Such externalities lead to nonoptimal resource allocation, because the private net product and the social net product of market activity are not often identical. If all externalities were internalized, transactions would occur until bargaining could no longer improve the situation, thus giving an optimal allocation of resources at a given time.

    17. The passage is primarily concerned with describing

    (A) objectives and legal method for directing technological development

    (:D technical approaches to the problem of controlling market activity

    © economic procedures for facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers

    (D) reasons for slowing the technological development in light of environmentalist objections

    E) technological innovations making it possible to achieve optimum allocation of resources

    18. The author cites air pollution from motor vehicles in lines 54-56 in order to

    (A) revise cost estimates calculated by including the costs of resources

    (:D evaluate legal methods used to prevent technological developments

    © give examples of costs not included in buyer-seller bargains

    (D) refute hypotheses not made on the basis of monetary exchange values

    (E) commend technological research undertaken for the common welfare

    19. According to the passage, transactions between private buyers and sellers have effects on society that generally

    (A) are harmful when all factors are considered

    (:D give rise to ever-increasing resource costs

    © reflect an optimal allocation of natural resources

    (D) encompass more than the effects on the buyers and sellers alone

    (E) are guided by legal controls on the development of technology

    20. It can be inferred from the passage that the author does NOT favor which of the following?

    (A) Protecting the environment for future use

    (:D Changing the balance of power between opposing interests in business

    © Intervening in the activity of the free market

    (D) Making prices reflect costs to everyone in society

    (E) Causing technological development to cease

    21. A gasoline-conservation tax on the purchase of large automobiles, with the proceeds of the tax rebated to purchasers of small automobiles, is an example of

    (A) a specific directive

    (:) a market incentive modification

    © an optimal resource allocation

    (D) an alteration of a decision-making structure

    (E) an external cost

    22. If there were no external costs, as they are described in the passage, which of the following would be true?

    (A) All technology-control methods would be effective.

    (:) Some resource allocations would be illegal.

    © Prices would include all costs to members of society.

    (D) Some decision-making structures would be altered

    (E) The availability of common goods would increase.

    23. The author assumes that, in determining what would be an optimal allocation of resources, it would be possible to

    (A) assign monetary value to all damage resulting from the use of technology

    (:D combine legal methods to yield the theoretical optimum

    © convince buyers to bear the burden of damage from technological developments

    (D) predict the costs of new technological developments

    (E) derive an equation making costs depend on prices

    24. On the basis of the passage, it can be inferred that the author would agree with which of the following statements concerning technological development?

    (A) The government should own technological operations.

    (:D The effect of technological development cannot be controlled.

    © Some technological developments are beneficial.

    (D) The current state of technological development results in a good allocation of resources.

    (E) Applications of technological developments are criminally destructive

  6. Poppers

    in Chat

    Posted

    I used to love poppers. I was challenged to inhale 50 (yes fifty) large sniffs of them in one go once. I passed out instantly. My friends (being the lovely chaps that they are) rather than check I was still alive decided to have a game of human buckaroo and pile everything they could find on top of me. I woke up 8 or so hours later covered in all sorts of paraphanalia and with the mother of all headaches.

    Needless to say, I don't do poppers any more!

    By the way - I do not recommend anybody do this, apparently it can do your brain some serious damage

  13. Driving......r u?

    in Chat

    Posted

    Abbathehorse...you seem to know your stuff.

    If I'm coming on the A303 from London, wanting to get into the East car parks, should I take the A37 like they suggest or the A371 or the a A36/A361...they both look shorter than the A37.

    Any suggestions? And anyone know how long its likely to take from the M3/M25 junction on the Friday morning?

  14. Another Phone thread.........

    in Chat

    Posted

    Help please phone/tech boffs, what do you guys/girls do to save your phone battery at glasto?? I have spare batteries but will be trying to squeeze as much out of them as poss, so vibrate off/ swap funky ring tone for basic "ring ring" type/ bluetooth off any other tips tricks? will definitely be to f**ked to remember to switch it off at night when i sleep/pass out. Realise some people ain't fussed by mobile phones at festivals but i am for various reasons like, going with girlfriend so she will be seeking out toilets every half hour so we need to be able to find one and other/ have other friends/family going who we will not be camping with and its quite likely i could become an uncle whilst there so want people to be able to get hold of me Wednesday-Monday, Cheers :P
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