Advice for New HS graduates soon to be incoming college freshmen

You want to think about what you want to do after you graduate college.  I know that is four years in the future, which seems like forever.  But college goes by quick and you will be out in the job market before you know it. 
   College is expensive, you or your parents, are paying for it.  If you are borrowing the money to pay tuition, you have to pay it back after you graduate.  You gotta have a job to pay off your student loans.  Which means you need to pick your college major to make you employable.  For instance a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, and you will have a decent job no problem.  A bachelor of arts in gender studies, and you will be waiting tables for a long long time. 
  The best majors, looking toward making yourself employable, are the STEM majors, Science (physics, chemistry, biology) Technology (computer programming, premed), Engineering (electrical, mechanical, chemical, civil) and Mathematics (calculus, statistics, matrix algebra)  Engineering, in addition to being decently paid, is interesting and satisfying.  Engineering is a lot of new design work, and being the engineer who designs that new automobile, new handheld electronic best seller, new building, new aircraft, is very satisfying work.  Beats the bejesus out of selling used cars. 
   STEM fields often require math up thru integral calculus and differential equations.  In fact you may need that math under your belt in order to even understand the homework in your major.  You want to find out what the mathematics requirement are in your chosen field, and sign up for those math courses ASAP, freshman year.  Electrical engineering is probably the most math intensive.  A simple two component circuit (a resistor and a capacitor)  require a first order differential equation to analyze. Things like biology and computer programming are less demanding in the math dept.
   If you just cannot warm up to a STEM field, consider the liberal arts.  Traditionally there are seven liberal arts, English, History, Foreign Language, Music, Art, Philosophy, Theology.  English ought to teach you how to write.  Industry offers a lot of jobs to people who can write, specifications, instruction manuals, advertisements, articles about the product, endless written materials.  History will also teach you how to write, and offers a broader field, all of human history, every age, every culture, which makes picking a thesis easier.  English is limited to the works of a relatively small number of English authors.  Picking a thesis in English literature that hasn't been written about a thousand times already is hard.  Foreign languages are always useful to any company doing business overseas, which is most of them these days. 
   If you are a musician or an artist, Music or Art majors are rewarding.  If you are not a musician or an artist, they won't do you any good at all.  There are next to no jobs for music or art majors who are not themselves practicing  musicians or artists.
   Philosophy and Theology used to be big, back in medieval times, but they won't get you a job today.
   One other major, which isn't STEM or an Art; that is education.  If you want to teach in the public schools, you have to take the ed major.  The ed major will get you a job, no problem.  If you can stand the total boredom of the major, and you like teaching, go for it.  The ed departments pretend that education is something that can be taught and will make you a better teacher.  In actual fact, the ed major is endless chit chat about trivia.  It's easy enough to pass the major, but most students find it REALLY boring. The best teachers I ever encountered didn't even have college degrees, let alone an ed major.  They were good Air Force enlisted men pulled right off the flight line to teach in the base Field Training Detachment.  They knew their subjects (jet engines, aircraft instruments, radar, nav electronics, hydraulics, what ever) backwards and forwards.  And that's all you really need to be a good teacher.  If you want to teach in the private schools, then you can major in something useful, the private schools are less hung up about the ed major than the public schools. 
   Then there are the majors that aren't sciences but want to be sciences, (sociology,political science, anthropology, economics, ecology, psychology)  To be a real science you have to conduct experiments to validate your theories.  Conducting experiments in sociology or any of them is not possible or totally unethical. The courses usually boil down to political indoctrination.  And there are no jobs to be had with these majors.
   Then we come  underwater basket weaving majors.  These won't get you a job (other than waiting tables)
Black Studies, Gender Studies, Men's studies, Any kind of Studies, art appreciation, aroma therapy, and others.  Stay away. Total waste of four years and a lot of money.
  Final word.  Don't trust advice from guidance counselors, ESPECIALLY as to the requirements for your major.  You have to get in ALL the required courses in order to win a degree.  Find the college catalog, the current catalog, not one from last year.  All the major requirements are in the catalog.  Look them up, write them down (a spreadsheet is good) and sign up for them as early as possible.  Don't trust a guidance counselor to steer you into the right courses, they don't know, and don't really care, not the way you care.
   

Who gets blamed when Obamacare crashes and burns?

Fox News was discussing this on Sunday.  Obamacare is driving insurance companies out of the health care business.  Even with $2500 premium increases and $4000 copays,  insurance companies are still loosing wads of money on policies sold thru the Obamacare exchanges.  As a result,  the companies are pulling out of the Obamacare business, leaving vast tracts of America without ANY Obamacare health insurance.
   Who takes the blame was the subject of discussion on Fox.  In actual fact, the MSM will write long tear stained stories about how it's all the Republicans fault.  They will do their best to blame all bad things on the Trump administration. 
   The Republicans NEED to get a health care bill thru Congress and to the president's desk.  If they don't, then the coming Obamacare crash will sink the Republicans, come 2018 elections.  Rule in American politics, when bad things happen, the incumbent president, and his party, take the blame.  Especially when the MSM hates them.  Bad things are happening to Obamacare.  The Republicans must get their act together and pass something, now. 

Paper Ballots Antidote to hacking, Russian or other contenders

We have a leak, from Reality Winner, that the Russians hacked into a voting machine software company.  Apparently they didn't go further and hack the voting machines, but who knows what might be possible next year, or after the next release of Windows. 
   Vote on paper ballots.  Keep the ballots after election day in case you need to do a recount.  And we can do a recount by hand, even after all the fancy digital voting machine stuff dies. 
   Modern digital voting machines are merely desktop computers running a "I-pretend-to-be-a-ballot" program.  They mostly run Windows, world's most vulnerable operating system.  Hack into the software provider, which the Russians did, and modify the "I-pretend-to-be-a-ballot" program to elect who ever you like.  The software company distributes the hacked program to all it's customers, and presto, the Russians favorite candidate wins the election. 
   This cannot happen with paper ballots, marked with pen or # 2 pencil.  And paper ballots a gotta be cheaper for the towns and cities than fancy electronic voting machines. 

Saw Wonder Woman in the Jax Jr last night

Pretty good.  It's a comic book super hero (super heroine) movie.  I  haven't paid much attention to Wonder Woman since I stopped reading comic books around age 14 or so.  Gal Godot plays a great Wonder Woman.  She has the looks, she has the figure.  She gets a great part and a lot of good lines.  A lot of good costumes too.   The flick opens on the Amazon's magic island (I missed the name) inhabited by lots of really hot Amazon women, and ONE really cute Amazon child, Diana.  They don't talk about it, but I assume the lack of men on the island accounts for the very low birthrate.  We see Diana at age 8 and then at age 14 or so, (younger actors) and as grown up (Gal Godot)  The movie opens when handsome American pilot Steve Trevor  (Chris Pine) crashlands a WWI monoplane just offshore (would have been cooler if it were a biplane).   Diana rescues him from his sinking aircraft.  There is a cool fight when WWI German infantry land from boats to capture Steve Trevor.  The Amazons show up in surprising numbers and slay the Hun with swords, arrows and spears. 
    Shortly Steve and Diana set off for Europe to stop WWI.   They leave the magic island by sailboat.  Actually the prop guys should have done a little more work on that sailboat,  its sails never set well, and were always luffing and it's speed thru the water was much too high.   After reaching Europe we see a great set of period automobiles, all polished and shiny.  Period British trains.  Great period costumes.  The guys are all wearing hats (fedoras for civilians).  We see inside of Whitehall offices (lots of hardwood paneling and Army uniforms).   We go clothes shopping in London with Diana which has some very funny bits.  We see the inside of a British pub, full of ugly tough Brits who even manage to impress Diana with their toughness.   We meet war weary British politicians who are ready to sign a really wimpy armistice with the Germans.  And we heard what Diana thinks about wimping out.  
    They miss a few cool shots.  Although bayonets were standard issue in all armies back then, we never see soldiers (allied or enemy) with bayonets on their rifles.  We miss an opportunity to watch Diana with a sword duel with a bayonet wielding infantryman.   One of Steve's buddies carries a good sniper rifle with a big telescopic sight all thru the latter half of the movie.  We never see him draw a bead, center the crosshairs, and blow a bad guy away at 1000 yards. 
   This flick is over two hours, gets a little tedious toward the  end.  Really young kids won't have the patience to sit still thru out.  Other than that, it's fine for kids, everyone keeps their clothes on and doesn't sleep together on screen.  Lots of explosions, acrobatic fighting styles,  and exciting stuff, not much blood.

Islamic terrorist videos on Utube cause big advertisers to pull ads

Wall St Journal had this story today. I don't cruise Utube myself so I don't really know what gets posted there.  But the stuff must be pretty bad if advertisers are pulling their ads off Utube.  Was I Utube, I'd think real hard about throwing extremist video clips off the site, just to maintain good relations with my advertisers, who put up the money. 

Nextgen and Privatizing Air Traffic Control

Trump was pushing these two ideas on TV yesterday.  Right now air traffic control (ATC) has been run by the FAA and paid for thru appropriations of federal tax money.  Trump (and others) want to set up a private or semi private company to run ATC and be funded by levying  fees on the airlines who use ATC.  The airline industry is in favor, as is the ATC union.   The issue really comes down to funding.  Right now, every time Congress gets its panties in a twist, the FAA funding bill doesn't get passed, and when it finally does pass, it leaves out funding for capital improvements, new radars, new control towers, new computers, Next Gen and such.   With a private company funded from fees, the cash flow is steady and predictable, every one's paycheck comes thru on time, and  capital improvements can be made, especially long term multi year projects.   The down side is the private company can hire more people, buy more equipment and just raise the fees to pay for it all.   They have a monopoly, and they will exploit it to grow. 
    The capital improvement under consideration is "Next Gen" an expensive plan to force every airplane in the country (and out of the country) to buy an pricey GPS receiver/transponder.  This gadget uses the GPS part to find the plane's location, speed and course, and when interrogated by a ground transponder would transmit the plane's ID and location back to the ground to update the ATC displays in control towers.  Transponders start at a couple of K for a light plane model, and a lot more for an airliner grade model.  The advantage of Next Gen is greater accuracy, say 10 feet of so, as compared to  5 miles or so for today's ground radar.  Which is said to allow controllers to fly planes closer together, allowing more air traffic in the same amount of airspace. 
   Maybe.  But it relies on vulnerable technology.  The GPS signal from satellites is quite weak and could be jammed in wartime.  The NextGen GPS/transponder is complicated and should it fail the aircraft disappears off ATC display screens.  And there is plenty of airspace for flying from place to place.  The congestion occurs around airports.  We only have 50 odd airports in the whole country and each one can only handle one operation (takeoff or landing) a minute.  There is plenty of airspace inbetween airports for all the planes now flying and all the planes that will be flying in the future.
   We should not do Next Gen.  Too expensive, too vulnerable, and we don't get anything for spending all that money. 

Reality Winner??

Unlikely name.  NSA contractor arrested Saturday for leaking classified information.  She had a history of flakiness, including a posting about whiteness is racism, or some such malarkey.  She was an Air Force veteran.   The newsies haven't said what kind of discharge she had.
   Question:  How did somebody so flaky ever get a security clearance?  Did who ever granted her clearance talk to her former Air Force commander?  And how did she keep her clearance?
  Another Question:  Why was a contractor given access to this classified?  What was their need to know. 
   Seems to me, NSA has lost it's grip.  Back when I was a NSA contractor they gave us polygraph tests as part of gaining a clearance.   NSA was the only place I was ever at where they inspected your briefcase on the way in and out of secured areas.   Letting "Reality Winner" (is that really a name?)  in and giving her the run of the files makes me think NSA is getting sloppy. 

Cortana: What can it do and do I care?

According to net rumor, Cortana does some searching and accepts voice commands and gives voice responses and does snooping for Microsoft.   It used to suck up better than 100 Mbytes of RAM and a smidgen of CPU time.  Since putting in Creator's update big patch the other day it is down to 66.6 Mbytes of RAM and zip for CPU time. 
   After go rounds with Dragon Dictate and the average robocaller, I am not impressed with voice recognition.  I haven't gone thru a training session with Cortana.  I don't think I'm using it at all. I think I want to blow it away to save RAM and speed up things.
   So far, net searching only say you can use Regedit to add a key to the registry  (AllowCortana = 0) that inhibits Cortana from doing something while searching.  No directions for blowing Cortana clean off the hard  drive.   The only searching I ever do is with a web browser and Google, or on my harddrive with Windows Explorer.  
  Question:  Is it worth  adding the magic key to the registry?   Will it recover that 66.6 Mbytes of RAM, or does it leave Cortana sucking up RAM and doing nothing?  
   

HP Laptop battery recall. Lack of nameplate

While futzing around after the "Creative Update" big patch, I find that HP has a recall out on some laptop batteries.  Hmm.  I saw that photo for some years ago of a laptop bursting into flames on a conference room table.  Could be bad.  Could burn your house down. 
   So, a few clicks and the website asks for the product name of my laptop.  I get choices of Pavilion G4, thru Pavilion G16.   Top of my laptop just says "Pavilion"  I look on the back, on the bottom, sides, top, everywhere.  No data plate.  PITA.  Battery compartment needs tools to open.  Rather than going down to the shop for tools, I download an 800KB program to figure out which battery I have.  It reports that my battery is NOT on the recall list.  Nice.   
    I wish HP wasn't so cheap and had bothered to put a real dataplate, readable by humans, on their product. 

Creator's update to Win 10: aka Big Patch 2017

So I let Windows Update do the "Creators Update".  It is big and fat.  Took hours to download and more hours to install after download.  It fixed the power button on my HP laptop.  The last big patch, last summer, broke the button.  I had to keep my finger on the power button for the count of ten to make the laptop power down AND turn off the LED in the power button.   Granted a LED only draws 10 milliamps out of a battery rated for an amp-hour or more, but even 10 milliamps will run the battery down if you put the laptop on the shelf for a week or so.  Anyhow Win 10 Creator's update fixed the button that the last big patch broke.  
   And then Creators update broke HP 3D Driveguard.  That's an HP program that does an emergency hard drive head park should the internal accelerometer sense the laptop is taking a fall.  Sounds cool IF it is really fast enough to get the heads parked before the laptop hits the floor.  Net searching offered advice to uninstall HP 3D Driveguard and then download the latest version and reinstall.   Uninstall worked, but download and reinstall not so much.  My first reinstall crapped out with an error message about a bad file in the download.  I tried a second download from another site and it might have worked.  It never bothered to report success or failure.  HP 3D Driveguard does not show in Task Manager.  Neither do it's aliases, of which it has two.  So, either it hides from task manager or it isn't there at all. 
    A Creators Update puff piece on the 'Net  was vague about what all this updating buys you.  You get a 3D Paint program (whoopie) and a lot of stuff for gamers.  I don't draw with my computers and games are for kids.  
     Another productive year for the Micro$oft software weenies. 

Wipe Islamic Terrorists off the Internet

We ought to do it.  We can do it, the backbone carriers are mostly American.  We  furnish a list of terrorist URL's to the backbone carriers, and presto, they go into the bit bucket for good.  The terrorists will undoubtedly open new ones, but we can make those go into the bit bucket too.  And their audiences, who just pop a URL into their browsers will be confused when they get the 404 error message after the site got blackholed.  It will take time for the audience to discover the new URLs and by which time we can discover them too and make the new ones go away. 
   Everyone agrees that a lot of Islamic terrorists get started, get instructed, and get encouraged over the internet.  For instance we know that Anwar Al Awlaki  set up the shoe bomber, and engaged in emails with Major Hassan, the Ft Hood shooter.  Awlaki got so bad that the weak kneed Obama administration summoned up a little resolve and snuffed Awlaki in a drone strike.  If we can snuff them from the air, surely we can turn off their internet access.
   Every other media, print newspapers, radio, TV, movies, books, music, engage in censorship.  There are some things they simply will not show.  Examples:  death threats, calls to violence, pornography, wardrobe malfunctions, overly  raunchy lyrics, and hate speech.  Only the internet gets away scot free.  With Islamic terrorist racking up more and more kills (149 kills just this Ramadan) we need to shut down their internet access. 
   We need to do this right, and prevent censorship of other perfectly legitimate internet activities.  Probably a small board of respected and impartial  people ought to OK each request to blackhole a URL for being an Islamic terror site.  We have done a fairly good job at snuffing out spammers, no reason why we should not do the same to Islamic terrorists. 

Mandatory Minimum Sentences.

Used to be, back in the 60's and 70's, judges had broad discretion in sentences.  Unfortunately a number of judges abused this discretion, letting criminals off with slap-on-the-wrist sentences when the community wanted the throw the book at them. 
  As a result, in the 70's and 80's, Congress and state legislatures  passed laws requiring judges to impose mandatory minimum sentences in all cases, mitigating circumstances be damned.  Judges have been whining about this ever since.  But the mandatory minimum sentencing laws still mostly stand, the voters have little interest in the whines of judges.  

Do you believe in Global Warming?

Or, "Does the president believe in global warming," a question fired during one of those interminable daily press conferences.  The poor press secretary who was serving as a target rightfully dodged the question. 
  Believe.  That's a word used in  religion.  Do you believe in God?  When the newsies start asking about belief, they become religious fanatics looking for heretics to burn at the stake.  The fanatics LIKE global warming, they are using it to scare people into giving them political power. 
   Global warming ought to be a scientific theory, an idea supported by observations or experiments.  About the only observation behind the global warmists is CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.  We have good observations that the CO2 concentration has increased from 300 and something parts-per-million to 400 parts-per-million in the last 50 years or so.  The earth gets heated on the sunside and cools itself by radiating infrared radiation on the night side.  To hold Earth's temperature steady, the heating and the cooling have to balance.  CO2 blocks infrared radiation which reduces the nighttime cooling.  This is the whole of the greenie global warming religion.  Of which they are demanding the president believe. 
   Counter observation.  Plain old water vapor, steam, humidity, clouds, is as strong an infrared blocker as CO2.  And there is about 1000 times as much water vapor in the air as the puny rise of CO2.  The CO2 rise is like 50 parts-per million, against a water vapor concentration of 50,000 parts-per-million.  Most experienced people don't think a change that small means anything in the real world.  Especially as all the computer models of global warming produce crazy results when asked to predict today's temperature based upon data from some starting point in the past. Incidentally,  on a planet two thirds covered with open water, there is going to be a lot of water vapor in the air, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.  
   And, if the world warms up, then the oceans will warm and more water will vaporize and make the air even moister than it is.  Which will increase the amount of cloud cover.  Everyone knows that daytime clouds cool the earth.  You can feel the chill when you are on a beach in a bathing suit and a cloud covers the sun.  Less well known is that night time clouds warm the earth, they block infrared radiation even better than CO2 or water vapor.  Clear winter nights are colder than overcast winter nights.  Which effect is stronger?  No one knows, or at least no one has published on this where I could see it. 
   Another observation.  World temperature has remained steady, no rise at all for the last 19 years. 
   So, scientifically speaking global warming is a maybe.  Might be happening, might not.  This isn't a matter of belief.  It's a matter of scientific observations and theory. 
   

Bye Bye Paris Climate Deal.

Trump called a special Rose Garden address on the Paris accord for 3 PM Eastern today.  It got started 15 minutes late, not bad.  Trump said the US was pulling out off the Paris agreement, something he had promised repeated on the campaign trail.  He said the Paris agreement was costing us jobs and economic growth, and it wasn't doing much against global warming.  And the other members, like China, weren't doing as much as the United States. 
   The Paris accord was supposed to be an international treaty, which needs a 66% majority in the Senate to pass.  Obama, who negotiated the Paris accords, never submitted the final treaty to the Senate, because he knew it would never pass.  So, it never was a real treaty, and Trump can denounce it and walk away from it on just his say-so.  That's legit.
   Funny thing about the Paris accord.  I have no idea what the pseudo treaty obligated America to do.  And who might be keeping score.  The Obama administration claimed that the Clean Power Plan, which called for shutting down every coal fired power plant in the country, was  just one step toward meeting the Paris accord.  Of course Trump shut down the Clean Power Plan a couple of months ago, so that's kind of moot.  Of course the greenies are all upset, but next greenie I hear venting about Paris, I'm gonna ask him what the Paris accord required us to do.  And is it fair when the Chinese don't have to do squat until 2030.  The greenie won't know, and that ought to quiet him down for a while.
   In short, Trump put on a show for his voter base, doing something they approve of.  It gives the MSM something new to whine about, which is good, I'm tired of listening to them whine about Russians.  I don't think it does anything about global warming, especially as there has been no global warming for the last 19 years. 

Angela Merkel's Lament

"All I can say is that we Europeans must really take our destiny in our own hands.  The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over as I experienced in the past few days."  Angela Merkel said these words at a campaign stop in Bavaria. 
   In my estimation, these are words that all sensible European leaders ought to be saying.  Europe, the EU, is as big as the United States in regards to population, land area, industrial capacity, wealth.  It has real threats, the Russians, financial turmoil, a flood of Muslim refugees, Brexit which could lead to disintegration of the EU, Islamic terrorism, high unemployment and sluggish growth, oppressive regulations, Greek bankruptcy, falling birthrates,  and doubtless more that are not obvious to Americans like me. 
   We Americans will help out against Russian aggression, but the rest of the problems we see as purely internal European problems.   Against most of them there is nothing we can do, even if we believed we ought to.   Wealthy Europe is a tempting target to aggressors, refugees, terrorists, and others.  Europe lacks America's natural defenses, lacks America's large and effective armed forces, and lacks America's political unity.  Any thinking person ought to be concerned.  Angela Merkel, as leader of Germany, the largest and most influential member of the EU, is speaking to Germans and EU citizens about what ought to be. 
   But US TV, even normally sober Fox News, is going ape over Merkel's words.  I heard both Shepard Smith and Charles Krauthammer yesterday decrying Angela Merkel words as a call to break up NATO,  and trash the American alliance.  How do you spell "overreact"?
  I read Angela Merkel's words as a call for Europe to stand on it's own two feet.  Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to say.  

Words of the Weasel Part 51

Someone invented a new and opaque term for a tax on imports to the country.  This sort of tax has been called a tariff since at least the American Revolution, and "The Tariff" funded the federal government down until the invention of the income tax in the very early 20th century.  The size of the tariff was a serious political issue from the Revolution right on.
   We enacted a very stiff tariff,  the Smoot Hawley tariff right after Great Depression I hit.  Most historians and economists tell us that Smoot Hawley made the Great Depression worse, and prolonged it.  Needless to say, "tariff" became something of a bad word  most places.  The exception was in union circles, the unions like tariffs.
   There is a push to put in a tariff again.  Only since "tariff" is now a bad word, they call it a "Border Adjustment Tax".  And the newsies let them get away with it. 

Fake News takes over the MSM

For the last couple of weeks, stories featuring the name of someone in the Trump administration, the proper noun "Russians" and little else have been all we get from the MSM.  The stories are always been from anonymous sources, i.e. sources fearful to give their names lest stuff fall on their heads.  Highly reliable those sources are.  The stories never actually accuse anyone of illegal, treasonous, or immoral acts, they just insinuate that something evil is going on.  Last couple of days they have been talking about, not accusing anyone of anything, just talking about communication between the Trump administration and the Russians.  Sure, the Russians are our international competitors (real people call them enemies). but there is nothing wrong with talking to them.  "Jaw, Jaw is better than War, War."  Winston Churchill said long ago.  JFK managed to keep the Cuban missile crisis from turning into WWIII by talking with the Russians.  After the smoke blew away he set up the "Hot Line" a secure back channel of communication.  There is nothing wrong with talking to the Russians. 
   I wonder what else is going on in the world?

Latest Intel CPU chip is $1999

That's just for the chip, mother board and casework extra.  Read all about on Slashdot. 
 Damn, that is pricey.   I remember when the Mostek 6502 selling for $30 won the Apple II slot, and in the process extinguished the Motorola 6800 which sold for $100.   And there is some market share such a chip will miss, such as the $300 laptop market.
   And in real life, the speed of a desktop computer is set by the speed of the RAM, hard drive, OS, and network, not the CPU.  I notice my relatively new HP laptop running Win 10 is no faster than my 10 year old desktop running Win XP.  Improvements in hardware speed are sucked up and thrown away by the latest version of Windows.  

And yet more unsolicited advice for Detroit.

How come so many cars on the road are painted gray?  Car salesmen will tell you it is "silver metallic" but in actual fact, it's gray.  And another whole bunch of cars get painted mud color.  Do customers really want mud colored cars? What ever happened to red, or blue, or British Racing Green, or black, or other bright primary colors? 
  Is it really consumer demand for cars painted yucky colors?  Or is it some faceless flunky who chooses the paint color for the average car going down the production line?  Most cars are built on speculation, they don't have a customer nailed down, so the factory builds what it thinks will sell, and ships it to the dealers who manage to sell it.  If the dealer's lot is filled with cars painted yucky colors, then yucky colors they will sell. 
   Maybe sales would increase if there were more cars painted decent colors?

Learning while in a Vegetative State.

Dandelions manage it.  They are vegetables, or a least plants.  Left to their own devices, dandelions will grown nearly 12 inches tall, flower, go to seed, and propagate themselves. 
  But, make one pass with a lawnmower and it learns 'em.  After getting mowed, the dandelions change their life strategy, and grow low to the ground and flower low to the ground, too low for the mower to mow them.  Dandelions learn from the first pass of the lawn mower. 
   Smarter than the average weed. 

Words of the Weasel Part 50

Impact, used as a verb. Bad English example "The car impacted the guard rail."  Impact is not a verb, it is a noun, using it as a verb is trendy but annoying.  Newsies can be particularly annoying this way. 
Proper English is " hit": or "strike".  Good English examples " The car hit the guard rail," or "The car struck the guardrail." 

More unsolicited advice for Detroit Automakers

1.  Stick with building real cars powered by gasoline engines.  They have decent range, and you can refill the gas tank in a few minutes.  Nobody wants to cool their heels on a trip for a couple of hours waiting for batteries to recharge.   Hybrids simply cost $10k more than real cars and don't offer much in the way of better fuel economy.

2.  I personally would never buy a self driving car.  As a matter of fact I would not ride in one either.  When I am zipping thru traffic, I want my hands on the wheel, not some microprocessor.  A little R&D, to stay up to speed on the technology is one thing, betting the company on a self driving car model is foolishness.

3.   Offer a thermometer in the car.  On cold dark nights, you want to know if that black slickness up ahead is ice, or just a puddle.  Is it above or below freezing out side?  Could be a matter of life or death.  And make sure the thermometer reads right when it gets wet by rain or road spray.