I used the term ESE just to check if you really were Hehan, who would have recognised it. I have to conclude that you’re only his identical twin who was separated at some point. Perhaps you mother gave you away for adoption when you told her that she was inferior to you in every way becaue she was female. You would make an ideal statistic in support of your “nature is more powerful than culture” argument because there seems to be little difference between you and Heshan still.

For your information a ESE is a term coined by Indi to describe the English speaking Elite of Colombo, and is currently being considered for inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary. I feel that the term better describes some Sri Lankans like you who think they’re special just because they speak English.

Yes, there’s a definite cultural aspect to metaphors. My point was that getting out of jail free seems not to be the best metaphor to describe getting married, in cultures where marriage is referred to as “wedlock” or “hiraya”.

Not very sure about this. Do you inferior turds, who think they are not inferior turds, always lose arguments like this?

Metaphors are culture specific? “Get out of jail free card” means pretty much nothing if you take it outside its Monopoly reference. It doesn’t have a different use in any Sri Lankan subculture. Even the word “card” is a new concept for Sinhalese people. So when someone says “Get out of jail free card”, it pretty much means only one thing. There’s no way one could mistake it for something else, unless she’s a moron.

Why should I be embarassed regarding some alien tongue? It’s you, who tries to portray yourself as an an all knowing ESE, who should to be embarassed because you didn’t know that metaphors are culture specific, and cannot be applied universally. Nine out of ten ordinary Sri Lankan married men consider wedlock to be a prison.

PS: I don’t have mud colored skin like you sh1thead.

Get out of jail free card is not an analogy. It’s a metaphor, and totally correct in this scenario..

Get out of jail free card is not an analogy. It’s a metaphor, and totally correct in this scenario.

I just added you to the Morons Club, for not accepting it when your worldview has been completely demolished by me. (others, this is how it looks to outsiders when I completely ruin your beliefs and ideas).

You claimed the reason US more accidents per capita than Sweden was because of the blacks. I showed you that Russia has a much higher accident rate, even though there aren’t many blacks. Your response to this is, it is because 20% of Russians are ethnic minorities, only 80% white.

Two obvious questions arise. First one is this. Only 72% of US population is white,( source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States ) which is less than 80%, which is the case in Russia according to you. So how come US has a much lower accident rate, even though its minority percentage is higher than Russia?

The second question is this. You blamed the higher US accident rate on blacks, who constitute 13% of the US population. Now I’d suppose that Russian black population is much lower than 13% of Russian population. I also showed you that China, which is non-white, yet multi-ethnic country, has a lower accident rate than Russia. So how cone this 20% of the Russian ethnic (non-black) minority share more common features with blacks, and not much with most ethnic groups in China? Do the those Russian non-Black 20% of minority share a common ancestor with blacks, who is not an ancestor of the Chinese?

Again, I have put you in the category of morons. A basic rule of making hypotheses is that before you make predictions, you must explain the already available data. Your hypothesis is erroneous as a simple matter of fact. You are a moron not to see it when you have been clearly shown how retarded it is.

I never asked you to cite a study to support your claim that foreigners driving non-English number plated cars wear seat belts. You made that claim without citing any study to support it, and I didn’t even ask you for one, and yet you moronically ask me to cite a study that measured the correlation between income and accidents? Seriously, are you high or something?

Not really. Most buses don’t have seat belts. So how can they wear them????

The seat belt law was imposed only on certain models of buses; buses that actually have seat belts. If you carefully observe, you’d see that most new buses actually have seat belts. I would say if you count only the buses that actually have seat belts, you are still more likely to find a gentleman driving a hybrid wearing his seat belt than a bus driver, whose bus actually has a seat belt, wearing the seat belt. Don’t you think so?

If enforement is the key, then why does sweden has on of the lowest accident rates in the world and US has one of the highest??? Both are countries where laws are enforced strictly. But the US has many folds accidents (per capita) than sweden. You know why??? Because of Blacks.

Suppose this is true. Now explain to me the following data:

USA
Road Fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year = 12.3
Road Fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles = 15

Russia
Road Fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year = 18.5
Road Fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles = 55.3

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

Are there a millions of blacks in Russia, secretly driving motor vehicles?

If you still don’t see the pattern, I’m going to put you in the category of morons who comment on this blog. It’s a distinguished club really, which includes dodo, realist and shammi.

Are you saying that Sri Lankans are equal to Europeans in intellectual capaticy and mental development??

Never made such a claim. But again, don’t make claims related to evolutionary psychology without first reading Hamilton, Williams, Smith or Wilson. Such elaborate theories are not needed when there’s the obvious fact that Russia has higher accident rates than USA even though virtually all of them are white. If you try to do that, you’d be stumped by the following data, and conclude that Chinese have higher intellectual capacity and mental development than the Russians, whether it is true or not.

China
Road Fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year = 5.1
Road Fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles = 36

You mean the poor people in bullock carts who don’t drive cars? :D

“Are you saying that Sri Lankans are equal to Europeans in intellectual capaticy and mental development???”

No, Rodney, you’re clearly not equal to anyone on this planet.

” You simply didn’t address my claim that you are more likely to find a gentleman driving a hybrid wearing a seat-belt than find a bus driver wearing a seat-belt.” – Not really. Most buses don’t have seat belts. So how can they wear them????

If enforement is the key, then why does sweden has on of the lowest accident rates in the world and US has one of the highest??? Both are countries where laws are enforced strictly. But the US has many folds accidents (per capita) than sweden. You know why??? Because of Blacks. Blacks cause more accidents maney times more than their population % than Whites. So that is why there are so many more accidents (per capita) in the US than in Sweden. So it’s clearly genetic.

Are you saying that Sri Lankans are equal to Europeans in intellectual capaticy and mental development???

I can predict someone saying So I suppose you have done a pretty good study about foreigners who drive non-English numbered cars wearing seat-belts? At least you’d be able to tell me how many non-English numbered cars are driven by foreigners per day on average?

But then, I’m not one of those people. We can’t decide everything based on studies. But you are not even addressing anything I said. You simply didn’t address my claim that you are more likely to find a gentleman driving a hybrid wearing a seat-belt than find a bus driver wearing a seat-belt. Do you deny this? You simply didn’t address my claim that if you accidentally killed someone, you are more likely to get beaten by some lowly creatures than by a bunch of office workers. Do you deny this?

What you are saying, without addressing any of the above, is also flawed. I’d bet that when you say foreigners, you are actually thinking about a Caucasian man, or a woman, who has earned enough money to travel the world, driving a car that is definitely not a Maruti. More than being white or foreign, his/her obeying laws can be explained by the fact that he’s not a penniless, inbreeding, gun-cling, bible-thumping American redneck.

And please, don’t try your hand at evolutionary psychology unless you’ve at least read people like Wilson, Hamilton, George Williams and John Meynard Smith.

I rather suspect that genetics has nothing much to do with it. Sri Lankan drivers I know in places like the UK seem curiously able to drive safely and politely. Nor do I think that enforcement itself is the main problem. I’ve driven in many countries where the general road manners are pretty good despite there being far fewer visible traffic cops than in Sri Lanka, enforcement via speed cameras for the most part. Enforcement problems in this country are many, particularly the easy ticketing that happens (speeding on straight stretches out of town, hiding by single white lines, waiting by no U-turn areas etc) rather than following and arresting poor drivers per se; their poor training, minimal experience of driving and the corruption being the main reasons.

No, the main problem is that everyone does it. It’s a societal issue, an education issue and a manners issue. No one is embarrassed or shamed by poor driving. An idiot straying over two lanes is nearly as dangerous as a prick in a Landcruiser hustling you with flashing lights from behind, and no-one seems to care.

Onto the thrust of this post, though, electric cars are a stupid idea. They have a tiny range, take ages to charge, the batteries only last 5-10 years and are not environmentally friendly by any means. Fine for a rich person who needs a city runabout, not very good for anyone else. No, as private transport goes, hydrogen cell cars are the future, whether they directly run on hydrogen or use the cell as a generator to run electric motors. They emit only water (admittedly a greenhouse gas conveniently forgotten by eco-mentalists), the existing fuel station network can be utilised, you can fill up in minutes and they have similar performance and range to petrol engines. All we need is large scale production of liquid hydrogen, which is easier to do in geographical regions with a lot of rainfall…

Lol, looks like literacy hasn’t reached your neck of the woods yet. And what is a “lumprie”???

So you agree that 70% is OK for literacy? So how can you say that that’s primitive? Lol.

And no, underdeveloped isn’t talking about a mindset. If it were you’d be pretty underdeveloped yourself, Rodney. What is your criteria for a developed mindset, and what is your source for saying that underdeveloped refers not to economy?

I would say luxury cars violate the road rules far less often than three-wheelers, buses or motorcycles, though this is in part due to the obvious fact that luxury cars are rare. That’s why I took Maruti for my argument. I think you’d agree if we consider prior probabilities, you are more likely to get verbally abused by a three-wheeler driver than by a Maruti car driver. If you accidentally kill someone, you are more likely to get beaten and car burned by lowly creatures in the society than by some office workers.

It’s hardly genetic either. Humans usually easily submit to authority. I would describe Stanley Milgram’s social paychology experiment if I have to. Basically, our ancestors could not have survived if they didn’t submit to authority. Those who did got killed before they could reproduce. Those of us who survived easily submit to authority. Those who defy authority do it after tremendous internal struggle.

So if we had strict laws that are vigorously enforced, we won’t have this problem. If making sure that road rules are obeyed is all you care about, you can easily achieve it by making violations of road rules punishable by death, and actually go through with it and kill every single idiot who stops the vehicle on a zebra crossing. Have no doubts. It’ll work.

By the way, remember the seat-belt rule? People actually obeyed it when it was actually enforced, even the bus drivers. But when it is not properly enforced, like now, you are more likely to find a gentleman driving a Hybrid wearing a seat-belt than a TATA bus driver wearing one

SL was almost 100% literate in the ’70s” ???? Fuck off moron.

Here are the statistics from none other than STATISTICS.GOV.LK

Table 2.1 – Literacy rate by sector and sex

1963 – 77%
1981 – 87.2%
1990 – 86.6%
2001 – 90.7%

Source: http://www.statistics.gov.lk/social/social%20conditions.pdf

Now, go eat the lumprie packet like a good boy!!!

You are however right about “economically underdeveloped countries are less disciplined”. So we have been an economically underdeveloped country since 1948. So we have to be less disciplined all along.