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"I would not consider the An-124 to be a viable commercial aircraft,"

It's "viable" enough to be subcontracted to ship MRAPs to Iraq and A-stan for (presumably) a handsome profit!

http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/jan/05/air_force_hires_russian_jets26735/

There's an interesting comment on Sen. Ford's practice of filing bills that go nowhere in today's Charleston paper: "Ford continues to file a stack of bills every session. Not many make it into the law, at least not directly. He puts the bills on record to please his constituents and then pursues other avenues to get them in the law books." http://www.charleston.net/news/2009/jan/14/the_odd_couple68284/ I guess it's better to satisfy a complaining constituent that way than to attach the text to some bill that might actually pass.

• "A prosecutor plans to charge a former Dillon police officer with assault after he was captured on videotape beating a suspect in a traffic stop."
• "A state trooper who hit a fleeing suspect with his car has been indicted by a federal grand jury on a civil rights violation charge. . . . The 2007 incident, caught on [the officer's] dashboard video in what may be the first of several cases against highway patrolmen."

These are just two incidents from S.C., where I have roots and take notice of such things. In both cases, the most damning evidence against the police is from their own in-car cameras. I'm sure S.C. hasn't cornered the market on thuggish cops.

I think that as a general rule of thumb, if you are filming a police or other law enforcement action and you think the people doing the enforcing may be breaking the law, you don't want to advertise the fact, lest their attention be diverted to you, with potential consequences including loss of the evidence you are collecting. When I was just starting off on my own, my dad (a newspaper man) dispensed this piece of advice: "If you are stopped by a policeman for any reason, say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir'. Let him be the big man, because he has the badge and the gun, and it will be his word against yours." Basically, if you think there is something that needs to be redressed, write the facts down (badge number, name, etc.) and take it up with the supervisors later, in plain light of day. Being a smart aleck isn't the way to go.

Not only is it possible that those statements you made are true, we have direct evidence, through DNA testing (voluntary of course) that showed common ancestery across vast swaths of populations. It does teeter on the edge of "dangerous" discussion, but it's true that if you go far back enough we're all related to each other somehow. Isaac and the rest of the people you mentioned have lived long enough ago for them to be true ancestors, so to speak.

What does it mean in the long run? In my opinion, not a whole lot. Other people's opinions may differ from mine.

Here's an example for the curious.

One document obtained by the AP, a 1998 U.S. government business solicitation, mandated that "any color printer must include a tracing system that encodes system identification in any output. This will tie the output to the originating equipment so that forensic identification of the equipment is possible in the event of illegal printing of currency images due to failure or circumvention of the recognition system(s) ..."

What really surprises me is that this didn't break into the blogosphere back in October. It didn't even make it into the Slashdot thread! But at least there's some resiliency in the system of Internet democracy -- at least the story made it out anyway in under two months.

But it does show that we live in a soundbite/headline world. This information was hidden in plain sight on a front-page CNN story. Nobody who cares about privacy saw it (and reported it, mea culpa), or everyone who saw it didn't care about privacy.

Interesting read - the full text is online here.

Two things to note:
1) The Frasier Institute (which released the study) is well-known in Canada for being a right-wing think tank. That by no means invalidates the findings of the study, but is important context to consider while reading it.

2) The main theme of the report is simply "violent crime in the US is falling faster than in Canada, so Canada's gun control laws are a failure". As the report completely fails to take into account the massive increases in incarceration and other justice-system oversight that have occurred in the US in recent years, it's worth asking whether the report is correct in its findings. It is entirely possible, as some appear to argue that America's drop in crime has been in large part due to this massive surge in its prison population.

Mauser's study is interesting, but fails to examine its assumptions nearly enough to establish the kind of causal relationship between gun laws and crime that it's claiming.

Yes, some of them will be pretty much useless after all of the time, but others will be more unstable.

Something called "Composition A" is RDX mixed with melted wax. That stuff will keep for a LONG time, since no water is going to penetrate the wax.

RDX has been used as an explosive since the 1920s. It's some powerful stuff.

Remember Saving Private Ryan? Remember the "sticky bombs"? That was Composition A. You can blow the treads off of a tank with a sock full of the stuff. Imagine what a boatload of it will do.

We're not talking small quantities of these explosives either, we're talking about a military transport ship.

That could be dangerous, but nothing compared to the Lost Hydrogen Bomb that is sitting in the atlantic just off the coast of the US.

War is nasty business.

LK

This is completely false. The much publicized PIPA poll that linked the source of news to beliefs showed that 50% of Americans believed there was some link between Saddam and al Qaida (which means that half the nation believes there is no link).

How about this, this, and this? At least half thought that some of the hijackers were Iraqi. My apologies for saying "most" before. Only some thought that most were. As for half believing there was no link, apparently 36% couldn't answer the question.

I can't believe you're trying to say that the U.S. public is/was well informed about the war in Iraq. Look at where everyone gets their information from.

If everyone that 'talks the talk" also 'walked the walk', than 2/3 of the population would be in prison, or dead.

Well, it hasn't reached 2/3 yet but we're working on it! Especially when it's so lucrative.

Plans to build a steel shell around reactor #4...hope it gets built soon...

As far as the auto industry goes, after years of having their asses handed to them, they decided that competitive pricing and quality improvements may sell a few more cars, Duh! In most cases, it is still cheaper to build a car half-way around the world, and pay to ship it here, because it is still of higher quality and similar cost to that which is produced domestically. I think you'll find that the foreign manufacturers have simply gotten 'golden goose' type deals to move to certain places in the US.

BMW built a plant here because they got $259,000 PER EMPLOYEE in state funds to do so. Without a sweetheart deal of some sort, it doesn't make sense for most manufacturing industries to be here.

I agree with your final comment, basically the same old story, the top 10% in any field can get a job anywhere at any time, to anyone else, good luck.

"As Wal-Mart, we do not discriminate against anyone, including women," said Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for communications.

She noted that when Wal-Mart posted notices companywide in January inviting workers to apply to become management trainees, only 43 percent of those who expressed interest were women.

(emphasis mine)

13-16 hour days molding, assembling, and painting toys, 7 days a week; 20 hour days in the peak season.

A whole 13 hours at Christmas? And here I am working at my shop doing 24 hour days. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. They have it good. But hey, just pretend nobody is working long hours at Christmas in North America, the wool over your eyes will keep you warm.

Workers are paid 13 cents/hour wages in China: the minimum wage is 31 cents.

Incorrect. There is no minimum wage in China. However, individual Chinese cities have elected to enact minimum wage standards.

The minimum wage in Shenyang, for example, is 320 yuan monthly, or 8 cents per hour if your above numbers are true.

But that's ok. Don't let the truth cloud your rhetoric.

There is no health or safety enforcement: constant headaches and nausea from chemical fumes, indoor temperatures above 100 degrees F, rampant repetitive stress disorder, no protective clothing available.

That's not unusual for any Chinese factory. It's not unusual for any developing nation. It is unfortunate and my heart bleeds for them. But denying them employment and money will only serve to exacerbate such problems through death and pestilence.

Most employees are young women or teenage girls.

It is unfortunate that in most rural areas choices are diffcult and it is believed in such areas that men are more suited to farm work than women. This leads to women working in such factories to support the financial aspect of such families.

Suppliers have to open their accounting books to Wal-Mart executives so they can cut "unnecessary expenses" like unionized worke

...as they didn't take into account this small piece of VERY important data.

...they have less than a third of the prison population that the US has...

According to web sites such as
this and this, the prison population in Australia was approximately two orders of magnitude less than that in the US. The total population is also an order of magnitude less.

Sure, we Americans have more enummerated rights than you Brits, but we've also got a higher percentage of our population in prison than you. In fact, we've got the highest confirmed prisoner per capita rate of any country on Earth.

Numbers like that make me wonder if we're somehow missing the point here in the States. Rights on paper are nice, but they don't tell the whole story.

(Here's a big chart of imprisonment figures, if anyone wants details.)

Honestly people, why keep linking to the "reg required" links?

NYTimes Story
Alternate story

When computer expert Jack Goynes of Charleston saw the technology wave moving toward smart cards, he jumped on it. He didn't figure he would be sued. Read the complete story here

People get bored with crybabies moaning about the same thing, year after year. "Rights! Civil liberties!"

yes, so they change the rules and you shut up.

But since then we have seen a dramatic and fundamental shift both in public opinion and the behavior of law enforcement (especially the AG's office.) And people don't seem to care. They are incredibly concerned with security and their own personal safety, which they believe to be threatened. Liberty takes a back seat to safety, and Franklin can fuck himself.

I dunno about that. I saw a story about this on CNN today. And don't forget these folks. So people are working on the issue, and fighting against the tide.

I dunno, I tend to wander over to /. now and again and fight against the pessimism that is so rampant here. Yea, things suck, but these issues are so far removed from most people's lives (coming back to DMCA stuff), it is very difficult to grasp how they affect everyone. But people are getting it, and the ones that don't are dying faster. Patience and perseverence, and all that. Really, it works. (it just kinda sucks in the mean-time).

The longest suspension brigde in the US, and what looks to be the thrid longest span in the world (4th if you count this new italian bridge) is currently being built in Charleston, SC. The span will be 1546ft, with the total bridge coming in at about 2.5mi. Check out some info on it here.

Also, the South Carolina DMV sold 3.5 million driver photos for $5000 in 1999. There is a lot of info at Charleston.net if you are interested.

They sold the pictures to a company called Image Data for use in fraud prevention. The idea is that a merchant can buy a special terminal from Image Data that scans the bar code on a South Carolina driver licence. The bar code gets sent to Image Data, and they send back the driver's picture for display on the terminal, so the merchant can verify the person's identity.

Other states have also tried to sell their info to Image Data, including Florida and Colorado, among others. The governors of these states stopped the sales, after all the bad press from the South Carolina deal, although some of the Colorado photos were released before the deal was halted. News that the database was funded in part by the Secret Service added to the outcry.

One of the things that has really bothered me during the whole SSSCA debate is the media coverage, or lack thereof. I live in South Carolina, and I've never even ONCE heard any mention of this issue from any SC-based media outlet. A quick search of some newspaper archives (Columbia's The State and Charleston's Post and Courier) confirms this. It seems that most of the state adores Hollings and most news stories present him in glowing fashion. I just find it sad that very few of the people actually responsible for putting and keeping this guy in office even hear about major policy he is spearheading. If that's not a breakdown of democracy, I don't know what is.