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I could empty an AR-15 w/30 rounds from inside an airliner flying at 30K feet, reload, do it again, and still not depressurize the cabin to any serious extent as long as no windows were blown out. I serviced/repaired aircraft for a living.

I designed and coded the software for cabin pressurization systems used in commercial aircraft. BlueStrat is correct in all details, and if you know a little engineering you can easily convince yourself.

The cabin pressurization valve is an inflatable balloon (of sorts) sitting in an 8" diameter hole, and there are two of them. The system will easily compensate for even a large number of bullet holes in the body - 1" holes are much smaller than the area the valve system has to work with.

The pressure differential between the inside and outside can be at most 15 pounds per square inch(*). That means that a 1" hole would only present 15 lbs of force pressure on an object pressing against it, which can be easily overcome by a person. Bullet holes are much smaller than 1" diameter. Further away and the effect is negligible.

A window being shot out would not suck out a passenger. From experience, when an 8" diameter hole (the pressurization valve) is suddenly uncovered, it doesn't pull very hard on people standing near it and the pull ends almost instantly. Force isn't present for any length of time, and since F=M*A and V = A*T, you end up with very little velocity.

Sorry folks, Goldfinger doesn't get sucked across the cabin and forced through the blown-out window, and Pussy Galore doesn't have to pull the plane out of a tailspin.

(*) To reduce stress on the airframe, the cabin is depressurized as the aircraft reaches cruising altitude.This reduces the maximum differential by about 1/3.

So, since there are dictators who attack their own citizens with military weapons, we can just ignore free speech rights? Internet freedom is a subset of freedom of speech.

I suspect that(aside from the UN's relative fecklessness), the bigger issue will be that the UN's position on "Human Rights" has a loophole in the free speech department that you could drive one of those comically oversized trucks used in open pit mining through...

From UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 29:

"(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society."

So, can anybody think of any popular restrictions on rights and freedoms that aren't fairly trivial to rationalize under 'morality', 'public order' or 'the general welfare'? Even with the 'in a democratic society' stipulation, that still leaves you a considerable degree of flexibility.

Someone who cares about these things isn't going to get an 600kWh / year fridge. He is going to get a A+++ 161 kWh / year fridge freezer combo Maybe a second fridge to plug in in case of a party.

Believe it or not, I've not only heard of it but actually ridden on it. Although damn cool, and definitely a fun trip if you're ever in Skagway, since it doesn't really connect to any other railroads, it's not exactly what I was thinking of as part of the "rail network" in the U.S. (And the line currently doesn't go all the way to Whitehorse, only to Carcoss, due to some sort of bureaucratic issue with the Canadians...you'd think the people in Whitehorse would be dying for the tourism, and when I was there back in '01 or '02 I heard some of the workers saying that they were ready to run trains there whenever, but apparently there's a lot of red tape involved. I think it became a political football after 9/11 with the border-security issues.) But for anyone interested in railroads the trip is a must-do, if only to see the old steel cantilever bridge along the route (WP says it's over "Dead Horse Gulch" and if you saw it you'd believe it).

For simple point-to-point transportation, you can certainly pick any gauge railroad (or any other form of transportation) that you please. There are functioning narrow-gauge railroads in certain niches both in the Americas and in certain parts of Eastern Europe (I saw a program on the BBC not too long ago about some honest-to-god steam narrow-gauge railways in Eastern Europe; they're more tourist attractions now, but used to be functioning parts of the timber industry), but they don't really help you when you're trying to import goods in a form that can be easily dispersed with a minimum of extra effort, if they're not the regional/national standard.

I think the best solution to the rail problem is to use containerized cargo, and then use the currently-available, COTS equipment [1] for moving cargo containers around to move it from wide-gauge rolling stock to standard gauge, and bring it into the U.S. that way.

[1] The sort of cranes that exist in every major container port in the world, for lifting and moving containers off of ships and onto trucks/trains. Example

Hummers are just too small. Everybody should be driving a T 282 B. Stop worrying about towing your boat, just drop it on the back to the other ones left there from last summer.

Just wait until someone gets in a head on collision with an SUV (most of them are nearly 3 times the weight of these cars -- The driver of the SUV feels almost nothing

Just wait until that crappy SUV gets in a head on collision with a Freightliner. Only a moron would drive anything smaller than a Freightliner. Good thing the Liebherr isn't licensed for onroad use, or we'd all have to drive one of them.

Just caught me funny that the technology intended to mimick the brain is used to refer back to the brain itself...
My thought was that that to mimick "just" the part of the brain that deals with visual analysis would require a rather large supercomputer. A little much to stuff into a plane, much less a vehicle meant to navagate on land without being as big as one of these

OK. Reality check.

The computer you typed that post with -
were all of the circuit boards domestically made?
Own a cell phone? Pull the battery cover off and see where it was made.
Oo-h! My coffee cup! Made in Mexico!! Do you have an American made coffee cup? I've got about a dozen that aren't. Watch? Japanese.
There could be more great examples, but that's what I see in front of me right now.

If you can't catalog your life and say 'yes, I have no forign made products', than YOU'RE THAT GUY that Taco Cowboy is talking about.
Pot calling Kettle...

Oh, here's a fun scenario for your economic treason (i.e., where do you draw the line):
I work in construction, and we use a lot of cranes. Now, there is a certain class of cranes called Duty-Cycle cranes, mainly for heavy foundation work - slurry walls, drilled shafts, tasks that beat the crap out of equipment.
The best American made entry is the Manitowoc 1015, which is a huge POS. Just doesn't do the job. (Too bad really, since the rest of their cranes are wonderful products.) On the other hand, the German Liebherr makes an excellent duty-cycle crane, the HS 833 HD.
Should I be punished for buying the Liebherr? Should I buy the Manitowoc out of some sort of loyalty to USA?
What you are proposing by such a law is rapidly approaching the "anti-dog-eat-dog rule" from Atlas Shrugged. Honestly, you don't have to agree with everything (or most) of what Ayn Rand says, but it should be very self apparent that rules like that are misguided, idiotic, and self defeating.

Here's one that'll do max of 592 metric tons or 652.5 non-metric., the T282B from Liebherr

I concur.

I bought a Liebherr refrigerator a while back - the first thing I noticed (when I got over the power consumption - which was a paltry 200kwh per year) was the insulation. We're not talking the piddly 200mm of insulation that you're lucky to get with a fridge. We're talking "try and get your hands around this" thickness.

That model has finished now, but I've been looking at newer ones on Liebherr's site, like this one. 182 kwh per year for a 413 litre fridge? That's an unbelievable difference!