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My kid will be five soon, and I thought it would be a great present!!!

I don't what to think when a post like this gets modded up funny.

A young boy in Kentucky has accidentally shot his two-year-old sister in the chest, killing her. He was playing with a rifle he got for his birthday. The shooting happened in Burkesville, Kentucky as the boy was playing with the 22-calibre 'youth model' gun when it was not realised that the gun was loaded. The children's uncle, David Mann, described the accident as 'something you can't prepare for'

Five-year-old shoots and kills toddler sister with birthday present rifle --- video [May 3]

Here's How the Rifle That Just Killed a 2-Year-Old Girl Is Marketed for Kids

The Crickett website is down.

But incomes went up.

Yes, but for whom?

Seriously,

Most H1B visa holders are sub-par. Many have inflated resumes. And have done very little broad work or detailed work.

Many are employed to fill budgets in large mega contracts, often government related.

More than 80 percent of H-1B visa holders are approved to be hired at wages below those paid to American workers for comparable positions, according to EPI.

And because H-1B workers and green card applicants are locked into jobs with whatever employer sponsors their visa, they have less less leverage to push for raises and promotions.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/h1b-visa-bloomberg-foreign-workers-smarter

The US government OES office's data indicates that 90 percent of H-1B IT wages were below the median US wage for the same occupation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Duration_of_stay

Modern farming techniques are washing both down our rivers to the ocean:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/are-we-heading-toward-peak-fertilizer

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/03/slow-insidious-soil-erosion-threatens-human-health-and-welfare

At least one country gets it:

http://www.rodale.com/organic-farms

reThey mention "Al Queda in Iran." --- So...exactly how powerful is a Wahabbi Sunni sect in an iron-fisted Shiite country?
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It's because the idiots who believe these things make mistakes in what they believe and what they write in their scripts. If they want to provoke an incident in Iran, they create stories with their worst possible bogey-man in Iran: hence their choice of AQ, which logic would show would definitely not be in Iran, as your comment so correctly points out. But when you wants idiots to believes your stories, you tells them whats they wants to hearz.
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Was there even a real plot in the first place? Or was there only a scenario scripted, funded, produced, and directed by "informants" and governmental agencies to further their own ends? The Patriot Act extended the concept further, making it illegal to attempt or conspire to provide material support. Before, prosecutors had to prove you gave support. Now they just have to show you wanted to.
.
That change, along with other newly exploited vagueness in the existing material-support laws, opened up a whole new path for prosecutors. In the Padilla case and others, the government has argued successfully that a suspect is guilty of attempting to provide material support even if the plot he allegedly supported was purely a government concoction or, just as curious, even if the government hadn't said what group or plot the accused might have been supporting. -- from Department of Precrime

Studies have been done on this subject and they don't line up with the gun lobby rhetoric. Please read this and digest it:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/mass-shootings-rampages-rising-data

I think what it boils down to is that mass murders are out of their minds and often suicidal. The power and attention they want from the rampage becomes the last and only thing they care about, even to the exclusion of their own lives.

Having some armed people in the vicinity does not deter these maniacs.

Mother Jones: Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers

Zuckerberg, Melissa Mayer, Bill Gates, John Chambers and the rest of that crowd PROFIT by encouraging this race to the bottom. It's disgusting, and a blatant betrayal of the American worker. These people made billions off the backs of American high tech workers, and they are using blatant deception and outright lies to support their cause to bring in more H-1B workers.

Here are some references that *accurately* put the lie to the claims made by these lying SOBs. Does that sound harsh? It's meant to. These so-called "American leaders" are betraying the very workers who helped them make their unreal wealth. They need to be called out.

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp356-foreign-students-best-brightest-immigration-policy/

http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_23_2/tsc_23_2_nelson_printer.shtml

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h1b-visas-hurt-tech-workers

What's little known is that American corporations are using large-scale outright deception and manipulation in an attempt to displace American Workers.

Some of the information presented in the following links will shock most Americans, because American corporate leaders don't want us to know the truth, and they are paying off policy makers with contributions to keep the truth from us. The H-1B fiasco has cost Americans $10TRILLION dollars, since 1975. For anyone who wants to know the truth, read on.

Watch this attorney and his consultants teach corporations how to manipulate the law to replace qualified American workers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

Here's more abuse of the L-1 Visa (H1-B's are only the tip of the iceberg http://economyincrisis.org/content/l-visa-programs-brimming-abuses

Professor Norman Matloff's extremely well documented studies: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

"When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate"

Got to wonder about an article that starts out this way. Grant you, I haven't gone back and reviewed the video in a while. Still, I'm pretty sure what he said was that about 47% of the population wouldn't be interested in him and a platform for a smaller government.

Well, after five seconds of googling I found:

Romney: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those peoplewe do all these polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4

I did enjoy, however, how you removed the inflammatory notion that "there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it" and replaced it with "a platform for a smaller government."

It's amusing to call out one summary as being inaccurate and replace it with your own inaccuracies. I found the line you quoted from the summary more accurate about Romney's "giving up on them" attitude than your "they refuse a small government."

Every campaign focuses their attention on those votes they're most likely to get. You didn't see Obama spending a lot of his campaign in states that weren't likely to go his way no matter what. Certainly he had his strategy sessions that had they been publicly released wouldn't be especially flattering either.

So quote them. Go ahead, you don't think he's mindful of what he says to a large group of people? Your accusations that Obama was just as bad as Romney are backed up with absolutely zero citations.

Mother Jones recently published an article America's Real Criminal Element: Lead, detailing the correlation between decrease in environmental lead levels (mostly due to unleaded gasoline laws) and the decrease in crime rates (with a 20-year delay). The numbers are impressive, and they've correlated across areas of the country that enacted lead control laws at different times. The research is thorough and they make bold claims: "Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century." I highly recommend giving it a thorough read.

Sociology study after study shows that there is significant racial bias in the police force against blacks. Minorities are more likely to get charged with crimes, arrested, and pulled over for committing the same traffic infraction as compared to whites.[1] This bias exists and is real. This is a significant portion of the story.

The other significant portion of the story is that blacks are far more impoverished than whites, on average. " In 2010, 27.4 percent of blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to 9.9 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 12.1 percent of Asians." [2] Poverty has a strong correlation to violent crime and drug use. "Nonviolent drug offenders now account for about one-fourth of all inmates in the United States, up from less than 10 percent in 1980. " [3] This figure does not include crimes which are committed to support a drug addiction.

Interestingly, violent crime rates are similar in impoverished black and white neighborhoods. "The violent crime rate in highly disadvantaged Black areas was 22 per 1,000 residents, not much different from the 20 per 1,000 rate in similar white communities." [4] This means that despite the proven police bias, for violent crimes, only 2 per 1000 more blacks are convicted of violent crimes as compared to whites in impoverished neighborhoods.

In summary... 50 years after Martin Luther King, Jr., we still have significant racial bias in American Culture. However, we have come a long way as compared to even 25 years ago. As we continue to improve as a nation, and treat others not based on their racial makeup, I believe the poverty inequality will begin to equalize in this nation. We still have a big problem with racism in the US. The racism issue is slowly improving, but there are practical and non-racist reasons why the incarceration rates differ so dramatically between whites and blacks. You don't enslave a population of people for hundreds of years and then turn around, snap your fingers, and suddenly have racial, economic, financial, and social equality. Repairing the damage that was done takes time. Now if our prison system could be more interested in healing instead of retribution...



Interesting Note: There is growing evidence that Lead is the cause of the majority of the violent crime. [5] If this is true, this may explain why the violent crime rates are similar--impoverished people are more likely to be exposed to lead, but impoverished blacks are just as likely to be exposed as whites.

[1] http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/08/09/blacks-hispanics-still-more-likely-to-get-traffic-tickets-in-illinois/ [2] http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/
[3] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/269208/prison-math-and-war-drugs-veronique-de-rugy
[4] http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/badcomm.htm
[5] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

If you think Adria Richards does not understand that community, you should read how the story is told by two female reporters, Dana Liebelson and Tasneem Raja, on Motherjones.com:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/pycon-2013-sexism-dongle-richards

According to that version, "Richards' termination triggered its own surge of support, from passionate tweets with the hashtag #SupportAdria to a DDoS attack on SendGrid that crippled their website for a good chunk of the workday on Thursday". That is the first version I read where it is said that the DDoS was caused to *support* Adria Richards.

Also the post of a female blogger who sheds a very interesting light on Adria Richards as a repeat offender (including a whole section called "An Established Pattern of Action") is summarized in a biased manner.
https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

To anyone who has a minute to spare I strongly suggest to read the Amanda Blum post. As for the masterpiece from Liebelson & Raja, well it shows that some people don't let the facts in the way of promoting an agenda (and/or a career).

Yeah, have we seen the US's military contracts and cost overruns? Shit, I'm glad they only spent $60k on this!

"Of course you need to search all over the world if you only want highly skilled people."

According to a recent study mentioned in Mother Jones and elsewhere, H-1B workers are not even close to the "best and brightest" as these companies claim. In fact they probably don't hold up to American workers. All they are is cheap.

the U.S. homicide rate has fallen 50% since the early 90s, the decline starting before the Brady bill and the "assault weapons" ban and continuing after the ban expired, while more and more states liberalized CCW laws and the number of guns in private hands increased.

There seems to be growing evidence that the increase in crime in the 70s ,and eventual decrease in the 90s, is related to environmental lead pollution from the rise and fall of the use of lead in gasoline

The problem with wind farms isn't just the silly people surrounding it but the ecological risks and damage done. In NA our bat populations are critically endangered and being destroyed by the pressure differential caused by various wind farms, if you bother to count the bodies. It sounds OK until you realize that bats are incredibly useful, they pollinate more than bees do, they control more insect pest populations than anything else. A single bat can eat many thousands of mosquitoes in a night.

In countries with more wind farms the damage is magnified. See Costa Rica. If only more people even gave a shit.

Do you have actual data to back up how many bats are being killing by wind gennies? I recalled people opposed to wind gennies saying they killed a lot of birds. However studies have shown cats kill more birds than wind generators. The article Do wind turbines kill birds? has a chart of statistics showing how many birds are killed by different things, from cars, wild and feral cats (but not pet cats?), to windows. Some may have a problem with the chart though, out of seven killers of birds 5 of the statistics are provided by the American Wind Energy Association, one by treehugger, and one by American Bird Conservancy. Sciam asks the question Are Wind Turbines Getting More Bird and Bat-Friendly? It partially answers by saying stake holders from AWEA, ABC, and National Audubon are working on ways to reduce bird and bat mortality rates.

Falcon

As stated in a previous comment, I don't have an issue if adequate notice is given and if obtaining said ID is not unreasonably burdensome.

As for GOP gerrymandering - here's a sample: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-gerrymandering-house-representatives-election-chart

Dems do it too but last time around, the GOP did it bigger, badder, better. Canada has had an arm's-length agency for administering elections since 1920.
Proprotional representation can, I believe, mitigate gerrymandering to some extent.

Here are some noteworthy gerrymanders with lessons and embarrasments for both sides:
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/11/the-top-ten-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts-in-the-united-states/?singlepage=true

Mali, of all the places, where the isn't a single American boot on the ground or in the air?

Should have quit while you were ahead.

Libya was for once a required war

No such animal.

that prevented much greater suffering

Suffering like militias shooting every black person on sight because they might have been a mercenary fighting for Gaddafi, or suffering like doctors being asked to revive patients so they can go back to being tortured? You do know that far more people have suffered after the Iraq invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power, yes? Libya could easily be the new Iraq.

Microsoft Brief | Mother Jones:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1998/11/microsoft-brief

Can you cite where Obama says targeted killings count as due process?

You can read a discussion right here. Granted, not Obama personally, but presumably Attorney General Eric Holder voices Obama's position

It was my understanding that the stance of the White House considers drone strikes as military actions that don't require due process.

Not so. Well, I think it is their position that they got 20 good reasons and this is just one of them:

"'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security." Holder said. "The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process."

...with a man that you don't trust. Some facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape

Drug use, especially alcohol, is frequently involved in rape. A study (only of rape victims that were female and reachable by phone) reported detailed findings related to tactics. In 47% of such rapes, both the victim and the perpetrator had been drinking. In 17%, only the perpetrator had been. 7% of the time, only the victim had been drinking. Rapes where neither the victim nor the perpetrator had been drinking were 29% of all rapes. Contrary to widespread belief, rape outdoors is rare. Over two thirds of all rapes occur in someone's home. 31% occur in the perpetrators' homes, 27% in the victims' homes and 10% in homes shared by the victim and perpetrator. 7% occur at parties, 7% in vehicles, 4% outdoors and 2% in bars.

One of six U.S. women has experienced an attempted or completed rape. More than a quarter of college age women report having experienced a rape or rape attempt since age 14.

For one-third to one-half of the victims, ... symptoms continue beyond the first few months and meet the conditions for the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. In general, rape and sexual assault are among the most common causes of PTSD in women.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/rape-and-violence-against-women-crisis

• nearly two thirds of all women killed by guns are killed by their partner or ex-partner
• Spouses are also the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US
• Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined

...with a man that you don't trust. Some facts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape

Drug use, especially alcohol, is frequently involved in rape. A study (only of rape victims that were female and reachable by phone) reported detailed findings related to tactics. In 47% of such rapes, both the victim and the perpetrator had been drinking. In 17%, only the perpetrator had been. 7% of the time, only the victim had been drinking. Rapes where neither the victim nor the perpetrator had been drinking were 29% of all rapes. Contrary to widespread belief, rape outdoors is rare. Over two thirds of all rapes occur in someone's home. 31% occur in the perpetrators' homes, 27% in the victims' homes and 10% in homes shared by the victim and perpetrator. 7% occur at parties, 7% in vehicles, 4% outdoors and 2% in bars.

One of six U.S. women has experienced an attempted or completed rape. More than a quarter of college age women report having experienced a rape or rape attempt since age 14.

For one-third to one-half of the victims, ... symptoms continue beyond the first few months and meet the conditions for the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder. In general, rape and sexual assault are among the most common causes of PTSD in women.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/rape-and-violence-against-women-crisis

• nearly two thirds of all women killed by guns are killed by their partner or ex-partner
• Spouses are also the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US
• Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined

No, requireing a voter to identify themselves is always racist and a way to conduct voter suppression. Since all the cardinals know each other and you have to be known in order to vote it is OBVIOUSLY the method used to prevent the minority from voting, not to give them an equal vote.
I read it here what I'm told is a relyable source according to /. readers.

Of course I'm a little confused by facts though. Like you said it gives the minority an equal vote and I can't find an intelectually honest argument against that. I also have this story where a black woman voted 6 times last year where voter id doesn't exist, something the Mother Jones article said never actually happens or could happen.

But, in order to not be called a racist/bigot and tea party moron, I'll have to ignore the facts and keep with the statement that voter id continues to suppress the black vote and the Catholic church should be ashamed for suppressing the votes of minorities in this situation the way they are. After all its not about facts anymore in this world, its all about not being called names by the left as they seem to have lost this debate with facts but still can rely on their name calling.

If we were to reduce defense spending by 30%, we'd still have $500B+ deficits every year. If we ZEROED defense spending, we'd still be running a deficit every year.

No, we wouldn't. Because the actual war budget is well over a trillion a year.

However, likewise, valid comparisons were done with lead, and not just in the US but worldwide.
They found the same thing... ban lead from gasoline, violent crime goes down. Not only that, but the overall violent crime rate tracks pretty well with exposure levels. That is, the years of the highest environmental lead exposure were, in fact right before it was banned, and correlated with the highest violent crime rates.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

I found it pretty convincing. Note also that the violent crime rate and murder rate do not really track. Violent crime has been on the downswing since then, but the murder rate peaked in the intervening years, though, thats pretty easily attributable to the drug war.

Here is a better article than the small blog post cited. Read the whole thing. The clincher for me was that when lead was removed from gasoline in different states at different times the reduction in violence in those areas tracked perfectly two decades later. Not only that, but the shape of the violence reduction data tracked well with the shape of the lead reduction data. (i.e. a fast phase out of lead resulted in a fast reduction of crime twenty years later.)

But I agree, BP used it to make the spill appear less severe on the surface.

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/12/chemical-dispersant-made-bps-gulf-oilspill-52-times-more-toxic

A new study finds that adding Corexit 9500A to Macondo oil—as BP did in the course of trying to disperse its 2010 oilspill disaster—made the mixture 52 times more toxic than oil alone. The results are from toxicology tests in the lab and appear in the scientific journal Environmental Pollution.

I'm guessing there are a lot of pelicans who, if they could talk, would be praising the use of the dispersants.

Perhaps not, there's some research that could suggest that the dispersants could have made the disaster worse.

There's always a line of people who are salivating to second-guess whatever decision gets made.

So we shouldn't be testing these things and being critical of how disasters are handled? That's how progress is made, and how we can improve for the next time it happens.

When even the left calls you on your claim of "transparency" you know that's a bogus argument...

Technically, corn ethanol subsidies have already ended, so the whole deal about lobbyists and congressmen and farmers paid by the government is moot. However, now the President has mandated corn ethanol via the "Renewable Fuel Standard" which is an EPA executive branch mandate, so now instead of the government shoveling money to farmers for ethanol, government mandates a guaranteed demand instead.

In order to fix this problem now, we have to convince the EPA to adjust the Renewable Fuel Standard to get anything accomplished.

A couple of points. First off the link is to the Motherboard site, not Mother Jones. And there are no links in that article to Mother Jones.

Secondly, I am not sure why you think Mother Jones has no credibility. As a board member of that organization I am proud of our journalism, and the many awards we have received over the years.

http://www.motherjones.com/about/press/awards-accolades

And if you have a job, you are spending more time working outside normal hours, for the lowest amount of vacation or maternity leave in the 1st world.

And if you have a job, you are spending more time working outside normal hours, for the lowest amount of vacation or maternity leave in the 1st world.

Yeah! Companies HAVE to outsource because their tax burden would just be waaaaaaay too high! They'd go out of business and then what? We be buying from Chinese and Indian companies!

Oh wait. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/top-tax-dodging-companies-politicians

Companies with billions in profit are getting negative tax rates.

...inhibiting consumption and wealth accumulation...

Not subsidizing would help with the former and taxes on investments and estates (the so-called "death taxes") would help with the latter.

They'd treat it like a regular child...

Oh, you mean like the kids at the Judge Rotenberg Center? *raises eyebrows*

No silly, look over here. Then maybe over here. The finally come over here. Hopefully this brings some clarity for you.

The police have absolutely nothing to do with the decrease in crime in the 1990s... http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

Learn to quote. Lead == primary cause, which I believe, does not imply police played no role (the later being something I do not believe). These two positions are not mutually exclusive, and there is no evidence to suggest they are. Furthermore, this is a multi-faceted, extremely complex social problem, and it is absurd to explain it in terms of simple-minded absolutes.

But if you still believe so, knock yourself out and prove that lead was the absolute, one-and-only factor into consideration, to a magnitude that makes/made all other factors negligible.

The police have absolutely nothing to do with the decrease in crime in the 1990s... http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

Divide the number of switzerland sized areas in the US and you will find plenty that have had less mass shootings than Switzerland. These things don't happen every day. At least, not when it isn't convenient to the agendas of politicians. A coincidence I find quite disturbing, honestly.

They don't happen every day... but they do happen every 6 months on average, going back 30 years.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map?page=2

First off, RoundUp is the most talked about, but far from the only pesticide used

Second, the whole big thing with pesticide resistant crops is that it allows you to use more of the pesticide on your farm. This is leading to increased pesticides in soil.

Manufacturers have a history of toxic pesticides being used than proven dangerous decades later only to be replaced by new products.

We are now getting reports that manure compost is testing at times with high enough levels of herbicides to post a problem.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/02/us-usa-study-pesticides-idUSBRE89100X20121002

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/10/how-gmos-ramped-us-pesticide-use

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/genetically-modified-crops-pesticides_n_1931020.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/pesticides-gmo-monsanto-roundup-resistance_n_1936598.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090817143610.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8308903.stm

http://www.motherearthnews.com/killer-compost-herbicide-contamination-zl0z1211zkin.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Human

GMOs infected non GMO products. Yes, we were originally told this wasn't a risk.

The SCIENCE is there...you just want to be ignorant.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129010499

That or a home TV.

The purpose of such a Ubuntu phone is to have Ubuntu at your disposal while on the road. At home, you've got your fully fledged PC with big keyboard, ergonomic mouse, nice screen...

Yes, I do have a Nokia N900, and being able to open up a terminal locally (on the built-in screen) and use the command line is really nice :-)

bus stops

I carry a netbook for these situations.

Whenever you take the bus, you've got your netbook with you? The advantage of a phone is, it fits into your pocket, no backpack needed. Or maybe, the backpack is not just for the netbook, but also as a protection against mad shooters?

In the dual-boot scenario I mentioned, Android still works.

Either Android has the application you need (terminal, iodine, whatever), or it doesn't. In the first case, why bother with Ubuntu at all? In the second case, you will miss your application without a TV (or other external screen)... defeating the point of having it on the phone.

Who said anything about mass shootings? Only you. Mass shootings kill about as many people in this country as terrorism. They are that rare

Rare? That word doesn't mean what you think it means. The U.S. is averaging a mass shooting every 6 months, over the last 20 years:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data

The fact terrorism kills more than mass shootings basically comes down to the numbers a single huge event (9/11), and leaving out the "normal" annual deaths from gun violence. If you counted homicides, deaths from gun violence would outnumber 9/11 every year.

Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers : Thanks to a five million dollar grant awarded by Google on Tuesday, the organization is expanding its use of unmanned aerial vehicles to track and deter criminals who illegally hunt endangered animal species around the world. WWF spokesman Lee Poston is not calling these vehicles drones, because he doesn't want people to confuse them with the military kind. According to Poston, they are "sophisticated radio-controlled devices like hobbyists use" that can be "controlled from your iPad or other device." But the WWF website does call them "conservation drones."

miracles of science would feed the world with an unbelievable array of giant, hearty and delicious foods. We're almost there.

I was just talking about this with my daughter at the grocery store. We picked up some Polaner instead of the Smuckers because of their GMO positions.

The first GMO's were things like rice that grew Vitamin A so rural Asian children wouldn't go blind. That was good.

The logical next steps were to make all sorts of food that was healthy, tasty, vigorous, and efficient (able to grow in poor soils).

But instead, we got crops that are resistant to pesticides that are applied by the tanker load and vegetables that express their own pesticides, which, we're kinda-maybe-sure don't effect humans (but it hasn't really been studied).

Making fast-growing salmon is more like it's supposed to be, but the experience of the past decades shows that the critical vulnerability is the governments' Imaginary-Property system that their corporations are using to seize control of the food supply.

You're right about the science, but the governments have fucked it up (like pretty much everything else people ask them to save us from).

i see a lot of posts on good old slashdot here saying that "the real issue is clearly mental illness" (to quote one of many).

so but,
according to Mother Jones,
of the counted 62 U.S. Mass Murders in the past 20 years,
38 of the 62 (61%) showed signs of mental illness,
while 61 of the 62 (98%) were .. male.

which correlation do you think more strongly deserves attention.

Want to cry in your soup?

For the middle class, real wages haven't risen since 1978. (chart). Of course the upper class has made out like gangbusters.

In other words, your buying power is the same as your Leisure Suit-wearing predecessors, whereas the rich have accumulated whole closets of never-been-used ivory-handled backscratchers.

Interesting question. If the basis for your statement that "federal jobs require so much more skill and education than private sector jobs", is the difference in average salary, then my hunch is that #1 is the dominant factor here.

You motivated me to go find some data, and I did find a CBO report which says that the government is generous relative to public sector for lower-paid workers but actually pays less than private sector for higher paid, higher education positions:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/chart-day-federal-government-pay-vs-private-sector-pay

The biggest difference in the CBO study is 36% (federal employees w/ no more than high school education make that much more). I think based on this, it is pretty likely that distribution of job types has to play a big factor. Unfortunately though, the CBO report groups people by education, years of work experience, etc, as well as "Occupation". There isn't a good way to compare the actual work done; so it is possible that federal organizations hire more overqualified people to do the same job relative to private companies.

The main point I wanted to make was that the USA Today article is meaningless, and you can't make any inference about the generosity of federal compensation from average compensation.

If anyone knows where to find similar studies for state and local government as well as federal, I'd like to see it. We did start out talking about Illinois.

They sure seem to be treating humans as robots already. And yes, the humans are cheaper to operate.

If you don't know that you are doing something wrong while cheating I will call you a sociopath.

Why is the word "sociopath" always abused by Internet psychologists? You are not qualified to deem people as sociopaths, and especially not for this reason alone. Have you ever considered that they simply have a different set of morals than yourself? There is no absolute "wrong" here.

I can tell you that living with a strong moral compass is actually easier than living without.

What is a "strong moral compass"? Your personal opinions are oozing from that phrase.

It's probably being abused because they don't realize as of the DSM-II, it has been called Antisocial Personality disorder.

The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, More) describes Antisocial Personality Disorder as follows:

There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

o failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

In 23 state, it is illegal, regardless of consent between the married persons: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/11/is-adultery-illegal-map ... so that's one of the 3 needed for a diagnosis. NB: in Michigan, you can get life in prison; in all 50 states, if you are military, it's a courts martial offense.

o deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

You posted as an AC; that a use of an alias. So that's 2 of the 3 needed for a diagnosis.

o Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

o Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

o Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

o Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honour financial obligations;

o Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;

o The individual is at least age 18 years. ...and we have 3.

I'd say bfadreas has a case for a technical call on this one, even without the "(or more)" being present, if you live in one of those 23 states, or engaged in the behaviour while a member, active or reserve, of any branch of the armed forces.

Realize that people with APD generally are incapable of recognizing it in themselves.

However, if you are an untreated Schizophrenic or in the midst of a Manic Episode, APD is not the preferred diagnosis.

Maybe it's been over-adjusted. Granted, this is an extreme case of a bus driver with a lot of seniority and a lot of overtime, but even his base salary is probably more than you would expect for a bus driver.