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Why would you expand your project to a city that won't exist soon?

Solar thermal is great if you have the right environment for it, but outside the southwest, nuclear is still the better option.

Must suck to live in a country where you can't trust the news.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html

Re much as 10 miles.
With logs, a good security system in place and pro police level tech skills - you can get that down to streets, cars.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2006/07/italys_watergate.html showed in open court what good team can do with cell information.

The other privacy fear apart from adverts is open access for the state to trawl through Gmail's servers at will.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/03/26/andrew_weissmann_fbi_wants_real_time_gmail_dropbox_spying_power.html
Of course here in the UK the government want to intercept communications before they even get to Google's servers so the only real answer is a vpn and a private mail server in some other country.

...the $600 price tags on phones

I keep reading about $600 smart phones in stories on this T-Mobile no-contract scheme. You can have an amazing unlocked no-contract quad-core Nexus 4 for $299-349 here. It's HSPA+ which is all you'll get with T-Mobile in most markets anyhow.

If the best argument against this deal is that unlocked iPhones cost too much then sign me up. Data coverage is the real problem with T-Mobile... but perhaps they're really solving that now.

Oh, but most of the world isn't a sunny place like Germany.

Fox News Claims Solar Won't Work in America Because It's Not Sunny Like Germany

Go spew your "science" somewhere else.

That has been completely debunked. On Fox News.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html

Additionally, we still lost a few thousand soldiers in Europe post-VE day through ~1947 to German partisons (ie, insurgent).

A few thousand? Really? Care to provide a source?

Because history does not appear to be on your side: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2003/08/condis_phony_history.html

And lets not talk about Werwolf which was largely a pre-surrender propaganda move and never amounted to anything.

Additionally... unlike Iraq, we didn't exactly have a bunch of foreign fighters flooding into Germany after the surrender just so they could kill Americans.

Here are some of the ones that got killed by Google.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html

You really should start your medication, boy. Then read the fucking article, which says this is common and expected behavior. Of course, if it had been anything but the Register it wouldn't be blowing it so much out of proportion. Here are a few better links to the same story, by less disreputable sources:

New York Daily News
Atlantic Wire
Herald Sun (Australia)
Huffington Post
Slate (Slate credits BoingBoing)

Google News is full of them. There was one story by a business blog that questioned its authenticity on Google's list of stories from the search term "Ukraine dolphins"

Because you can just choose to not be impacted by pervasive messaging in society. Right. THAT sounds like something you can back up. Even small details can make a big difference.

"Phil Plait rips the paper to shreds. Wickramasinghe is a crank, and that Journal publishes all kinds of nonsense."

This deserves more than a short mention. I do not always agree with Phil Plait, but I think he nailed it pretty solidly here.

First, Plait points out that the diatoms are (A) all known Earthly varieties, and (B) almost certainly not "fossilized".

Then, he gives us other good reasons to question whether the "fragment" is a meteorite at all.

Bill Plait's take on this story.

Is that Phil's big brother?

Bad Astronomer has done a good hatchet job on this story:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html

Bill Plait's take on this story.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html

According to this..

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html

Here. Interesting stuff.

Who approves the pay increases and golden parachutes?

Okay.

Oh yes the CEOs.

No, they don't. From the link:

If bosses set the salaries of their workers, who decides what the bosses earn? In a modern corporation, the task of setting the CEO's pay falls to the board of directors, typically a subgroup of board members on its compensation committee.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/09/lets_pay_doctor.html
I call BS. Median salaries for family care are under 150k. Median for even highly specialized fields like anesthesiology are around 250k. That starts in your mid 30s, and comes with a large amount of debt (unless your family dropped half a million on your education). Meanwhile, a good software engineer can clear 200k by the time they hit 30 without much trouble, and they'll have been making over 100k for nearly 10 years by that point rather than going further into debt. If you're smart with your investments, there's no reason you can't do just about as well as the average doctor in the long term.

Now, there are people who use their earning power to go deep into debt to afford all the fancy things you mentioned, but that's not exclusive to doctors except maybe the "old money" wanabe contingent who feel entitled to live that way (which I suspect may be slightly more attracted to that field). But going into more debt to support a lavish lifestyle isn't "rich". And there are the outliers... physical therapists to nationally known sports franchises, etc. who make millions of dollars, but you also have outliers like early employees at Facebook and Google on the other side.

Short answer, I just don't see where doctors are significantly overpaid on average. It doesn't fit the facts.

Blah blah blah ... context apparently means nothing to you. This is in the context the leak of a summary of Obama's assassination memos -- the ones that support his policy of extrajudicial assassination (i.e., murder). The weapon of choice is drones, but it could be spaghetti for all the weapon matters -- the issue is the policy itself.

If you don't see some conflict between Obama's assertion that he can kill anyone based on secret accusation, and the notion that no person shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" -- then it's hopeless arguing with you. You'd be the person who would argue with someone who says "he used a gun to kill them" by saying, "well, actually, it was rifle, blah blah blah..."

As for arbitrary murder not happening, are you asleep? The term "Terror Tuesday" means nothing to you? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/terror-tuesdays-kill-list_b_1606371.html

How long before all RC helicopters (and all hobby RC planes for that matter) will be banned ?

They are already trying in Texas and in New Hampshire. Notice the inclusion of drones by name in the legislation, and the lack of differentiation between government use and private use.

This article from a few weeks ago shows that two other state legislatures, specifically Florida and Virginia, are attempting a legislative fix to drone use, though those attempts are targeted specifically at government use of drones. The mayor of Seattle cancelled the Seattle PD's drone program and ordered the chief of police to return the ones they'd already bought to the manufacturer for a refund.

With that said, attempts to block government use of drones are probably doomed to failure, since the FAA has already been directed by the 112th Congress to integrate drones into the national airspace via HR 658 (relevant section here,) and police departments across the nation are buying them in droves, despite what happened in Seattle. The DHS's "loan a drone" program, coupled with DHS's $4M grant program to local law authorities to acquire drones, would strongly suggest that government use of drones is here to stay.

Given the push/pull legislative wars being driven by the privacy vs. public safety debate, I doubt that banning RC aircraft is a viable legislative option. What is (probably) going to happen with RC aircraft is what has already happened with other "hobbies" that are deemed to be a threat to public safety (think: greenhouses that could be used for growing pot, legal chemicals that could be used to manufacture illegal drugs, model rockets that could be weaponized.) Purchases of RC aircraft and related equipment will be tracked at the point of sale and those records will be forwarded to the feds, where the purchasers will end up on an FBI watch list, just like the purchasers of the above-mentioned items.

"AI" has always been that which AI can't do. Here are several activities that once were considered sci-fi-level AI but are no longer considered AI in a broad sense because we know how to do them more-or-less:
* Looking stuff up for us (Google);
http://www.google.com/
* Inferring questions from examples and answering questions posed in natural language (IBM's Watson);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)
* Generating hypotheses and doing hands/grippers-on scientific experiments (Adam);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Scientist
* Reading text in multiple fonts reliably and quickly and cheaply;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
* translating one human language to another on the fly;
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.uit.innovation.html/
http://www.gizmag.com/go/1833/
* reading and translating signs;
http://questvisual.com/us/
* Making portraits;
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/11/tresset_robot_artist_artist_engineers_robots_to_make_art_and_save_his_own.single.html
* Playing the piano including from sheet music;
http://www.synthgear.com/2009/music-misc/synth-playing-robot/
http://gizmodo.com/5963137/watch-this-adorable-horde-of-intelligent-swarm-robots-play-piano
* Driving a car in busy traffic (Google, Stanford, CMU, others);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2007_Urban_Challenge
* Winning chess games (IBM's Deep Blue and pretty much any PC now against a mid-level player);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess
* Image recognition for quality control in factories;
http://www.general-vision.com/products/mtvs.php
* Recognizing faces;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system
* Figuring out the name of a musical composition from a few notes as well as making new compositions and dynamic accompaniments;
http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_artificial_intelligence
* The diagnostic aspect of being a doctor (Watson again);
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor
* Investing in volatile financial markets;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading
* Serving as a sentry with a machine gun;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ
* Twirling a cell phone;
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
* Identifying things by smell;

This one is a comet, estimated up to 50km. It's retrograde and hyperbolic, giving a good inertial multiplier and ensuring that it's a one time only event. It may hit Mars. If it was headed for us, there's nothing we could do about it.

Actually, there are signs growth may be slowing: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_exploding.html

Star can't be heavier than 100 solar masses, as the solar wind (stellar wind?) becomes so strong that it tears the star apart.

Oh look, it's an al Qaeda PR drone.

And since you'll only accept a source like this:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/02/drones_war_and_civilian_casualties_how_unmanned_aircraft_reduce_collateral.html

I dont remember the last time we had a dept that was so pathetic, inefficient, useless, corrupt and annoying as the Dept. of Homeland Security. Why do these people even exist? I dont feel any safer with them being around at all. Just yesterday there was an article in Slate about how insecure airport perimeter security is. http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/02/20/airport_diamond_heist_it_is_shockingly_easy_to_breach_perimeter_security.html

Accordig to Phil, the objects observed in the US simultaneously with the Russian meteor can be explained by the Russian meteor being a bolide.

Yeah it was probably a global political conspiracy funded by big oil. Not some dumbass from the NYT that wanted a sensational story instead of another, "yeah it works as advertised."

Not a conspiracy. for whatever reason, some folks just won't accept new technology, and perhaps the old aguments aren't working as well, so they need to make up new ones. The problem these days is that the people doing the new technology have become used to the lies, and take pains to expose the lies.

To wit:

Fox news, in a segment titled "Green Going Bust?" had an "expert", Shibani Joshi, who claimed that part of Germany's success in solar power was "They're a smaller country, and they've got lots of sun. Right? They've got a lot more sun than we do."

Lie - and a particularly stupid one. But just like Gallup polls that projected a Rmoney win, and Richard Morris's predictions of a Republican landslide in the recent presidential election, it was the exact thing that their audience wanted to hear.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world kinda noticed that Germany gets about as much solar resource as Alaska, in other words, not very much. In addition, she makes a misleading statement about the amount of solar power being distributed on the national electrical grid. I haven't checked the veracity of that, but does solar power not on the grid noyt count for solar power? On Fox News it would appear to not be actual power.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html

Also rather amusing is the grand dudgeon and outrage of people who are terribly upset that CFL bulbs contain a small amount of Mercury. I never heard much about mercury lamp fear before CFL's, despite the fact that a 4 foot flourescent tube typically has 11.6 grams of Mercury http://www.co.thurston.wa.us/health/ehhw/fluorescent.html and a typical CFL contains between 3 and 5, often in an amalgam form: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp

Would they have also been upset about the switch over from arc lamp lighting? Plus, I imagine they might be the same people who would be very upset to have tax increases to pay for a nice new power plant..

There are people, who perhaps in an earlier age, were really angry that transistors supplanted tubes, and likewise integrated circuits largely replacing transistors.

And while It would not surprise me if there were some involvement by industries that might have a financial interest, none is necessary. All you need to know is there is a whole lot of "Get off my Damn lawn!" in this world, and that some people find stasis comforting. Since people are more than willing to make up lies about their desire for stasis, people like Musk and other trend setters will not trust them at all, but will verify, and part of the process will be gaming out likely lies about them or their product.

And it probably wasn't a very good idea to piss off Elon Musk in the first place.

The submission has 6 links none of them have any reference to TFA.

The first fucking link, buddy: The Fucking Article

I even looked at 'em all and made sure that that one talked about what you seem to wanna read about. Will you let go of my hand now, FFS?

>As I understood this asteroid came from a different direction than 2012 DA14

Any references?

The Bad Astronomy blog deals with it. The author, Phil Plait, is not a "bad" astronomer, he worked on Hubble images for quite a while. The blog name is because he started it to counter "bad" astronomy.

[Update (Feb. 15, 15:45 UTC): The European weather satellite METEOSAT-9 caught images of the meteor trail blowing away due to winds high in the air. An animation was created from the images, displayed below. Note that the trail is oriented northeast to southwest, again very different than the orbit orientation of 2012 DA14 (south to north), indicating this is meteor is unrelated to the previously-known asteroid. Thanks to Timothy Patterson for the tip.]

So the burn rate isn't increasing, big fucking deal. We're still not remotely at a break even point for water consumption so, guess what, there's still a huge problem.

I agree with you.

Here's what fuzzy is parroting:

Moreover, the poor, highly fertile countries that once churned out immigrants by the boatload are now experiencing birthrate declines of their own. From 1960 to 2009, Mexico’s fertility rate tumbled from 7.3 live births per woman to 2.4, India’s dropped from six to 2.5, and Brazil’s fell from 6.15 to 1.9. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where the average birthrate remains a relatively blistering 4.66, fertility is projected to fall below replacement level by the 2070s. This change in developing countries will affect not only the U.S. population, of course, but eventually the world’s.

Why is this happening? Scientists who study population dynamics point to a phenomenon called “demographic transition.”

“For hundreds of thousands of years,” explains Warren Sanderson, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University, “in order for humanity to survive things like epidemics and wars and famine, birthrates had to be very high.” Eventually, thanks to technology, death rates started to fall in Europe and in North America, and the population size soared. In time, though, birthrates fell as well, and the population leveled out. The same pattern has repeated in countries around the world. Demographic transition, Sanderson says, “is a shift between two very different long-run states: from high death rates and high birthrates to low death rates and low birthrates.” Not only is the pattern well-documented, it’s well under way: Already, more than half the world’s population is reproducing at below the replacement rate. - Slate.com

This argument, which is not proven science, suggests the following: as technology and wealth improve likelihood of survival, people tend to have fewer children. That which technology does not do, birth control will also.

The main evidence for this, in this article's view, is that in fewer than half of the nations on earth, population growth has declined, and it took us as a whole longer to add the 7th billionth person than it has to add the previous billion.

The article is shoddy science for a number of reasons.

First, the nations that are declining in population tend to be the wealthier ones or ones aided by immigration in becoming so. Related to that is that the nations which are dropping in birth rate are importing large immigrant populations.

Second, the delay in adding the seventh billion may have very little significance. A few tragedies or droughts, some instability or disease, and a delay can happen. That's even assuming our estimates are right, since we're estimating that seven billion and when it occurred.

Finally, the article ignores the path of history. The poorer tend to outproduce the wealthier, which tends to make wealthy nations poorer and less stable, which tends to increase the birth rate as well.

Further, many of our magic cures like antibiotics are no longer guaranteed barriers to disease. In addition, many diseases are mutating. Life expectancy rates of a modern nature may be a blip on the radar.

As you noted, we're already at a stressing point. We don't need to look much farther than the collapse of fish stocks to see that we're trying to feed too many people.

The Slate article is suspect for another reason: Slate tends to pump out these feelgood articles every year or so encouraging us not to think about any problem that contradicts popular notions of fre

It's also a good thing for the Obama administration.
During the last election his election team was strong to pick stuff like that to make Republicans appear as nuts as possible (to be fair, there are plenty enough of high-rankings Republicans to do that).
How Obama Got Into the Republican Party’s Head

This way he was able to swing people at the center / moderate Republicans.

Apparently it's have been pulled out of British press ass. Their tabloids really don't waste time with checking facts.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/12/christopher_dorner_manhunt_faa_dhs_say_no_drones_are_being_used.html

Of course this could be false in event that you say that huge amount of people in government are lying about official record.

"Why is this on slashdot?"

It's about a guy who can talk to the cloud without any computer.

Chuck Norris?

No, Jeff Dean

Reading between the lines, I think HBO's recent "Mea Maxima Culpa" was probably a significant factor. His resignation will stave off the worst of the public outcry and demands for deeper revelations from the church about the matters raised there. Hopefully the Catholic Church will be pressed about the issues raised regardless, but his specific, key role in it all is the point at the moment.

To recap what I read elsewhere: prior to being Pope, he was the head of the modern (renamed) Inquisition, assigned there by the previous pope. In that role, he "took charge" of the recent wave of priest sex abuse scandals since the 90s, ordered all evidence be centralized in his department's archives, and then basically hid it all and did little to actually act on the mountains of evidence they still haven't revealed to prosecutors or the public. It's pretty damning stuff.

The late, lamented Christopher Hitchens had possibly the ultimate take on the cover-up at Slate.com.

To quote the appropriately entitled "The Great Catholic Cover-Up: The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it":

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)

Potato starch rumor is debunked here: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2013/01/calamari_made_of_pig_rectum_the_this_american_life_rumor_isn_t_true_but.html

Here is what the Dr. Hansen did: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/03/climate_change_deniers_write_another_fact_free_op_ed.html

Yea, no cherry picking there..

Oh this crap again?

Phil Plait says it better than I can: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/01/14/no_global_warming_for_16_years_debunking_climate_change_denial.html

Exactly, gun control does not reduce violent crime, it makes it less deadlier http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/01/gun_violence_summit_at_johns_hopkins_researchers_present_data_and_analyses.html

If states like California would allow more refining capacity to be built, then the supply end of the market would have more of a 'buffer' to supply problems (if you have a refinery they build these large things called tanks to store petrol in, this boots your supply and you can crank up capacity if you need more). If you don't believe me you can read this: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2004/06/the_great_refinery_shortage.html
There hasn't been one built in California for at least 30+ years because of environmental restrictions. I was talking to a VP of an oil distributing company, he said that 10 years ago they were trying to get additional capacity for their oil refinery, each time they were rejected because of these regulations and today it would be prohibitively expensive to add capacity. This is not just a problem for California either... just look at what has been built in the last 40 years and where http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=29&t=6 . We are all to ready to fill up our vehicles, but when you bite the hand that feeds you, it may have a hard time delivering.

indeed, it's not until the 2029 pass whether we'll know if it will hit the earth or not in 2036. the current probabilities are nonsense and mean nothing.

No, the current probabilities are not nonsense. They mean that, based on the currently understood orbit of Aphophis with the given error bars, it has a certain probability of passing through the "keyhole" and hitting earth on the next pass.

The belief that after 2029 we'll know if it will hit earth or not, either 0% or 100% chance, are based on the assumption that the error bars in measurement will at that time be small enough to definitively state if it will hit or not. Which is true, they will be, but is still based on exactly the same reasoning and math as probabilities calculated today.

That probability, by the way, is 0%. The other piece of news unmentioned in the headline is that in addition to new size observations, new orbital observations have decreased the error bars sufficiently that it can be said with confidence that Apophis will not pass through the keyhole and will not hit the earth in 2036.

Here's a tough question: Should I start planning to move to California in a couple years

Actually, the question is not tough but the answer may be: No.

Who’s the greatest Jewish Jock of all time? The strongest (and most screamingly obvious) case can be made for Sandy Koufax. His image and career come very close to perfection. It helps that he retired before we could witness him at less than full strength. (In his final season, he won 27 times, each of them a complete game!) And his decision to sit out Yom Kippur—and the applause he received for it—certified Jewish assimilation in this country. I can also make a case for Benny Leonard, the greatest of the Jewish pugilists. He won the lightweight title in 1917 and didn't let it go until 1925. The authoritative Bert Sugar (also a Jew) has rated him the sixth best pound-for-pound fighter of all time—just one spot below Muhammad Ali. http://mobile.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/10/jewish_jocks_franklin_foer_on_his_new_book_about_the_greatest_jewish_athletes.html?original_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den%26gl%3DUS%26ie%3DUTF-8%26source%3Dandroid-browser%26q%3Dmovie%2Bairplane%252C%2Bjewish%2Batheletes

See also: the baseball card bubble of the late 1980's, then recall that Beanie Babies were also hyped as investments around the same time as those comic books. Now you've even got investing lingo subtly worked into the direct advertising for many kids' games and toys. "Gotta catch 'em all!", "special display case" etc.

This linked article about Lego investors reeks of being bought and paid for by by current "investors" hoping to fuel a massive Lego collecting craze, and then dump their stock onto the market for huge profits and ruin yet another popular toy for the kids who'd actually benefit from actually playing with them. If this were an article about a traditional investment (Stock, mutual fund, etc.) I'd expect the SEC would be investigating it as a "pump and dump" scheme.

Perhaps the only bright spot in this is that if they successfully create a great Lego bubble, then in 10-20 years, Legos will readily be available for about $1 per pound too!

cell phone subsidies drive up cost T-mobile is dropping them and even when you pay full price for a iPhone over 2 years you pay less with T-mobile and get more data.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/12/07/cell-phone-subsidies-rip.aspx
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/12/t_mobile_end_smartphone_subsidies_paying_more_for_your_phone_is_good_for.html

This is somewhat disingenuous. Physics is physics and rocket technology hasn't improved much since the Centaur (hydrogen rocket) engine in the mid-1960s because they're already getting close to the theoretical maximum energy from chemical rockets. This is sort of like saying we shouldn't develop spoons and forks at the turn of the last millennium because by 1935 we'll have developed the spork. Cutlery has been a mature technology for about two thousand years now, and you can't really improve on it. Short of FTL travel we're looking at scramjets and multigenerational probes.

Cutlery has changed significantly, even in the 700 year period we were discussing:

Slate article

I'm not sure how it affects your argument, but perhaps you should try to find an example of something that hasn't changed significantly in the past 700 years.

Or, shockingly enough, since no one is armed... they just use other weapons to do the same damn thing to their victims.

And you know what? A lot less people die because they use weapons that aren't as massively lethal as a 30 round clip.

Take Australia. Not a single mass shooting since they banned assault rifles in 1996. Homicides by gun went down 60% between 1996 and 2006, with no corresponding increase in deaths by other weapons.

Care to try again?

I don't have any kids, but if I did, the last thing I would be worried about each day is them going to school and being the victim of one of these freak-occurrence events where some nutjob stomps into a school and unloads a couple guns on the students and teachers. Statistically, I'd be far more worried about teachers, coaches, scout leaders, and religious authorities sexually molesting them.

About 300 people (not just students) have been killed in school shootings in the last thirty years, in this country. Something like one per million or one per three million odds of being killed in a school shooting (source: http://www.teenviolencestatistics.com/content/school-shootings.html ).

About 4 to 10 percent of all children have been molested or sexually abused in some way by teachers.

(source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html )

What video games, weapons, television shows, movies, books, or society influences are to blame for these teachers sexually molesting children on such a mass scale? Where's the investigation into that? Where's the rational concern and moral outrage over that compared to the irrational concern that your child might be the freak statistic that is killed in a shooting? How the lizard-brain might initially fear the school shooting far more, how does it reach the point of discussion and legislation on a society-wide level without the common sense acknowledgement that 1:10 or 1:20 is far fucking greater than 1:1000000 to 1:3000000?