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That's true. Because the natural state of an unpriced road is congestion, mass transit is just as incapable of permanently solving traffic congestion as widening the road.

[Citation very badly needed]

http://www.newser.com/story/22...

http://whnt.com/2016/04/21/cel...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bro...

Correlation is not causation, but absence of correlation is absence of causation.

A study like the one mentioned in http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2006/10/how_the_web_prevents_rape.html doesn't prove that porn prevents rape.
It does, however, prove that porn doesn't increase rape.

And while smoke may not prove fire, fire's a good bet.
The study may not be enough to prove porn reduces rape, but it does point in that direction.

Except it doesn't peak everywhere at the same time. When it's dark in Connecticut, it could be still broad daylight in San Diego.

Right this is why transmission is so important: if one can transmit power efficiently then areas with excess power can transmit it elsewhere. Unfortunately, that's in practice really tough. Right now, the US has three major grids: East, West and Texas. In practice there's almost no interconnection between these grids. And Texas sometimes has more wind power than they can use in parts, but can't actually give it to the other grids. This leads to weird things like the cost of electricity in Texas briefly going negative http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_plentiful_one_night_that.html (what actually happened is a bit more complicated but that's essentially accurate). There's a very cool project underway to connect the three grids with a set of superconducting lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation. Unfortunately, that won't be enough by itself but it is a step in the right direction.

Considering the fluctuation in power usage over the 24 hour day, I'm not sure having localized drops in power-generation is necessarily a bad thing.

Unfortunately, when peak power consumption occurs and when peak solar output are are not the same time generally. Similarly, while there's least power consumed very late at night (1-3 AMish), solar stops being useful well before that. See http://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/10970858/flattening-duck-curve-renewable-energy.

Just like everyone else, 50% of them have a double-digit IQ.

Just high enough to demand payment in American greenbacks.

There is also the small issue that you don't own their airspace above your property

It would seem that case law isn't in agreement. At least SCOTUS has indicated below 83ft is yours, and it ends somewhere at or below 500ft.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Good one. So you conveniently pretend Norway, Australia, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany and Ireland aren't there? Or are you man enough to admit that yes, there are a few socialist countries with higher standard of living than the US?

The US spends about the same percentage of GDP on social welfare as Switzerland and Australia, and significantly more than Canada. In absolute terms, the US spends more on social welfare per capita than any other major country. Canada, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK all rank higher on economic liberty than the US. And the US has the highest corporate tax rates among OECD countries. So, the idea that those other countries are "socialist", even in the sense of being a welfare state, while the US is supposedly not is untenable.

In terms of economic factors (housing, jobs, income), the US outranks all other OECD members. If you ranked countries like Sweden and Germany among US states, they would be among the poorest US states. Having lived in several of the countries you list, that agrees with my experience. In particular, I rejected emigrating both to Canada and Australia because I consider the economic opportunities and standard of living to be too low in those countries.

And if we take the wealth inequality of the US into account, then for 99% of Americans, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Sweden, UK, Iceland etc etc have higher standards of living too?

Most comparisons of living standards already look at median incomes or exclude the top 1%, so arguments about "if you take wealth inequality into account" are rooted in a misunderstanding of what that data shows. Furthermore, the levels of inequality in the US are not much higher than other countries; pretax, they are the same or lower than the UK, Spain, Poland, Germany, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Post tax, they are similar to the UK, Canada, Spain, and Australia (0.42 vs. 0.41 and 0.38).

Overall, I agree: the US should be more like Canada, Australia, and Ireland: we should cut back our corporate tax rates to lower levels, and cut back our social welfare spending to the lower levels found in those other countries.

I know that people call him racist, but he has been against "illegal" (which is not a race) and urges caution in terms of Islam (once again, not a race, but a religion that creates more than 90% of terrorists).

Has he said something else that I have missed?

Donald Trump: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." So being a Mexican immigrant means you're either a drug dealer or a rapist according to Trump. That's racism.

Donald Trump: "But you have people coming in and I'm not just saying Mexicans, I'm talking about people that are killers and they're coming into this country." And that's xenophobic.

Donald Trump: "Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border." Linking a community with disease. Where did I hear this before?

Donald Trump: "I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan. The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” Treating hispanics like dogs he can throw a bone to, that's racist too.

Donald Trump: "No surprise that China was caught cheating in the Olympics. That's the Chinese M.O. - Lie, Cheat & Steal in all international dealings." Note how he said it's the "Chinese modus operandi", not the "Chinese *government* M.O.". Claiming 1+ billion people are liars, cheaters and thieves, just for their ethnicity or the country they live in is racism.

Has Trump ever actually issued a call for violence? If so, I must have missed it.

Well he certainly did against protestors at his rallies.

But more importantly, "Donald Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." and "Donald Trump said that he would 'absolutely' institute mandatory registration." So he says he will use the force of law to discriminate on the basis of religion. In other words he is against freedom of religion and against the bill of rights.

While those are not direct threats of violence, it's already too much for someone who wants to be the chief of the world's most powerful army.

Boy, you're a dickhead. See this article on why some people say math and some say maths. Often we talk about the sciences (plural) when we refer to biology, physics, chemistry, etc. Others refer to maths like geometry, algebra, trig, calculus. Are they one or plural? Lots of English speakers use the plural.

By way of Exploding the Telephone (highly recommended) I was reading Trump's Nuclear Experience just yesterday, which reprints a 1987 interview between Rosenbaum and Trump, in which uncle John plays a critical role.

"He told me something a few years ago," Trump recalls. "He told me, 'You don't realize how simple nuclear technology is becoming.' That's scary. He said it used to be that only a few brains in the world understood it and now you have a situation where thousands and thousands of brains can easily understand it, and it's becoming easier, and someday it'll be like making a bomb in the basement of your house. And that's a very frightening statement coming from a man who's totally versed in it."

Then I spent another hour perusing Rosenbaum's views on Nabokov (also recommended), because at the end of the day it doesn't matter who or what inhabits Trump's public persona, the persona itself is unfit to hold public office.

If he was not under oath, he could lie easily. If he was, however, then he probably was telling the truth — lawmen tend to take that sort of thing seriously.

But he was quite explicit about continuing to search for other methods... The man is doing his job, I would not be jeering the way you do.

Half true. I heard of lawyers who were disbarred for lying under oath, and as a result lawyers take it seriously.

However, prosecutors do lie all the time, and get away with it. It's a rare judge who calls them to account for it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...
For Shame
The criminal justice system encourages prosecutors to get guilty verdicts by any means necessary—and to stand by even the most questionable convictions. Can one crusading court stop the lying and cheating?
By Lara Bazelon
Slate
April 7 2016

Cops, on the other hand, lie routinely, and almost always get away with it, even when they get caught on video. It happens in New York City all the time.

There was a demonstration against the Iraq war, where among their many violations of the Bill of Rights, the pigsxxxcops indiscriminately arrested people who were on the steps of the New York Public Library, demonstrators and uninvolved bystanders alike, and charged them with assaulting an officer.

Assaulting an officer is a felony, and if they insisted on defending themselves in court, they would have to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees, and would have been likely to get a felony conviction and a jail term, since juries usually believe pigsxxxxcops over defendants. So the prosecutor forces them to plead guilty to a misdemeanor that they never committed.

This time, there were videos, including the pigs' own videos, as well as the videos taken by bystanders, which clearly showed that the defendants weren't assaulting an officer, but instead were assaulted by the pigs without justification. I think they may have sued the city for false arrest. But I know that none of the pigs were charged with perjury. I once heard a city official on the radio explaining why they didn't. He said cops sign affadavits under oath all the time that they had seen a crime when they really didn't. In other words, the "everybody does it" defense. They basically admitted that cops routinely lie. One good thing that came out of it is that those cops can never appear on the witness stand themselves, because the dense lawyer can always bring up their false statements under oath in the past.

I think you're getting something mixed up. When trying a case, lawyers are not under oath; in fact, they're never under oath in that capacity. They aren't testifying...in fact, except in very rare circumstances (and even then, against standard advice and professional guidance) they aren't even parties to the criminal or civil matter being discussed and thus they *couldn't* testify because they have no direct knowledge of the case. Everything they know is what was told to them by someone who is a direct party.

I'm not a fan of the way the criminal justice system tries every dirty trick in the book to go after people. But let's focus on the problems that actually do exist, rather than making up ones that don't.

If he was not under oath, he could lie easily. If he was, however, then he probably was telling the truth — lawmen tend to take that sort of thing seriously.

But he was quite explicit about continuing to search for other methods... The man is doing his job, I would not be jeering the way you do.

Half true. I heard of lawyers who were disbarred for lying under oath, and as a result lawyers take it seriously.

However, prosecutors do lie all the time, and get away with it. It's a rare judge who calls them to account for it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...
For Shame
The criminal justice system encourages prosecutors to get guilty verdicts by any means necessary—and to stand by even the most questionable convictions. Can one crusading court stop the lying and cheating?
By Lara Bazelon
Slate
April 7 2016

Cops, on the other hand, lie routinely, and almost always get away with it, even when they get caught on video. It happens in New York City all the time.

There was a demonstration against the Iraq war, where among their many violations of the Bill of Rights, the pigsxxxcops indiscriminately arrested people who were on the steps of the New York Public Library, demonstrators and uninvolved bystanders alike, and charged them with assaulting an officer.

Assaulting an officer is a felony, and if they insisted on defending themselves in court, they would have to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees, and would have been likely to get a felony conviction and a jail term, since juries usually believe pigsxxxxcops over defendants. So the prosecutor forces them to plead guilty to a misdemeanor that they never committed.

This time, there were videos, including the pigs' own videos, as well as the videos taken by bystanders, which clearly showed that the defendants weren't assaulting an officer, but instead were assaulted by the pigs without justification. I think they may have sued the city for false arrest. But I know that none of the pigs were charged with perjury. I once heard a city official on the radio explaining why they didn't. He said cops sign affadavits under oath all the time that they had seen a crime when they really didn't. In other words, the "everybody does it" defense. They basically admitted that cops routinely lie. One good thing that came out of it is that those cops can never appear on the witness stand themselves, because the dense lawyer can always bring up their false statements under oath in the past.

Trump is certainly does his best to spread ignorance, but many of his supporters see through at least some of it. I'm somewhat loathed to link to a slate.com article, but this one interviews Trump supporters about climate change. Many of his supporters see climate change as real and caused by humans, but they prioritize other things or thinks that Trump will come around on the issue. Many people support Trump because they think he is a successful business man, a man of action, and is not a dirty Washington politician. I take issue with the first two claims, but Trump hasn't really had to propagate those claims; the media was doing that long before he ran for president.

What did the gov't sponsor in that succeeded? Tesla. Right.

Our — the taxpayers' — investment in Tesla was even worse than the Solyndra fiasco.

VCs lose money all the time.

VCs invest their own money — and they can not lose more than earn for very long. Government invests — and loses — ours and can keep on losing forever, because it can compel us to keep giving it more.

Capitalism works, Socialism does not — if you accept the 100 years of failure, from Lenin's USSR to Chavez's Venezuela, as any guide.

Because the German Government hands out 130Billion to subsidize privately owned solar panels?

Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies—totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University—to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?

Subsidizing green technology is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

So you are charging each other $260 per year to make solar cheaper for others. Seeing how the article is how Germany is phasing out the program, it would appear it does not work as intended.

Yeah. I'm thinking of the bunches of articles we had like this one. My current thinking is that languages are not copyrightable.

Another question is who owns the C standard libraries, and can they sue anyone? I don't really know the answer to that one.

1. Did you think I was endeavoring to accomplish that? Whatever gave you that impression? I did not say that transparency was bad, I was simply giving my thoughts on what you said, by using your own words to highlight how easy it is to misunderstand and misrepresent the actual sentiment which was expressed. Even though, in fact, those words in particular spoken by Nancy Pelosi are clearly available to anybody who wishes to see them. If you did not apprehend my reasons, before, then perhaps you can see them now, and contemplate what shall be done in light of that consideration I have offered regarding the potential for distortion.

Like said by some esteemed wit, a lie got halfway around the world before the truth got its pants on. What you have heard was said, and represented it to be, is not, in fact, what was said, when in fact, she was speaking about the problem herself. That to understand things, we'd have to really see them.

Whether or not she was correct in her assessment of the particulars, the principle remains true, don't you think?

Whatever shall be done?

2. Ah, but you did not mention complexity per se, but focused on length. There is a difference between complexity and brevity. Why just above, if I had expounded further upon my intent, you might have apprehended it better, so that alone demonstrates the utility of sometimes expanding upon one's thoughts to increase comprehension rather than serve some ill-intent. I could have chosen to express myself simply, yet would have had to speak further upon it to make my point clear.

Moving further on, to another convenient demonstration, I do apologize for not mentioning this earlier, as well as my earlier mistake due to inattention with referring to it as words instead of pages(and that caused an error of my own, though not one that changes my position on the Constitution of Alabama), but the figure you give? Is apparently questionable, if not outright bogus. I have seem many sources, that one would think are authoritative, declare such a length to the US Tax Code, but yet others claim it to be specious. This too can serve to illustrate the problem with overly brief remarks. Even referring to pages?

You see, while it is is undoubtedly brief to simply state that "70,000 pages" is too long, that doesn't serve well to point out a problem, and itself may not be sufficiently accurate. In fact, that remark itself may serve to mislead, even in its shortness. The emotional reaction to such a length is a given, but is it really the state of affairs, or are you just being fooled into reacting, and giving a phrasing that triggers the same in others, who will not even stop to consider what it really is?

Even thought it is a truth that in some way, it is possible to arrange whatever constitutes the tax code to be said length, that will not mean much, other than it is possible to arrange the contents in that manner. It does not tell us about those specific contents, merely sets up a reaction based on emotion. Much like say, the Size of Wikipedia, is of little importance when measuring the contents of the work itself.

Yes, it is possible to deceive with length, but it is also possible to deceive with brevity. Sometimes you need to get into a more lengthy examination, that while the pieces may be simple, are part of a complex whole. To really reform the tax code, I think, based on your choice to use a questionable example, it will be best if you take the time to consider your position a bit more carefully, and choose your further expressions with due examination. I have no doubt there is much reform and improvement you could do, as a work that has built up

Unfortunately the consequences don't stop compounding. Certainly we have committed ourselves to further warming at this point even if we stopped all fossil fuel use today. The system will take time to reach its new warmer equilibrium. That means we may already have committed to exceed the 2 Celsius limit that we are trying to avoid. This is especially likely considering last month's global mean temperature anomaly was already 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. - http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Firstly, I don't think "agents not being in a new or high-tech call center" is one of the complaints people have about Comcast.

Secondly, Comcast is well known for not allowing customers to terminate the service.

After purchasing the service through Amazon, will you be able to terminate the service?

The fact that it's through Amazon means nothing if you're still routed to Comcast customer service.

It'll still be (*) Comcastic!

(*) Remember the old meme "he's so $something, when you look it up in the dictionary there's a picture of him"? Comcast is so bad, they've got an entry in the urban dictionary. That's sayin' something!

They are ignorant savages.

Yeah they're actually often not at all ignorant :
http://www.economist.com/node/...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

and democrats, Obama included, tend to nominate more centrist persons, persons not known for bombast and partisanship at the time of their nomination. they nominate people agreeable to both sides.

the GOP does not.
there was nothing centrist about Scalia, or Thomas, or Alito, or Roberts.
and that's largely because the only persons GOP president nominate over the past few decades are judges active with or supported by the federalist Society, and very right wing group.

the last GOP nominated centrist was Kennedy, and that was because it was an election year and Reagan didn't want the sort of political fighting going on now!

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

P
resident Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court may have come as a surprise to the political world. But it shouldn’t have. Garland is the kind of nominee whom we would have expected from Obama under ordinary circumstances. Indeed, in important respects he is similar to Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the nominees whom Obama chose early in his presidency. More importantly, his nomination reflects the practice of recent Democratic presidents to balance ideology with other goals by appointing moderate liberals. In sharp contrast, our research shows that Republican presidents over the past 25 years have put ideology first by appointing strong conservatives to the court.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The guy hasn't done anything wrong, yet lost his business due to governmental pressure.

The government (which in effect means the taxpayers) should compensate this man for the loss of his business. He had the personal integrity to stand up for his users even at great personal cost to himself. If our society shits on people like that, while the ones who succeed are people like this, then I think we've lost the plot. Our society is rotten to the core.

We need to start treating people like Snowden (or apparently this Levison chap) with respect for their service to the public, and punishing the people who are responsible for the wrong doings to begin with, rather than punishing the whistleblowers.

Yes, the money to compensate him for the loss of his business comes out of taxpayer coffers, but it's lost in the noise of graft and corruption losses, and anyway, we, the taxpayers, elected the clowns that caused the problem, so it's really our fault in the end.

For all the talk about Scalia as an originalist, he also place a high value on precedent (I've read that this is something that separates him from Thomas who is more willing to overturn precedents that he sees are wrong). The commerce clause was already regularly stretched and in fact one of the original cases expanding the commerce clause dealt with the exact issue of a plant that was "not produced or consumed across state lines". Note that Gonzales v. Raich is exactly what you asked for, a case where Scalia broke with the conservatives and concurred with the leftists. You asked for multiple instances. Well-known very liberal slate.com has examples for you. They say introduce it by saying, "But every once in a while, Scalia’s insistence on interpreting the Constitution exactly how it was (purportedly) understood by the framers leads him to unexpectedly progressive opinions. From flag burning to warrantless searches to free speech, Scalia’s liberal streak has made a surprisingly profound impact on constitutional law."

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

But they will never abandon U.S. Dollars

Except for how you improperly applied capacity factor to power (GW) rather than energy (GWh), you're basically right.

For your next assignment, though. consider the time of day the power is generated with the time of day the power is used. For example, it's all fine and good that a nuclear plant can produce 1.1GW with 90% uptime, but you generally don't need 1.1GW all the time anyway. The result is your nuclear plant spends a lot of time very under-utilized - a bad thing considering how expensive they are.

On the other hand, solar tends to produce peak output right around the same time that demand is at peak... so even if it's only producing 15% of the time, every watt it produces counts towards shaving the peak loads. Nothing is wasted.

Then there's something like Wind, where it's so plentiful that it's not unheard of for producers to offer negative prices to encourage people to use it all.
=Smidge=

Really, how hard is it to act professional in a workplace and refrain from speech or actions that someone might find harassing

I think this is the crux of the matter - anyone is able to claim that anything makes them feel harassed, and the speaker is always instantly assumed to be in the wrong.

Or, possibly, the crux of the matter is that clear, over-the-top sexual harassment is widespread in academia, and people are finally refusing to accept it as normal.

GP is right: it isn't really all that hard to not act like a dick, but some people can't seem to make even that very low bar.

To judge by the article, that would seem to be the case. Indeed, one might conclude that the only mission NASA has is to get to Mars as soon as possible.

The Republican chairman of the Science Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas, echoed those concerns in his comments, saying that under President Obama, NASA does not seem to be taking a serious approach to human exploration. The hearing comes at a critical time for NASA, now two months into the last year of President Obama’s second term and with a new administrator likely to replace Charles Bolden in 2017. Republicans in Congress have made it clear they do not favor the president’s plan to send astronauts to visit a fragment of an asteroid near the Moon and an eventual journey to Mars.

It is no surprise that Lamar Smith would like to make manned space exploration the priority rather than, say, global warming, since he is a notorious denier known for bullying scientiests who don't see things his way.

yup

-the effect of el nino on the GLOBAL AVERAGE is tiny. even with el nino it still would have been the hottest year. http://www.slate.com/content/d... [slate.com]

Why don't you add the missing bit? "Hottest year since modern surface records began in the 19th Century". Which is completely expected given the recovery since the Little Ice Age. Not the hottest year within the last 500 years, nor 1000, nor 2000. Look again at the REALITY that warmunists must deny:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com...

Please tell us wall why the Vikings used to farm in Greenland, but are now buried under permafrost? could it be that today is COLDER than it used to be, and we are only getting back to relatively normal temperatures - and all of this is ****NATURAL****.

ROFL you think "SkepticalScience" is anything except blinkered rants from eco-loons who deliberately ignore data (that is, REALITY) they don't like. They don't have neutral peer-review of their drivel.

-your continual pointing to the RSS satellites show only that you are ignorant of what that data is and what it is capable of showing, let alone its relation to the overall picture from all the data. https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]

BOOM! here you show you know NOTHING about the CAGW/AGW Hypothesis that predicts that the lower tropic troposphere will show warming before anything else, including the sea and surface. The predictions of this hypothesis are NOT observed (and the UAH and RSS satellites agree with each other, and the tens of thousands of weather balloons, and the well-sited surface stations, etc). The Scientific Method REQUIRES you to accept the Null Hypothesis instead of AGW based on the OBSERVATIONS (that is, reality) because the specific prediction of AGW is not observed (in fact, the counter is observed). Did you not know this?

-the urban heat island effect isn't a factor. IE, remove all urban stations from the data and the trend still remains the same. https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]

COMPLETELY FALSE. The apparent surface warming decreases significantly when UHI affected stations and the increasing proportion of ESTIMATED data is taken away. Here's a discussion of the developing story, that has been improved by wamists critiquing it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

-the corrections actually reduce the amount of warming shown in the data, by ~20%.

Here you show a complete inability to reason statistically. Who cares if the absolute level is reduced? the 'corrections' introduce a systematic effect that cools the past and warms the present - artificially introducing a trend in the first time derivative. But you are not smart enough to see this and instead trot out a deception you were unable to see through.

-there are no observations which "falsify AGW all the time". there are only cranks like yourself who misinterpret the data (deliberately) in order to spread misinformation.

It is you spreading disinformation. It is you who merely parrots talking points because you don't understand the specific predictions of AGW and how the observational data have falsified this hypothesis. You refuse to follow the Scientific Method when it conflicts with your cultural Marxist "Progressive" Narrative. Even your byline "America, shining city on a hill, was built upon progressive ideals. Conservatism has only ever diminished its luster." shows how colossally ignorant you are of economics and American history. But hey, you are prepared to deny th

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

-the effect of el nino on the GLOBAL AVERAGE is tiny. even with el nino it still would have been the hottest year.
http://www.slate.com/content/d...

-the urban heat island effect isn't a factor. IE, remove all urban stations from the data and the trend still remains the same.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...

-your continual pointing to the RSS satellites show only that you are ignorant of what that data is and what it is capable of showing, let alone its relation to the overall picture from all the data.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...

-the corrections actually reduce the amount of warming shown in the data, by ~20%.

-there are no observations which "falsify AGW all the time". there are only cranks like yourself who misinterpret the data (deliberately) in order to spread misinformation.

Go tell it to the Progressives in the anti-vaccine movement:

As it turns out, there are about equal numbers of progressive and conservative anti-vaxxers. It's not a political issue, merely what the boys down at the shop call stupid assholes.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Apparently a lot of doctors still do. There was an article on Slate about it today.
Given the issues I've seen with coverage and random SMS delays on phones, I'm glad they do.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

"Under [California] law, any citizen who properly submits an initiative (and pays the $200 fee) is entitled to gather signatures for their pet proposal.” This is how ballot initiatives work. Stupid troll.

There's a difference between a "mass shooting" and a "mass killing spree".

Not fully automatic, but the high cyclic rate Gatling was used to subjugate the indigenous peoples. It was also used in a civil war against both regulars and militia on both sides. It was used to intimidate anti-draft protestors in New York.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was a mass shooting by FBI standards and featured shotguns and at least one Thompson machine gun. That was gang-on-gang violence, which is what much handgun violence is today. The Thompson was a well-known weapon and well-known to be popular with crime syndicates in New York and Chicago. I can't think of a specific other incident in which 4 or more people were killed with one.

Clyde Barrow used a BAR and killed a number of people. He and Bonnie Parker and their associates were certainly killers on a spree, but I'm not sure they ever killed four people at one time. They also were firing during gang robberies and getaways, not at targeted pockets of civilians looking to make a statement or raise their body count.

Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns at all. http://www.slate.com/articles/...

It featured a fantastic, humorous episode written by Darin Morgan about a monster who is bitten by a man and turns into one. Its a beautiful satire about an alien trying to make sense of human behavior (working 9 to 5, lying about sexual prowess, our love for fast food) and, at one point, he gets hit by a transgender which leads to an hilarious exchange with Duchovny trying to explain transgenderism to Darby.

So i've just found out that Slate actually run a story on their LGBTQ section titiled Did The X-Files use a transgender character for cheap laughs?. Why, yes. Yes they did. It doesn't matter that the treatment wasn't offensive at all, or that the entire episode was making fun of the human race as a whole, or even that it actually was in line with the transition theme that was the entire point of the episode. Some people got their panties in a bunch because a transgender character threw a punch.

Cleese is absolutely right here. Then again, he usually always is.

Riiii-ight.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/12...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/twhyla...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/out...

The only way she gets pardoned is if she has been found guilty. That takes either a trial and a conviction or a guilty plea.

Pardons can be pre-emptive. In fact, that was just the case with Nixon.

Where are you getting your data? Here's what I found. It doesn't seem to support your analysis.

Criminal Justice outcomes are also widely accepted as being worse for non-whites, as well as health outcomes. Granted, much of this is due to poverty which you can pretend is not related to race, despite boatloads of evidence to the contrary.

What some cursory evidence does seem to indicate is that the gap between outcomes for different races is narrowing, slowly. This is probably what your really noticing.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your just ignorant, not racist.

Compared to what? Some Marines when down last week and a couple of Hawaiians went down yesterday I think it was. That's two accidents in just a few days. There are a whole bunch of helicopter accidents. They're actually crashing fairly often.

So, compared to what? You say "safe." That's an affirmative statement and leaves no room for quantification. So, using that as a response to your argument then you'd be demonstrably wrong by virtue of there being any accidents. If there are any accidents then they are not safe. They are, even they had just one accident ever, then less than safe - even if trivially less than safe with a single accident.

Given that they have certainly had way more than one accident then you're way more incorrect. They're even further away from safe with every single accident. Safe, the word, is definitive in nature. Normally, I'd let it slide but you were confident/cocky enough to say "Right, so like I said, they are safe."

Now, your first statement was actually more correct (still subjective) with "pretty damned safe." But the second one, which is just "safe" is not even remotely correct. I don't know of anything that is safe. Some things are more or less safe.

Citation of the definition as you used the word:

a. Free from danger or injury; undamaged or unhurt: He returned from the voyage safe and sound.
b. Not exposed to the threat of danger or harm: The children were safe at home all through the storm.
c. Usable in specified conditions without being damaged. Often used in combination: a microwave safe container.

You'll note that they're definitive. So, really, nothing is safe until after the fact. At least I can't think of anything that is safe until after the fact. Not even sleep is safe, people die in their sleep all the time.

So, no... A helicopter is definitely not safe. However, you can be safe after arriving in a helicopter. They, by the fact that nothing is certain, are not safe. In fact, they are unsafe by default and by definition. ;-)

But, on a more serious note, as compared to what? You might find the data (what can be found) to be a bit surprising. I invite you to have a look at this link:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Helicopters are not really all that safe. Those numbers don't include military helicopter accidents but, I guess, don't include military helicopter flying hours either. It's really not easy to draw a very direct comparison but it's pretty reasonable to conclude that you're mistaken in your second post and it's a bit too subjective to answer the first one but I'd argue that they're not "pretty damned safe" to the other regular modes of travel.

Using the best (most advantageous) numbers for making this choice... Allow me to quote from the fine article:

By this measure, helicopter flying is just 27 times more dangerous than driving.

(Emphasis added, emphasis mine.)

Those are the most optimistic of numbers given. So, by what definition (for your first post) are you going with for "pretty damn" because that's probably wrong too.

Yeah, normally I'd ignore it and just let you think that helicopters are safe but, well... That last one was a bit cocky and so I figured you might want to actually have an example of some data. Oh, I'd still ride in a helicopter and I do still ride in helicopters but it's really not a good idea to think of them as safe. By definition they are unsafe and, by any real metrics, they're probably not what you'd want to consider as "pretty damn safe" either. Unless you want to compare it to riding the back of a pickup truck filled with uncapped and used syringes from Needle Park. It's probably "pretty damn safe" compared to that. It's also probably "pretty damn safe" when compared to riding on the back of enraged bull. It's probably somewhere on par with riding on the back of an angry crocodile.

Slick Teddy Cruz makes Slick Willy look like an amateur.
He may be the most spectacular liar ever to run for president.

Or perhaps is has to do with you pausing before under god for some reason when the pause is only after under god.

Nope. It has something to do with George MacPherson Docherty.

So, this is somehow forcing you to believe in the Christian God, vs the Jewish, Muslim, or whoever else's god/gods, or none at all?

It's forcing a message to be promulgated with the money of the state.

Personally, I find it offensive as a religious person though, money and God do not mix.

Let me guess, blocking religious law from becoming state law is now a bad thing?

It is when you block particular people of a particular religion from using their religious law to guide their own personal decisions, don't you think?

This means, for example, that your own will can be invalidated if you rely upon a given set of laws in it, even if it violated no express concern of the state's existing jurisprudence otherwise.

It'd be one thing if a state had found some will instructions to be problematic, like disinheriting minor children, but this is a blanket ban with no such consideration.

But go ahead and pretend you're interested solely in banning religious law from becoming state law. Nobody catches a whiff of hypocrisy there. You'll note how none of the Amendments, whether in North Carolina, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota or Tennessee ever seem to note the perils of Christian legal abuses. At most they try to smoke-screen it by being generic, saying foreign law, or international law. Which by a proper reading of the Constitution, would be invalid since it violates the treaty clause. Yet still they do it.

Why?

Of course, the irony is that it is these same states that were most often opposed to civil rights in America. That protested how they were being oppressed by giving up segregation and anti-miscegenation laws. And where they most stridently demand their right to have a big ole display of the Ten Commandments.

Sorry, but Roy Moore is in your bunch, and by their works you shall know them.

You do realize that this is not against the First amendment right? Preventing others from displaying their religious symbols however is.

You do realize that your First Amendment Rights are your speech, not your use of other people's property?

You don't have a right to use the public property to display your religious symbols, especially not your religious symbols alone.

Besides, nobody had to bring up the First Amendment. They can bring up things like Section II-5 of the Oklahome Constitution.

Curse you modern liberal atheists and your time travel machine, rewriting a state constitution!

In english please? I do believe that there has been much from the Left restricting people from praying, even on their own quietly to themselves at team sporting events...that is against religious liberty.

That's against facts you mean, as in reality. Unless you can cite an actual example to substantiate your belief, you're probably just falling into the idea that you MUST be being persecuted. After all, you're a Christian, you're always being thrown to the lions. Always.

Mean while This does happen.

And this is real.

And this.

Where is the law stating that you must be a Christian and must go to church on Sundays?

Probably in the darkest recesses of the minds of certain wretched folks who think if only that were the case, all

That's exactly who covered it up, the government agencies responsible for the testing. State and Federal officials.

What I don't understand is how none of these politicians who want backdoors into all encryption fail to understand that it would be just as easy for IS or Al-Qaeda...

Because leadership shrouds themselves ignorance as it suits them. They beat the drum about buzz words in technology like encryption but then they don't actually know what power their wielding or what the consequences of their ideas truly are. This isn't limited to politicians... look no further than your friendly top executives in your workplace. The US Supreme Court is just as guilty: http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Not sure where to start. I assume, given the current news, you are referring to the Iranian 'peace' deal when you say:

Maybe it's time to declare war on the countries harboring and funding these organizations instead of making 'peace' deals with them.

Iran is not supporting ISIS and is, in fact, urging their allies to fight them.

You go on to say:

We no longer tolerate fundamentalist christians teaching 'creation' in place of science, nor allow them to trample women's reproductive rights.

Again I must assume (you didn't specify) that you are referring to the USA which still has many states where creationism is taught in public schools and recently made exceptions for FOR PROFIT self described (not legally associated with any religion) corporations to deny woman coverage to basic reproductive health treatments at the insistence of their employer.

I do not believe people are supporting giving "irrational muslim belief" any quarter. Are you implying that all muslim belief is irrational? What action do you believe would solve the current world issues? It seems that having a bunch of American soldiers on the ground does not generally result in a stable nation appearing. This is not a simple problem assuming you have the answers or even all the information without having dedicated your life to it is ignorant at best.

http://www.academia.edu/375869...

The practice of Sky Burial was at one time, pretty common, from Anatolia to China

Even today, the Parsi people (whose ancestors came from Persia - currently known as Iran) in India still practice Sky Burial

http://www.treehugger.com/cult...

In Iran, "Towers of Silence" still exist, in remote places

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atl...

Al Gore will be happy!

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_...

From what I have heard, women have a way to "shut that whole thing down" anyway...

No, that is the most dangerous myth about the 2nd Amendment.
It was never about being able to stop a rogue government.

The citizenry would find a way to do with with or without hte 2nd Amendment (indeed, with the overwhelmingly conservative (and anti-government) nature of the majority of military and police, just who the flying fuck do you think a rogue government is going to get to enforce its will???)

Reality is the 2nd amendment is about the ability of the militia to exist and be capable of fulfilling its mission of assisting in national defense.
The early nation did not have sufficient army to provide for the defense. the idea being that they would be reinforced with citizen militia.
The army then provides the knowledge and experience, and heavy weapon such as cannon, and the militia provides the bodies.
The army lacked the equipment to supply every militia though, so it was necessary for the militia to be able to supply its own arms.

Today, with the militia now being hte National Guard, and the National Guard having no trouble supplying its members with gear, its safe to say needs for providing for the national defense have changed.

Some light reading to correct your ignorance:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

If Gun Massacres Are the Price of Liberty, We Need to Reconsider What Liberty Means.

If constant gun massacres are an inevitable result of American liberty—if we cannot be truly free without letting every madman, abuser, and hothead with a grudge get guns, if we cannot send our children to school without fearing they may be slaughtered in a hail of bullets—we need to reconsider what liberty truly means.

And you should also not pretend that we dont regularly restrict or limit the rights in the constitution over various greater public interests.

Freedom of speech has its limits: cant yell fire in the movie theater.
So does religion: you dont get to impose your religion on others even if its what your religious expression or observance calls for
Assembly: cant block public streets, or you must get a permit to do so

So dont pretend that the 2nd Amendment is any different, or any more sacred and inviolate than the others. There are times and places to limit it. By imposing background checks, on ALL sales. By requiring training to prove your anret incompetent and a threat to others. By requiring proper storage, so that unauthorized persons, such as children, get access.