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NYC Wants to Ban Geiger Counters
Ellis D. Tripp noted a village voice article about attempts in NYC to pass a law requiring permits for air monitoring devices including apparently geiger counters. I'm sure everyone will feel much safer not knowing anything.
The title is very misleading, its actual a response to a possible panic caused by people using bad detectors. Imagine if hundreds of people buy shitty detectors that can be tripped by high NOX counts(A car emission). Suddenly on a hot afternoon during rush hour, 100+ counters register a large nuclear presence. Thats a big worry.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
I bet most New Yorkers don't know how to run a Geiger counter (or possibly even what one is).
All the same, slaves were prevented from learning how to read, Jews in the death camps were not given any information about the war, their future, and today, people we want to strip of power are kept in the dark.
Check my history, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I really think that those in power (ALL of them, not just the Bushies) have gotten to the point of realizing that the American populace have become dumb sheep. Through fear, all is possible for them.
Refuse, resist.
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This is ancient early 90s news but Brooklyn has been the site of nuclear waste storage and it concerns many citizens. There is a warehouse there called Radiac Research Corporation that has about enough nuclear material for one atom bomb, although I'm sure it's not refined to that. Citizen watch groups have formed that will walk around the streets with Geiger counters. You will find some shock reporting that has somethings factual and a lot of things anecdotal evidence. If you do watch those videos, ironically pay attention to the state employed inspector on the boat. Hard numbers and comparisons with other major cities are a must to make any effect in this kind of reporting. Still, I would be upset if stuff like this dried up. I think it's important so that the community at least feels like it has an independent non-interested voice--I would risk false alarms for that any day.
I've also heard from other sources that New York City offers permits for polluting which isn't so wrong except that some of these are ridiculous. A lot of the rivers and streams to this day still are being polluted but since the companies are 'grandfathered' into pollution control, they can keep doing it. Do you ever think they're going to clean that up? I hardly think so.
So they want to avoid false alarms that could cause a mass panic. But like a lot of things there is a trade off and the trade off is the ability to independently verify that the air quality or radiation levels are indeed safe. If I were a citizen living there, losing the latter in and of itself would cause me panic. Poor means you're at risk of being ignored & treated like you don't matter and I don't think New York City (especially historically) is any different from the rest of the world.
My work here is dung.
It seems that quite often, lawmakers listen (quite intently) to what government groups want the law to be. In this case, it is the city police who want this law. But the people don't benefit from it, just the police. The same thing holds for much of the Patriot Act; it is not a benefit for the people, but the FBI wanted it, and congress listened.
The biggest trouble isn't false alarms, terrorists, or corporate lobbying. The biggest trouble is that government listens to itself more that it listens to the people.
It's New York...Your average New Yorker, on plugging in a Geiger counter that immediately redlined and then exploded would say, "Eh, I figyaed as much." They know it's hazardous to live there, they take a weird sort of pride in it. I moved from New York to Georgia in 2002, and people were way more freaked out about 9/11 in Georgia than they were in New York...The city still had that "burnt tire" smell, but otherwise things were back to normal.
Not to say there weren't some deep fricking scars, but you can't live there and be that high strung about environmental safety issues; the first day you come home, take off your white shirt and your white undershirt, and notice that, while they were the same color when you put them on, one of them is now a sort of stinky grey...You have to accept it and move on, or you will lose your fricking mind.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I totally disagree with this law. The mere POSSESSION of a device like a Geiger counter or air quality tester is a misdemeanor. That is insane, and everyone should acknowledge this. BUT there is a real problem here, which is people buying inaccurate devices that they do not know how to operate. This is resulting in false positives which, when reported, police officials are obligated to investigate. At the very least this is a defense mechanism by the NYPD, because if something was reported and they didn't respond, if it turned out to be legitimate they would be held responsible.
My problem is why is the citizen always perceived as the enemy? Why are criminal punishments always deemed the solution? Here is my solution: Establish a citizen corps of air/radiation testers. Require a minimum set of standards for equipment and require some sort of proof that the operator knows how to operate the device and that the device functions properly. This may involve some sort of licensure. If you meet the requirements and become a member, you will have established the repute required to report a crisis to the proper authorities.
If you are not a member, you will still be allowed to own or operate these devices. However, if you detect a problem, you are obligated to report it to your closest deputy as defined above, who will verify and report it to the authorities if legitimate. You will not be punished for false positives because the purpose of the deputy is to filter these. However, if by your irresponsible actions you cause a panic, you will be held responsible, possibly criminally.
This engages the community, establishes a system of responsibility and gives a method to report problems. No one has to give up their equipment. It's almost like we live in a society, where people work together and laws aren't just made on the spot to ban stuff and create criminals out of regular people.
I agree. My BS detector is going off like crazy. Uh... I mean, my BS detector *would* be going off like crazy if I owned one.... which I don't... because owning a device that can measure the atmospheric content of BS is quite illegal and I wouldn't do anything like that.... *glances over shoulder nervously*
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
pitchblende is a murky dark colored rock that is a very high quality ore for many radioactive materials. dark. grey to black with some samples pitched to the purple or brown.
yellow radioactive rock is your usual uranium oxide, hydrated "yellowcake," a low concentration. but that's the production ore in north america and most of the world. in the 60s, you could buy a sample in a little plastic box at visitor centers like at the Oak Ridge Laboratories.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"requiring permits for air monitoring devices
Customer in restaurant: This steak smells delicious.
Cop: You got a permit for that nose, mister?
Kevin Smith on Prince
> Yeah, good idea, if you want to make the world a thoughtcrime maybe.
;)
Oh you fuddyduddy libertarian.
Seriously though I think it is a perfectly logical progression. After all we have already been told by every right thinking person[1] that NYC has to operate under different rules, that certain otherwise fundamental liberties must be compromised to make such a metropolis fuction.
Seriously, count em:
1. The second Amendment is pretty much void in New York. The former mayor[2] carefully explained in a recent debate that 'laws that make sense in New York might not make sense in flyover country' so I list this one first to put the accepted precedent that the idea that core Consitituitional liberties vary by population density is now accepted policy. Or I totally missed the nationwide outrush of rage, the riots, etc.
2. The right to property is probably most circumscribed in NYC. See the history of several generations of Rent Control for details.
3. The Right to follow a profession of one's choice is pretty much null and void in NY, between the unions and the almost total control by the city government through licensing and regulation designed not to pretect the public but to control entry into the professions to protect the current workers from competition.
4-999 could be filled in by anyone depressed enough to type that long.
No, if one accepts the base logic that makes that level of State control acceptable, allowing them the monopoly power to control information about the safety (read the actual performance of regulators) makes perfect sense. So all I can say is, suck it up Citizen, turn in your detectors and listen to the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration when they calmly inform you everything is 'perfectly safe.'
Of course you COULD start demanding the whole fetid mess of dank rotting crap go to Hell. You don't even have to be a Ronulan to say that.
[1] Defined of course by the editorial board of the NYT and usually Socialist house organs such as the Village Voice. Nice to see one of their sacred oxes served up on the grill.
[2] With the partial agreement of all right thinking people[1] except they think he isn't enough of a gun banner.
Democrat delenda est
You do realize that banning guns raises the crime rate in a city, right? How about DC for a nice example of that. Or is that not big city enough for you?
To you, you have your own opinion, and you are entitled to it. However, that doesn't counter factual evidence. This is along the same lines of "I don't want XYZ regardless of studies/logic".Non-factual opinion has no basis in the court of law, nor in politics.
On a beautiful 1986 summer day in Poland the secret police confiscated all Geiger detectors from all the schools and universities. A week later the world learned about the Techernobyl catastrophe. (This is a true story, my uncle was a chemist at one of the universities)
> So you're saying it makes sense to drive truckloads of guns into the hands of people of the most densely populated cities of America?
Yes, I'm saying exactly that. Because NYC is exactly where they are needed most. I live in flyover country. Random violent crime is so rare it makes the front page on the occasion we have one. My weapon stays in a case on a top shelf of a closet on the reasoning that an accidental discharge is the greater risk. I wouldn't live in a place like NYC unless I could keep the damned thing loaded and under my pillow or srapped to my ass when I was walking the crime ridden streets of our major cities... even after the admirable efforts of NYC's former mayor to REDUCE[1] violent crime.
> You know, where hunting consists of going to the store, not actually going out and hunting?
You might be shocked to learn that the 2nd Amendment has exactly zero to do with hunting. The primary purpose was the belief that armed men are Citizens while unarmed ones were only Subjects. That the carrying of arms was itself a virtue, helping to keep a Free People in the right frame of mind to be worthy of receiving the Blessings of Liberty.
But while a gun control debate would be fun, I'm instead going to stay ontopic and use your post to illustrate my original point.
I'd like to start by drawing the attention of the readers to both what our canonical hive minder said and left unsaid.
He mentions "There is no reason people in NYC need guns" and "people of the most densely populated cities" which couldn't make my argument better that there has crept into the thinking, of city dwellers at least, that individual liberty is fundamentally incompatible with cities. Personally if it proves true I'd prefer razing every population center >1million over tossing liberty but I refuse to believe it; Free Men can live in Cities, Suburbs, the country or on the Moon. Quivering masses of welfare clients on the other hand... the solution should be obvious.
And note that he ins't calling for repealing the 2nd Amendment, just substituting his greater wisdom for that of the Founding Fathers without all that tedious mucking about with having a public debate about repealing the Bill of Rights. This trend is most disturbing because it isn't just limited to gun control. McCain/Feingold shredded the 1st Amendment while those who should have been objecting were cheering. 1, 2, 9 and 10 are pretty much extinct and 5 is threatened and not once have we actually repealed any of them.
Once upon a time the fundies wanted to regulate booze. Realizing the federal government had no such authority, and believing in our Republican Form of Government[2], they did it the right way and pushed through an Amendment though it took them a hell of a lot longer than just getting 50%+1 vote in Congress. So when did we pass an Amendment authorizing the FDA, DEA, etc? Thus was the 9th and 10th Amendments voided without a vote being needed.
Remember that you can't just object to ONE of these violations, because if one accepts the logic that allows ANY of these violations to occur the rest logically follow. Choose. Choose wisely.
[1] Reduce from truly insane to levels that make Dodge City at it's worst look like a safe place to raise children.
[2] As distict from the Republican Party... for the benefit of the Government educated.
Democrat delenda est