Do you really think it's an accident every time? If you were caught in the TSA line with a gun, what do you think would be the "correct" response?
A) "I was planning to hijack the plane, sir." B) "I was planning to defend the plane in case of a terrorist attack, sir." C) "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." D) "I forgot."
It wouldn't surprise me if there were that many gun-lovers who think they have a right to carry regardless of the circumstances, or at least just like to see what they can get away with. Also makes me wonder how many guns make it past TSA.
Thank you for your support of teachers. I've already reported and weighed in a few times about this subject, and I'd like to just expand on a few of your points.
Unfortunately, money speaks, and superintendents listen. When someone walks into a sup's office and says, "I'd like to donate $50,000 to the district to buy more technology," who would say no? And, on a national scale, if Zuck & Gates walk into the president's office to say, "We'd like to donate $1,000,000 to get more school districts to code," do you think Obama would be any different?
Probably my greatest frustration with the movie (though, there were many) was that there was no clear lead character. Is Ray really the protagonist of the movie? From my count, there was at least three: Ray, Finn, and Han Solo, and none of them were developed particularly well. Of course, we already knew everything we needed to know about Han Solo, but as for Ray and Finn, we understand very little about their backgrounds. We are never really told why Finn becomes "self aware" of the evil that he is a part of, aside from some quick cop-out line about occasional storm troopers going rogue and needing "reprogramming". And Ray just is abandoned on Jakku as a child; we don't know who abandoned her, and we don't know why. As an audience, we really cannot empathize with either character, making it challenging at best for us to identify them as lead characters or feel any attachment to their plight or their struggle to overcome it.
When comparing the two stories, episode 4 wins hands down.
In my home state of Minnesota, they allow anyone with either a business licensure or a mathematics licensure to teach computer science. In college, I majored in Computer Science and Secondary Mathematics Education. I found it ironic that it was my math licensure that allowed me to teach computer science and not my computer science degree. I found it just as silly that I was not allowed to teach keyboarding; mathematics teachers are not qualified for that. Also, just as amusing, anyone in the state with an English licensure is licensed to teach web page design.
It's a complete joke that our government advocates for increased computer science education, while in the same breath says that anyone can teach it. By that same perverse logic, I should be fully qualified to become a law professor. Right? Computer science is very logical...very layered...very structured...lots of inheritances...sounds like a good foundation of law to me.
We should use the facility that has been built, instead of letting one lone-wolf senator prevent that from happening. Yes, a national repository would be much, much safer than the status quo.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed to create a national program to dispose of nuclear fuel safely. The bill arranged for utility companies to pay for the development of such a site, which technically was a fee payed for by customers, not taxpayers (though that's really not much of a difference). Congress in 1987 decided that Yucca Mountain was the site to use, and all that money was collected and spent to build the site.
I don't understand why Yucca Mountain even needs to be a permanent storage solution. At least storing our nuclear fuel in one location is magnitudes safer than storing it at hundreds of nuclear power facilities throughout the country. Because we all know how safecoastal powerplants are, and there's no worryabout riversever flooding them either. The only reason why we aren't in a panic about Yucca Mountain being shut down is because we haven't had an accident yet. But just getting lucky should be no basis of national policy.
I don't like Ted Cruz. I don't like that he has double-standards. I think he's a hypocrite. And I don't like the platform he has chosen to run on.
But a good idea is a good idea. And when someone we disagree with shares a good idea, we should unite behind it, rather than censor it because of its source. If we don't, we just divide this nation further.
Do you believe governments / the US Government will succeed in forcing digital communication giants like Apple or Google to either make illegal zero-knowledge encryption methods or mandate backdoor decryptors to snoop on customer data and communications?
I just finished watching the movie Tomorrowland yesterday. It was a bit of a let-down... good acting, but the story made the movie weaker than it should have been.
But, hidden within it was this very insightful gem:
"In every moment, there is the possibility of a better future. But you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it, you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this all-terrible future and resign yourselves to it for one reason: Because that future doesn't ask anything of you today." -- David Nix / Hugh Laurie
We like being pessimists when it comes to our future. When we imagine a brighter future, then we are responsible for doing what is necessary to create it. But when we imagine a bleaker future, there's nothing we have to do to make it a reality. We can just live as hedonists until our passing.
I mean, if they're really this gullible, why stop there? If we want to talk about fictional destructive fluids of a crimson color, why not try to sell them red matter? What faster way to your 72 virgins than destroying an entire planet? Or don't they have a way yet to drill to the Earth's core?
I welcome the opinions of others, especially those that differ with my own. I don't welcome the name calling that accompanies it.
There's a big difference between saying, "I disagree with your idea" and "Your idea is stupid." The former leaves room for discussion. The latter is designed to censor or invalidate the statement based on emotional argument, leaving no room for debate.
There's an even wider difference between saying "Your idea is stupid", and "You are stupid for having come up with such a stupid idea." Gstoddart transitioned from the former to the latter, though, instead of calling me stupid, he called me a "fucking idiot." Now we're not only invalidating the statement, but also the person who made it. But the individual being censored is not silenced for valid reasons, but rather over emotions.
And there is an irony in that. These terrorists have abandoned reason in their acts; emotion has clouded their judgement, emotion influenced by corrupt religious leaders. We should not allow emotion to cloud our judgements in the same way. (No, our judgements are not anything near the same as their atrocious acts. But we still are allowing emotions to interfere with the ability to scrutinize them properly.)
We must be willing to accept any and every possible examination of the truth.
Comments like yours are what's making our country more difficult to live in. People are too afraid to share ideas, because they fear being judged for them.
In fact, the very essence of your comment is a quintessential illustration of the problem I was trying to highlight. Let's not debate the idea. Let's judge the voice.
All I can say is wow. I came back to check on responses to my comment four hours after posting it, and it looks like only the parent seems to have understood my meaning.
I know very well that the 1st Amendment is a limitation on actions the government may take against the people. My point had nothing to do with government action against an individual. My point is that we as a society would rather lynch anyone who dares to rationalize the actions of these bombers before we ever will find the courage to consider it ourselves.
In our rush to defend the victims of this tragedy and protect them from further harm, we are quick to decry any-and-all rhetoric that fails to condemn those responsible as anything less than psycopathic, sadistic, demented, and/or depraved. So, when someone has the courage to merely suggest that these individuals may be acting out in a manner that is, dare I say, human, we must as a society silence that voice. We will not allow ourselves to, as the parent put it, "foster debate, free from intrusion". These individuals who attacked civilians in Paris were/are monsters, we must forever see them that way, and we must treat them that way.
But it's that exact point-of-view that got us into a 10-year war in Iraq. It's that exact point-of-view that is keeping us in a 14-year war in Afghanistan. We as westerners do not understand the Arab mindset. (A decade ago, I lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, myself. I'm not a Muslim, but it did certainly give me perspective on this subject.) The more we seek revenge / justice / reparations / etc. from these individuals, the more it will inflame them. We're pouring water on a gas fire, and it's only spreading further and further. If we want to ever succeed in solving this Crisis in the middle east, we -must- see these terrorists not as savages, but as humans. We need to understand what drives them to such ends, and cure the sickness rather than treat the symptoms.
And when a politician of all people has the courage to suggest as such, we cannot treat him or her as a monster either.
This makes no sense to me. Why does our government need Boeing-grade solutions to very simple problems? Can our federal IT department not spend 60 seconds on Google, look up "Drone Jammer", and find this well-documented solution? Why can't they make something like this? FCC? Psh...these are the feds we're talking about. If Stingrays aren't a problem for them, jamming commercial drone frequencies won't be either. Maybe the electrical diagrams too complex for Uncle Sam to know what to do with? Oh, they want to detect them also? Another 60 seconds with "Sonar to detect drones" tells me that our friends across the pond have developed drone sonar for Heathrow. I'm pretty sure we're good friends with the Brits and can figure out how to use this technology in our prisons. Seriously...I've seen high school science fair projects look more complicated than this.
Or maybe I'm not getting the point. Maybe our government just doesn't want to bother coming up with their own solutions. Maybe they just want to throw our tax money away.
Article 1, Section 8, Section 1: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."...and Section 18: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Congress controls the money, and they can use it any way that is "necessary and proper" for the "general welfare" of our nation. Pretty broad power.
But, to clarify, Congress does not require any state to follow the educational laws they have passed. If they refuse to do so, they just cannot receive desperately-needed federal funding. The constitution allows it, as opined by the Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Dole.
"Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff."
I recall a moment in college when I was standing in the ruins of classic Rome with a friend of mine, reading to him a sign in one of the structures indicating where Julius Caesar was stabbed, and having him ask me, "Who's Julius Caesar?" Smart guy, graduated from college in three years, and has been a middle school science teacher ever since.
A central problem with our K-12 educational system has been too many cooks, i.e. politicians, in the kitchen. The central message they have been preaching without ceasing has been "More, more, more," and schools continue to suffer. Schools have become bloated with educational mandates that keep adding to the curriculum, and expect it sooner. For example, 25 years ago, my kindergarten classroom met for a half-day three days a week, where we learned our ABC's, learned how to count from 1-10, and otherwise drew crude drawings with crayons and played on the playground. Now every kindergartner needs to know how to read. The Finns still enjoy play time, and who has the better test scores? And don't get me started on Algebra expectations...
If we really want students to succeed, we need to give them room to grow by relaxing curricula standards, not adding more to them. If a smart guy can get through college and succeed in life not knowing who Julius Caesar was, does he need to know how to program a computer?
In my personal opinion, beyond the 8th grade, I think the only class every student should be required to take by law nationally is Civics. The care and maintenance of our nation depends on it. Leave the rest up to the states, and let national benchmarks like the ACT and SAT serve as a common metric students can measure themselves by.
It appears obvious that the human condition will put too much trust in the car. So, let's not let all humans operate self-driving vehicles for now. Let's say we instead begin with a very limited license that can only be obtained by specially-trained drivers familiar with expectations for device operation and manual override. Find a fleet of taxi drivers in a municipality, for example, or perhaps some transport vehicles that just bus passengers between an airport and hotels. Beta test car operations to determine how much driver-intervention is required at this stage in SDV technology development, then make recommendations from what is learned on how to proceed to the next step?
Either that, or start building dedicated highways that only allow self-driving vehicles. And only allow SDV-mode while on those highways.
But is it surviving? Does it even exist in our water system at present? I only know about this amoeba, because it became an issue up here in Minnesota when a boy swimming in Lake Minnewaska was believed to have contracted the disease and passed away. (Although, it was later determined that he died not from an amoeba but rather from bacterial meningitis.) But, as this was happening, it was shared that there's been only 35 confirmed deaths from amoebas over the last 10 years. Do we really need to concern and trouble ourselves over something killing 3.5 humans a year?
He doesn't cook, and was able to get rid of almost all kitchen appliances because of that. He uses a butane stove for hot beverages. He powers a small computer off batteries, which get their energy from solar panels. For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines. He re-wired his apartment's LED lighting to run off direct current. Have any of you made similar changes?
It irritates me every time I hear this ruddy nonsense that keeps spewing out of Seattle and San Fransisco that we're not cranking out enough computer science graduates.
Sorry for not answering your question, but your statement, "Since they weren't charged, it wasn't really a problem" actually gets to the heart of what's happening here and was worth commenting on.
There is a legal gray area here, though one of a different sort. Cops cannot legally stop and detain "suspicious people" just because they look suspicious. But they do it all the time, because no one will take the time to sue for an unlawful Terry Stop. It's unpractical; the unlawful action may be a demoralizing inconvenience, but that's better than getting yourself involved in a lawsuit.
But in this circumstance, the DHS can detain anyone they want. The gray area here is that the individual is being detained in an international zone. Until one passes through customs, he/she is not legally on U.S. soil and U.S. law does not apply. The DHS is technically welcome to detain her, you, and any other U.S. Citizen for as long as they want. My wife personally went through it on one occasion and sat in a locked room for about two hours before they mysteriously just let her go. She asked why she was held and got the "We're not at liberty to say" line in return.
The American lifestyle is no different. We need oil. We drive vehicles that burn gas. We need asphalt to pave our roads. We fly in airplanes that burn jet fuel. We depend on plastics to make everything that exists in our lives. In order to buy everything, we need it shipped from half-way around the world in freighters that burn diesel and in trains to get it across the United States. Practically everything that makes our modern lives modern depends on petrochemicals. If you want a more thorough list, go here.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really think it's an accident every time? If you were caught in the TSA line with a gun, what do you think would be the "correct" response?
A) "I was planning to hijack the plane, sir."
B) "I was planning to defend the plane in case of a terrorist attack, sir."
C) "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands."
D) "I forgot."
It wouldn't surprise me if there were that many gun-lovers who think they have a right to carry regardless of the circumstances, or at least just like to see what they can get away with. Also makes me wonder how many guns make it past TSA.
Thank you for your support of teachers. I've already reported and weighed in a few times about this subject, and I'd like to just expand on a few of your points.
Unfortunately, money speaks, and superintendents listen. When someone walks into a sup's office and says, "I'd like to donate $50,000 to the district to buy more technology," who would say no? And, on a national scale, if Zuck & Gates walk into the president's office to say, "We'd like to donate $1,000,000 to get more school districts to code," do you think Obama would be any different?
I do wish that we would just let labor markets let supply and demand naturally encourage or discourage people from entering and leaving the profession, as it happened a decade ago. While Microsoft claims that we aren't supplying enough computer programmers to meet demand, the BLS begs to differ. Salaries have grown at 1.5% annually between 2004-2012, barely keeping up with inflation. All the while, we continue to bring in more H1B visa applicants. If these companies -really- want more programmers, all they need to do is raise salaries. It sounds like they have plenty to spare. Not to mention repatriating all that money would go a long ways in increasing tax revenues to help states pay for their K-12 institutions.
where the lead happens upon it...
Probably my greatest frustration with the movie (though, there were many) was that there was no clear lead character. Is Ray really the protagonist of the movie? From my count, there was at least three: Ray, Finn, and Han Solo, and none of them were developed particularly well. Of course, we already knew everything we needed to know about Han Solo, but as for Ray and Finn, we understand very little about their backgrounds. We are never really told why Finn becomes "self aware" of the evil that he is a part of, aside from some quick cop-out line about occasional storm troopers going rogue and needing "reprogramming". And Ray just is abandoned on Jakku as a child; we don't know who abandoned her, and we don't know why. As an audience, we really cannot empathize with either character, making it challenging at best for us to identify them as lead characters or feel any attachment to their plight or their struggle to overcome it.
When comparing the two stories, episode 4 wins hands down.
In my home state of Minnesota, they allow anyone with either a business licensure or a mathematics licensure to teach computer science. In college, I majored in Computer Science and Secondary Mathematics Education. I found it ironic that it was my math licensure that allowed me to teach computer science and not my computer science degree. I found it just as silly that I was not allowed to teach keyboarding; mathematics teachers are not qualified for that. Also, just as amusing, anyone in the state with an English licensure is licensed to teach web page design.
It's a complete joke that our government advocates for increased computer science education, while in the same breath says that anyone can teach it. By that same perverse logic, I should be fully qualified to become a law professor. Right? Computer science is very logical...very layered...very structured...lots of inheritances...sounds like a good foundation of law to me.
We should use the facility that has been built, instead of letting one lone-wolf senator prevent that from happening. Yes, a national repository would be much, much safer than the status quo.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed to create a national program to dispose of nuclear fuel safely. The bill arranged for utility companies to pay for the development of such a site, which technically was a fee payed for by customers, not taxpayers (though that's really not much of a difference). Congress in 1987 decided that Yucca Mountain was the site to use, and all that money was collected and spent to build the site.
I don't understand why Yucca Mountain even needs to be a permanent storage solution. At least storing our nuclear fuel in one location is magnitudes safer than storing it at hundreds of nuclear power facilities throughout the country. Because we all know how safe coastal power plants are, and there's no worry about rivers ever flooding them either. The only reason why we aren't in a panic about Yucca Mountain being shut down is because we haven't had an accident yet. But just getting lucky should be no basis of national policy.
I don't like Ted Cruz. I don't like that he has double-standards. I think he's a hypocrite. And I don't like the platform he has chosen to run on.
But a good idea is a good idea. And when someone we disagree with shares a good idea, we should unite behind it, rather than censor it because of its source. If we don't, we just divide this nation further.
Do you believe governments / the US Government will succeed in forcing digital communication giants like Apple or Google to either make illegal zero-knowledge encryption methods or mandate backdoor decryptors to snoop on customer data and communications?
I just finished watching the movie Tomorrowland yesterday. It was a bit of a let-down ... good acting, but the story made the movie weaker than it should have been.
But, hidden within it was this very insightful gem:
"In every moment, there is the possibility of a better future. But you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it, you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this all-terrible future and resign yourselves to it for one reason: Because that future doesn't ask anything of you today." -- David Nix / Hugh Laurie
We like being pessimists when it comes to our future. When we imagine a brighter future, then we are responsible for doing what is necessary to create it. But when we imagine a bleaker future, there's nothing we have to do to make it a reality. We can just live as hedonists until our passing.
I mean, if they're really this gullible, why stop there? If we want to talk about fictional destructive fluids of a crimson color, why not try to sell them red matter? What faster way to your 72 virgins than destroying an entire planet? Or don't they have a way yet to drill to the Earth's core?
I welcome the opinions of others, especially those that differ with my own. I don't welcome the name calling that accompanies it.
There's a big difference between saying, "I disagree with your idea" and "Your idea is stupid." The former leaves room for discussion. The latter is designed to censor or invalidate the statement based on emotional argument, leaving no room for debate.
There's an even wider difference between saying "Your idea is stupid", and "You are stupid for having come up with such a stupid idea." Gstoddart transitioned from the former to the latter, though, instead of calling me stupid, he called me a "fucking idiot." Now we're not only invalidating the statement, but also the person who made it. But the individual being censored is not silenced for valid reasons, but rather over emotions.
And there is an irony in that. These terrorists have abandoned reason in their acts; emotion has clouded their judgement, emotion influenced by corrupt religious leaders. We should not allow emotion to cloud our judgements in the same way. (No, our judgements are not anything near the same as their atrocious acts. But we still are allowing emotions to interfere with the ability to scrutinize them properly.)
We must be willing to accept any and every possible examination of the truth.
Comments like yours are what's making our country more difficult to live in. People are too afraid to share ideas, because they fear being judged for them.
In fact, the very essence of your comment is a quintessential illustration of the problem I was trying to highlight. Let's not debate the idea. Let's judge the voice.
All I can say is wow. I came back to check on responses to my comment four hours after posting it, and it looks like only the parent seems to have understood my meaning.
I know very well that the 1st Amendment is a limitation on actions the government may take against the people. My point had nothing to do with government action against an individual. My point is that we as a society would rather lynch anyone who dares to rationalize the actions of these bombers before we ever will find the courage to consider it ourselves.
In our rush to defend the victims of this tragedy and protect them from further harm, we are quick to decry any-and-all rhetoric that fails to condemn those responsible as anything less than psycopathic, sadistic, demented, and/or depraved. So, when someone has the courage to merely suggest that these individuals may be acting out in a manner that is, dare I say, human, we must as a society silence that voice. We will not allow ourselves to, as the parent put it, "foster debate, free from intrusion". These individuals who attacked civilians in Paris were/are monsters, we must forever see them that way, and we must treat them that way.
But it's that exact point-of-view that got us into a 10-year war in Iraq. It's that exact point-of-view that is keeping us in a 14-year war in Afghanistan. We as westerners do not understand the Arab mindset. (A decade ago, I lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, myself. I'm not a Muslim, but it did certainly give me perspective on this subject.) The more we seek revenge / justice / reparations / etc. from these individuals, the more it will inflame them. We're pouring water on a gas fire, and it's only spreading further and further. If we want to ever succeed in solving this Crisis in the middle east, we -must- see these terrorists not as savages, but as humans. We need to understand what drives them to such ends, and cure the sickness rather than treat the symptoms.
And when a politician of all people has the courage to suggest as such, we cannot treat him or her as a monster either.
Another circumstance where the court of public opinion rules political correctness to be a greater virtue than the first amendment.
I thought when it came to the war on terror, it was mission accomplished.
Since they're still attacking American and European targets 14 years later, would that possibly suggest that our existing strategies are not working?
And it hasn't even been one week since the election. Well, I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords.
But on a more serious note, we all know the real reason why this pipeline was rejected. And its name is Berkshire Hathaway.
This makes no sense to me. Why does our government need Boeing-grade solutions to very simple problems? Can our federal IT department not spend 60 seconds on Google, look up "Drone Jammer", and find this well-documented solution? Why can't they make something like this? FCC? Psh...these are the feds we're talking about. If Stingrays aren't a problem for them, jamming commercial drone frequencies won't be either. Maybe the electrical diagrams too complex for Uncle Sam to know what to do with? Oh, they want to detect them also? Another 60 seconds with "Sonar to detect drones" tells me that our friends across the pond have developed drone sonar for Heathrow. I'm pretty sure we're good friends with the Brits and can figure out how to use this technology in our prisons. Seriously...I've seen high school science fair projects look more complicated than this.
Or maybe I'm not getting the point. Maybe our government just doesn't want to bother coming up with their own solutions. Maybe they just want to throw our tax money away.
Article 1, Section 8, Section 1: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."...and Section 18: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Congress controls the money, and they can use it any way that is "necessary and proper" for the "general welfare" of our nation. Pretty broad power.
But, to clarify, Congress does not require any state to follow the educational laws they have passed. If they refuse to do so, they just cannot receive desperately-needed federal funding. The constitution allows it, as opined by the Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Dole.
"Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff."
I recall a moment in college when I was standing in the ruins of classic Rome with a friend of mine, reading to him a sign in one of the structures indicating where Julius Caesar was stabbed, and having him ask me, "Who's Julius Caesar?" Smart guy, graduated from college in three years, and has been a middle school science teacher ever since.
A central problem with our K-12 educational system has been too many cooks, i.e. politicians, in the kitchen. The central message they have been preaching without ceasing has been "More, more, more," and schools continue to suffer. Schools have become bloated with educational mandates that keep adding to the curriculum, and expect it sooner. For example, 25 years ago, my kindergarten classroom met for a half-day three days a week, where we learned our ABC's, learned how to count from 1-10, and otherwise drew crude drawings with crayons and played on the playground. Now every kindergartner needs to know how to read. The Finns still enjoy play time, and who has the better test scores? And don't get me started on Algebra expectations...
If we really want students to succeed, we need to give them room to grow by relaxing curricula standards, not adding more to them. If a smart guy can get through college and succeed in life not knowing who Julius Caesar was, does he need to know how to program a computer?
In my personal opinion, beyond the 8th grade, I think the only class every student should be required to take by law nationally is Civics. The care and maintenance of our nation depends on it. Leave the rest up to the states, and let national benchmarks like the ACT and SAT serve as a common metric students can measure themselves by.
It appears obvious that the human condition will put too much trust in the car. So, let's not let all humans operate self-driving vehicles for now. Let's say we instead begin with a very limited license that can only be obtained by specially-trained drivers familiar with expectations for device operation and manual override. Find a fleet of taxi drivers in a municipality, for example, or perhaps some transport vehicles that just bus passengers between an airport and hotels. Beta test car operations to determine how much driver-intervention is required at this stage in SDV technology development, then make recommendations from what is learned on how to proceed to the next step?
Either that, or start building dedicated highways that only allow self-driving vehicles. And only allow SDV-mode while on those highways.
N. fowleri can easily survive for 24 hours
But is it surviving? Does it even exist in our water system at present? I only know about this amoeba, because it became an issue up here in Minnesota when a boy swimming in Lake Minnewaska was believed to have contracted the disease and passed away. (Although, it was later determined that he died not from an amoeba but rather from bacterial meningitis.) But, as this was happening, it was shared that there's been only 35 confirmed deaths from amoebas over the last 10 years. Do we really need to concern and trouble ourselves over something killing 3.5 humans a year?
Drone manufacturers come up with a "sound-proof drone." Then your new hi-techy gun is just a worthless noisemaker.
He doesn't cook, and was able to get rid of almost all kitchen appliances because of that. He uses a butane stove for hot beverages. He powers a small computer off batteries, which get their energy from solar panels. For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines. He re-wired his apartment's LED lighting to run off direct current. Have any of you made similar changes?
No. I have a wife.
It irritates me every time I hear this ruddy nonsense that keeps spewing out of Seattle and San Fransisco that we're not cranking out enough computer science graduates.
Hey Microsoft! Newsflash! Computer science majors rise and fall as starting salaries rise and fall.
If you want to see more majors, raise your starting salaries. Stop firing everyone and outsourcing to India.
Sorry for not answering your question, but your statement, "Since they weren't charged, it wasn't really a problem" actually gets to the heart of what's happening here and was worth commenting on.
There is a legal gray area here, though one of a different sort. Cops cannot legally stop and detain "suspicious people" just because they look suspicious. But they do it all the time, because no one will take the time to sue for an unlawful Terry Stop. It's unpractical; the unlawful action may be a demoralizing inconvenience, but that's better than getting yourself involved in a lawsuit.
But in this circumstance, the DHS can detain anyone they want. The gray area here is that the individual is being detained in an international zone. Until one passes through customs, he/she is not legally on U.S. soil and U.S. law does not apply. The DHS is technically welcome to detain her, you, and any other U.S. Citizen for as long as they want. My wife personally went through it on one occasion and sat in a locked room for about two hours before they mysteriously just let her go. She asked why she was held and got the "We're not at liberty to say" line in return.
The American lifestyle is no different. We need oil. We drive vehicles that burn gas. We need asphalt to pave our roads. We fly in airplanes that burn jet fuel. We depend on plastics to make everything that exists in our lives. In order to buy everything, we need it shipped from half-way around the world in freighters that burn diesel and in trains to get it across the United States. Practically everything that makes our modern lives modern depends on petrochemicals. If you want a more thorough list, go here.
We won't give up on oil until we run out.