What I question is the constitution itself: Is the right to bear arms really a key element to protest against excessive government control? India didn't gain their independence through guns. Today, we don't need them.
Among other things, the constitution is a contract. As with most multi-party contracts, it includes a provision on changing it. In this case, Article V.
You're welcome to try and convince 3/4th of the state legislatures that the 2nd amendment should be abolished, and that we need a new privacy amendment.
March on the white house to storm it ? Or what exactly ?
What is the point of those "freedom protecting" guns all the US people are supposedly so fond of ?
Yes. This isn't something you do casually. It's for when things are so bad you're willing to die to make them better and so are most of the people around you. The people who wrote this amendment had done exactly that. They fought in a war. They were willing to get themselves killed to be free of British rule.
Don't think George W. Bush and a few hundred terror suspects at Gitmo. Think Stalin's gulags and Hitler's gestapo. That is what the second amendment is there to prevent.
I see your point. The farming job might be better while you're working, but the entire package is better with system maintenance. You get money to do more fun stuff outside of work.
Maybe you should take the 15 extra work hours and create something with them.
If you truly believe farming is better, what are you doing in system maintenance? Farming jobs are still out there. They are difficult and require a lot of manual labor, but a lot less than they used to.
A lot of the people I grew up with now have kids, and they all think their kids are the best thing ever to happen to them. Even those whose personal finances are going thru some rough times.
Kids are expensive. But the standard of living, the stuff you can buy, isn't the most important thing in life. At least, not in most people's lives.
If you have an SO, for how much would you sell him/her? Unless you have a figure in mind, you don't think that standard of living is the most important thing either.
If your biological imperatives told you to have sex in order to have children, would you do it? If you had lived a hundred years ago, when contraception was difficult and uncomfortable, would you have chosen celibacy?
I may be rationalizing, or remembering the kidless past as worse than it was. But you may also be rationalizing your decision not to have kids. In either case it's an enormous decision with huge effects on your life.
I don't get how being tied down makes a person more independent.
It doesn't - I wasn't clear enough.
When you're just out of college, the fact that you live on your own without any supervision is new and exciting. You want to stretch it to the limits and see what you can do. Eight years later, it's something you're used to. Nothing to get excited about, just like the ability to see or read the internet isn't something you get excited about.
You have to take breaks and do other things, otherwise you do go nuts. I take an evening a week to write stories on my own.
However, being bored at work isn't enough reason to ditch your kids. If you decide to have children, they need you to work to support them and they need you to figure out how to stay sane doing it.
BTW, even a boring job today is a lot more varied than the farming jobs most people had two centuries ago. We're just spoiled.
A lot of service jobs do involve a high level of skills. If you don't believe me ask your doctor.
The fact is we've gotten really good at manufacturing. So good that the manufacturing we need can be done by a lot less people (just as agriculture now requires a lot less people than it used to). Services are a lot harder to optimize because you can't stockpile them.
Me too. But I haven't always valued money the same way.
Alone in your early twenties is a good time to chase after fun experiences and short term payoffs. Your money needs are relatively low, job security in a nice to have, and independence is new and exciting.
Wait eight years. Add a mortgage and a couple of kids. Get used to the independence. Suddenly a stable job that pays the bills sounds a lot better. You've done enough exciting jobs and short term payoffs, and now you need to think it terms of decades.
Most IT jobs aren't so complex that you have to start right out of college. You can do something else and change jobs.
If I could select between paying for my oil changes with post-tax dollars, or buying the oil-change insurance with pretax dollars, I'll do the latter. It's cheaper.
I could use a health care spending account, but that means I need to predict the amount I'll spend at the beginning of the year. Any money unused disappears, as per IRS regulations.
To do this would require absolute knowledge of the future. You and I may have the same likelihood of developing cancer in ten years. But if I get hit by a truck tomorrow killing me instantly I save my insurance company a bunch of money. If somebody is developing a new treatment, that will be available in ten years but very expensive, your cancer will cost a lot more than expected.
There's a world of difference between putting people in finer-grained baskets and predicting the results for a particular person.
Israeli Arabs are not Mizrachi Jews, but they are Arabs.
IIRC, Jews in Arab countries were called Arab Jews (in the same way the Christians are called Christian Arabs) until 1948. Today, of course nobody would say that.
The UN is not an impartial judge of borders either.
But yes, the US barges on other countries' affairs. So do other countries that are nearby or big and powerful. India did it by granting the Dalai Lama asylum. Pakistan did it by letting US forces pass through Pakistani soil on their way to Afghanistan. That's a normal part of diplomacy.
(1) BTW, that doesn't invoke Godwin's law, even if it comes close.
Exactly. The US makes those as political decisions. So does the UN, or more accurately UN officials who are diplomats of particular countries, usually with loyalties to those countries.
Mr anonymous coward, you have a perfect right to make a bold stand and refuse to buy things manufactured in a country whose policies you disagree with. I hope you agree with the Saudi policies on freedom of religion.
Since labor and land are both expensive in Israel, there isn't much manufacturing there for export. Unless you refuse to use services from Israel, or from companies that do product development in Israel (IBM and Intel spring to mind), this is a meaningless gesture.
Does the UN objectively determine what is contested territory? How do you determine something like that objectively? If England were to claim Normandy is English (as it has been in the past), would it make it contested territory?
They are subject to military tribunals. But based on the facts the military tribunal decides if they are protected by the Geneva Convention or not based on Article 4.
I think it would be perfectly legal to claim they were shooting at US soldiers as criminals and not combatants. Then they can be released into the custody of the current governments of Afghanistan and Iraq to be dealt with according to their local laws. In many cases, those laws are considerably harsher than Guantanamo.
Germany followed the Geneva Convention in WWII when fighting against the US for the most part.
The military claims that the organizations to which these detainees belong did not. You don't get Geneva Convention protections just by shooting at an army and then throwing your gun and raising your arms.
Slashdot Mirror
What I question is the constitution itself: Is the right to bear arms really a key element to protest against excessive government control? India didn't gain their independence through guns. Today, we don't need them.
Among other things, the constitution is a contract. As with most multi-party contracts, it includes a provision on changing it. In this case, Article V.
You're welcome to try and convince 3/4th of the state legislatures that the 2nd amendment should be abolished, and that we need a new privacy amendment.
March on the white house to storm it ? Or what exactly ?
What is the point of those "freedom protecting" guns all the US people are supposedly so fond of ?
Yes. This isn't something you do casually. It's for when things are so bad you're willing to die to make them better and so are most of the people around you. The people who wrote this amendment had done exactly that. They fought in a war. They were willing to get themselves killed to be free of British rule.
Don't think George W. Bush and a few hundred terror suspects at Gitmo. Think Stalin's gulags and Hitler's gestapo. That is what the second amendment is there to prevent.
Because the media is a business. Teaching about reality doesn't sell as well as presenting a well crafted fantasy.
Kids need to learn about sex. The problem is that porn often teaches the wrong things about sex.
I see your point. The farming job might be better while you're working, but the entire package is better with system maintenance. You get money to do more fun stuff outside of work.
Maybe you should take the 15 extra work hours and create something with them.
If you truly believe farming is better, what are you doing in system maintenance? Farming jobs are still out there. They are difficult and require a lot of manual labor, but a lot less than they used to.
A lot of the people I grew up with now have kids, and they all think their kids are the best thing ever to happen to them. Even those whose personal finances are going thru some rough times.
Kids are expensive. But the standard of living, the stuff you can buy, isn't the most important thing in life. At least, not in most people's lives.
If you have an SO, for how much would you sell him/her? Unless you have a figure in mind, you don't think that standard of living is the most important thing either.
If your biological imperatives told you to have sex in order to have children, would you do it? If you had lived a hundred years ago, when contraception was difficult and uncomfortable, would you have chosen celibacy?
I may be rationalizing, or remembering the kidless past as worse than it was. But you may also be rationalizing your decision not to have kids. In either case it's an enormous decision with huge effects on your life.
I didn't complain about them. I love the kids and they're the best thing ever to happen to my wife and me. But kids are labor intensive.
I don't get how being tied down makes a person more independent.
It doesn't - I wasn't clear enough.
When you're just out of college, the fact that you live on your own without any supervision is new and exciting. You want to stretch it to the limits and see what you can do. Eight years later, it's something you're used to. Nothing to get excited about, just like the ability to see or read the internet isn't something you get excited about.
You have to take breaks and do other things, otherwise you do go nuts. I take an evening a week to write stories on my own.
However, being bored at work isn't enough reason to ditch your kids. If you decide to have children, they need you to work to support them and they need you to figure out how to stay sane doing it.
BTW, even a boring job today is a lot more varied than the farming jobs most people had two centuries ago. We're just spoiled.
A lot of service jobs do involve a high level of skills. If you don't believe me ask your doctor.
The fact is we've gotten really good at manufacturing. So good that the manufacturing we need can be done by a lot less people (just as agriculture now requires a lot less people than it used to). Services are a lot harder to optimize because you can't stockpile them.
Me too. But I haven't always valued money the same way.
Alone in your early twenties is a good time to chase after fun experiences and short term payoffs. Your money needs are relatively low, job security in a nice to have, and independence is new and exciting.
Wait eight years. Add a mortgage and a couple of kids. Get used to the independence. Suddenly a stable job that pays the bills sounds a lot better. You've done enough exciting jobs and short term payoffs, and now you need to think it terms of decades.
Most IT jobs aren't so complex that you have to start right out of college. You can do something else and change jobs.
Yet another bad economic result of the tax code.
If I could select between paying for my oil changes with post-tax dollars, or buying the oil-change insurance with pretax dollars, I'll do the latter. It's cheaper.
I could use a health care spending account, but that means I need to predict the amount I'll spend at the beginning of the year. Any money unused disappears, as per IRS regulations.
To do this would require absolute knowledge of the future. You and I may have the same likelihood of developing cancer in ten years. But if I get hit by a truck tomorrow killing me instantly I save my insurance company a bunch of money. If somebody is developing a new treatment, that will be available in ten years but very expensive, your cancer will cost a lot more than expected.
There's a world of difference between putting people in finer-grained baskets and predicting the results for a particular person.
Israeli Arabs are not Mizrachi Jews, but they are Arabs.
IIRC, Jews in Arab countries were called Arab Jews (in the same way the Christians are called Christian Arabs) until 1948. Today, of course nobody would say that.
The UN is not an impartial judge of borders either.
But yes, the US barges on other countries' affairs. So do other countries that are nearby or big and powerful. India did it by granting the Dalai Lama asylum. Pakistan did it by letting US forces pass through Pakistani soil on their way to Afghanistan. That's a normal part of diplomacy.
(1) BTW, that doesn't invoke Godwin's law, even if it comes close.
Exactly. The US makes those as political decisions. So does the UN, or more accurately UN officials who are diplomats of particular countries, usually with loyalties to those countries.
Mr anonymous coward, you have a perfect right to make a bold stand and refuse to buy things manufactured in a country whose policies you disagree with. I hope you agree with the Saudi policies on freedom of religion.
Since labor and land are both expensive in Israel, there isn't much manufacturing there for export. Unless you refuse to use services from Israel, or from companies that do product development in Israel (IBM and Intel spring to mind), this is a meaningless gesture.
Hmm, no. You can't normally join races. You can convert to Judaism.
Besides, "Israeli" isn't a proper subset of "Jewish". There are plenty of Israeli citizens who are Arabs.
Does the UN objectively determine what is contested territory? How do you determine something like that objectively? If England were to claim Normandy is English (as it has been in the past), would it make it contested territory?
No, the conditions for it to apply are spelled out in the convention itself.
Remember in grade school? When they taught you that two wrongs don't make a right?
Yes, but there was a central authority to enforce good behavior. Between combatants there isn't one. That's the reason reprisals exist.
They are subject to military tribunals. But based on the facts the military tribunal decides if they are protected by the Geneva Convention or not based on Article 4.
I think it would be perfectly legal to claim they were shooting at US soldiers as criminals and not combatants. Then they can be released into the custody of the current governments of Afghanistan and Iraq to be dealt with according to their local laws. In many cases, those laws are considerably harsher than Guantanamo.
Germany followed the Geneva Convention in WWII when fighting against the US for the most part.
The military claims that the organizations to which these detainees belong did not. You don't get Geneva Convention protections just by shooting at an army and then throwing your gun and raising your arms.