Heh heh, I'm an 11B, and my AFQT was a 99...not all of us are idiots! Of course, I also have a B.S. in CS and a B.S. in Physics...
Heh. You're lucky you figured it out before joining. After I'd been in a year or so I figured out that I wished I'd gone 11B (or ANYTHING combat arms). It took me another year to claw my way from a REMF in Class B's most of the time (Signal Intelligence Analyst/Russian translator-- chairborne all the way!) to an Air Assault qualified Tactical Intelligence Analyst with the 101st Airborne. That's where all the FUN is! My god, that strategic job was draining my will to live.
Of course then suddenly it was August 1990 and I spent half a year washing grit out of my mouth and eating MREs. Ugh. Memorable, but ugh.
It sucks in a weirdly selective manner, though. Do an image search for "Abu Ghraib". Six pages of results. Not one image relevant to the issue of prison torture.
If you go look at the page context of those images, you notice that the dates (of those with dates at all) show nothing earlier* than January this year, months before the torture story broke. Abu Ghraib was a well-known prison BEFORE it's latest claim to infamy, so it's not surprising there are SOME pics. I think a modified form of Hanlon's Razor applies here: Never attribute to censorship that which can be adequately explained by inefficiency.
* I saw one story dated 11/8/2004 about a brit journalist being freed after being held as a POW by the Iraqi army at Abu Ghraib, but seing as how the Iraqis had been out of command of Abu Ghraib for 16 months at that date, I suspect the date is in error.
the original google-censoring story had a mention that the IMAGES WERE THERE, but did no longer appear on the image search like they had few weeks earlier(thus the (re)indexing excuse being damage control or 'google is da god' groupthink).
I've noticed that the google images search seems to catalog two distinct kinds of pics: the high-turnover images from high traffic sites (mostly news sites), and the deep spidering of essentially random images from all the other sites. Since news-type sites have a lot of "churn", google re-spiders them frequently and the images search database gets updated for those sites fairly regularly. All other sites are pretty much just "when the spider gets around to it". It's not surprising that the Abu Ghraib pics would "fall off" the images index when the news sites moved on to the next titilating scandal of the week, and the slow-ass "rest of the 'net" image spider has a half-year-plus lag time in updating old entries. So you can't find Abu Ghraib pics. You also can't find "Alexandra Kerry in her black dress at Cannes" pics. But you can find plenty of pics of Paula Radcliffe, the marathon runner, running with the Union Jack and wearing number 576, even though those pics are under a day old. Good luck finding those same pics of her in a week though!
Please read the Godwin's Law FAQ. "Invoking" Godwin's Law is a misuse of the law. Godwin's Law is about probability, not ending discussions and declaring yourself a winner.
The real irony and humor if this statement is that if you knew anything about the Bible, the ten commandments, or systematic theology (which Asimov actually did) you would not have made this incongrous statement.
The 10 commandments were supposed to be a figurative ethical mirror into which humanity would see, and then hopefully acknowledge, their imperfection.
The key part of your words is "supposed to be". When I said "parody of the Ten Commandments" I thought it was fairly clear that I meant "parody of the Ten Commandments as they are seen by inflexible religionists who think that indoctrination with dogmatic adherence to laws is a preferable substitute for teaching people to think for themselves in a reasonable, ethical manner". I seriously doubt Asimov was attacking the original intent of the Ten Commandments, but rather the way they had for some become an inflexible bludgeon used to beat down critical thought.
The really funny part is that YOU missed this.
No, the real funny part is that I had to spell out to you how neither I, nor Asimov, missed that at all.
Anyway, you mistook my point. I don't care that Asimov "copied" Jesus. Originals are few and far between. The real point is, if the parent was correct and Asimov was trying to criticize Christianity by way of criticizing the Ten Commandments for their thoughtless rigidity, he is in effect attacking a straw man. Jesus attacked the same viewpoint a long time ago.
The ossified Christian 10-rules-set-in-stone viewpoint he was poking at isn't really the same thing as the dynamic and fairly rebelious Christianity of Jesus himself. Asimov was attacking the very mindset of rigidity that turns a rabble-rousing street preacher's wisdom into a stodgy code of dry rules.
The three laws are essentially a parody of the Ten Commandments intended to illustrate the folly of trying to sustitute iron-clad rules for rational thought by reasonable, ethical people.
I've never heard that before. It's interesting, but derivative. Jesus did something similar a couple thousand years ago.
And people said it before Jesus as well. So what? It's a fundamental message that bears repeating. Repeating in as many possible thought-provoking and/or entertaining ways as people can think of. Are you saying that no one should state this basic bit of philosophy without attributing it to Jesus or whoever? Get real. The message belongs to humanity.
It says that it's structured to benefit nearly everyone else primarily at the expense of the U.S.?
Are you saying that even if the US does not sign it everyone benefits at America's expense?
No, as a non-signatory how would the treaty apply to the US? It's usually a given that nations which do not sign treaties are not bound by them.
If not, who benefits and who loses in its current state?
As far as the US Senate is concerned, the fuck cares? I'm explaining the reason why the US Senate voted 95-0 to reject Kyoto. They don't give a rat's ass about how Nigeria might benefit from selling emissions credits to India. They clearly thought the deal stank and tossed it entirely.
What is says is "if you're a third world country you can produce as much green house gasses as you want, if you're an industrialized nation you have to pay third world countries for the right to produce green house gasses."
I'm sorry; this is a quote from the Kyoto Treaty? Funny that a google search doesn't bring up the text of the treaty.
Now can someone please explain what is insightful about the above?
This is Slashdot. Smartass comments are frequently rated insightful. Why, just look at YOUR comment. It was nothing BUT smartass and you got rated "interesting"!
The quote isn't an actual quote from the treaty, it's clearly an exaggerated paraphrasing of the effective meaning of Article 6 of the Kyoto Protocol-- but you knew that, despite your elaborate straight-man act complete with links to searches for a phrase worded like no treaty is ever worded. What he's alluding to is this:
For the purpose of meeting its commitments under Article 3, any Party included in Annex I may transfer to, or acquire from, any other such Party emission reduction units resulting from projects aimed at reducing anthropogenic emissions by sources or enhancing anthropogenic removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in any sector of the economy
What the treaty does is set impossible goals for rich industrial countries, while giving undeveloped countries goals that result in them accruing "emissions credit", which they can then trade to the rich countries for cash. In the end, the emissions aren't actually reduced-- it becomes just another redistributionist scheme.
What does it say about the structure fo the treaty?
And what does the fact that most countries other than the US joined the treaty say about its structure?
It says that it's structured to benefit nearly everyone else primarily at the expense of the U.S.? Whether this imbalance is fair or unfair, I leave as an exercise to the reader.
What would it look like if the government, or the current administration was involved?
Surely They wouldn't point out that censoring was going on or what was being censored. That would defete the whole point of censorship
Censoring google image search, but not yahoo, nor even google's TEXT search also defeats the whole point of censorship. Unless we see the images "become unavailable" from more than just the one place, it makes more sense to conclude that the one place just has problems. Google's image search has always been 6 months to a year behind in some areas. Like another poster said elsewhere, try finding pictures of the 2004 world series. Is that being censored too? It's not censorship-- google image search just sucks.
Sorry, disregard my previous reply. The post you were replying to had disappeared due to down-mods and totally screwed up the context in which I read yours.
You're supposed to look for images with the image search. Not links with the web search.
What do you mean "supposed to"? Maybe if you want to avoid deflating your rampant paranoia. The truth is not that Google censors Abu Ghraib pictures, but that Google's image search sucks. The fact that plenty of pics are findable via the text search proves this point.
How are those things going to recognize whether someone is a soldier or a civilian?
Who said they're for shooting people? Judging by the only other robots that carry shotguns (police bomb squad robots) and one of the most dangerous things troops in Iraq face (booby traps in the for of bombs) I'd say the shotguns are probably for disabling explosive devices safely.
It also has chemical sensors that detect nuclear, biological, and chemical contaminants.
That sounds handy. I can't think of how many times I've found an NBC weapon and wanted to shoot it with some buckshot.
Being that these robots are frequently used to look for booby traps, usually in the form of bombs, the shotgun is for disabling explosive devices. Police bomb squads have used robots with shotguns to do that for years. Having NBC sensors is handy as well, so you know when NOT to use the shotgun.
Okay. So does it kill terrorists by hitting them with the buckshot, or with its body that flies through the air every time it fires the gun?
How powerful do you think a shotgun is? A 40lb robot will hardly move. The reason a shotgun seems hard to hold on to for PEOPLE is that we generally stand vertical to fire one and have a lot of angular momentum to absorb. Try firing one from the prone position. You won't move an inch.
And, being ankle-height, what part of the body does it aim at? Ouch...
You're just now saying that? You should've said that after getting about halfway through Asimov's book "I, Robot". The three laws are essentially a parody of the Ten Commandments intended to illustrate the folly of trying to sustitute iron-clad rules for rational thought by reasonable, ethical people. Asimov never intended the three laws of robotics to be taken seriously.
And all that was OK as long as Saddam was Washington's little puppetman. As soon as the puppet didn't follow its master, then suddenly he became the most evil man after Hitler.
So you're saying that if some CIA jackasses 20 years ago convinced the president that Saddam was "good enough", no future president should ever be able to call bullshit on it? The duplicity in Washington is a totally separate issue from whether Saddam was a murderous prick that deserved an ass kicking, yet you bring up the former as some sort of counter to the latter. Bravo, that's a really fucking lucid argument.
hey now, I'm a TANKER and I consider myself quite a geek.
Heh. At least you're not eleven bravo. I was a 98C (inteligence analyst/translator) deployed "up front" with the 11B's in the 101st AB. Some of those guys were in dire need of tech support, if you know what I mean.
b) Pulling a gun frequently led to escalation and injuries, in comparison to just shouting at them.
If the escalation led to the criminal's injuries, then pulling the gun on them wasn't a bad thing.
Couldn't have said it better myself! If you take the two premises and analyze them, you get an interesting picture. Some percentage of the time (let's assume that it's 95% just for the sake of argument) shouting "get out!" is as effective as shouting "I have a gun!" (let's take the anonymous poster's unsubstantiated word based on an unnamed "study" that they're equally effective, also for sake of argument). That leaves 5% of the time where shouting does not work. So what does that leave us? Two situations: you vs. intruder with you unarmed, and you vs. intruder with you ARMED. Of course the second arrangement is more likely to end in injury. In the first, the intruder is confident that he can go about his business (robbery or whatever) without having to fight you, and he is right! In the second the intruder is equally confident, but he is wrong, and will most likely end up taking a bullet for his error.
Notice that the second point b) the word "frequently" is used to make it seem like pulling a gun is a worse choice than being unarmed. Yet in point a) the poster admits that shouting, armed or unarmed, has the same effectiveness! Going by the poster's own arguments, it's better to be able to back up one's shouting with deadly force.
Incidentally, I love "citations" of studies that show X, Y, or Z to bolster an argument, yet the study is never clarified beyond "I saw a study". That's about as credible as saying "I saw on TV".
The second british atomic bomb ever made was made from plutonium from spent fuel rods back in 1953. It included lots of PU240. Even numbered isotopes of PU might suck as bad as even numbered star trek films, but you can still make a bomb from the stuff. I'm not sure why it became "impossible" 20 years after the British did it.
Pu-241 and -242 are the larger problem. Smaller quantities of -240 can be dealt with, but when you throw even a small amount of Pu-242 in there and it's Game Over. Regardless, all I said was that separating a mix of Pu-239 thru -242 into bomb-ready Pu is impossible, not that a a bomb can't be constructed with slightly contaminated Pu239.
This is patently untrue. Mechanical devices can be as unreliable as electronic devices if they're sufficiently complicated and/or poorly designed, but a simple and robust mechanical system (such as a firearm) will always have higher reliability than the simplest electronic device.
The gun not working because you hadn't cleaned it would be MORE likely than the smart part of the gun failing.
Nonsense. A gun would have to be extraordinarily dirty to gum up the works badly enough to make it not fire. Conversely, it generally only takes getting the battery wet to knock out an electronic device.
If you are scared of that not working, I suggest you don't drive a car since A)The cars electics could fail or B) Traffic lights could fail.
They can and often do fail. The difference is that the odds that it's an emergency situation are a hell of a lot lower in the case of the car and traffic lights.
Oh and btw no batteries, the people who are making this weapons aren't stupid.
Oh really? The article didn't mention anything about powering the system. How do YOU think these electronic devices will be powered, if not via batteries? Solar panels? Hand cranked generator? Extension cords? Happy thoughts?
if they surrender their weapon to someone, it's probably because they are already under gunpoint..
Actually, this only happens on TV and in movies. In real life, cops do not ever surrender their firearm willingly. Not at gunpoint, not in a hostage situation, not ever. Cops being shot by their own guns generally happens during a struggle when some nut gets in a wrestling match with them. Police holsters are even designed such that the weapon can't be pulled out from behind, so sneaking up on 'em and jerking their gun won't work. Cops cooperating with some guy who say "OK, now take out your guns and slide them over here" is pure Hollywood bullcrap. They might pull their guns, but only to start shooting.
Then you own a gun for the wrong reason. Police studies indicated you have a vastly increased chance of being killed with a gun if you keep a gun in the house
Those "police studies" are looking at the wrong numbers. The vast majority defensive uses of firearms do not involve discharging the firearm. Most intuder-homeowner confrontations involving firearms start with the homeowner announcing they are armed, and the intruder swiftly vacating the premises. I don't know where people get the idea that the only way to use a gun is to sneak up on someone and start blasting. Really, all you have to do to get a burglar moving is operate the slide on a pump action shotgun. Most law abiding citizens don't want to hurt anyone. In fact, generally the only people capable of making the a law abiding citizen fly into a homicidal rage are close family who've been working at it for years. Your more likely to be killed than kill with the gun in your house, but not more likely to be killed with than to scare of an intruder by brandishing or announcing posession of it.
Ok, are you saying he voted FOR the reactor, or he voted for getting rid of the reactor? Because if he voted FOR the reactor, the grandparent post would be wrong.
He voted to continue funding it, but likely only after finding out it wasn't going to matter. I doubt he wanted the reactor, but he probably wanted to be able to tell the folks back home "I fought for the reactor program".
Here's a man who's a nuclear engineer who bans breeder reactors because terrorists might get ahold of the plutonium and make a bomb, even though he should know that refining the Pu239 from the mix is impossible.
It's only impossible until somebody finds a way to do it.
Irrelevant. It was impossible in 1977 when he banned breeder reactors based on the argument that terrorists would somehow be able to achieve this impossible task. It's not "can't quite figure out how" impossible either. It's more of a "we dumped millions into research and neither we, the Russians, nor the Brits, nor anyone else can figure out a way to do it, because it's ALL frickin' Plutonium" type of impossible.
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Heh. You're lucky you figured it out before joining. After I'd been in a year or so I figured out that I wished I'd gone 11B (or ANYTHING combat arms). It took me another year to claw my way from a REMF in Class B's most of the time (Signal Intelligence Analyst/Russian translator-- chairborne all the way!) to an Air Assault qualified Tactical Intelligence Analyst with the 101st Airborne. That's where all the FUN is! My god, that strategic job was draining my will to live.
Of course then suddenly it was August 1990 and I spent half a year washing grit out of my mouth and eating MREs. Ugh. Memorable, but ugh.
If you go look at the page context of those images, you notice that the dates (of those with dates at all) show nothing earlier* than January this year, months before the torture story broke. Abu Ghraib was a well-known prison BEFORE it's latest claim to infamy, so it's not surprising there are SOME pics. I think a modified form of Hanlon's Razor applies here: Never attribute to censorship that which can be adequately explained by inefficiency.
* I saw one story dated 11/8/2004 about a brit journalist being freed after being held as a POW by the Iraqi army at Abu Ghraib, but seing as how the Iraqis had been out of command of Abu Ghraib for 16 months at that date, I suspect the date is in error.
I've noticed that the google images search seems to catalog two distinct kinds of pics: the high-turnover images from high traffic sites (mostly news sites), and the deep spidering of essentially random images from all the other sites. Since news-type sites have a lot of "churn", google re-spiders them frequently and the images search database gets updated for those sites fairly regularly. All other sites are pretty much just "when the spider gets around to it". It's not surprising that the Abu Ghraib pics would "fall off" the images index when the news sites moved on to the next titilating scandal of the week, and the slow-ass "rest of the 'net" image spider has a half-year-plus lag time in updating old entries. So you can't find Abu Ghraib pics. You also can't find "Alexandra Kerry in her black dress at Cannes" pics. But you can find plenty of pics of Paula Radcliffe, the marathon runner, running with the Union Jack and wearing number 576, even though those pics are under a day old. Good luck finding those same pics of her in a week though!
Please read the Godwin's Law FAQ. "Invoking" Godwin's Law is a misuse of the law. Godwin's Law is about probability, not ending discussions and declaring yourself a winner.
The 10 commandments were supposed to be a figurative ethical mirror into which humanity would see, and then hopefully acknowledge, their imperfection.
The key part of your words is "supposed to be". When I said "parody of the Ten Commandments" I thought it was fairly clear that I meant "parody of the Ten Commandments as they are seen by inflexible religionists who think that indoctrination with dogmatic adherence to laws is a preferable substitute for teaching people to think for themselves in a reasonable, ethical manner". I seriously doubt Asimov was attacking the original intent of the Ten Commandments, but rather the way they had for some become an inflexible bludgeon used to beat down critical thought.
The really funny part is that YOU missed this.
No, the real funny part is that I had to spell out to you how neither I, nor Asimov, missed that at all.
The ossified Christian 10-rules-set-in-stone viewpoint he was poking at isn't really the same thing as the dynamic and fairly rebelious Christianity of Jesus himself. Asimov was attacking the very mindset of rigidity that turns a rabble-rousing street preacher's wisdom into a stodgy code of dry rules.
I've never heard that before. It's interesting, but derivative. Jesus did something similar a couple thousand years ago.
And people said it before Jesus as well. So what? It's a fundamental message that bears repeating. Repeating in as many possible thought-provoking and/or entertaining ways as people can think of. Are you saying that no one should state this basic bit of philosophy without attributing it to Jesus or whoever? Get real. The message belongs to humanity.
Are you saying that even if the US does not sign it everyone benefits at America's expense?
No, as a non-signatory how would the treaty apply to the US? It's usually a given that nations which do not sign treaties are not bound by them.
If not, who benefits and who loses in its current state?
As far as the US Senate is concerned, the fuck cares? I'm explaining the reason why the US Senate voted 95-0 to reject Kyoto. They don't give a rat's ass about how Nigeria might benefit from selling emissions credits to India. They clearly thought the deal stank and tossed it entirely.
I'm sorry; this is a quote from the Kyoto Treaty? Funny that a google search doesn't bring up the text of the treaty.
Now can someone please explain what is insightful about the above?
This is Slashdot. Smartass comments are frequently rated insightful. Why, just look at YOUR comment. It was nothing BUT smartass and you got rated "interesting"!
The quote isn't an actual quote from the treaty, it's clearly an exaggerated paraphrasing of the effective meaning of Article 6 of the Kyoto Protocol-- but you knew that, despite your elaborate straight-man act complete with links to searches for a phrase worded like no treaty is ever worded. What he's alluding to is this:
What the treaty does is set impossible goals for rich industrial countries, while giving undeveloped countries goals that result in them accruing "emissions credit", which they can then trade to the rich countries for cash. In the end, the emissions aren't actually reduced-- it becomes just another redistributionist scheme.
And what does the fact that most countries other than the US joined the treaty say about its structure?
It says that it's structured to benefit nearly everyone else primarily at the expense of the U.S.? Whether this imbalance is fair or unfair, I leave as an exercise to the reader.
Censoring google image search, but not yahoo, nor even google's TEXT search also defeats the whole point of censorship. Unless we see the images "become unavailable" from more than just the one place, it makes more sense to conclude that the one place just has problems. Google's image search has always been 6 months to a year behind in some areas. Like another poster said elsewhere, try finding pictures of the 2004 world series. Is that being censored too? It's not censorship-- google image search just sucks.
Sorry, disregard my previous reply. The post you were replying to had disappeared due to down-mods and totally screwed up the context in which I read yours.
What do you mean "supposed to"? Maybe if you want to avoid deflating your rampant paranoia. The truth is not that Google censors Abu Ghraib pictures, but that Google's image search sucks. The fact that plenty of pics are findable via the text search proves this point.
Who said they're for shooting people? Judging by the only other robots that carry shotguns (police bomb squad robots) and one of the most dangerous things troops in Iraq face (booby traps in the for of bombs) I'd say the shotguns are probably for disabling explosive devices safely.
Being that these robots are frequently used to look for booby traps, usually in the form of bombs, the shotgun is for disabling explosive devices. Police bomb squads have used robots with shotguns to do that for years. Having NBC sensors is handy as well, so you know when NOT to use the shotgun.
Okay. So does it kill terrorists by hitting them with the buckshot, or with its body that flies through the air every time it fires the gun?
How powerful do you think a shotgun is? A 40lb robot will hardly move. The reason a shotgun seems hard to hold on to for PEOPLE is that we generally stand vertical to fire one and have a lot of angular momentum to absorb. Try firing one from the prone position. You won't move an inch.
And, being ankle-height, what part of the body does it aim at? Ouch...
Packbots are too slow to use against people.
You're just now saying that? You should've said that after getting about halfway through Asimov's book "I, Robot". The three laws are essentially a parody of the Ten Commandments intended to illustrate the folly of trying to sustitute iron-clad rules for rational thought by reasonable, ethical people. Asimov never intended the three laws of robotics to be taken seriously.
So you're saying that if some CIA jackasses 20 years ago convinced the president that Saddam was "good enough", no future president should ever be able to call bullshit on it? The duplicity in Washington is a totally separate issue from whether Saddam was a murderous prick that deserved an ass kicking, yet you bring up the former as some sort of counter to the latter. Bravo, that's a really fucking lucid argument.
Heh. At least you're not eleven bravo. I was a 98C (inteligence analyst/translator) deployed "up front" with the 11B's in the 101st AB. Some of those guys were in dire need of tech support, if you know what I mean.
If the escalation led to the criminal's injuries, then pulling the gun on them wasn't a bad thing.
Couldn't have said it better myself! If you take the two premises and analyze them, you get an interesting picture. Some percentage of the time (let's assume that it's 95% just for the sake of argument) shouting "get out!" is as effective as shouting "I have a gun!" (let's take the anonymous poster's unsubstantiated word based on an unnamed "study" that they're equally effective, also for sake of argument). That leaves 5% of the time where shouting does not work. So what does that leave us? Two situations: you vs. intruder with you unarmed, and you vs. intruder with you ARMED. Of course the second arrangement is more likely to end in injury. In the first, the intruder is confident that he can go about his business (robbery or whatever) without having to fight you, and he is right! In the second the intruder is equally confident, but he is wrong, and will most likely end up taking a bullet for his error.
Notice that the second point b) the word "frequently" is used to make it seem like pulling a gun is a worse choice than being unarmed. Yet in point a) the poster admits that shouting, armed or unarmed, has the same effectiveness! Going by the poster's own arguments, it's better to be able to back up one's shouting with deadly force.
Incidentally, I love "citations" of studies that show X, Y, or Z to bolster an argument, yet the study is never clarified beyond "I saw a study". That's about as credible as saying "I saw on TV".
Pu-241 and -242 are the larger problem. Smaller quantities of -240 can be dealt with, but when you throw even a small amount of Pu-242 in there and it's Game Over. Regardless, all I said was that separating a mix of Pu-239 thru -242 into bomb-ready Pu is impossible, not that a a bomb can't be constructed with slightly contaminated Pu239.
This is patently untrue. Mechanical devices can be as unreliable as electronic devices if they're sufficiently complicated and/or poorly designed, but a simple and robust mechanical system (such as a firearm) will always have higher reliability than the simplest electronic device.
The gun not working because you hadn't cleaned it would be MORE likely than the smart part of the gun failing.
Nonsense. A gun would have to be extraordinarily dirty to gum up the works badly enough to make it not fire. Conversely, it generally only takes getting the battery wet to knock out an electronic device.
If you are scared of that not working, I suggest you don't drive a car since A)The cars electics could fail or B) Traffic lights could fail.
They can and often do fail. The difference is that the odds that it's an emergency situation are a hell of a lot lower in the case of the car and traffic lights.
Oh and btw no batteries, the people who are making this weapons aren't stupid.
Oh really? The article didn't mention anything about powering the system. How do YOU think these electronic devices will be powered, if not via batteries? Solar panels? Hand cranked generator? Extension cords? Happy thoughts?
Actually, this only happens on TV and in movies. In real life, cops do not ever surrender their firearm willingly. Not at gunpoint, not in a hostage situation, not ever. Cops being shot by their own guns generally happens during a struggle when some nut gets in a wrestling match with them. Police holsters are even designed such that the weapon can't be pulled out from behind, so sneaking up on 'em and jerking their gun won't work. Cops cooperating with some guy who say "OK, now take out your guns and slide them over here" is pure Hollywood bullcrap. They might pull their guns, but only to start shooting.
Those "police studies" are looking at the wrong numbers. The vast majority defensive uses of firearms do not involve discharging the firearm. Most intuder-homeowner confrontations involving firearms start with the homeowner announcing they are armed, and the intruder swiftly vacating the premises. I don't know where people get the idea that the only way to use a gun is to sneak up on someone and start blasting. Really, all you have to do to get a burglar moving is operate the slide on a pump action shotgun. Most law abiding citizens don't want to hurt anyone. In fact, generally the only people capable of making the a law abiding citizen fly into a homicidal rage are close family who've been working at it for years. Your more likely to be killed than kill with the gun in your house, but not more likely to be killed with than to scare of an intruder by brandishing or announcing posession of it.
He voted to continue funding it, but likely only after finding out it wasn't going to matter. I doubt he wanted the reactor, but he probably wanted to be able to tell the folks back home "I fought for the reactor program".
It's only impossible until somebody finds a way to do it.
Irrelevant. It was impossible in 1977 when he banned breeder reactors based on the argument that terrorists would somehow be able to achieve this impossible task. It's not "can't quite figure out how" impossible either. It's more of a "we dumped millions into research and neither we, the Russians, nor the Brits, nor anyone else can figure out a way to do it, because it's ALL frickin' Plutonium" type of impossible.