One picture is case civilization has collapsed - skulls, and people on fire.
One picture in case civilization has not collapsed. An orbital model of the atom, with little balls streaming away.
What if the archeologist is not humanoid and is used to a completely different models for atoms/particles? Then let the fucker burn, what do we care about octopi from Alpha Centauri?
And anyway, we still understand Hebrew, Greek and Latin after 2000 years. I would be amazed if civilization endures in 10000 years AND English has been lost.
I wonder which 'school' you went to. I was an international student myself. We were not talking about how we were going to default on our student loans, we were all talking about how we were going to negotiate our one year of practical training into green cards.
It took me only 18 months to pay off my 53K loans but it took me 7 more years, and 16K to get the green card. Of course, I was handicapped by trying to remain as independent from the company employing me as possible. I still do not know whether it was a good idea. I am still with the same company, but I keep telling myself that I would not have been able to negotiate my present compensation if my immigration lawyer had been in their pocket.
But to come back to the subject - no, international students do not come to the US to cheat it from its student loans. They either come for the prestige, and then they usually do not need loans, or they come for the education, and try to get the best job they can handle. When I graduated (1996, CompSci) that still meant the US. In any case, I know only three guys who returned to their home countries. One defaulted on his loans, but only because he was snatched by the military of his home country when he attended his brother wedding, and had his life and career ruined for trying to skip on his military service. The other two went back to start businesses who work with the US, and very much care about US credit rating and reputation.
Oh, I guess I should have put a date to go with the picture. Somewhere in the dark eighties, probably '86. Of course, twenty years later, Sony released wedge shaped laptops, before Apple did so, I believe.
Actually, the Soviets had it harder. The West was giving the insurgents high tech weaponry, was diplomatically supporting Pakistan in giving the Taliban a safe haven, and was paying for the indoctrination of new fighters.
It was quite reasonable to think that things would be easier without a superpower supporting the enemy. After all, in the beginning, Russia helped a lot.
No, they are setting churches on fire, in their annual attacks on Christians around Christmas. Then some kids burn, and some firemen who come to fight the fire get shot at, but of course, no one gets punished. After all, non-believer public worship is illegal.
Funny that you would mention Malaysia. The above paragraph happened there. Wanna guess at the AVERAGE number of Christians they kill for Christmas every year?
As for Jordan, I have to admit that they do prosecute attacks on Christians. But now, given that the highest profile case was against people who tried TO BURN KIDS IN A CHURCH for disrespecting Mohamed... I think I have been trolled. Or you're a brainwashed ignoramus. It can go either way.
Speaking for myself, my boardgame nights' male/female ratio is very close to 50/50. Usually it's three or four couples, and two or three singles. We play Settlers of Catan, Diplomacy, and sometime, when it's at my place, we break out my sister's and my own Warhammer Armies, and play some four way battles with simplified home rules.
There's one girl who clearly does not like boardgames as much of the rest of us, but she tries very hard to please her guy. We recently found out she actually enjoys Munchkins, so now we keep a game of Munchkins going all the time, with people who drop out joining (we modified the rules a bit)
> There reason for this is that cell phones don't significantly increase the danger of accidents
That's absolutely true. Using a cellphone while driving, on the other hand, may increase the danger of accidents. I have not personally done any studies, but I have caught myself doing stupid shit while talking on a cellphone. So nowadays I usually end the conversation if it becomes too involved, despite having a built-in hands free system in one of my cars.
> So, how is banning reading a newspaper and applying makeup a police state, but banning cellphones isn't?
You can prove that someone was on the cellphone by consulting carrier records. So, if there is an accident, and one of the drivers claims the other was on a cellphone, a warrant can be issued, and the issue can be resolved.
If a driver claims the other driver was eating, there's no way to prove it... unless a camera happens to record it. Nowadays, there is no technology problem with having a camera in every car, room, etc. A police state may find this a good thing. Not saying the UK is a police state, but quite a few people in the UK have been penalized for having an accident while eating/drinking, because a camera happened to be recording them at the time.
> anything else that's distracting and requires one to take a hand off the wheel
So you are saying that my cars should be illegal to operate? I happen to like manual transmissions. By the way, most studies show that hands free cellphone are not significantly less distracting that handheld ones.
We cannot ban all distracting activities, for example paying attention to your baby in the backseat or thinking about the problems with your current project. We can ban and penalize some easy to prove activities like texting and cellphone use. We can attempt to penalize being sleepy, eating, applying makeup, reading a newspaper, smoking, if we are willing to live in a police state.
So where do we draw the line? I'd draw it at the easy to prove, and I would only enforce it when there is an accident. I have no pity for those whose cellphone records show activity at the time of the accident.
Oh joy. Publicity has increased the chances that yet another person's life will be risked on the evacuation flight, which will be undertaken earlier than originally planned.
I hope the crew and the medical attendant make it safely back... and the stroke victim, of course. But if they all die in the premature rescue flight, I hope that one of their relatives gets away with arranging the murder of whoever set up the publicity site. And yeah, I am deliberately not posting anonymously, fucking karma be damned.
Back in the dark ages, in a military outpost stationed on top of the Balkans highest mountain, a Party official's son had a kidney stone. We had to get him down, my best friend lost a finger, and another of the guys lost a few toes. I had 30 square centimeters of dead skin on my face and hands. The crisis had passed, but he was freaked out and hyperventilating.
Two years later, the Party fell, and a bit later he drowned in a outdoor shithouse. I doubt the two were related... he had been involved in much worse.
Try peacefully assembling in a fire station's driveway, in the middle of the I-405, or on the path of police activity. Bring a copy of the Constitution, if you wish... See how far it gets you.
If it interferes with someone else's rights, if it prevents access to public services, if it conflicts with existing laws, if it lacks locally required insurance, if it incites a riot... these are exceptions that have applied in US cities where I have personally lived.
Like most anything in the Constitution, it's a great idea, a great ideal, and severely crippled if frowned upon by the Powers that Be.
> Peaceful protest doesn't require a permit you fucking fascist.
Yes, it does. If you want to peacefully stand in the lane I use to get to work, you better have a permit, so that I can demand to know what idiot issued it.
If you are protesting without a permit, you are breaking the law, and the police should arrest you. If the law is unjust, your arrest may prompt a change in the law. If the law is 'don't block a public thoroughfare', I doubt you will get it changed.
It has not been long enough, but I am not quite agreeing with the glowing reviews. The story so far is great, and the levels/cities are really well designed. The graphics are good, while nowhere near The Witcher 2 or even Crisis/Metro. The great, internally consistent style of the game world more than makes up for that.
But the combat, oh, the combat. I started both one shooter and one sneaker character, and tried two difficulty levels with each. I have not found a combo that worked satisfyingly. The shooter mode is stupid easy until you crank up the difficulty, and then it becomes a 'pop in and out of cover' chore. (Disclaimer: I despise cover combat)
The sneaking is immensely satisfying, until you clearly screw up, wait for hammer to fall... and the guard brushes against you and walks on without detecting you.
It needs work. It is nowhere as bad as Alpha Protocol, or whatever the spy game was called. It is enjoyable, and I do not regret buying it. I hope it will be polished after release, the way the Witcher 2 still is. But even if it is abandoned, the way AP was, it is still worth playing.
Just in case someone wants to reinstall the original Witcher: The Patch 1.4 on this page http://www.en.thewitcher.com/the-witcher/1/ will remove the DRM that comes on the retail CD. You will need to download the appropriate language patch in the same directory. And then you can apply patch 1.5 for extra content.
CD Project are trying. They fucked up big time with the registration servers, but I do not think it was trough malice. Never attribute to malice that which, yada, yada...
At the time of your posting, CD Project had already released a patch that upgrades the retail version of the original Witcher to the Enhanced Edition without checking registration.
But the only way that I know this is because I read a bit of Polish. As far as I know, there is no announcement in English and a bunch of frustrated people are complaining about being unable to play the original Witcher.
Hey, I did not appeal to the force of the law! Of course, what Dr.Bob DC is doing is legal. But morally, I don't think he should be doing it. No, we should not be jailing those saying what we do not like. But since when is it censorship to try to change their mind?!
I know you are trolling, and I even crack a smile sometimes, but have you stopped and considered that there are people more credulous and less informed than what you expect? Even if one paranoid parent withholds vaccine from his child because of your crap, wouldn't it outweight the shits and giggles we got from it?
And you know why we're getting this stupid idea? Because of the American Public's obsessive opposition to a proper gas tax.
Every single poll I've seen in the last couple of years has shown a majority supporting raising the gas tax. I think you are looking for culprits in the wrong place.
Chercher le fric? Who benefits from this stupid and roundabout way to implement what is basically a gas tax? Government contracts for tracking devices on every car, more bureaucracy and no additional taxes for oil companies... We truly have the best politicians money can buy.
Your explanation is not the correct one. Contrast Canada which has more guns per citizen than the US, or Switzerland, where most adult males are required by law to keep an assault rifle in their residence - a military weapon that is most certainly meant to kill people. Still the murder rate is minuscule compared to the US.
It's not about the availability of guns, and it is not about the types of guns. As an European living in the US, all I know that the answer is complex. It has to do with people living in poverty, it has to do with a part of the population that believes that it will never get a fair deal, and it has to do with glamorization of violence and guns. In Sweden, the social safety net is what keeps your murder rates down. I hear that's changing, with the influx of people who don't believe in the system, or who want to game it.
But seriously, in this specific case, the perpetrator seems to haven't been all there mentally. This kind of shooting is exactly as common in Europe as it is here.
You guys are making this sound a lot easier than it is.
Yes, it is theoretically possible to carefully remove the explosives with a specialized crew or even a robot. But even leaving their costs aside, it will take a long time, and there will be a risk of something going wrong. It would be irresponsible not to evacuate the neighbors while the disposal of the explosives is going on. So on one hand, you hope a controlled burn, with one day of evacuation and closing the highways. On the other hand, you either shut down the whole neighborhood (and the I-15 - hah!) for months, or work without evacuation, and open yourself to unthinkable damages if the non-so unlikely happens. The main cost is not the disposal itself, it's the cost of securing the area.
No one, not the owner, not the government, can afford the second option. Even the first option will cost dozens of millions. The owner will be covered by his insurgence, and his losses will not cover a fraction of one percent of the cost to the taxpayer. For once, the government is going its best in a totally fucked up situation.
That's the point. The drinks in the original post have some nutrition value. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are made to trick your senses, make you feel better about your choice, and not solve the existing problem. That is, they are an chemical concoction that is designed to deceive your taste buds, is passed as the healthy choice, and actually increases your thirst.
Oh PowersThatBe, I just killed a good joke by over-explaining it;-)
Yeah, this is actually a damn smart way to go about it. The mice are dead, and the poison destroys the target's liver, while being metabolized into an almost harmless compound, so that whatever eventually eats the snake is less likely to be poisoned in turn.
Of course, that does not mean that something isn't going to go wrong, but seriously, where would we be, as a race, if we never took risks? At least it looks someone actually thought about this for a second, as opposed to the NYC opossum debacle.
One night I got a call from my wife - she met some beasty on the path from the complex's gate to the apartment's front door, and the stupid thing stood its ground, got on its two hind legs, and started waving its paws and hissing at her. Something had been clawing our cat, so I was feeling pretty murderous - I took my recurve, and two arrows and went to see what was what.
It was a oversized raccoon, and it was really standing its ground - it could have ran in the bushes or through the pool's fence, but did not, even though we were on both sides of it. I was afraid I would miss it (I had never shot my bow at anything but targets) so I made my wife go back to the car, i.e. out of the line of fire. I'm glad I did, because the arrow went clean through the raccoon, bounced off the concrete path, and took out a finger worth of wood from a wall. I realize now it was a damn stupid thing to do, as I had really underestimated what my bow could do.
Shooting a gun in the same situation seem even more irresponsible - the bullet may just go through the critter, and end up into one of your neighbors.
In any case, we called animal control, and I got a sermon from the Sheriff deputy about firing the bow inside the apartment complex. She said that she could have brought me in front of a judge for it, but she let it slide.
Two days later, the animal control people wanted to check both me and my wife for scratches - the raccoon turned out to have been rabid... I guess we were both very lucky that night, despite doing so many things wrong - she stood nearby when she should have gone back to the car, I came up on the raccoon and could have scared it into attacking her, and then I shot a 65 pound bow in the middle of a bunch of dry wall buildings.
Re:Halo is About Multi-Player
on
Review: Halo: Reach
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You have a point. I have two cars. One is a 2005, immaculate, 460hp Volvo S60-R. The other is a totaled 1990 Toyota Supra. Both have bucket seats, but before a cop on a cell-phone smashed the Supra, I had installed a $2500 sound system.
Guess what, I still drive the Supra to work. I pay about 25% more for gas, and the ride is way rougher, but I enjoy the surround speakers, and there is something to be said about being able to push your right of way to the hilt (and then some) No one cuts off or rides the ass of a totaled car.
Slashdot Mirror
Pictures.
One picture is case civilization has collapsed - skulls, and people on fire.
One picture in case civilization has not collapsed. An orbital model of the atom, with little balls streaming away.
What if the archeologist is not humanoid and is used to a completely different models for atoms/particles? Then let the fucker burn, what do we care about octopi from Alpha Centauri?
And anyway, we still understand Hebrew, Greek and Latin after 2000 years. I would be amazed if civilization endures in 10000 years AND English has been lost.
I wonder which 'school' you went to. I was an international student myself. We were not talking about how we were going to default on our student loans, we were all talking about how we were going to negotiate our one year of practical training into green cards.
It took me only 18 months to pay off my 53K loans but it took me 7 more years, and 16K to get the green card. Of course, I was handicapped by trying to remain as independent from the company employing me as possible. I still do not know whether it was a good idea. I am still with the same company, but I keep telling myself that I would not have been able to negotiate my present compensation if my immigration lawyer had been in their pocket.
But to come back to the subject - no, international students do not come to the US to cheat it from its student loans. They either come for the prestige, and then they usually do not need loans, or they come for the education, and try to get the best job they can handle. When I graduated (1996, CompSci) that still meant the US. In any case, I know only three guys who returned to their home countries. One defaulted on his loans, but only because he was snatched by the military of his home country when he attended his brother wedding, and had his life and career ruined for trying to skip on his military service. The other two went back to start businesses who work with the US, and very much care about US credit rating and reputation.
Oh, I guess I should have put a date to go with the picture. Somewhere in the dark eighties, probably '86. Of course, twenty years later, Sony released wedge shaped laptops, before Apple did so, I believe.
Actually, why doesn't apple patent these? Just because we already have knives and forks?
It's not as if no computer has been wedge shaped before. My first computer was a Sinclair... from the side, it looked like this http://s19.postimage.org/s17afwooj/Sinclair2_A.jpg
Actually, the Soviets had it harder. The West was giving the insurgents high tech weaponry, was diplomatically supporting Pakistan in giving the Taliban a safe haven, and was paying for the indoctrination of new fighters.
It was quite reasonable to think that things would be easier without a superpower supporting the enemy. After all, in the beginning, Russia helped a lot.
No, they are setting churches on fire, in their annual attacks on Christians around Christmas. Then some kids burn, and some firemen who come to fight the fire get shot at, but of course, no one gets punished. After all, non-believer public worship is illegal.
Funny that you would mention Malaysia. The above paragraph happened there. Wanna guess at the AVERAGE number of Christians they kill for Christmas every year?
As for Jordan, I have to admit that they do prosecute attacks on Christians. But now, given that the highest profile case was against people who tried TO BURN KIDS IN A CHURCH for disrespecting Mohamed... I think I have been trolled. Or you're a brainwashed ignoramus. It can go either way.
Speaking for myself, my boardgame nights' male/female ratio is very close to 50/50. Usually it's three or four couples, and two or three singles. We play Settlers of Catan, Diplomacy, and sometime, when it's at my place, we break out my sister's and my own Warhammer Armies, and play some four way battles with simplified home rules.
There's one girl who clearly does not like boardgames as much of the rest of us, but she tries very hard to please her guy. We recently found out she actually enjoys Munchkins, so now we keep a game of Munchkins going all the time, with people who drop out joining (we modified the rules a bit)
> There reason for this is that cell phones don't significantly increase the danger of accidents
That's absolutely true. Using a cellphone while driving, on the other hand, may increase the danger of accidents. I have not personally done any studies, but I have caught myself doing stupid shit while talking on a cellphone. So nowadays I usually end the conversation if it becomes too involved, despite having a built-in hands free system in one of my cars.
> So, how is banning reading a newspaper and applying makeup a police state, but banning cellphones isn't?
You can prove that someone was on the cellphone by consulting carrier records. So, if there is an accident, and one of the drivers claims the other was on a cellphone, a warrant can be issued, and the issue can be resolved.
If a driver claims the other driver was eating, there's no way to prove it... unless a camera happens to record it. Nowadays, there is no technology problem with having a camera in every car, room, etc. A police state may find this a good thing. Not saying the UK is a police state, but quite a few people in the UK have been penalized for having an accident while eating/drinking, because a camera happened to be recording them at the time.
> anything else that's distracting and requires one to take a hand off the wheel
So you are saying that my cars should be illegal to operate? I happen to like manual transmissions. By the way, most studies show that hands free cellphone are not significantly less distracting that handheld ones.
We cannot ban all distracting activities, for example paying attention to your baby in the backseat or thinking about the problems with your current project. We can ban and penalize some easy to prove activities like texting and cellphone use. We can attempt to penalize being sleepy, eating, applying makeup, reading a newspaper, smoking, if we are willing to live in a police state.
So where do we draw the line? I'd draw it at the easy to prove, and I would only enforce it when there is an accident. I have no pity for those whose cellphone records show activity at the time of the accident.
So where do we draw the line?
Oh joy. Publicity has increased the chances that yet another person's life will be risked on the evacuation flight, which will be undertaken earlier than originally planned.
I hope the crew and the medical attendant make it safely back... and the stroke victim, of course. But if they all die in the premature rescue flight, I hope that one of their relatives gets away with arranging the murder of whoever set up the publicity site. And yeah, I am deliberately not posting anonymously, fucking karma be damned.
Back in the dark ages, in a military outpost stationed on top of the Balkans highest mountain, a Party official's son had a kidney stone. We had to get him down, my best friend lost a finger, and another of the guys lost a few toes. I had 30 square centimeters of dead skin on my face and hands. The crisis had passed, but he was freaked out and hyperventilating.
Two years later, the Party fell, and a bit later he drowned in a outdoor shithouse. I doubt the two were related... he had been involved in much worse.
Keep dreaming.
Try peacefully assembling in a fire station's driveway, in the middle of the I-405, or on the path of police activity. Bring a copy of the Constitution, if you wish... See how far it gets you.
If it interferes with someone else's rights, if it prevents access to public services, if it conflicts with existing laws, if it lacks locally required insurance, if it incites a riot... these are exceptions that have applied in US cities where I have personally lived.
Like most anything in the Constitution, it's a great idea, a great ideal, and severely crippled if frowned upon by the Powers that Be.
> Peaceful protest doesn't require a permit you fucking fascist.
Yes, it does. If you want to peacefully stand in the lane I use to get to work, you better have a permit, so that I can demand to know what idiot issued it.
If you are protesting without a permit, you are breaking the law, and the police should arrest you. If the law is unjust, your arrest may prompt a change in the law. If the law is 'don't block a public thoroughfare', I doubt you will get it changed.
It has not been long enough, but I am not quite agreeing with the glowing reviews. The story so far is great, and the levels/cities are really well designed. The graphics are good, while nowhere near The Witcher 2 or even Crisis/Metro. The great, internally consistent style of the game world more than makes up for that.
But the combat, oh, the combat. I started both one shooter and one sneaker character, and tried two difficulty levels with each. I have not found a combo that worked satisfyingly. The shooter mode is stupid easy until you crank up the difficulty, and then it becomes a 'pop in and out of cover' chore. (Disclaimer: I despise cover combat)
The sneaking is immensely satisfying, until you clearly screw up, wait for hammer to fall... and the guard brushes against you and walks on without detecting you.
It needs work. It is nowhere as bad as Alpha Protocol, or whatever the spy game was called. It is enjoyable, and I do not regret buying it. I hope it will be polished after release, the way the Witcher 2 still is. But even if it is abandoned, the way AP was, it is still worth playing.
I do not think a kilo means what you think it means,
Seventeen young kids may add up to 500kg. Seventeen adults will be significantly more. They would have to weight 65 pounds on average,
Just in case someone wants to reinstall the original Witcher: The Patch 1.4 on this page http://www.en.thewitcher.com/the-witcher/1/ will remove the DRM that comes on the retail CD. You will need to download the appropriate language patch in the same directory. And then you can apply patch 1.5 for extra content.
CD Project are trying. They fucked up big time with the registration servers, but I do not think it was trough malice. Never attribute to malice that which, yada, yada...
At the time of your posting, CD Project had already released a patch that upgrades the retail version of the original Witcher to the Enhanced Edition without checking registration.
But the only way that I know this is because I read a bit of Polish. As far as I know, there is no announcement in English and a bunch of frustrated people are complaining about being unable to play the original Witcher.
Hey, I did not appeal to the force of the law! Of course, what Dr.Bob DC is doing is legal. But morally, I don't think he should be doing it. No, we should not be jailing those saying what we do not like. But since when is it censorship to try to change their mind?!
I know you are trolling, and I even crack a smile sometimes, but have you stopped and considered that there are people more credulous and less informed than what you expect? Even if one paranoid parent withholds vaccine from his child because of your crap, wouldn't it outweight the shits and giggles we got from it?
And you know why we're getting this stupid idea? Because of the American Public's obsessive opposition to a proper gas tax.
Every single poll I've seen in the last couple of years has shown a majority supporting raising the gas tax. I think you are looking for culprits in the wrong place.
Chercher le fric? Who benefits from this stupid and roundabout way to implement what is basically a gas tax? Government contracts for tracking devices on every car, more bureaucracy and no additional taxes for oil companies... We truly have the best politicians money can buy.
Your explanation is not the correct one. Contrast Canada which has more guns per citizen than the US, or Switzerland, where most adult males are required by law to keep an assault rifle in their residence - a military weapon that is most certainly meant to kill people. Still the murder rate is minuscule compared to the US.
It's not about the availability of guns, and it is not about the types of guns. As an European living in the US, all I know that the answer is complex. It has to do with people living in poverty, it has to do with a part of the population that believes that it will never get a fair deal, and it has to do with glamorization of violence and guns. In Sweden, the social safety net is what keeps your murder rates down. I hear that's changing, with the influx of people who don't believe in the system, or who want to game it.
But seriously, in this specific case, the perpetrator seems to haven't been all there mentally. This kind of shooting is exactly as common in Europe as it is here.
You guys are making this sound a lot easier than it is.
Yes, it is theoretically possible to carefully remove the explosives with a specialized crew or even a robot. But even leaving their costs aside, it will take a long time, and there will be a risk of something going wrong. It would be irresponsible not to evacuate the neighbors while the disposal of the explosives is going on. So on one hand, you hope a controlled burn, with one day of evacuation and closing the highways. On the other hand, you either shut down the whole neighborhood (and the I-15 - hah!) for months, or work without evacuation, and open yourself to unthinkable damages if the non-so unlikely happens. The main cost is not the disposal itself, it's the cost of securing the area.
No one, not the owner, not the government, can afford the second option. Even the first option will cost dozens of millions. The owner will be covered by his insurgence, and his losses will not cover a fraction of one percent of the cost to the taxpayer. For once, the government is going its best in a totally fucked up situation.
*woosh*
That's the point. The drinks in the original post have some nutrition value. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are made to trick your senses, make you feel better about your choice, and not solve the existing problem. That is, they are an chemical concoction that is designed to deceive your taste buds, is passed as the healthy choice, and actually increases your thirst.
Oh PowersThatBe, I just killed a good joke by over-explaining it ;-)
Yeah, this is actually a damn smart way to go about it. The mice are dead, and the poison destroys the target's liver, while being metabolized into an almost harmless compound, so that whatever eventually eats the snake is less likely to be poisoned in turn.
Of course, that does not mean that something isn't going to go wrong, but seriously, where would we be, as a race, if we never took risks? At least it looks someone actually thought about this for a second, as opposed to the NYC opossum debacle.
One night I got a call from my wife - she met some beasty on the path from the complex's gate to the apartment's front door, and the stupid thing stood its ground, got on its two hind legs, and started waving its paws and hissing at her. Something had been clawing our cat, so I was feeling pretty murderous - I took my recurve, and two arrows and went to see what was what.
It was a oversized raccoon, and it was really standing its ground - it could have ran in the bushes or through the pool's fence, but did not, even though we were on both sides of it. I was afraid I would miss it (I had never shot my bow at anything but targets) so I made my wife go back to the car, i.e. out of the line of fire. I'm glad I did, because the arrow went clean through the raccoon, bounced off the concrete path, and took out a finger worth of wood from a wall. I realize now it was a damn stupid thing to do, as I had really underestimated what my bow could do.
Shooting a gun in the same situation seem even more irresponsible - the bullet may just go through the critter, and end up into one of your neighbors.
In any case, we called animal control, and I got a sermon from the Sheriff deputy about firing the bow inside the apartment complex. She said that she could have brought me in front of a judge for it, but she let it slide.
Two days later, the animal control people wanted to check both me and my wife for scratches - the raccoon turned out to have been rabid... I guess we were both very lucky that night, despite doing so many things wrong - she stood nearby when she should have gone back to the car, I came up on the raccoon and could have scared it into attacking her, and then I shot a 65 pound bow in the middle of a bunch of dry wall buildings.
You have a point. I have two cars. One is a 2005, immaculate, 460hp Volvo S60-R. The other is a totaled 1990 Toyota Supra. Both have bucket seats, but before a cop on a cell-phone smashed the Supra, I had installed a $2500 sound system.
Guess what, I still drive the Supra to work. I pay about 25% more for gas, and the ride is way rougher, but I enjoy the surround speakers, and there is something to be said about being able to push your right of way to the hilt (and then some) No one cuts off or rides the ass of a totaled car.