Why do you insist they were built by humans? We have more resources and technology than ever before in history, and it's still considered impossible...
Where do you get the idea that the pyramids would be impossible to build today? It's just a pile of limestone blocks. People built a 6 meter pyramid using a total of only 40 something men in less than a month for an episode of NOVA, using only a few modern shortcuts (iron tools to carve and a front-end loader to transport blocks to the building site to be placed by hand after demonstrating that it was possible to move the blocks by rolling them). The only thing that makes pyramids impressive is that they were built with muscle power and no understanding of pulleys.
As for how they were constructed back then, there are a number of dominant theories, and the lack of consensus isn't because there's evidence disproving them so much as a lack of a smoking gun. Plus, there's evidence that there wasn't a consistent method and that techniques evolved over time.
Seriously, what's the alternative -- aliens? What plausible reason would aliens have to come down a build huge stone pyramids and leave not a single trace of more advanced construction materials or techniques? Why no skyscrapers? Why no reinforced concrete? Why no electrical or other fuel infrastructure? Why no plastics and no glass, even? Just overly fancy stone cairns with the corpses of rich humans stuffed inside? That's it? Insanity.
I'd just question why what would appear to be the world's most ingenious civilization, that spanned the globe apparently, would set up shop in a desert. Of course there could have been a good reason, the ancient Egyptians did all sorts of strange things. It's just that all of the other pyramids around the world are in lush rainforest-like places, many covered completely in vegetation. Also the sphinx was apparently worn down by a significant amount of rain since it was constructed.
I don't know how to say this without significant offense, but you've been listening to waaay too many crackpots.
As another poster pointed out, pyramids are a common monument structure, not because one globe-spanning civilization was obsessed with them, but because they are some of the simplest stable structures to create. (Never mind that there are significant differences in the way different cultures made their pyramids look either.)
The reason the Egyptians "set up shop in a desert" is that it wasn't one at the time. People were living in Egypt as far back as 8000 years ago, and it took over 2000 years for the region to become a desert. However, the Nile River valley was and still is one of the most fertile places on the planet. It nurtured their civilization for millennia after the surrounding area went to hell.
Shoving a spike through my gas tank is not a guaranteed fire. An environmental incident, maybe, but certainly not a guaranteed fire.
Puncturing a LiIon battery is a fire almost every time.
Maybe (though I'm skeptical), but no one has died from a punctured battery in a Tesla yet due to the firewall design. Each cell is wrapped in a gel that reacts in the presence of fire to cool down the pack and to harden into a material with low conductivity to heat. You can read more about the very interesting design here.
Sadly, you can't say the same for a gas tank, and punctured tank fires can get very energetic, very fast. Just ask the families of any number of Jeep Grand Cherokee owners, thanks to an unshielded plastic tank anchored close to the rear.
It's not impossible for an electric vehicle to catch fire due to the battery, but there's less that burns easily without gas & oil, and a more careful design like Tesla's allows you to safely bring the car to the side of the road and exist first. The only people to have died in an incident where an electric vehicle's battery system caught fire most likely did so from the force of impact.
Hell, that's another nod for Tesla, because one of the three fires that got so much press involved some drunk idiot driving through a concrete wall into a tree. The man walked away just fine. (Or more ran away to flee the cops and asked Tesla to expedite the replacement. However, being bought by total douches is no sign your car isn't safe.)
Unlike the Pinto, it never exploded in low-speed collisions, and it had a quarter-inch metal plate between its fuel source and danger. Your own car wouldn't handle a spike impaling its tank nearly so well, nor would you have had as much time to safely pull over or have a car left afterwards because gasoline & oil aren't as easy to contain once punctured as a battery is.
The fuel source in a Tesla is better armored than practically any other mass-produced car on the market. I think they're just being overly cautious rather than "admitting" danger; any other car with a similar ride height would have experienced far more catastrophic failure hitting a spike at highway speeds like that.
People are really bad at understanding statistics because the Mainstream Media purposely skews reporting to maintain current power structures.
Not really. If you want to understand why the media reports on what it reports on how it reports on it, you just have to remember that all TV news companies are large, for-profit corporations. That means that the news is a product just like any other. You want a product that (a) sells to the most people (b) for the lowest cost. The true bias of journalism is lazy, greedy, self-interest.
The reason why stories are low on research and fact-finding (aka "investigative journalism") is because of (b). The reason why some stations skew towards the emotional biases of one demographic or another is because of (a). The reason we get so much coverage of celebrities, sports, and "missing white girls" instead of international politics, finance, and science is because of (a) + (b). That's also the root of the behavior you mention of sportscasters cheering for a close game and whichever team is most popular.
Fox News, MSBNC, the Drudge Report, and the Huffington Post all cater to their respective partisans, because partisans like to have their egos stroked with nothing but stories that confirm their own biases. It's a reliable revenue source. CNN acts like a toddler with ADHD because they think that appeals to millennials (and they simply just don't care anymore). And "fringe" journalism? That's just catering to a niche, like any other small competitor in a market.
You want reliable journalism? Look for someone how isn't making a profit. The closest thing I can find to services that care about journalism is listener-funded NPR and billionaire-owned money sink newspapers. Facts just aren't profitable anymore.
If Tesla gains enough 'momentum' and mainstream acceptance (industry is large enough to gain its own power brokers), you will start seeing sensational articles about how great the Tesla is.
Pfft. Tesla gets plenty of free press in their favor. The problem is that no one likes a scandal quite like a scandal from someone who is popular. The "fires" thing is really the first major negative press Tesla has gotten since its inception. It's frankly just it's time in the ring.
In the near future, every town will need a small workshop with basic CNC machines and 3D printers capable of producing at least a 1990s-level computer, fridge and car engine. If we manage to get rid of copyright and patent monopolies, this is the path of least resistance.
Same problem, different technology. Once you eliminate most of the need for skilled labor except to service the machines and then get rid of many ways of making profit from invention, you're down to the person who owns the capital of the CNC mill & printers vs. a bunch of people who have nothing to offer in exchange for using them. Just on a more local scale. That is, unless the technologies become cheap enough to be ubiquitous, that is.
It's even more amusing to sit in the same lane driving at a nice constant speed while watching them do this, only to pass them a few minutes later when they get stuck behind a semi truck that just doesn't give a shit about their tailgating and bright flashing.
There is a black pit in my cold bitter heart that warms with cackles of schadenfreude glee at this whenever I see it. That's the closest I get to racing on the road anymore. Just seeing if I can beat someone who passed me by sticking to cruise control by making calm, measured lane changes.
Seeing as I've taken Constitutional Law and have actually spent time studying the Heller decision and its precedents, I'm certainly far more familiar with the issue than you. I'm not fond of the way that DC v. Heller (2008) nullified the militia clause of the Second Amendment (while pretending that it hadn't done so), but the decision is law on the 2nd Amendment.
You might be interested in what it has to say on concealed carry. As Scalia wrote in the majority:
"Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues... The majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues."
In other words, as a matter of the Constitution, which says absolutely nothing about concealed carry, it can totally be outlawed. You might consider reading the document yourself, if you want to toss around words like "idiot" on matter which you rely far more on emotion than fact about.
Well, if you want to propose an entirely different scenario from the one I was responding to, then I guess you...win? In so much as anyone does on the internet?
Seriously, do you think we'll all just stop doing stuff once our basic needs are met?
You're putting the cart before the horse. The GP's worry isn't the question of whether we'll stop doing stuff once our needs are met. It's one of whether there will be enough stuff to do that pay well enough to meet our basic needs. (See, e.g. the rise of permanent, part-time, single job status in the low-end service economy for most Americans.)
We're already at a point of labor oversupply. Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows what happens to the price of something when supply exceeds demand. As robots replace demand, we need desperately to come up with new stuff for people to do, or we're going to see the middle class completely vanish. After all, the modern American middle class was built on factory jobs that no longer exist. Technology has displaced old and created news jobs before, but this presents a challenge completely unprecedented in which unskilled labor becomes completely useless.
If that happens, we've got two choices: (1) Let those outside of the top 10% struggle because they aren't useful anymore. (2) Redistribute wealth to provide for basic necessities and let work become more voluntary.
Both have problems. The first is pretty much laying the seeds of a violent revolution and causing misery for no good reason but the glorification of elites, many of whom will have done little more than inherited their status. The second would create a permanent hedonistic class with no need for education nor pride in the value of work. It's most likely up to your own personal political biases as to which is a worse outcome.
I guess what is comes down to......is who decides what is safe driving?
Statistics. That's pretty much what actuaries do. Picking a policy that encourages more payouts is bad for business. The better and more refined the data results, the better the profits.
You know who drives like that? All those awful oblivious drivers who everyone else is dodging. And the people doing the dodging look like maniacs.
They are, typically. If you have to "dodge" in way that might make you "look" like a maniac and can't make a smooth, well-signaled transition into the next lane to go around, then you're not a good driver.
The road isn't a racetrack, and you don't score points for being the lead.
Studies have consistently shown that the safest drivers are around the 85th percentile by speed, so they really just need to measure how fast you go and charge more for the slower and faster drivers.
Note that that's people doing at or under the 85th percentile of speed on the road. You don't start really getting dangerous slow drivers until you're several MPH under the average speed, which not the 85th percentile speed.
You have a right to self-defense. You don't have the right to create an undetectable assassin's tool that can be smuggled into airports and courtrooms.
I'm not fond of concealed carry either, actually. I don't have much of a problem with open carry, though, and the deterrence factor is greater when people know you have a gun.
Exactly what part of your post don't you think I get?
You made a snarky joke; it was founded on faulty logic that may or may not have been sincere. I shot back with counter-snark, then you showed you were sincere, and then I pointed out the flaw in more detail.
(Saying, "woosh!" doesn't make you actually originally clever, by the way.)
Like that matters, as they wont let an anti-freedom law expire in the current totalitarian environment out there in Washington.
I don't know what sort of horrible, dystopian world you think you live in, but I kind of want to visit one in which Washington actually gets something done.
Watch the video, the only person much impacted by an exploding plastic gun is the person holding it. The person in front of them is certainly safe.
That only matters if the gun has a high enough failure rate. With ABS plastic, it doesn't.
Assassins fail frequently, but that's cold comfort when they don't. And in many crimes, the threat of a gun is more important than its use, such as kidnapping, robbery, and hijacking. A one-shot, oversized derringer is good enough for many troublesome purposes, and since bullets are made of non-ferrous materials, metal detectors are worthless against them.
It was a somewhat funny, flip comment, but the issues that plastic guns represent aren't solved purely by the chance that they'll kill the user.
Or, to paraphrase, "But, I might be among the have nots, while the haves inherit the earth!"
Putting aside the slim possibility that one human being might care for a less fortunate human being's plight as a matter of principle -- even if that person is separate by the gulf of time, do you mock that as an unreasonable concern?
As for the rest of the post, I don't even understand what point you're trying to make. You do know that DNA profiling doesn't really cover any useful genes that would determine haves or have nots, right?
Horrible things have been done, in the name of science, and specifically eugenics. Does that necessarily mean that any studies into eugenics is evil? I say, "Not only NO, but HELL NO!"
No, but the road to a virtuous outcome is a tightrope over an abyss. Eugenics faces a number of ethical challenges:
1) Who determines what is and isn't a fit trait? Government, parents, etc.? 2) What happens if a mistake is made -- either in who or what trait should be targeted? 3) Should people be allowed to abstain, or is participation compulsory? 4) How is the process done? Killing, sterilization, or non-sexual reproduction? 5) If the process is voluntary and non-destructive, how do we ensure equal access to "better" children?
Each of these points is an entire essay of ethical nightmares in and of itself.
If scientists announced tomorrow that they could screen for cystic fibrosis, with greater than 99% confidence, and abort the fetus early in the first trimester, would you object to that?
Putting aside the method proposed, the problem is where do you draw the line? We know that cystic fibrosis is a recessive mutation in a single gene, and you can't get it if you don't have two damaged copies. Eliminating it seems relatively easy to do under nearly any scheme within two generations once testing becomes universally available.
Okay, so that's one disease down! Now how about diseases where your genes only propose a risk of a disease? Should we block any genes that cause risks of disease? How big of a risk? What about deformities? What if a disease or deformity has a protective effect? (e.g. Sickle-cell v. malaria, or the cancer-preventing effects of a rare form of dwarfism.) Who gets to choose which is more important, looks or health?
What about mental illness? Take the infamous MAOA gene. "Defective" versions that produce less MAOA result in people who, if exposed to excessive violence as a child (e.g. child abuse, war zones, gangland killings, etc.), have a tendency to grow up to violent criminals and sociopaths -- or in another day and age, effective warriors. Do we weed that out despite the fact that most people with the gene grow up to be healthy and effective members of society?
That brings up two more issues. The first is epigenetics -- the methylization and expression of genes as influenced by the environment, some of which can be passed down in childhood. What do we do about genes that are good in the right place and time and bad in others? If we can't "clean" the genes, should we just cut them out as a risk factor?
The second is far more pernicious: what about traits that influence personality? What about traits that influence political leanings? We know that there are some biological correlations to party affiliation and that certain specific genes tie to political partisanship. Should we allow traits that encourage dissident thought or liberalism or conservatism to be bred out of the populace? Even if an oppressive government isn't invovled, should parents be allowed to customize their children to be more receptive to their own belief structure?
Forced sterilization? If we got so far along that we could screen for all the many conditions that make people's lives so miserable, sterilization wouldn't be a necessity. Instead, Mother can pick and choose traits, simply rejecting any and all number of undesirable traits.
As another poster has pointed out, that quickly becomes a "haves and have-nots" issue. Unless poor people get equal access to what will initially be a very expensive technology, you risk breeding a genetic overclas
 18.2-266. Driving motor vehicle, engine, etc., while intoxicated, etc.
It shall be unlawful for any person to drive or operate any motor vehicle, engine or train (i) while such person has a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent or more by weight by volume or 0.08 grams or more per 210 liters of breath as indicated by a chemical test administered as provided in this article, (ii) while such person is under the influence of alcohol, (iii) while such person is under the influence of any narcotic drug or any other self-administered intoxicant or drug of whatsoever nature, or any combination of such drugs, to a degree which impairs his ability to drive or operate any motor vehicle, engine or train safely, (iv) while such person is under the combined influence of alcohol and any drug or drugs to a degree which impairs his ability to drive or operate any motor vehicle, engine or train safely, or (v) while such person has a blood concentration of any of the following substances at a level that is equal to or greater than: (a) 0.02 milligrams of cocaine per liter of blood, (b) 0.1 milligrams of methamphetamine per liter of blood, (c) 0.01 milligrams of phencyclidine per liter of blood, or (d) 0.1 milligrams of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine per liter of blood. A charge alleging a violation of this section shall support a conviction under clauses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v).
For the purposes of this article, the term "motor vehicle" includes mopeds, while operated on the public highways of this Commonwealth.
I can't find a definition of the word "operate" anywhere in Virginia's criminal code, so it's up to the common law to decide what it means, and there's plenty of leeway to determine that if the vehicle is turned on and serving some purpose for you, you are operating it. It doesn't matter where in the car you are. You could be sleeping on the hood and using the engine to keep warm. If you had a plugin hybrid, and you were using it as a battery backup or generator for your house during a power outage, you could violate this statute in theory.
I don't have a huge amount of problem with this. It's a minor annoyance, not an accident, and sometimes it's very useful to be able to very quickly look something up or send a text. So long as you're not moving, and the moment you need to move the phone gets put down.
People willing to add minor inconvenience to multiple people around them adds up over time. This is why spam and littering are bad things.
You make the assumption this is genetic. If sexual proclivities were genetic then homosexuality would much rarer.
Actually, we don't know much about whether or not pedophilia has a genetic component or if it's entirely a factor of environment (or epigenetics). That's not really relevant though for two reasons:
1) Most abusers abuse their own family members, so the genes have already spread. 2) Going down the eugenics and forced sterilization route is a slippery slope straight to hell. Look at what we used to do in the 1930s. It's the stuff of nightmares.
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Why do you insist they were built by humans? We have more resources and technology than ever before in history, and it's still considered impossible...
Where do you get the idea that the pyramids would be impossible to build today? It's just a pile of limestone blocks. People built a 6 meter pyramid using a total of only 40 something men in less than a month for an episode of NOVA, using only a few modern shortcuts (iron tools to carve and a front-end loader to transport blocks to the building site to be placed by hand after demonstrating that it was possible to move the blocks by rolling them). The only thing that makes pyramids impressive is that they were built with muscle power and no understanding of pulleys.
As for how they were constructed back then, there are a number of dominant theories, and the lack of consensus isn't because there's evidence disproving them so much as a lack of a smoking gun. Plus, there's evidence that there wasn't a consistent method and that techniques evolved over time.
Seriously, what's the alternative -- aliens? What plausible reason would aliens have to come down a build huge stone pyramids and leave not a single trace of more advanced construction materials or techniques? Why no skyscrapers? Why no reinforced concrete? Why no electrical or other fuel infrastructure? Why no plastics and no glass, even? Just overly fancy stone cairns with the corpses of rich humans stuffed inside? That's it? Insanity.
I'd just question why what would appear to be the world's most ingenious civilization, that spanned the globe apparently, would set up shop in a desert. Of course there could have been a good reason, the ancient Egyptians did all sorts of strange things. It's just that all of the other pyramids around the world are in lush rainforest-like places, many covered completely in vegetation. Also the sphinx was apparently worn down by a significant amount of rain since it was constructed.
I don't know how to say this without significant offense, but you've been listening to waaay too many crackpots.
As another poster pointed out, pyramids are a common monument structure, not because one globe-spanning civilization was obsessed with them, but because they are some of the simplest stable structures to create. (Never mind that there are significant differences in the way different cultures made their pyramids look either.)
The reason the Egyptians "set up shop in a desert" is that it wasn't one at the time. People were living in Egypt as far back as 8000 years ago, and it took over 2000 years for the region to become a desert. However, the Nile River valley was and still is one of the most fertile places on the planet. It nurtured their civilization for millennia after the surrounding area went to hell.
As for the sphinx & rain thing, that's been pretty thoroughly debunked too.
Shoving a spike through my gas tank is not a guaranteed fire. An environmental incident, maybe, but certainly not a guaranteed fire.
Puncturing a LiIon battery is a fire almost every time.
Maybe (though I'm skeptical), but no one has died from a punctured battery in a Tesla yet due to the firewall design. Each cell is wrapped in a gel that reacts in the presence of fire to cool down the pack and to harden into a material with low conductivity to heat. You can read more about the very interesting design here.
Sadly, you can't say the same for a gas tank, and punctured tank fires can get very energetic, very fast. Just ask the families of any number of Jeep Grand Cherokee owners, thanks to an unshielded plastic tank anchored close to the rear.
It's not impossible for an electric vehicle to catch fire due to the battery, but there's less that burns easily without gas & oil, and a more careful design like Tesla's allows you to safely bring the car to the side of the road and exist first. The only people to have died in an incident where an electric vehicle's battery system caught fire most likely did so from the force of impact.
Hell, that's another nod for Tesla, because one of the three fires that got so much press involved some drunk idiot driving through a concrete wall into a tree. The man walked away just fine. (Or more ran away to flee the cops and asked Tesla to expedite the replacement. However, being bought by total douches is no sign your car isn't safe.)
Unlike the Pinto, it never exploded in low-speed collisions, and it had a quarter-inch metal plate between its fuel source and danger. Your own car wouldn't handle a spike impaling its tank nearly so well, nor would you have had as much time to safely pull over or have a car left afterwards because gasoline & oil aren't as easy to contain once punctured as a battery is.
The fuel source in a Tesla is better armored than practically any other mass-produced car on the market. I think they're just being overly cautious rather than "admitting" danger; any other car with a similar ride height would have experienced far more catastrophic failure hitting a spike at highway speeds like that.
People are really bad at understanding statistics because the Mainstream Media purposely skews reporting to maintain current power structures.
Not really. If you want to understand why the media reports on what it reports on how it reports on it, you just have to remember that all TV news companies are large, for-profit corporations. That means that the news is a product just like any other. You want a product that (a) sells to the most people (b) for the lowest cost. The true bias of journalism is lazy, greedy, self-interest.
The reason why stories are low on research and fact-finding (aka "investigative journalism") is because of (b). The reason why some stations skew towards the emotional biases of one demographic or another is because of (a). The reason we get so much coverage of celebrities, sports, and "missing white girls" instead of international politics, finance, and science is because of (a) + (b). That's also the root of the behavior you mention of sportscasters cheering for a close game and whichever team is most popular.
Fox News, MSBNC, the Drudge Report, and the Huffington Post all cater to their respective partisans, because partisans like to have their egos stroked with nothing but stories that confirm their own biases. It's a reliable revenue source. CNN acts like a toddler with ADHD because they think that appeals to millennials (and they simply just don't care anymore). And "fringe" journalism? That's just catering to a niche, like any other small competitor in a market.
You want reliable journalism? Look for someone how isn't making a profit. The closest thing I can find to services that care about journalism is listener-funded NPR and billionaire-owned money sink newspapers. Facts just aren't profitable anymore.
If Tesla gains enough 'momentum' and mainstream acceptance (industry is large enough to gain its own power brokers), you will start seeing sensational articles about how great the Tesla is.
Pfft. Tesla gets plenty of free press in their favor. The problem is that no one likes a scandal quite like a scandal from someone who is popular. The "fires" thing is really the first major negative press Tesla has gotten since its inception. It's frankly just it's time in the ring.
In the near future, every town will need a small workshop with basic CNC machines and 3D printers capable of producing at least a 1990s-level computer, fridge and car engine. If we manage to get rid of copyright and patent monopolies, this is the path of least resistance.
Same problem, different technology. Once you eliminate most of the need for skilled labor except to service the machines and then get rid of many ways of making profit from invention, you're down to the person who owns the capital of the CNC mill & printers vs. a bunch of people who have nothing to offer in exchange for using them. Just on a more local scale. That is, unless the technologies become cheap enough to be ubiquitous, that is.
It's even more amusing to sit in the same lane driving at a nice constant speed while watching them do this, only to pass them a few minutes later when they get stuck behind a semi truck that just doesn't give a shit about their tailgating and bright flashing.
There is a black pit in my cold bitter heart that warms with cackles of schadenfreude glee at this whenever I see it. That's the closest I get to racing on the road anymore. Just seeing if I can beat someone who passed me by sticking to cruise control by making calm, measured lane changes.
Seeing as I've taken Constitutional Law and have actually spent time studying the Heller decision and its precedents, I'm certainly far more familiar with the issue than you. I'm not fond of the way that DC v. Heller (2008) nullified the militia clause of the Second Amendment (while pretending that it hadn't done so), but the decision is law on the 2nd Amendment.
You might be interested in what it has to say on concealed carry. As Scalia wrote in the majority:
"Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues ... The majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues."
In other words, as a matter of the Constitution, which says absolutely nothing about concealed carry, it can totally be outlawed. You might consider reading the document yourself, if you want to toss around words like "idiot" on matter which you rely far more on emotion than fact about.
Well, if you want to propose an entirely different scenario from the one I was responding to, then I guess you ...win? In so much as anyone does on the internet?
Err.. congratulations?
Seriously, do you think we'll all just stop doing stuff once our basic needs are met?
You're putting the cart before the horse. The GP's worry isn't the question of whether we'll stop doing stuff once our needs are met. It's one of whether there will be enough stuff to do that pay well enough to meet our basic needs. (See, e.g. the rise of permanent, part-time, single job status in the low-end service economy for most Americans.)
We're already at a point of labor oversupply. Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows what happens to the price of something when supply exceeds demand. As robots replace demand, we need desperately to come up with new stuff for people to do, or we're going to see the middle class completely vanish. After all, the modern American middle class was built on factory jobs that no longer exist. Technology has displaced old and created news jobs before, but this presents a challenge completely unprecedented in which unskilled labor becomes completely useless.
If that happens, we've got two choices: (1) Let those outside of the top 10% struggle because they aren't useful anymore. (2) Redistribute wealth to provide for basic necessities and let work become more voluntary.
Both have problems. The first is pretty much laying the seeds of a violent revolution and causing misery for no good reason but the glorification of elites, many of whom will have done little more than inherited their status. The second would create a permanent hedonistic class with no need for education nor pride in the value of work. It's most likely up to your own personal political biases as to which is a worse outcome.
I guess what is comes down to ... ...is who decides what is safe driving?
Statistics. That's pretty much what actuaries do. Picking a policy that encourages more payouts is bad for business. The better and more refined the data results, the better the profits.
You know who drives like that? All those awful oblivious drivers who everyone else is dodging. And the people doing the dodging look like maniacs.
They are, typically. If you have to "dodge" in way that might make you "look" like a maniac and can't make a smooth, well-signaled transition into the next lane to go around, then you're not a good driver.
The road isn't a racetrack, and you don't score points for being the lead.
Studies have consistently shown that the safest drivers are around the 85th percentile by speed, so they really just need to measure how fast you go and charge more for the slower and faster drivers.
Note that that's people doing at or under the 85th percentile of speed on the road. You don't start really getting dangerous slow drivers until you're several MPH under the average speed, which not the 85th percentile speed.
You have a right to self-defense. You don't have the right to create an undetectable assassin's tool that can be smuggled into airports and courtrooms.
I'm not fond of concealed carry either, actually. I don't have much of a problem with open carry, though, and the deterrence factor is greater when people know you have a gun.
Sure, buddy! (I know I dropped one somewhere around here...)
Can't we get an article for Playstation that does not refer to Xbox or vice versa?
Nintendo fan, I'm guessing.
That's okay, we've got a new entrant in the market we can all talk about instead!
Exactly what part of your post don't you think I get?
You made a snarky joke; it was founded on faulty logic that may or may not have been sincere. I shot back with counter-snark, then you showed you were sincere, and then I pointed out the flaw in more detail.
(Saying, "woosh!" doesn't make you actually originally clever, by the way.)
Like that matters, as they wont let an anti-freedom law expire in the current totalitarian environment out there in Washington.
I don't know what sort of horrible, dystopian world you think you live in, but I kind of want to visit one in which Washington actually gets something done.
Watch the video, the only person much impacted by an exploding plastic gun is the person holding it. The person in front of them is certainly safe.
That only matters if the gun has a high enough failure rate. With ABS plastic, it doesn't.
Assassins fail frequently, but that's cold comfort when they don't. And in many crimes, the threat of a gun is more important than its use, such as kidnapping, robbery, and hijacking. A one-shot, oversized derringer is good enough for many troublesome purposes, and since bullets are made of non-ferrous materials, metal detectors are worthless against them.
It was a somewhat funny, flip comment, but the issues that plastic guns represent aren't solved purely by the chance that they'll kill the user.
It looks then like we don't need to pass any laws around 3D printing of guns, since according to the feds it's a self-correcting problem.
By that logic, so are suicide bombers.
Or, to paraphrase, "But, I might be among the have nots, while the haves inherit the earth!"
Putting aside the slim possibility that one human being might care for a less fortunate human being's plight as a matter of principle -- even if that person is separate by the gulf of time, do you mock that as an unreasonable concern?
As for the rest of the post, I don't even understand what point you're trying to make. You do know that DNA profiling doesn't really cover any useful genes that would determine haves or have nots, right?
Horrible things have been done, in the name of science, and specifically eugenics. Does that necessarily mean that any studies into eugenics is evil? I say, "Not only NO, but HELL NO!"
No, but the road to a virtuous outcome is a tightrope over an abyss. Eugenics faces a number of ethical challenges:
1) Who determines what is and isn't a fit trait? Government, parents, etc.?
2) What happens if a mistake is made -- either in who or what trait should be targeted?
3) Should people be allowed to abstain, or is participation compulsory?
4) How is the process done? Killing, sterilization, or non-sexual reproduction?
5) If the process is voluntary and non-destructive, how do we ensure equal access to "better" children?
Each of these points is an entire essay of ethical nightmares in and of itself.
If scientists announced tomorrow that they could screen for cystic fibrosis, with greater than 99% confidence, and abort the fetus early in the first trimester, would you object to that?
Putting aside the method proposed, the problem is where do you draw the line? We know that cystic fibrosis is a recessive mutation in a single gene, and you can't get it if you don't have two damaged copies. Eliminating it seems relatively easy to do under nearly any scheme within two generations once testing becomes universally available.
Okay, so that's one disease down! Now how about diseases where your genes only propose a risk of a disease? Should we block any genes that cause risks of disease? How big of a risk? What about deformities? What if a disease or deformity has a protective effect? (e.g. Sickle-cell v. malaria, or the cancer-preventing effects of a rare form of dwarfism.) Who gets to choose which is more important, looks or health?
What about mental illness? Take the infamous MAOA gene. "Defective" versions that produce less MAOA result in people who, if exposed to excessive violence as a child (e.g. child abuse, war zones, gangland killings, etc.), have a tendency to grow up to violent criminals and sociopaths -- or in another day and age, effective warriors. Do we weed that out despite the fact that most people with the gene grow up to be healthy and effective members of society?
That brings up two more issues. The first is epigenetics -- the methylization and expression of genes as influenced by the environment, some of which can be passed down in childhood. What do we do about genes that are good in the right place and time and bad in others? If we can't "clean" the genes, should we just cut them out as a risk factor?
The second is far more pernicious: what about traits that influence personality? What about traits that influence political leanings? We know that there are some biological correlations to party affiliation and that certain specific genes tie to political partisanship. Should we allow traits that encourage dissident thought or liberalism or conservatism to be bred out of the populace? Even if an oppressive government isn't invovled, should parents be allowed to customize their children to be more receptive to their own belief structure?
Forced sterilization? If we got so far along that we could screen for all the many conditions that make people's lives so miserable, sterilization wouldn't be a necessity. Instead, Mother can pick and choose traits, simply rejecting any and all number of undesirable traits.
As another poster has pointed out, that quickly becomes a "haves and have-nots" issue. Unless poor people get equal access to what will initially be a very expensive technology, you risk breeding a genetic overclas
 18.2-266. Driving motor vehicle, engine, etc., while intoxicated, etc.
It shall be unlawful for any person to drive or operate any motor vehicle, engine or train (i) while such person has a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent or more by weight by volume or 0.08 grams or more per 210 liters of breath as indicated by a chemical test administered as provided in this article, (ii) while such person is under the influence of alcohol, (iii) while such person is under the influence of any narcotic drug or any other self-administered intoxicant or drug of whatsoever nature, or any combination of such drugs, to a degree which impairs his ability to drive or operate any motor vehicle, engine or train safely, (iv) while such person is under the combined influence of alcohol and any drug or drugs to a degree which impairs his ability to drive or operate any motor vehicle, engine or train safely, or (v) while such person has a blood concentration of any of the following substances at a level that is equal to or greater than: (a) 0.02 milligrams of cocaine per liter of blood, (b) 0.1 milligrams of methamphetamine per liter of blood, (c) 0.01 milligrams of phencyclidine per liter of blood, or (d) 0.1 milligrams of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine per liter of blood. A charge alleging a violation of this section shall support a conviction under clauses (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), or (v).
For the purposes of this article, the term "motor vehicle" includes mopeds, while operated on the public highways of this Commonwealth.
I can't find a definition of the word "operate" anywhere in Virginia's criminal code, so it's up to the common law to decide what it means, and there's plenty of leeway to determine that if the vehicle is turned on and serving some purpose for you, you are operating it. It doesn't matter where in the car you are. You could be sleeping on the hood and using the engine to keep warm. If you had a plugin hybrid, and you were using it as a battery backup or generator for your house during a power outage, you could violate this statute in theory.
I don't have a huge amount of problem with this. It's a minor annoyance, not an accident, and sometimes it's very useful to be able to very quickly look something up or send a text. So long as you're not moving, and the moment you need to move the phone gets put down.
People willing to add minor inconvenience to multiple people around them adds up over time. This is why spam and littering are bad things.
You make the assumption this is genetic. If sexual proclivities were genetic then homosexuality would much rarer.
Actually, we don't know much about whether or not pedophilia has a genetic component or if it's entirely a factor of environment (or epigenetics). That's not really relevant though for two reasons:
1) Most abusers abuse their own family members, so the genes have already spread.
2) Going down the eugenics and forced sterilization route is a slippery slope straight to hell. Look at what we used to do in the 1930s. It's the stuff of nightmares.