I don't claim that children without a gun don't kill themselves or stab others with knifes, yet it seems striking to me that the violent crimes (aka "running amok") by children (and probably also adults) are so violent because they have one or more guns. At least to me as a non-violent layman from Europe it seems much easier to shoot a dozen classmates than to club them to death or stab them.
The counterargument from most pro-gun folks in the US is that if one bad guy opens fire, all the good guys can shoot back and stop him more easily.
This isn't born out by reality. In fact, most mass shootings in the US are stopped by the gunman being tackled and taken down by non-lethal force. For instance, when Jared Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and kept firing, there were people armed with guns and military training in the area, and not one of them opened fire on Loughner (citing reasons like the risk of hitting people other than the target and the police not knowing who the bad guy was if they had started shooting).
I'm an Arizona citizen, and I am armed all the time. I was in Tucson when the attack occurred; if I'd been at that rally (unlikely in the extreme -- I don't agree with Ms Giffords' politics in the slightest) I'd have drawn and fired at the shooter. I am not a cop, nor am I currently a soldier (used to be one, though.)
As you say, cops are trained *not* to deploy their weapons in situations where the risk of collateral damage is too high. And there were indeed armed private security personnel at the scene who doubtless had military training, but they were private security and were thus constrained by the same considerations as the cops, though for obvious fiscal liability reasons, if not public safety reasons.
It is unlikely that there would have been any ordinary, gun-toting Arizona citizens at a rally for an unpopular politician (unpopular in the rest of Arizona, anyway -- Tucson is a liberal enclave in a decidedly non-liberal state.) A pity, because I'm pretty sure they would have opened fire on her attacker, as I certainly would have, and maybe fewer people would have died as a result.
Those who think that video games make people aggressive got cause and effect mixed up. If there is a correlation between aggression and video games it's because aggressive people like to play violent games and not because a game made them aggressive. Like the fact that most bank robbers have guns doesn't mean that guns turn people into criminals.
video games, like guns, enable violent behavior. Trying to separate the enabler from the act itself is just a legal strategy, not a scientifically rational one.
Yeah, and many children form a "gun" with their hand, point it at someone else and say "bang, you're dead". Few of them become killers.
You are either living in cloud cuckoo land, or are being disingenuous. I would venture to guess that every soldier who ever killed the enemy has played cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians, or whatever the local ethnic combat game was called. That's more than a few, even if we limit to soldiers in only the last ten years.
Fwiw, I played cops and robbers, and I definitely said, "bang your dead!" as my older brother the gangster fell to my index-finger-and-thumb simulation of a police-issue S&W.38. He did the same when we reversed roles. He became a mercenary in Rhodesia (still in Africa, doing contract work for shipping companies worried about Somali pirates. He says it's like shooting fish in a barrel, sometimes, the pirates are so inept.) I enlisted in the USAF when I was 19, trained as a commando (bet you didn't know the Air Force had commandos) so I too, got to kill real people for real. Beats the shit out of pretending, let me tell you.
It is sad that so many people don't understand this.
Not sad at all, dude. The enemy of profit is an educated consumer, and the enemy of government is an educated citizen. My portfolio is deep in the three E's: energy, entertainment, and ecology. These are areas where ignorance and misunderstanding are routinely exploited for insane profits, often with the collusion of the government. Don't be sad about how uninformed your fellow consumer/citizen is -- take advantage of it, instead. You will be glad you did.
This country doesn't seem to have learned from its mistakes with Prohibition, which created some of the most violent gangs and cartels in this country's history, at least the most violent until the New Prohibition (aka War on Drugs).
No, the government has learned well. They now understand that the black market effect benefits the government as well. For the government, keeping certain drugs illegal creates a demand for government services, allowing the governent to profit in the form of an expanded sphere of influence via increased enforcement and incarceration manpower. It's a win-win for the traffickers and the government.
Sad to say, but there will now be a massive investigation into this incident, and regardless of the outcome of that investigation I can't see where public officials will allow an event like this to occur in the United States ever again.
Really? Car racing has killed a lot of drivers and spectators. In fact, in one spectacular crash at Le Mans in 1955, the driver and 80 spectators died. But Le Mans is still one of the busiest tracks on the professional racing circuit, though admittedly not a US track. The Indy 500 is still going strong, despite 56 driver deaths and 61 crew, staff and spectator deaths. Air racing has killed a lot of pilots, and the Reno Air Race accounts for at least fifteen of them. This is the first time spectators have died, but I doubt seriously that the government will intervene. If car racing is still allowed after their track record (pardon the pun) why should air racing be treated any differently by the government? Indeed, I find it difficult to believe air racers, who are uniformly rich, white and Republican, would allow the government to constrain their hobby just because spectators got in the way of a crash.
Definitely. I can't believe that first comment. No-one wants to see an air crash, that's truly sick. As the blogger said, it's nothing like the movies. I saw a fatal accident at an airshow in the 1970s and it was a horrible, horrible thing to witness. It's as vivid in my mind now as it was right then - you never forget those things.
This is simply tragic and a terrible waste of life. My condolences to all those who have lost loved ones.
tragic? why tragic? What is so special about the lives of the pilot or those two spectators that elevates this to tragedy? The pilot died because something happened he couldn't handle, and given his age and the highly modified nature of aircraft used in air racing, he was an incident waiting to happen. The spectators died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they were there of their own free will. People go to vehicular races because they *want* to see a crash. It doesn't matter what kind of vehicles are racing -- what does matter is if there is a good chance a couple of them will collide. NASCAR has been making money on this aspect of human nature for a long time. If the fans wanted something other than a crash, the promoters would send one car or airplane out at a time, and then compare lap times. But that wouldn't be thrilling enough, now, would it? Feh.
Thought the potential of crashes was the point or do I just not understand air shows?
As someone who attended quite a few air shows growing up I feel it is safe to say that people go to see the airplanes. Hell I would have gone to see a P-51 sitting on the tarmac let alone fly. Seeing one crash and be destroyed is not something that an aviation or history enthusiast wants to see, nor does anyone want to see people get hurt.
Dude -- and this goes for the GP, too -- it was an air race, not an air show. The Reno Air Race is to air racing what the Indy 500 is to car racing. The only real difference between air racing and car racing is that the air race fans are generally richer, and even more white than their NASCAR cousins. Think Tea Party vs the rest of the Republican base. But they do have at least one thing in common -- they are there for the crashes, and not much else.
This reminds me of back in grade school when we'd have a section on genetic traits. There was always one kid who couldn't possibly have inherited all of his/her traits from both parents. (Eye color, hair color, blood type, etc.)
Ummm...what? You are describing a phenotypic effect that is explained by allele dominance, not hybridization.
That explains how Cane and Abel had kids. When Adam and Even only had 2 sons.
Dude -- you are not helping. Adam and Eve had *a lot* more children than two sons. At least twice that many offspring, in fact, because Genesis 4:25 states Adam fathered "sons and daughters," and a third son, Seth, is mentioned explicitly by name in both Genesis and Chronicles. And then there is the question of Lilith which weakens the exclusivity of the Adam/Eve relationship. If you are going to be snarky about the Christian nuts, at least be responsible enough to do the research first -- all you are doing right now is insulting yourself, and by extension, those of us who feel the same way as you do about religious nutbars.
Yes because we all know that people "outside the ivory towers" are just "uneducated masses" who have no understanding of things like physics, chemistry and biology. With no chance of having taught themselves.
None at all. That's what we call elitism.
Come again? What's so elitist about demanding somebody demonstrate the ability to apply their knowledge, and/or demonstrate an original contribution to the body of knowledge he's claiming expertise in? By definition, a self-educated man can do neither. He's outside the channels through which he may be judged competent. He may indeed be competent, but until he can demonstrate his competence in some acceptable way, its better to assume his knowledge is worthless. How on earth is that elitism?
The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.
Easy solution: point out Mt. Vesuvius, and tell the populace to follow what happened in AD 79.
If you want sufficient and consistent information, don't sue the people who have devoted their entire lives to doing so, otherwise you'll be left doing it the old fashioned way, not having any information at all.
The scientists in question not only failed to provide consistent and reliable information, they were told by the government to do so. So much for their dedication to truth. They also helped silence one of their own who refused to toe the government line. If you want to hold up scientists as shining examples of integrity, these are the wrong ones, dude.
Your point, sir, if you have one? The issue is not about the non-existence of feelings. Nor is the issue related to the hardness-is-good meme or the ideal of humans as emotionless robots, nor even ideological captialism.
The issue is related to all of those. Your entire argument rests on the assumption that hurt feelings aren't sufficient cause for any consequences. The UK court disagrees, and I agree with them.
Rather, it is about depriving somebody of their freedom *because* of feelings. If someone puts their emotions on display in public, they are going to be mocked in public.
And if you mock someone's feelings beyond a certain point you're going to face jail time, at least in the UK. What's your point, sir?
I submit that people should not have to fear incarceration because they mock somebody's hurt feelings. I eagerly await your (hopefully) strawman-free response.
The UK court disagrees with you, and I agree with the UK court. As for strawmen, I could hardly attack your points since you didn't make any, besides asserting your opinion.
First a bunch of strawmen, and now you are being disingenuous. Throwing somebody in a cage for mocking someone's grief is an heinous overreaction, precisely because it is coming from a court. Forgive me for not spelling it out for you; I truly thought it was fucking obvious to even a casual observer. It sets a bad precedent for freedom of expression, and sets an horrible example for dealing with an otherwise harmless jerk. The legal system that can throw somebody in a cage for mocking somebody is flawed, dude -- that is my point, and my only point. If you can't/won't defend the legal system that did this, then you are wasting my time. You've had two chances; if you don't respond with an argument that is on point, this conversation is over.
Putting a human in a cage because he hurt somebody's feelings is the real outrage, here.
Why is it that people keep on talking about feelings like they were nonexistent? Is this somehow related to the "hardness is good" -meme and its ideal of humans as emotionless robots? Or the related ideas in ideological capitalism where nothing has value besides the financial?
In any case, how can a few weeks in jail be an "outrage" if hurt feelings don't matter? Because that's all it's likely to result in.
You are sick and wrong to defend it.
You are sick and wrong to defend a sick person's right to act his sickness out on others without consequences.
Your point, sir, if you have one? The issue is not about the non-existence of feelings. Nor is the issue related to the hardness-is-good meme or the ideal of humans as emotionless robots, nor even ideological captialism.
Rather, it is about depriving somebody of their freedom *because* of feelings. If someone puts their emotions on display in public, they are going to be mocked in public. I submit that people should not have to fear incarceration because they mock somebody's hurt feelings. I eagerly await your (hopefully) strawman-free response.
According to TFA, they developed an "evolutionary algorithm"; that means it is still trial and error.
Everything is information; there is no fundamental difference between doing something in a computer simulation or with beakers and ovens.
Performing trial and error on a supercomputer just happens to be much faster than performing trial and error in the laboratory.
Somewhere, a really smart German named Goedel is laughing his ass off at you. Please let us know when you can simulate emergent phenomenon like consciousness in your computer. (Here's a hint: You can't, so don't try. Just concede your error and press on with a new theory, ok?)
Freedom of expression has to include the freedom to offend people, or it's no freedom at all.
Freedom of expression is not absolute; for example slander and libel are forbidden. Why would someone intentionally abusing his freedoms to hurt others not be punished? Surely the purpose of law is not to give cover to psychopaths as they prey on the weak?
Putting a human in a cage because he hurt somebody's feelings is the real outrage, here. You are sick and wrong to defend it.
Running around shooting random civilians will tend to show that, in general, street clothes aren't bullet proof.
Is the common person going to take away the idea they should be wearing body armor all the time or that there's thugs running around randomly murdering people?
Depends on the "common" person, I should think:
Common liberal: only way to stop these thugs is to take away their guns. pulls out wallet and throws money at the Democratic Party.
Common conservative: only way to stop these thugs is to make the police more powerful. pulls out wallet and throws money at the Republican Party.
Common libertarian: only way to deal with this situation is to make sure there is a liberal or conservative between me and the bullets. pulls out wallet and opens a bodyguard service, and is its first customer.
The difference being I own the server, paid for it, it is mine. The government does not own my country, nor does it own me.
I think your concept of "ownership" needs to be upgraded from the kindergarten variety you seem to be espousing. Look up "eminent domain" if you need help wrapping your head around what "ownership" really means when the State is involved. More to the point, if I decided that I owned your server, and took it away from you by simple force majeure, to whom are you going to appeal to attempt a recovery? Not the government, surely -- your quaint concept of ownership effectively closes off that avenue.
If they are super Aliens then we are probably meaty animals with soft bones that they can easily chew up.
Any species capable of interstellar travel must, by definition, be a social species. It's not the type you technology you can achieve without cooperation. I personally believe that the concept of an alien species who would have no qualms about destroying another sentient species is science fiction, and nothing more.
Anyone capable of coming here would be much more interested in our cultures than in our meat. Earth has plenty of other animals we'd be happy to share with them at a table while talking about our art, our science, our philosophies, and hell, even our reality TV.
So what if they are social? Cooperation does not eliminate competition -- it simply alters the point at which stability can occur. Cooperation is simply an emergent phenomenon, one that emerged as the result of selective pressures on the ever-more complex patterns of DNA that program the organisms on this planet. If you want a really accessible exposition of this concept, check out Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and his follow-up, The Extended Phenotype. Cooperation is a tactic, really, and it will be favored or unfavored depending on the circumstances. Certainly, cooperation produced some incredibly complex structures on this planet, including the single sapient species that dominates it. However, this same sapient species cooperatively developed planetary extinction as an operative mode of self-defense.
I can't see where a species that invested enough energy to traverse the interstellar gulf is going to allow itself to be constrained by ethical considerations if some different species happens to be occupying their destination. You don't have to go to science fiction to find examples of what happens when cultures collide. Humans can look at their own relatively recent history. It is pretty clear what happens when cultures clash, especially when one culture is technologically superior to the other. I doubt the US Army gave a rat's ass about the social and cultural uniqueness of the indigenous civilizations they wiped out, ditto the Spanish conquistadors a few centuries earlier.
Put a whole bunch of smart and dedicated people together on the same project and they will work their ass off to solve that project. Along the way, they will develop (or spin off for development) a slew of other fantastic ideas.
Support the creative stew!
Well, that was the idea behind the creation of the national laboratories in the US. The problem is, people are people, even if they are really smart people, or really dedicated people. I'm really good at what I do, but I'm very careful to not work myself out of a job too quickly. I'm certain scientists and engineers are even better than I am at estimating how long they can milk a customer, and for how much.
By your own link the National Ignition Facility does nuclear weapons maintenance, not nuclear weapons testing.
Weapons maintenance has to do with ensuring that existing nuclear weapons don't leak, explode or otherwise freak out as the components age, and with more deeply understanding just how radioactive material behaves in situations like that of building and storing a bomb; it has little or nothing to do with making new weapons, at least not inherently.
Not only is their research critically important to responsibly storing or (hopefully) disposing of our existing bombs, there are also scientifically useful radioisotopes that can be extracted from the warhead cores as the uranium or plutonium decays (though for the life of me I can't recall which ones; I just remember reading it in other slashdot comments).
I do understand that part of the program goal involves keeping current on the technology and the staffing that could be used to make weapons, but I don't see any evidence that they are involved in weapons research at the moment.
I think you are confusing the NIF with the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, a DOE initiative designed to deal with the ramifications of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. While the goals of the SSMP are broadly what you have outlined, the NIF was created by the SSMP to specifically come up with a way around the criticality ban in the CTBT, so that nuclear weapons design could continue without the need for explosive testing. The wiki on NIF is revealing.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
It's been recognized for generations that people won't rebel against a government for light reasons. As long as people have food and jobs to keep them busy, they'll tolerate quite a bit of oppression.
Indeed -- I think governments in general need a large, complacent middle class, and the Democrats were well on the way to achieving it in the US, until it was undermined by Nixon and the rest of the neo-conservatives who followed after him. Too bad, really -- if the current crop of paleocons and Christian dominionist nutbars have their way, they are going to dismantle all the things that have helped create that large, complacent middle class. If they are successful, America will step off the world stage, and be remembered as only a failed experiment in democracy.
Sounds fine, why not just leave ample space behind the new guy? Because someone else will do the same, and then another, and another.
It's really just those few drivers who feel the need to weave through traffic. They're only in front of you for a few seconds before they're off into the next lane.
That's illegal, of course, but the police aren't enforcing those laws or any of the laws that would actually make driving safer. It's too easy for them to park and radar the fast lane.
Why is it illegal? Even in areas that have lane change laws (ours is 100 feet before you can legally change lanes) "a few seconds" is all it takes to travel the requisite distance. Fwiw, here in Arizona at this time of year, the snowbirds start arriving, and they add to our already considerable traffic problems by being tentative and slow. It's way better to change lanes and get these people in your review mirror as soon as possible. Since not everybody drives at the speed limit, and indeed an appreciable fraction actually drive slower than conditions warrant, why should it be illegal to pass them? I'm really curious about the traffic laws in your area.
Reminds me of MCI typosquatting ATT's operator-assisted collect call service, 1-800-OPERATOR, by using 1-800-OPERATER. It was about twenty years ago, but I do remember ATT changing that promotion to 1-800-CALL-ATT, after losing something like half a million dollars to MCI in the first month because of poor spellers.
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I don't claim that children without a gun don't kill themselves or stab others with knifes, yet it seems striking to me that the violent crimes (aka "running amok") by children (and probably also adults) are so violent because they have one or more guns. At least to me as a non-violent layman from Europe it seems much easier to shoot a dozen classmates than to club them to death or stab them.
The counterargument from most pro-gun folks in the US is that if one bad guy opens fire, all the good guys can shoot back and stop him more easily.
This isn't born out by reality. In fact, most mass shootings in the US are stopped by the gunman being tackled and taken down by non-lethal force. For instance, when Jared Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and kept firing, there were people armed with guns and military training in the area, and not one of them opened fire on Loughner (citing reasons like the risk of hitting people other than the target and the police not knowing who the bad guy was if they had started shooting).
I'm an Arizona citizen, and I am armed all the time. I was in Tucson when the attack occurred; if I'd been at that rally (unlikely in the extreme -- I don't agree with Ms Giffords' politics in the slightest) I'd have drawn and fired at the shooter. I am not a cop, nor am I currently a soldier (used to be one, though.)
As you say, cops are trained *not* to deploy their weapons in situations where the risk of collateral damage is too high. And there were indeed armed private security personnel at the scene who doubtless had military training, but they were private security and were thus constrained by the same considerations as the cops, though for obvious fiscal liability reasons, if not public safety reasons.
It is unlikely that there would have been any ordinary, gun-toting Arizona citizens at a rally for an unpopular politician (unpopular in the rest of Arizona, anyway -- Tucson is a liberal enclave in a decidedly non-liberal state.) A pity, because I'm pretty sure they would have opened fire on her attacker, as I certainly would have, and maybe fewer people would have died as a result.
Those who think that video games make people aggressive got cause and effect mixed up. If there is a correlation between aggression and video games it's because aggressive people like to play violent games and not because a game made them aggressive. Like the fact that most bank robbers have guns doesn't mean that guns turn people into criminals.
video games, like guns, enable violent behavior. Trying to separate the enabler from the act itself is just a legal strategy, not a scientifically rational one.
Yeah, and many children form a "gun" with their hand, point it at someone else and say "bang, you're dead". Few of them become killers.
You are either living in cloud cuckoo land, or are being disingenuous. I would venture to guess that every soldier who ever killed the enemy has played cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians, or whatever the local ethnic combat game was called. That's more than a few, even if we limit to soldiers in only the last ten years.
Fwiw, I played cops and robbers, and I definitely said, "bang your dead!" as my older brother the gangster fell to my index-finger-and-thumb simulation of a police-issue S&W .38. He did the same when we reversed roles. He became a mercenary in Rhodesia (still in Africa, doing contract work for shipping companies worried about Somali pirates. He says it's like shooting fish in a barrel, sometimes, the pirates are so inept.) I enlisted in the USAF when I was 19, trained as a commando (bet you didn't know the Air Force had commandos) so I too, got to kill real people for real. Beats the shit out of pretending, let me tell you.
It is sad that so many people don't understand this.
Not sad at all, dude. The enemy of profit is an educated consumer, and the enemy of government is an educated citizen. My portfolio is deep in the three E's: energy, entertainment, and ecology. These are areas where ignorance and misunderstanding are routinely exploited for insane profits, often with the collusion of the government. Don't be sad about how uninformed your fellow consumer/citizen is -- take advantage of it, instead. You will be glad you did.
I think that's his point...
This country doesn't seem to have learned from its mistakes with Prohibition, which created some of the most violent gangs and cartels in this country's history, at least the most violent until the New Prohibition (aka War on Drugs).
No, the government has learned well. They now understand that the black market effect benefits the government as well. For the government, keeping certain drugs illegal creates a demand for government services, allowing the governent to profit in the form of an expanded sphere of influence via increased enforcement and incarceration manpower. It's a win-win for the traffickers and the government.
Sad to say, but there will now be a massive investigation into this incident, and regardless of the outcome of that investigation I can't see where public officials will allow an event like this to occur in the United States ever again.
Really? Car racing has killed a lot of drivers and spectators. In fact, in one spectacular crash at Le Mans in 1955, the driver and 80 spectators died. But Le Mans is still one of the busiest tracks on the professional racing circuit, though admittedly not a US track. The Indy 500 is still going strong, despite 56 driver deaths and 61 crew, staff and spectator deaths. Air racing has killed a lot of pilots, and the Reno Air Race accounts for at least fifteen of them. This is the first time spectators have died, but I doubt seriously that the government will intervene. If car racing is still allowed after their track record (pardon the pun) why should air racing be treated any differently by the government? Indeed, I find it difficult to believe air racers, who are uniformly rich, white and Republican, would allow the government to constrain their hobby just because spectators got in the way of a crash.
Definitely. I can't believe that first comment. No-one wants to see an air crash, that's truly sick. As the blogger said, it's nothing like the movies. I saw a fatal accident at an airshow in the 1970s and it was a horrible, horrible thing to witness. It's as vivid in my mind now as it was right then - you never forget those things.
This is simply tragic and a terrible waste of life. My condolences to all those who have lost loved ones.
tragic? why tragic? What is so special about the lives of the pilot or those two spectators that elevates this to tragedy? The pilot died because something happened he couldn't handle, and given his age and the highly modified nature of aircraft used in air racing, he was an incident waiting to happen. The spectators died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they were there of their own free will. People go to vehicular races because they *want* to see a crash. It doesn't matter what kind of vehicles are racing -- what does matter is if there is a good chance a couple of them will collide. NASCAR has been making money on this aspect of human nature for a long time. If the fans wanted something other than a crash, the promoters would send one car or airplane out at a time, and then compare lap times. But that wouldn't be thrilling enough, now, would it? Feh.
Thought the potential of crashes was the point or do I just not understand air shows?
As someone who attended quite a few air shows growing up I feel it is safe to say that people go to see the airplanes. Hell I would have gone to see a P-51 sitting on the tarmac let alone fly. Seeing one crash and be destroyed is not something that an aviation or history enthusiast wants to see, nor does anyone want to see people get hurt.
Dude -- and this goes for the GP, too -- it was an air race, not an air show. The Reno Air Race is to air racing what the Indy 500 is to car racing. The only real difference between air racing and car racing is that the air race fans are generally richer, and even more white than their NASCAR cousins. Think Tea Party vs the rest of the Republican base. But they do have at least one thing in common -- they are there for the crashes, and not much else.
This reminds me of back in grade school when we'd have a section on genetic traits. There was always one kid who couldn't possibly have inherited all of his/her traits from both parents. (Eye color, hair color, blood type, etc.)
Ummm...what? You are describing a phenotypic effect that is explained by allele dominance, not hybridization.
That explains how Cane and Abel had kids. When Adam and Even only had 2 sons.
Dude -- you are not helping. Adam and Eve had *a lot* more children than two sons. At least twice that many offspring, in fact, because Genesis 4:25 states Adam fathered "sons and daughters," and a third son, Seth, is mentioned explicitly by name in both Genesis and Chronicles. And then there is the question of Lilith which weakens the exclusivity of the Adam/Eve relationship. If you are going to be snarky about the Christian nuts, at least be responsible enough to do the research first -- all you are doing right now is insulting yourself, and by extension, those of us who feel the same way as you do about religious nutbars.
Yes because we all know that people "outside the ivory towers" are just "uneducated masses" who have no understanding of things like physics, chemistry and biology. With no chance of having taught themselves.
None at all. That's what we call elitism.
Come again? What's so elitist about demanding somebody demonstrate the ability to apply their knowledge, and/or demonstrate an original contribution to the body of knowledge he's claiming expertise in? By definition, a self-educated man can do neither. He's outside the channels through which he may be judged competent. He may indeed be competent, but until he can demonstrate his competence in some acceptable way, its better to assume his knowledge is worthless. How on earth is that elitism?
The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.
Easy solution: point out Mt. Vesuvius, and tell the populace to follow what happened in AD 79.
If you want sufficient and consistent information, don't sue the people who have devoted their entire lives to doing so, otherwise you'll be left doing it the old fashioned way, not having any information at all.
The scientists in question not only failed to provide consistent and reliable information, they were told by the government to do so. So much for their dedication to truth. They also helped silence one of their own who refused to toe the government line. If you want to hold up scientists as shining examples of integrity, these are the wrong ones, dude.
The issue is related to all of those. Your entire argument rests on the assumption that hurt feelings aren't sufficient cause for any consequences. The UK court disagrees, and I agree with them.
And if you mock someone's feelings beyond a certain point you're going to face jail time, at least in the UK. What's your point, sir?
The UK court disagrees with you, and I agree with the UK court. As for strawmen, I could hardly attack your points since you didn't make any, besides asserting your opinion.
First a bunch of strawmen, and now you are being disingenuous. Throwing somebody in a cage for mocking someone's grief is an heinous overreaction, precisely because it is coming from a court. Forgive me for not spelling it out for you; I truly thought it was fucking obvious to even a casual observer. It sets a bad precedent for freedom of expression, and sets an horrible example for dealing with an otherwise harmless jerk. The legal system that can throw somebody in a cage for mocking somebody is flawed, dude -- that is my point, and my only point. If you can't/won't defend the legal system that did this, then you are wasting my time. You've had two chances; if you don't respond with an argument that is on point, this conversation is over.
Why is it that people keep on talking about feelings like they were nonexistent? Is this somehow related to the "hardness is good" -meme and its ideal of humans as emotionless robots? Or the related ideas in ideological capitalism where nothing has value besides the financial?
In any case, how can a few weeks in jail be an "outrage" if hurt feelings don't matter? Because that's all it's likely to result in.
You are sick and wrong to defend a sick person's right to act his sickness out on others without consequences.
Your point, sir, if you have one? The issue is not about the non-existence of feelings. Nor is the issue related to the hardness-is-good meme or the ideal of humans as emotionless robots, nor even ideological captialism.
Rather, it is about depriving somebody of their freedom *because* of feelings. If someone puts their emotions on display in public, they are going to be mocked in public. I submit that people should not have to fear incarceration because they mock somebody's hurt feelings. I eagerly await your (hopefully) strawman-free response.
According to TFA, they developed an "evolutionary algorithm"; that means it is still trial and error.
Everything is information; there is no fundamental difference between doing something in a computer simulation or with beakers and ovens.
Performing trial and error on a supercomputer just happens to be much faster than performing trial and error in the laboratory.
Somewhere, a really smart German named Goedel is laughing his ass off at you. Please let us know when you can simulate emergent phenomenon like consciousness in your computer. (Here's a hint: You can't, so don't try. Just concede your error and press on with a new theory, ok?)
Freedom of expression is not absolute; for example slander and libel are forbidden. Why would someone intentionally abusing his freedoms to hurt others not be punished? Surely the purpose of law is not to give cover to psychopaths as they prey on the weak?
Putting a human in a cage because he hurt somebody's feelings is the real outrage, here. You are sick and wrong to defend it.
...after all, they don't have Bin Laden anymore.
Running around shooting random civilians will tend to show that, in general, street clothes aren't bullet proof.
Is the common person going to take away the idea they should be wearing body armor all the time or that there's thugs running around randomly murdering people?
Depends on the "common" person, I should think:
Common liberal: only way to stop these thugs is to take away their guns. pulls out wallet and throws money at the Democratic Party.
Common conservative: only way to stop these thugs is to make the police more powerful. pulls out wallet and throws money at the Republican Party.
Common libertarian: only way to deal with this situation is to make sure there is a liberal or conservative between me and the bullets. pulls out wallet and opens a bodyguard service, and is its first customer.
The difference being I own the server, paid for it, it is mine. The government does not own my country, nor does it own me.
I think your concept of "ownership" needs to be upgraded from the kindergarten variety you seem to be espousing. Look up "eminent domain" if you need help wrapping your head around what "ownership" really means when the State is involved. More to the point, if I decided that I owned your server, and took it away from you by simple force majeure, to whom are you going to appeal to attempt a recovery? Not the government, surely -- your quaint concept of ownership effectively closes off that avenue.
If they are super Aliens then we are probably meaty animals with soft bones that they can easily chew up.
Any species capable of interstellar travel must, by definition, be a social species. It's not the type you technology you can achieve without cooperation. I personally believe that the concept of an alien species who would have no qualms about destroying another sentient species is science fiction, and nothing more.
Anyone capable of coming here would be much more interested in our cultures than in our meat. Earth has plenty of other animals we'd be happy to share with them at a table while talking about our art, our science, our philosophies, and hell, even our reality TV.
So what if they are social? Cooperation does not eliminate competition -- it simply alters the point at which stability can occur. Cooperation is simply an emergent phenomenon, one that emerged as the result of selective pressures on the ever-more complex patterns of DNA that program the organisms on this planet. If you want a really accessible exposition of this concept, check out Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and his follow-up, The Extended Phenotype. Cooperation is a tactic, really, and it will be favored or unfavored depending on the circumstances. Certainly, cooperation produced some incredibly complex structures on this planet, including the single sapient species that dominates it. However, this same sapient species cooperatively developed planetary extinction as an operative mode of self-defense.
I can't see where a species that invested enough energy to traverse the interstellar gulf is going to allow itself to be constrained by ethical considerations if some different species happens to be occupying their destination. You don't have to go to science fiction to find examples of what happens when cultures collide. Humans can look at their own relatively recent history. It is pretty clear what happens when cultures clash, especially when one culture is technologically superior to the other. I doubt the US Army gave a rat's ass about the social and cultural uniqueness of the indigenous civilizations they wiped out, ditto the Spanish conquistadors a few centuries earlier.
Put a whole bunch of smart and dedicated people together on the same project and they will work their ass off to solve that project. Along the way, they will develop (or spin off for development) a slew of other fantastic ideas.
Support the creative stew!
Well, that was the idea behind the creation of the national laboratories in the US. The problem is, people are people, even if they are really smart people, or really dedicated people. I'm really good at what I do, but I'm very careful to not work myself out of a job too quickly. I'm certain scientists and engineers are even better than I am at estimating how long they can milk a customer, and for how much.
By your own link the National Ignition Facility does nuclear weapons maintenance, not nuclear weapons testing. Weapons maintenance has to do with ensuring that existing nuclear weapons don't leak, explode or otherwise freak out as the components age, and with more deeply understanding just how radioactive material behaves in situations like that of building and storing a bomb; it has little or nothing to do with making new weapons, at least not inherently. Not only is their research critically important to responsibly storing or (hopefully) disposing of our existing bombs, there are also scientifically useful radioisotopes that can be extracted from the warhead cores as the uranium or plutonium decays (though for the life of me I can't recall which ones; I just remember reading it in other slashdot comments). I do understand that part of the program goal involves keeping current on the technology and the staffing that could be used to make weapons, but I don't see any evidence that they are involved in weapons research at the moment.
I think you are confusing the NIF with the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, a DOE initiative designed to deal with the ramifications of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. While the goals of the SSMP are broadly what you have outlined, the NIF was created by the SSMP to specifically come up with a way around the criticality ban in the CTBT, so that nuclear weapons design could continue without the need for explosive testing. The wiki on NIF is revealing.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
It's been recognized for generations that people won't rebel against a government for light reasons. As long as people have food and jobs to keep them busy, they'll tolerate quite a bit of oppression.
Indeed -- I think governments in general need a large, complacent middle class, and the Democrats were well on the way to achieving it in the US, until it was undermined by Nixon and the rest of the neo-conservatives who followed after him. Too bad, really -- if the current crop of paleocons and Christian dominionist nutbars have their way, they are going to dismantle all the things that have helped create that large, complacent middle class. If they are successful, America will step off the world stage, and be remembered as only a failed experiment in democracy.
Sounds fine, why not just leave ample space behind the new guy? Because someone else will do the same, and then another, and another.
It's really just those few drivers who feel the need to weave through traffic. They're only in front of you for a few seconds before they're off into the next lane. That's illegal, of course, but the police aren't enforcing those laws or any of the laws that would actually make driving safer. It's too easy for them to park and radar the fast lane.
Why is it illegal? Even in areas that have lane change laws (ours is 100 feet before you can legally change lanes) "a few seconds" is all it takes to travel the requisite distance. Fwiw, here in Arizona at this time of year, the snowbirds start arriving, and they add to our already considerable traffic problems by being tentative and slow. It's way better to change lanes and get these people in your review mirror as soon as possible. Since not everybody drives at the speed limit, and indeed an appreciable fraction actually drive slower than conditions warrant, why should it be illegal to pass them? I'm really curious about the traffic laws in your area.
Reminds me of MCI typosquatting ATT's operator-assisted collect call service, 1-800-OPERATOR, by using 1-800-OPERATER. It was about twenty years ago, but I do remember ATT changing that promotion to 1-800-CALL-ATT, after losing something like half a million dollars to MCI in the first month because of poor spellers.