It is absolute poppycock to imply that objective, pure reason exists. We perceive the world with our senses and we make predictions about behaviour and we assume things based on what we can observe. The embodied mind is not capable of ignoring its own circumstance, and thus "pure" reason doesn't really exist nor does "pure" emotion or faith.
To a degree, we must all have some faith or approach situations with some subjectivity to make sense of this world. Since scientists are quite human too, there's a fair bit of "religion" in science. The caveat there is that the scientific community at large seems to review and test the ideas that live within that community to the point where viewpoints evolve with new evidence.
From a technical / linguistic-nazi perspective I would actually recommend you read "Metaphors we live by", "Where mathmatics comes from" and "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff. If you would, you wouldn't likely have made the above comment.
Beautiful post, shouldn't have been done AC so I could have given it some points.
It is indeed a thought I have had many a time about the UK. Why don't they just fuck off if they hate the EU so much? However, given the falling pound I welcome their existence in the EU as it gives me a low-cost destination just across the pond. When I say pond I mean the North Sea, as I'm a Dutch resident.
So many people die in complete oblivion, with the world never finding out or giving a toss, that I for one would welcome the notion of my death being accompanied by a resounding "UNSTOPPABLE!".
Besides, I'm not a terribly big fan of censorship.
They never added that to the anthem or the constitution.
McArthur and his cronies added it to the pledge of allegiance or whatever you call this thing you have to solemnly swear when you become a US Citizen. I believe they did that in 1956 if I'm not mistaken, this "One Nation under God" thing.
Ah. So you see the atmosphere and magnetosphere as this large "thing" about which the only interesting tid-bit would be the Ozone layer? Did you read the Article? Or this wiki? Or anything on our solar system for that matter?
The Ozone layer predominantly exists in the Stratosphere and it has no inherent connection to this article about the Magnetosphere. Let's just put it like this: Ozone layer makes sure we don't die because of too high concentrations of high frequency UV. The Magnetosphere makes sure we don't die because of the barrage of charged particles the sun spews at us all the time.
Since they both seem to enable our continued existence, I for one welcome our magnetosphere researching overlords. Always good to know what is needed to keep on living.
How Microsoft enters this picture just boggles the mind. I'm not sure what you've been eating, but if I were you I'd lay off the MJ.
It's funny and pretty accurate. The US is one of the fattest nations on the planet, and most of the fattest cities are located in Texas. This has been documented.
That's not a troll unless you happen to be an obese Texan with mod points. Sadly I can neither moderate nor meta-moderate right now, but that 0 Troll is undeserved.
In other news, Europe just started using Electricity too.
Whodathunkthat?
Hehehehehe... I think if you look around you in the world, no matter what country you're actually from, you'll find that most people on the planet are foreigners.
Hey man, if you explain the Joke ad nauseam it ain't funny anymore.
You ever see Eddie Murphy explain that he actually knew Jamaicans with Normal Dicks (TM)? Or did you ever see Richard Pryor explain he actually knew some black people that couldn't outrun a dobermann? Should have more faith in your joke. Tsk tsk... it was a perfectly fine joke. Until that American Disclaimer popped up.
I will always do a search for "some topic, described relatively clearly" because I always want to see if there are more authorative sources than the Wiki on any given thing.
Not quite so. This "muppetry" is quite true. Sadly or not, that is a debate.
- Mozart died relatively poor, in the middle of his Requiem. - Van Gogh shot 'mself in the chest, poor as a church rat. - Rembrandt didn't get paid for painting the Nightwatch because it was "too realistic".
The world is riddled with Artists who are poor during some stage of their lives. Some may gain recognition in life, some may gain it posthumously, some may never gain recognition. It is not your "right" to get paid for being an artist, just like it's not everyone's "right" to become a billionaire.
You need to make it happen and most of all you need to be lucky.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't download the Radiohead album. I store bought the disc because I am a fan and a consumer of music, books and many things. And I like buying physical media. So I'm not at all against paying for a product that works for me. But the record labels, the DRM factories and the various groups that infringe on my fair use of what I buy I do see as despicable. So I can understand where the author of the previous post is coming from.
An artist, if (s)he produces great works of art, would deserve to earn a good living on that. But it's never their "right", because that would turn it into my "duty".
Now I bought an iPod because it builds a very good IDv3 tag database in the device, allowing me to search my music in customizable ways. So I ripped almost 800 albums, which resulted in 11.000 songs on my 80 GB Classic. If I had my iAudio still, I would not be enjoying my music like I do today.
Because the iAudio didn't do Genres, Compilations, Search, Artist or Album select. The iAudio could only walk through directory structures or randomly play songs. Furthermore, the interface of it was way more clunky. So the iPod actually allows me to *FIND* and *MANAGE* my music. I have one, in spite of the piece of garbage that is iTunes, because of that reason.
But then again... I rip at VBR 224-320 bps, then I only rip *whole albums* that I bought in a store myself. Then I put the album art in there too. In all songs. So I really care about the look, feel and immaculateness of my collection.:-D Others might not.
I had an iAudio, iRiver, no name and iPod, and the audio quality of ogg vs mp3 isn't particularly important if you rip at high bit rates. It's the ear-phones that matter most, followed by the players DA converter, followed by the bit-rate, followed by the format.
Having said that, the music first needs to be good.
Re:"soon-to-be Leader of the Free World"
on
Obama's "ZuneGate"
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
As a Dutch citizen I have the perfect freedom to: - get abortions - do soft drugs of various kinds - drink alcohol from the age of 16 - get serviced by a hooker - get euthanasia - get married whether I'm gay, bi or straight - get divorced - speak my mind - drink on a sunday - have sex in public places so long as it's not visible from the street - go where I please (we don't need visa for 99% of the planet)
None of which are freedoms I've seen Americans enjoy.
So I second that motion. Obama will be president of the USA. Calling him "Leader of the Free World" pisses me off too since he sure as shit don't rule my country.
Right. So obviously nobody has modded your post +5 insightful yet.
But they should. I mean seriously. Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. Who cares? In other news, he might wear string underwear, use hugo boss suits and play the banjo in his spare time too... And I still ask myself "who cares?"
All of these bloggers, newsmen, execs and/. editors ought to get something that at least resembles a life. Really. Seriously.
It reminds me of a Cake Song:
Shut the Fuck up
Ok All right Oh no This one, this one, this one
Heads of state who ride and wrangle Who look at your face from more than one angle Can cut you from their bloated budgets Like sharpened knives through chicken mcnuggets
Now, heads of state who ride and wrangle Who look at your face from more than one angle Can cut you from their bloated budgets Like sharpened knives through chicken mcnuggets
(Shut the fuck) up Yo, shut the fuck up (Shut the fuck) Right, right, learn to buck up (Shut the fuck) Right, shut the fuck up, hey, ho (Shut the fuck) Now, now learn to buck up
(1, 2, a-1, 2, 3, 4!)
Now, nimble fingers that dance on numbers Will eat your children and steal your thunder While heavy torsos that heave and hurl Will crunch like nuts in the mouths of squirrels
Now, nimble fingers that dance on numbers Will eat your children and steal your thunder While heavy torsos that heave and hurl Will crunch like nuts in the mouths of squirrels
(Shut the fuck) up Yo, shut the fuck up (Shut the fuck) Right now learn to buck up (Shut the fuck) Right, shut the fuck up yeah, ho! Yow! (Shut the fuck) Yow! Yow! Yow! Learn to buck up
Now, simple feet that flicker like fire And burn like candles in smokey spires Do more to turn my joy to sadness Than somber thoughts of burning planets
Now, clever feet that flicker like fire And burn like candles in smokey spires Do more to turn my joy to sadness Than somber thoughts of burning planets
(Shut the fuck) All right Ok I don't(Shut the fuck) wanna I don't wanna hear it that's right (Shut the fuck) Oh no, ok, I don't wanna (Shut the fuck) I don't wanna (Shut the fuck) Yeeaahh, ho, yow! (Shut the fuck) I don't wanna...I don't wanna...
As another poster already stated, 9/11 was pretty brazen. Then again, so was the Unabomber's adventure.:-D
However, the point is this... ~188 people died in the Mumbai attacks you mention. In India, if I understood it correctly.
So on a population that's more than three times the size of the US you have ~188 deaths by terror attacks.
In the US you had ~3000 deaths by one terror attack, on a population of ~300 mio, while annually ~14000 people get killed with the hand-guns that you think are so useful to prevent these Mumbai attacks.
had guns to protect themselves against indians, slaves, outlaws.
While I agree with your viewpoints wholeheartedly the quote above is an abominable sentence.
It's the indigenous people of the US that needed protecting from these land-grabbing thieves that were marauding the land.
It's the slaves that needed protecting from westerners that came and kidnapped them, transported them overseas under abominable circumstances, raped them systematically, kept them dumb and down, and had them perform unpaid labour for years and years.
Why does this report then show the following on pages 9 and 10:
Between 1995 and 2004/05 violent crime, as measured by the BCS1, has fallen by 43 per cent and the composition of violent crime has changed.
You're very quick to say this, but I've read the data by the Dutch Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek as well, and there it's even shown that violent crime has been on the decline ever since it started being measured and stored in the 1920's.
You're using anecdotal evidence from "a buddy of yours" to belie the statistics on homicide?
If you had bothered to just google it quickly you would amongst others have found:
In the UK (population c. 60.5m) there were 765 reported incidents of murder for 2005-6 (Home Office, undated) - a rate of about 1.1 per 100,000.
In the US (population c. 298.5m) there were an estimated 16,137 homicides in 2004 (FBI, 2006a) - a rate of about 5.4 per 100,000. Of these, 10,654 were carried out with guns (FBI, 2006b).
There might simply be fewer coppers on London. How about them apples?
Then the question is how many burglaries there are in the US vs the UK. Then there's the question how many of those end up in a death and how many are solved.
To cut a long story short: You are ignorant as hell. Which is OK. But you choose to remain ignorant as hell because you think it suffices to listen to "a buddy" to make sweeping statements on a political topic like gun control.
And it is quite obvious to anyone on this forum that any document drafted in 1787 has to be absolutely right since we have not come up with any better ideas on human rights since then.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that since then, we've come a long way and maybe, just maybe, this "right" needs to be revoked.
Because it's obviously not working too well for those ~12000+ people that get murdered, let alone all the injured, traumatized and otherwise affected people.
According to Islamic law, an adulterer or a gay person can be stoned to death. You don't defend that one either, do you? And that law is significantly older. It goes back to the Torah, which is the basis for most Christian-Judeo law at present.
If the snake is about to bite you, you'll not be quick enough to shoot it. You probably were fumbling around in its vicinity and you scared it.
The farmer should call the organization responsible for the management of wild-life to get his coyote problem handled.
The hiker/camper would do well not to shoot a charging bear, because unless you have an elephant gun and kill it in one shot, that bear will go medieval on the hiker/camper's ass. What did the camper do to have the bear charge him, and how many people get killed by bears as opposed to the ~12.000 deaths / year by hand-guns.
There seems to be at least a correlation between weapons and violent crime, so if you eliminate the former, you might see significantly less of the latter. It's really too easy to become a gun-toting criminal in the US.
You have not made any valid argument to dissuade me from the notion that Guns are inherently uncivilized and breach respect for the individual per definition.
A gun is specifically designed, tooled and sold to kill life-forms.
A brick or a screw-driver are a building block for walls and a tool for mounting screws respectively.
A knife is a utensil for cutting food, rope, etc etc.
By the way, in The Netherlands, where you can legally smoke a doobie or two and then mosey on to your favorite hooker, if you are caught carrying a knife in public, the blade of which is longer than your hand is wide, you are looking at up to 10.000 Euros in fines and 6 months in the slammer.
We don't like violence of any kind, and we don't tolerate it by law. I find this a very civilized notion.
This is not "liberalism". It's called rational thought and respect for other life.
The public at large should not be armed. It's a very uncivilized notion. Frankly the fact that coppers need arms nowadays and the fact that countries tend to think they need an army is uncivilized too.
Having said that, abortion should be a woman's right in my view. The reasons for this are many and may or may not have to do with the child/fruit in question.
On top of that, soft-drugs should be legalized, So should prostitution and euthanasia.
Guess what country I'm from? Hint: We produce very good cheeses, windmills and wooden shoes.
Slashdot Mirror
On Faith vs No Faith Required:
It is absolute poppycock to imply that objective, pure reason exists. We perceive the world with our senses and we make predictions about behaviour and we assume things based on what we can observe. The embodied mind is not capable of ignoring its own circumstance, and thus "pure" reason doesn't really exist nor does "pure" emotion or faith.
To a degree, we must all have some faith or approach situations with some subjectivity to make sense of this world. Since scientists are quite human too, there's a fair bit of "religion" in science. The caveat there is that the scientific community at large seems to review and test the ideas that live within that community to the point where viewpoints evolve with new evidence.
From a technical / linguistic-nazi perspective I would actually recommend you read "Metaphors we live by", "Where mathmatics comes from" and "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff. If you would, you wouldn't likely have made the above comment.
Beautiful post, shouldn't have been done AC so I could have given it some points.
It is indeed a thought I have had many a time about the UK. Why don't they just fuck off if they hate the EU so much? However, given the falling pound I welcome their existence in the EU as it gives me a low-cost destination just across the pond. When I say pond I mean the North Sea, as I'm a Dutch resident.
So many people die in complete oblivion, with the world never finding out or giving a toss, that I for one would welcome the notion of my death being accompanied by a resounding "UNSTOPPABLE!".
Besides, I'm not a terribly big fan of censorship.
They never added that to the anthem or the constitution.
McArthur and his cronies added it to the pledge of allegiance or whatever you call this thing you have to solemnly swear when you become a US Citizen. I believe they did that in 1956 if I'm not mistaken, this "One Nation under God" thing.
Silly buggers.
Ah. So you see the atmosphere and magnetosphere as this large "thing" about which the only interesting tid-bit would be the Ozone layer? Did you read the Article? Or this wiki? Or anything on our solar system for that matter?
The Ozone layer predominantly exists in the Stratosphere and it has no inherent connection to this article about the Magnetosphere. Let's just put it like this: Ozone layer makes sure we don't die because of too high concentrations of high frequency UV. The Magnetosphere makes sure we don't die because of the barrage of charged particles the sun spews at us all the time.
Since they both seem to enable our continued existence, I for one welcome our magnetosphere researching overlords. Always good to know what is needed to keep on living.
How Microsoft enters this picture just boggles the mind. I'm not sure what you've been eating, but if I were you I'd lay off the MJ.
How is that a troll?
It's funny and pretty accurate. The US is one of the fattest nations on the planet, and most of the fattest cities are located in Texas. This has been documented.
That's not a troll unless you happen to be an obese Texan with mod points. Sadly I can neither moderate nor meta-moderate right now, but that 0 Troll is undeserved.
In other news, Europe just started using Electricity too.
Whodathunkthat?
Hehehehehe... I think if you look around you in the world, no matter what country you're actually from, you'll find that most people on the planet are foreigners.
Hey man, if you explain the Joke ad nauseam it ain't funny anymore.
You ever see Eddie Murphy explain that he actually knew Jamaicans with Normal Dicks (TM)? Or did you ever see Richard Pryor explain he actually knew some black people that couldn't outrun a dobermann? Should have more faith in your joke. Tsk tsk... it was a perfectly fine joke. Until that American Disclaimer popped up.
Good God, you people are lazy.
I will always do a search for "some topic, described relatively clearly" because I always want to see if there are more authorative sources than the Wiki on any given thing.
But go on.... trust that single source.
Not quite so. This "muppetry" is quite true. Sadly or not, that is a debate.
- Mozart died relatively poor, in the middle of his Requiem.
- Van Gogh shot 'mself in the chest, poor as a church rat.
- Rembrandt didn't get paid for painting the Nightwatch because it was "too realistic".
The world is riddled with Artists who are poor during some stage of their lives. Some may gain recognition in life, some may gain it posthumously, some may never gain recognition. It is not your "right" to get paid for being an artist, just like it's not everyone's "right" to become a billionaire.
You need to make it happen and most of all you need to be lucky.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't download the Radiohead album. I store bought the disc because I am a fan and a consumer of music, books and many things. And I like buying physical media. So I'm not at all against paying for a product that works for me. But the record labels, the DRM factories and the various groups that infringe on my fair use of what I buy I do see as despicable. So I can understand where the author of the previous post is coming from.
An artist, if (s)he produces great works of art, would deserve to earn a good living on that. But it's never their "right", because that would turn it into my "duty".
Hm. Sure. And an iPod does all those.
Now I bought an iPod because it builds a very good IDv3 tag database in the device, allowing me to search my music in customizable ways. So I ripped almost 800 albums, which resulted in 11.000 songs on my 80 GB Classic. If I had my iAudio still, I would not be enjoying my music like I do today.
Because the iAudio didn't do Genres, Compilations, Search, Artist or Album select. The iAudio could only walk through directory structures or randomly play songs. Furthermore, the interface of it was way more clunky. So the iPod actually allows me to *FIND* and *MANAGE* my music. I have one, in spite of the piece of garbage that is iTunes, because of that reason.
But then again... I rip at VBR 224-320 bps, then I only rip *whole albums* that I bought in a store myself. Then I put the album art in there too. In all songs. So I really care about the look, feel and immaculateness of my collection. :-D Others might not.
Which is such bullshit.
I had an iAudio, iRiver, no name and iPod, and the audio quality of ogg vs mp3 isn't particularly important if you rip at high bit rates. It's the ear-phones that matter most, followed by the players DA converter, followed by the bit-rate, followed by the format.
Having said that, the music first needs to be good.
As a Dutch citizen I have the perfect freedom to:
- get abortions
- do soft drugs of various kinds
- drink alcohol from the age of 16
- get serviced by a hooker
- get euthanasia
- get married whether I'm gay, bi or straight
- get divorced
- speak my mind
- drink on a sunday
- have sex in public places so long as it's not visible from the street
- go where I please (we don't need visa for 99% of the planet)
None of which are freedoms I've seen Americans enjoy.
So I second that motion. Obama will be president of the USA. Calling him "Leader of the Free World" pisses me off too since he sure as shit don't rule my country.
Right. So obviously nobody has modded your post +5 insightful yet.
But they should. I mean seriously. Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick. Who cares? In other news, he might wear string underwear, use hugo boss suits and play the banjo in his spare time too... And I still ask myself "who cares?"
All of these bloggers, newsmen, execs and /. editors ought to get something that at least resembles a life. Really. Seriously.
It reminds me of a Cake Song:
Shut the Fuck up
Ok
All right
Oh no
This one, this one, this one
Heads of state who ride and wrangle
Who look at your face from more than one angle
Can cut you from their bloated budgets
Like sharpened knives through chicken mcnuggets
Now, heads of state who ride and wrangle
Who look at your face from more than one angle
Can cut you from their bloated budgets
Like sharpened knives through chicken mcnuggets
(Shut the fuck) up
Yo, shut the fuck up
(Shut the fuck)
Right, right, learn to buck up
(Shut the fuck)
Right, shut the fuck up, hey, ho
(Shut the fuck)
Now, now learn to buck up
(1, 2, a-1, 2, 3, 4!)
Now, nimble fingers that dance on numbers
Will eat your children and steal your thunder
While heavy torsos that heave and hurl
Will crunch like nuts in the mouths of squirrels
Now, nimble fingers that dance on numbers
Will eat your children and steal your thunder
While heavy torsos that heave and hurl
Will crunch like nuts in the mouths of squirrels
(Shut the fuck) up
Yo, shut the fuck up
(Shut the fuck)
Right now learn to buck up
(Shut the fuck)
Right, shut the fuck up yeah, ho! Yow!
(Shut the fuck) Yow! Yow! Yow!
Learn to buck up
Now, simple feet that flicker like fire
And burn like candles in smokey spires
Do more to turn my joy to sadness
Than somber thoughts of burning planets
Now, clever feet that flicker like fire
And burn like candles in smokey spires
Do more to turn my joy to sadness
Than somber thoughts of burning planets
(Shut the fuck)
All right
Ok
I don't(Shut the fuck) wanna
I don't wanna hear it that's right
(Shut the fuck)
Oh no, ok, I don't wanna
(Shut the fuck)
I don't wanna
(Shut the fuck)
Yeeaahh, ho, yow!
(Shut the fuck)
I don't wanna...I don't wanna...
Ooooh ooh oooooooh ooh ooooooohhh ooh
As another poster already stated, 9/11 was pretty brazen. Then again, so was the Unabomber's adventure. :-D
However, the point is this... ~188 people died in the Mumbai attacks you mention. In India, if I understood it correctly.
So on a population that's more than three times the size of the US you have ~188 deaths by terror attacks.
In the US you had ~3000 deaths by one terror attack, on a population of ~300 mio, while annually ~14000 people get killed with the hand-guns that you think are so useful to prevent these Mumbai attacks.
You are not a maths professor, are you?
had guns to protect themselves against indians, slaves, outlaws.
While I agree with your viewpoints wholeheartedly the quote above is an abominable sentence.
It's the indigenous people of the US that needed protecting from these land-grabbing thieves that were marauding the land.
It's the slaves that needed protecting from westerners that came and kidnapped them, transported them overseas under abominable circumstances, raped them systematically, kept them dumb and down, and had them perform unpaid labour for years and years.
I shudder.
Again, your argument is invalid.
School shootings would not occur if people could not get their hands on weapons.
The only reason they do occur is because people do get their hands on firearms.
It takes one second of mental debilitation to pull a trigger and kill someone.
It takes a different kind of mentality to bludgeon your wife and her lover to death with a frozen salmon.
Again, your argument doesn't hold. None of them do.
If *that* is your world, you could argue your civilization has failed to be just that, a civilization, miserably.
All I can say is "Good luck to you and your guns", and not bother with your country. I wouldn't want to live there.
And lo and behold, I don't, never have and likely never will.
Why does this report then show the following on pages 9 and 10:
Between 1995 and 2004/05 violent crime, as measured by the BCS1, has fallen by 43 per
cent and the composition of violent crime has changed.
You're very quick to say this, but I've read the data by the Dutch Centraal Bureau voor Statistiek as well, and there it's even shown that violent crime has been on the decline ever since it started being measured and stored in the 1920's.
You're using anecdotal evidence from "a buddy of yours" to belie the statistics on homicide?
If you had bothered to just google it quickly you would amongst others have found:
In the UK (population c. 60.5m) there were 765 reported incidents of murder for 2005-6 (Home Office, undated) - a rate of about 1.1 per 100,000.
In the US (population c. 298.5m) there were an estimated 16,137 homicides in 2004 (FBI, 2006a) - a rate of about 5.4 per 100,000. Of these, 10,654 were carried out with guns (FBI, 2006b).
There might simply be fewer coppers on London. How about them apples?
Then the question is how many burglaries there are in the US vs the UK. Then there's the question how many of those end up in a death and how many are solved.
To cut a long story short: You are ignorant as hell. Which is OK. But you choose to remain ignorant as hell because you think it suffices to listen to "a buddy" to make sweeping statements on a political topic like gun control.
It's pathetic.
And it is quite obvious to anyone on this forum that any document drafted in 1787 has to be absolutely right since we have not come up with any better ideas on human rights since then.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that since then, we've come a long way and maybe, just maybe, this "right" needs to be revoked.
Because it's obviously not working too well for those ~12000+ people that get murdered, let alone all the injured, traumatized and otherwise affected people.
According to Islamic law, an adulterer or a gay person can be stoned to death. You don't defend that one either, do you? And that law is significantly older. It goes back to the Torah, which is the basis for most Christian-Judeo law at present.
If the snake is about to bite you, you'll not be quick enough to shoot it. You probably were fumbling around in its vicinity and you scared it.
The farmer should call the organization responsible for the management of wild-life to get his coyote problem handled.
The hiker/camper would do well not to shoot a charging bear, because unless you have an elephant gun and kill it in one shot, that bear will go medieval on the hiker/camper's ass. What did the camper do to have the bear charge him, and how many people get killed by bears as opposed to the ~12.000 deaths / year by hand-guns.
There seems to be at least a correlation between weapons and violent crime, so if you eliminate the former, you might see significantly less of the latter. It's really too easy to become a gun-toting criminal in the US.
You have not made any valid argument to dissuade me from the notion that Guns are inherently uncivilized and breach respect for the individual per definition.
Logical fallacy.
A gun is specifically designed, tooled and sold to kill life-forms.
A brick or a screw-driver are a building block for walls and a tool for mounting screws respectively.
A knife is a utensil for cutting food, rope, etc etc.
By the way, in The Netherlands, where you can legally smoke a doobie or two and then mosey on to your favorite hooker, if you are caught carrying a knife in public, the blade of which is longer than your hand is wide, you are looking at up to 10.000 Euros in fines and 6 months in the slammer.
We don't like violence of any kind, and we don't tolerate it by law. I find this a very civilized notion.
This is not "liberalism". It's called rational thought and respect for other life.
Gun control and Abortion are not related.
The public at large should not be armed. It's a very uncivilized notion. Frankly the fact that coppers need arms nowadays and the fact that countries tend to think they need an army is uncivilized too.
Having said that, abortion should be a woman's right in my view. The reasons for this are many and may or may not have to do with the child/fruit in question.
On top of that, soft-drugs should be legalized, So should prostitution and euthanasia.
Guess what country I'm from? Hint: We produce very good cheeses, windmills and wooden shoes.