Except that human civilization has been grain based for millennia. (Indeed, contrary to the "paleo" fad, grain consumption goes back to the days of Neandderthals; our gatherer-hunter ancestors gathered wild grains.) But traditional agricultural societies didn't see the sort of obesity crisis we see in industrial societies. Industrial societies are marked by high sugar consumption -- particularly in the past few decades -- which can led to general overeating, as everything becomes sweeter and more palatable. (Note how the title jumps right over the sugar to noodles.)
Industrial societies are also marked by sedentary lifestyles.
Overeating bad. Sugar bad, Meat bad, though the flesh of free-living wild animals is somewhat less bad than industrially-raised animals bred for generations to be fat. Dairy bad. Highly processed industrial food products bad. Grains ok if not over-processed; weight towards whole grains and heirloom varieties. Vegetables good. Legumes good.
the side that goes along with the overwhelming amount of research (not to mention common sense) that suggests more guns = more gun accidents (and of course, more gun violence.)
Now, if you don't like guns, that's fine; like abortions, if you don't like one, don't have one. But if you're going to talk about an "overwhelming amount of research" about crime, you'd better be able to cite some criminology papers.
your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.
Not if the attacker has decided to kill you, no. Knife attacks are sometimes done specifically to wound or mutilate rather than kill.
The fact that despite the easy availability of black-market firearms 30% of US murders are committed without a firearm ought to clue you in that it's not "orders of magnitude" easier to survive an attack by other means.
The ancient world killed people with blades quite effectively. The armies of Alexander didn't have guns. Nor did the Romans, the folks who gave us the word "decimate".
But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit.
No, assigning intent to inanimate objects is verifiable bullshit. Hammers don't build buildings. Scalpels don't perform surgeries. Guitars don't play music. Gasoline cans and matches don't burn down buildings. Shoes don't kick people. In all of those situations we understand that it is a person, not an object, which is responsible. But many people have an irrational emotional response to firearms due to their status as a cultural shibboleth, and so lose track of this principle.
A gun is a weapon, and has a single purpose. It kills. It kills well.
A gun is a tool, which fires small pellets at a high velocity. Pellets can be fired at a variety of targets for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons are both self-defense and aggressive violence against other human beings. They are neither the easiest not most efficient way to murder human beings, efficient mass murderers use fire while poison is easier for killing one at a time. Your local Home Depot is more dangerous than your local gun store. Firearms are, however, the best means of self- and community-defense yet developed. As the cliche says, God made man, but Samuel Colt made man equal.
The U.S.'s murder rate is linked much more to its prevalence of economic injustice and history of racism than to the legal status of firearms. (There is no correlation between a state's murder rate and it's gun laws, but there is one between it GINI score and its murder rate.) Criminologists are pretty clear that gun control laws have little effect on violent crime, and may increase it by decreasing the ability to citizens to defend themselves.
Fact - people are lazy animals, and if you put obstacles in front of them, the vast majority of them look for the path of least resistance, even if it yields an inferior result.
Yes. And that's why people "pirate": the copyright cartels have made it so inconvenient to get usable content that even if you throw a bunch of caltrops in the road to TPB, it's still better than a DVD with unskippable warnings and ads, or stuttering streaming video.
According to the wik, "The development of the laser enabled the first practical optical holograms that recorded 3D objects to be made in 1962 by Yuri Denisyuk in the Soviet Unionand by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, USA." Commies and socialized public universities gave us the hologram.
A global nuclear exchange ends civilization as we know it in minutes while climatic changes are something that we can adapt to
Climate change makes wars and conflicts more likely. (That's a Pentagon assessment.) More wars make escalation into a nuclear exchange more likely.
I do love how the denialist positions has evolved from "There is no warming!" to "Ok, there's warming, but it's not human caused!" to "Ok, there's warming and we're causing it, but we'll just adapt!"
Certain controls cannot be easily understood (like on/off states for check boxes or elements like tabs)
Thank you, I thought I was the only one. I have apps on my phone where I cannot tell if those on-off toggles are meant to indicate it's on or off. Use checkboxes, damn it.
My only fear: letting people get controlled by the advertisers and the government, each of whom are power hungry and relentless.
That's the real problem. Today, a computer user with any sophistication spends a great deal of time fighting their device and operating system to make it be the owner's servant rather than a spy and advertising delivery device. Rather than coding apps for my phone, I spent a lot of time this week finding hacks to fake location services for an intrusive app I wanted to use. (Just fake GPS doesn't do it anymore when apps use Google Play services and check your location via networks. The answer, BTW, turned out to be an Xposed module.)
The usual Reefer Madness bad science of prohibitionists:
All data were obtained for analysis from a large multisite database, involving 26,268 patients who came for evaluation of complex, treatment resistant issues to one of nine outpatient neuropsychiatric clinics across the United States
But "people with serious neuropsychiatric people who used cannabis have low blood flow to the brain" is both less clickworthy and less politically useful than "OMG pot rots yr brain!"
And I love this: "As a physician who routinely sees marijuana users..." Yeah, that's called "a physician". Cannabis use is common, every physician has seen patients who has used it.
How your brain and soul work together determines how happy you feel, how successful you become, and how well you connect with others. The brain-soul connection is vastly more powerful than your conscious will. Will power falters when the physical functioning of the brain and the health of your soul fail to support your desires, as seen by illogical behaviors like overeating, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, and compulsive spending.
Why don't you just not use a device w/ Google software on it?
Because due to the way that capitalism corrodes market choice and reduces product quality, I have two viable choices for a smartphone: walled-garden bullshit from Google, or walled-garden bullshit from Apple. Since GOOG's walls are a little lower and I can climb over them more easily, I take that lesser of evils...along with a sledgehammer to break down those walls.
When someone is sitting on your chest and slamming the back of your head into the sidewalk, you can shoot him in any State, stand your ground or otherwise.
Not when that someone is defending themselves against your assault, no. You cannot attack someone and then claim self-defense. It was Trayvon Martin who had the legal and moral right to stand his ground that night; it's unfortunate that the bad guy was armed and got away with it.
You do have a right to stop someone from saying things that a reasonable person would perceive as threatening.
And there's very little that someone hundreds of miles away from you can say over the internet that a reasonable person would perceive as threatening.
Someone in the same room with me, or standing in front of my house, saying "I'm going to punch you in the face for what you said!" is a true threat, the person has the imminent means and opportunity to carry it out. Someone in a different city tweeting "@tom_swiss I'm going to punch you in the face for what you said!" is not a threat. Their arms just aren't that long.
Can somebody tell me why motivation makes a difference?
Because intent matters.
Intent is a very different thing than motive. Motive, in your example is the reason why the first guy planned his murder: for gain, for the lulz, ethnic or religious or political hatred, whatever. The act is still one of deliberate intent, regardless of motive. Your second guy had no intent to kill.
Motive may matter when we turn to the question of how to rehabilitate a criminal. But it can play no rightful role in defining a crime.
If guns kill people, then no one ever kills themselves; they are murdered by various inanimate objects: guns, ropes, knives, bridges, pills, etc. I don't see people talking about someone who hanged themselves as a "rope death" or someone who jumped of a bridge as a "bridge death". It's as if guns were a special case, for some political reason.
... and elect a ho-hum stay-the-course centrist....
You misspelled "unprincipled sociopathic war criminal" there. Unfortunately it's not a choice of stepping into a dog turd to avoid a bullet, it's falling on a sword to avoid a bullet.
The only thing to do in that situation is use all available means to push the system into giving you more choices next iteration. Vote Green or Libertarian and demand electoral reform.
So since you are hearing ads (and I'm assuming you a relatively young anonymous coward) you would rather hear irrelevant ads shilling restless leg syndrome aids VS cheap flights to cancun?
Can't speak for the AC, but if I can't avoid corporate mind control (a.k.a. advertising) entirely I'd like it to be as mistargeted as possible. Facebook sometimes seems to think I'm in Sri Lanka or Laos and sends me ads I can't read, that's perfect.
Jota is a free software basic Android text editor. Ghost Commander is a free software file manager that lets me transfer files via sftp. I have my own server.
So from my phone and tablets I can download (when connected), create and edit (connected or not) and upload (when connected) notes, writing projects, or whatever. From my full-fledged PCs its even more transparent, I use sshfs to mount the remote directory.
(You have your own cheap VPS, right? I mean, I know/.'s standards have declined, but I assume we're still all techies here, and VPSs are cheap. Given that, why would you want to store your stuff on some computer you don't control?)
Capitalism's goal is free people satisfying the needs and desires of their fellow citizens.
Capitalism's goal is the enrichment of the capitalist class via the state-backed exploitation of workers and of the natural resources that are the common property of humanity. If any needs or desires of people outside the ruling class happen to get met -- which used to happen but is now more and more rare as capitalist scum become more efficient -- it's a by-product, not the goal.
Land existed before civilization, before humanity. It becomes "property" only via state action. The ante for the game of turning land (a real thing) into "property" (a human fiction) and backing that up with state force, is seeing that every human being has a warm, dry, clean, and safe place to sleep and store their stuff and attend to basic human needs.
And while it's impossible to know for sure, it's entirely possible that the time Gleeson saved by not having to call an ambulance manually helped save her daughter's life.
Extremely unlikely. The few seconds difference it might make is lost in the noise in all the factors that affect the response time. This rings as a bullshit justification of constant surveillance: "We're always watching out for you! Like a helpful older sibling."
Which implies that you still -- almost sixteen years later -- reject the findings of every recount -- both official and unofficial -- that found George W. Bush to be the legitimate winner.
1.) State and federal law and international treaty put a variety of requirements on the Florida 2000 selection of electors. These laws were not followed. Ergo Florida never sent a legitimate set of electors to cast their ballots.
2.) The complete Florida recount done by researchers found that, despite the illegal disenfranchisement of many voters, using the "clear intent" standard Gore got more votes in 2000 in Florida than Bush did. The press coverage universally buried the lede and talked about how the limited recounts Gore called for would have left Bush the winner.
Those are the facts. Those of us who push for history to recognize them, and for the political system to make sure the situation does not re-occur, are not "holding a grudge".
Since she was elected governor of Alaska, at least. Possibly since she was elected to the city council in Wasilla, though I'm not sure how much power or status that gave her. Certainly as mayor she was able to use her status to impose her will on people.
"Elite, sometimes "Ãlite" is a small group of powerful people in political and sociological theory, such as an oligarchy, that controls a disproportionate amount of wealth or political power in society. This group holds a superior position among the ordinary people and exercises greater privilege than the rest of the population." -- the wik
There is a legally recognized "Church of All Worlds", inspired by Heinlein. It's a sizable Neopagan group started by Oberon Zell (who corresponded a fair bit with Heinlein). The judge's apparent ignorance of this fact demonstrates the unsoundness of his ruling.
Pastafarianism is as real as any religion. Questions of religious liberty must be based on the sincere beliefs and actions of the person, not in the origins of the religion. Dude has FSM tats, has undergone some expense and pain in the name of Pastafarianism, so it's not a trivial thing for him.
Yes, it is, at least here in Maryland: "A person may not make, or cause to be made, a statement, report, or complaint that the person knows to be false as a whole or in material part, to a law enforcement officer of the State, of a county, municipal corporation, or other political subdivision of the State, or of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Police with intent to deceive and to cause an investigation or other action to be taken as a result of the statement, report, or complaint....A person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to imprisonment not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding $500 or both."
Slashdot Mirror
Except that human civilization has been grain based for millennia. (Indeed, contrary to the "paleo" fad, grain consumption goes back to the days of Neandderthals; our gatherer-hunter ancestors gathered wild grains.) But traditional agricultural societies didn't see the sort of obesity crisis we see in industrial societies. Industrial societies are marked by high sugar consumption -- particularly in the past few decades -- which can led to general overeating, as everything becomes sweeter and more palatable. (Note how the title jumps right over the sugar to noodles.)
Industrial societies are also marked by sedentary lifestyles.
Overeating bad. Sugar bad, Meat bad, though the flesh of free-living wild animals is somewhat less bad than industrially-raised animals bred for generations to be fat. Dairy bad. Highly processed industrial food products bad. Grains ok if not over-processed; weight towards whole grains and heirloom varieties. Vegetables good. Legumes good.
And exercise good.
Then I'm sure you can cite some of this research? The actual fact is that in recent decades, firearms accidents and murders by firearm have both decreased while the number of guns in private hands has increased.
Now, if you don't like guns, that's fine; like abortions, if you don't like one, don't have one. But if you're going to talk about an "overwhelming amount of research" about crime, you'd better be able to cite some criminology papers.
Not if the attacker has decided to kill you, no. Knife attacks are sometimes done specifically to wound or mutilate rather than kill.
The fact that despite the easy availability of black-market firearms 30% of US murders are committed without a firearm ought to clue you in that it's not "orders of magnitude" easier to survive an attack by other means.
The ancient world killed people with blades quite effectively. The armies of Alexander didn't have guns. Nor did the Romans, the folks who gave us the word "decimate".
No, assigning intent to inanimate objects is verifiable bullshit. Hammers don't build buildings. Scalpels don't perform surgeries. Guitars don't play music. Gasoline cans and matches don't burn down buildings. Shoes don't kick people. In all of those situations we understand that it is a person, not an object, which is responsible. But many people have an irrational emotional response to firearms due to their status as a cultural shibboleth, and so lose track of this principle.
A gun is a tool, which fires small pellets at a high velocity. Pellets can be fired at a variety of targets for a variety of reasons. Among those reasons are both self-defense and aggressive violence against other human beings. They are neither the easiest not most efficient way to murder human beings, efficient mass murderers use fire while poison is easier for killing one at a time. Your local Home Depot is more dangerous than your local gun store. Firearms are, however, the best means of self- and community-defense yet developed. As the cliche says, God made man, but Samuel Colt made man equal.
The U.S.'s murder rate is linked much more to its prevalence of economic injustice and history of racism than to the legal status of firearms. (There is no correlation between a state's murder rate and it's gun laws, but there is one between it GINI score and its murder rate.) Criminologists are pretty clear that gun control laws have little effect on violent crime, and may increase it by decreasing the ability to citizens to defend themselves.
Yes. And that's why people "pirate": the copyright cartels have made it so inconvenient to get usable content that even if you throw a bunch of caltrops in the road to TPB, it's still better than a DVD with unskippable warnings and ads, or stuttering streaming video.
According to the wik, "The development of the laser enabled the first practical optical holograms that recorded 3D objects to be made in 1962 by Yuri Denisyuk in the Soviet Unionand by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, USA." Commies and socialized public universities gave us the hologram.
Climate change makes wars and conflicts more likely. (That's a Pentagon assessment.) More wars make escalation into a nuclear exchange more likely.
I do love how the denialist positions has evolved from "There is no warming!" to "Ok, there's warming, but it's not human caused!" to "Ok, there's warming and we're causing it, but we'll just adapt!"
Thank you, I thought I was the only one. I have apps on my phone where I cannot tell if those on-off toggles are meant to indicate it's on or off. Use checkboxes, damn it.
That's the real problem. Today, a computer user with any sophistication spends a great deal of time fighting their device and operating system to make it be the owner's servant rather than a spy and advertising delivery device. Rather than coding apps for my phone, I spent a lot of time this week finding hacks to fake location services for an intrusive app I wanted to use. (Just fake GPS doesn't do it anymore when apps use Google Play services and check your location via networks. The answer, BTW, turned out to be an Xposed module.)
But "people with serious neuropsychiatric people who used cannabis have low blood flow to the brain" is both less clickworthy and less politically useful than "OMG pot rots yr brain!"
And I love this: "As a physician who routinely sees marijuana users..." Yeah, that's called "a physician". Cannabis use is common, every physician has seen patients who has used it.
Both Amen and this methodology are poorly regarded. He's in the addiction treatment industry -- look at this is an old marketing pitch of his quoted in a Quackwatch article:
OHOH, Officials at major psychiatric and neuroscience associations and research centers say his SPECT claims are no more than myth and poppycock, buffaloing an unsuspecting public.
Because due to the way that capitalism corrodes market choice and reduces product quality, I have two viable choices for a smartphone: walled-garden bullshit from Google, or walled-garden bullshit from Apple. Since GOOG's walls are a little lower and I can climb over them more easily, I take that lesser of evils...along with a sledgehammer to break down those walls.
Not when that someone is defending themselves against your assault, no. You cannot attack someone and then claim self-defense. It was Trayvon Martin who had the legal and moral right to stand his ground that night; it's unfortunate that the bad guy was armed and got away with it.
No, it doesn't. Read more carefully, including adjectives, and I think you'll get it. :-)
And there's very little that someone hundreds of miles away from you can say over the internet that a reasonable person would perceive as threatening.
Someone in the same room with me, or standing in front of my house, saying "I'm going to punch you in the face for what you said!" is a true threat, the person has the imminent means and opportunity to carry it out. Someone in a different city tweeting "@tom_swiss I'm going to punch you in the face for what you said!" is not a threat. Their arms just aren't that long.
Intent is a very different thing than motive. Motive, in your example is the reason why the first guy planned his murder: for gain, for the lulz, ethnic or religious or political hatred, whatever. The act is still one of deliberate intent, regardless of motive. Your second guy had no intent to kill.
Motive may matter when we turn to the question of how to rehabilitate a criminal. But it can play no rightful role in defining a crime.
If guns kill people, then no one ever kills themselves; they are murdered by various inanimate objects: guns, ropes, knives, bridges, pills, etc. I don't see people talking about someone who hanged themselves as a "rope death" or someone who jumped of a bridge as a "bridge death". It's as if guns were a special case, for some political reason.
You misspelled "unprincipled sociopathic war criminal" there. Unfortunately it's not a choice of stepping into a dog turd to avoid a bullet, it's falling on a sword to avoid a bullet.
The only thing to do in that situation is use all available means to push the system into giving you more choices next iteration. Vote Green or Libertarian and demand electoral reform.
Can't speak for the AC, but if I can't avoid corporate mind control (a.k.a. advertising) entirely I'd like it to be as mistargeted as possible. Facebook sometimes seems to think I'm in Sri Lanka or Laos and sends me ads I can't read, that's perfect.
Jota is a free software basic Android text editor. Ghost Commander is a free software file manager that lets me transfer files via sftp. I have my own server. So from my phone and tablets I can download (when connected), create and edit (connected or not) and upload (when connected) notes, writing projects, or whatever. From my full-fledged PCs its even more transparent, I use sshfs to mount the remote directory. (You have your own cheap VPS, right? I mean, I know /.'s standards have declined, but I assume we're still all techies here, and VPSs are cheap. Given that, why would you want to store your stuff on some computer you don't control?)
Capitalism's goal is the enrichment of the capitalist class via the state-backed exploitation of workers and of the natural resources that are the common property of humanity. If any needs or desires of people outside the ruling class happen to get met -- which used to happen but is now more and more rare as capitalist scum become more efficient -- it's a by-product, not the goal.
Land existed before civilization, before humanity. It becomes "property" only via state action. The ante for the game of turning land (a real thing) into "property" (a human fiction) and backing that up with state force, is seeing that every human being has a warm, dry, clean, and safe place to sleep and store their stuff and attend to basic human needs.
Extremely unlikely. The few seconds difference it might make is lost in the noise in all the factors that affect the response time. This rings as a bullshit justification of constant surveillance: "We're always watching out for you! Like a helpful older sibling."
1.) State and federal law and international treaty put a variety of requirements on the Florida 2000 selection of electors. These laws were not followed. Ergo Florida never sent a legitimate set of electors to cast their ballots.
2.) The complete Florida recount done by researchers found that, despite the illegal disenfranchisement of many voters, using the "clear intent" standard Gore got more votes in 2000 in Florida than Bush did. The press coverage universally buried the lede and talked about how the limited recounts Gore called for would have left Bush the winner.
Those are the facts. Those of us who push for history to recognize them, and for the political system to make sure the situation does not re-occur, are not "holding a grudge".
Since she was elected governor of Alaska, at least. Possibly since she was elected to the city council in Wasilla, though I'm not sure how much power or status that gave her. Certainly as mayor she was able to use her status to impose her will on people.
"Elite, sometimes "Ãlite" is a small group of powerful people in political and sociological theory, such as an oligarchy, that controls a disproportionate amount of wealth or political power in society. This group holds a superior position among the ordinary people and exercises greater privilege than the rest of the population." -- the wik
There is a legally recognized "Church of All Worlds", inspired by Heinlein. It's a sizable Neopagan group started by Oberon Zell (who corresponded a fair bit with Heinlein). The judge's apparent ignorance of this fact demonstrates the unsoundness of his ruling.
Pastafarianism is as real as any religion. Questions of religious liberty must be based on the sincere beliefs and actions of the person, not in the origins of the religion. Dude has FSM tats, has undergone some expense and pain in the name of Pastafarianism, so it's not a trivial thing for him.
Yes, it is, at least here in Maryland: "A person may not make, or cause to be made, a statement, report, or complaint that the person knows to be false as a whole or in material part, to a law enforcement officer of the State, of a county, municipal corporation, or other political subdivision of the State, or of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Police with intent to deceive and to cause an investigation or other action to be taken as a result of the statement, report, or complaint....A person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to imprisonment not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding $500 or both."