How can you tell what is and isn't a "civilian" anymore if the enemy insists on violating sanctuary? This is why that marine accused of "executing" an injured terrorist got off without even a slap on the wrist. This is why that idiot Italian journalist got "executed" by American soldiers and they got off without even a slap on the wrist. Such incidents are in fact excusable when you bear in mind that the enemy refuses to fight fairly. True soldiers wear a uniform to act as a proverbial "bull's eye" to make the statement that if you're to attack anyone, you attack the soldier, not the civilian. That is the covenant of sanctuary.
The problem is not civilians getting killed. The problem is identifying what is a civilian and what is a terrorist when the terrorists intentionally appear as civilians to capitalize on the element of surprise. I really have to question how many of these "innocent civilians" getting killed by "stray fire" are really innocents.
"If gas priced had been allowed to hit $3.50/gallon they would have bought only what they needed, and you wouldn't have had nervous crowds of 200 cars lined up just waiting for a single spark to trigger a riot."
True. Generally the higher the price is jacked, the more likely you'll get slammed with a charge of price gouging. A fifty-cent increase isn't going to piss off people as much as a five dollar increase per gallon of gas (which is why few in California are complaining of price gouging), because it's still within the range of affordability. Similarly, you could raise the price of a generator a couple hundred bucks over the advertised price and it won't screw people nearly as hard as if you jacked the price up tenfold. The greater the variance (in your favor, particularly), the more inclined the consumer is to assume he's being taken for a desperate fool.
Especially if the consumer has evidence of your previously advertised prices. Else, how would they know if they're being gouged in the first place unless they had a prior price to compare to?
If you're sold out and a riot breaks out, it's not your fault. You upheld your end of the bargain by selling at a reasonably fair price. If you've got plenty left and are withholding the supply because nobody can pay your exorbitant fees, whatever happens as a result is entirely your fault.
The moral of the story is that price gouging laws are not there to protect the consumer from getting gouged. They are there to prevent civil unrest. If you tell people you have the last ten and you have ten + 90 hidden in the back and you charge an exorbitant fee for each generator, and a riot ensues, you're directly responsible for creating the conditions that instigated the riot.
Yes, and thus the "average" American would be a little right-of-center if it is assumed that the people are represented by their representatives in Congress.
It's the only comparison that makes sense. Comparing news outlets only against eachother means you're always going to find Fox News hard to the right, whereas compared to the "average" American's view (as represented by Congress), Fox News (Special Report in particular) is "centrist" and CBS is liable to fall off the left edge of the seesaw.
Consider, if you will, that so many people live on active fault zones in California, especially north of San Diego county. Temecula, for instance, is a death trap when it comes to this, but nobody cares because the housing is so cheap.
If they don't have earthquake insurance, they're idiots, but you can't expect much in the way of a simple majority of firing neurons in the heads of people that choose to live on active fault zones in the first place.
There are a couple other mailing lists there, though probably not as much interest to you as the bigquake one. Mainly >3.5 in California/Nevada, and >4.5 in the United States. About three minutes after the 5.6 (later downgraded to 5.2) hit Anza I got a message from CISN.
Um, epicenters have no depth. The epicenter is the surface point above where the quake hit. Generally the deeper the quake is, the less damage will be incurred (quake-wise) even right at the epicenter.
The Richter scale is practically useless. You know what it ultimately comes down to? The number given is the number of centimeters the highest wave rises on the seismograph. 5.6 centimeters? Magnitude 5.6. Whoopie. Most of the damage produced by an earthquake comes not with the P wave but with the S and L waves.
The number to pay attention to is the Modified Mercalli Intensity rating. That's really what people should be paying attention to as it rates actual damage. That 5.2 that hit Anza was only about a 3 (out of 12) on the MMI scale by the time it hit San Diego.
The issue is that even on strike-slip faults there is often a mixture of lateral and vertical movement.
And no, the proper term is tsunami, only the media and the uneducated call it a "tidal wave", as tsunamis have absolutely nothing to do with the tides.
The natural argument is of course that it inevitably costs more to demolish old, not-to-code buildings and rebuild from scratch than it takes to just wait for a tsunami or earthquake to hit and do it for you for free. Mainly as insurance likely doesn't cover intentional demolishing of your own property.
Star Trek was written and produced with World War II still fresh in the minds of many (including Roddenberry, who served in the Army Air Corps). I'd say the Klingons more represented Imperial Japan and the Romulans represented the USSR under Stalin (where paranoia really was a way of life).
If you think about it, it actually makes sense, even tying in the events of Enterprise. The Klingons were already an established military power with ships and weapons that could easily rip Earth and any other Alpha Quadrant power a new asshole if provoked. The only thing preventing the Klingons from looking towards Earth with visions of conquering them was the sheer distance between the two powers, and the Klingons likely had issues closer to home to deal with. If skirmishes broke out, it was StarFleet with the inferior technology (they didn't even have shields at the time). The Klingons generally left Earth and the other pre-Federation powers alone so long as they stayed out of the Empire's business.
Contrast to the events leading up to World War II: The Japanese already had the Zero fighter which easily outclassed anything and everything the United States could throw at them (America of the time mainly relied on WWI biplanes). The sheer distance between America and Japan made it such that Japan looked closer to home for its initial conquests, mainly that of China, Korea and the Philippines. The reason why Japan geared up for war in the first place was because of the United States' policies and protests towards Japanese imperialism in China, with trade embargos starving the island nation of the resources (oil, primarily) that it needed to maintain its footing. By the time the two powers went to war, America was still outclassed by the Japanese and sorely needed a new fighter to combat the Japanese Zero.
Except that wasn't "basic command training" that's taught in the Academy and likely lasts a whole year. This was termed the "Bridge Officer's Exam", and demonstrated quite clearly that Star Trek never had the benefit of military advisors (Gene Roddenberry's service in the Army Air Corps notwithstanding), because that sorta crap doesn't exist in real navies. The implication is that all it takes is a crash course in naval command (lasting a couple weeks at most) to turn anyone into a competent naval commander.
I had hoped that's what "the new series" (what later became Enterprise) had been. Maybe following the Enterprise-B or the Excelsior.
That particular era of Federation history was perhaps the one time that StarFleet took itself seriously as a military organization. Their security personnel wore body armor, among other things.
Slashdot Mirror
Well it has to be cruel and unusual for it to be unconstitutional.
Barring the State of the Union, who honestly watches C-SPAN for longer than fifteen minutes?
*yawn*
The problem is not civilians getting killed. The problem is identifying what is a civilian and what is a terrorist when the terrorists intentionally appear as civilians to capitalize on the element of surprise. I really have to question how many of these "innocent civilians" getting killed by "stray fire" are really innocents.
The problem therein isn't necessarily a bad design, but rather the violation of sanctuary on the part of the enemy. By using civilians as cover.
Cats work for free, and they seem to enjoy it.
But silver bullets are only useful against werewolves, not vampires.
If you regularly haul lots of stuff, and know what you're doing (this is key), you use a diesel pickup truck. F-250 at the minimum.
True. Generally the higher the price is jacked, the more likely you'll get slammed with a charge of price gouging. A fifty-cent increase isn't going to piss off people as much as a five dollar increase per gallon of gas (which is why few in California are complaining of price gouging), because it's still within the range of affordability. Similarly, you could raise the price of a generator a couple hundred bucks over the advertised price and it won't screw people nearly as hard as if you jacked the price up tenfold. The greater the variance (in your favor, particularly), the more inclined the consumer is to assume he's being taken for a desperate fool.
Especially if the consumer has evidence of your previously advertised prices. Else, how would they know if they're being gouged in the first place unless they had a prior price to compare to?
If you're sold out and a riot breaks out, it's not your fault. You upheld your end of the bargain by selling at a reasonably fair price. If you've got plenty left and are withholding the supply because nobody can pay your exorbitant fees, whatever happens as a result is entirely your fault.
The moral of the story is that price gouging laws are not there to protect the consumer from getting gouged. They are there to prevent civil unrest. If you tell people you have the last ten and you have ten + 90 hidden in the back and you charge an exorbitant fee for each generator, and a riot ensues, you're directly responsible for creating the conditions that instigated the riot.
Five-sixths. It's not an exact science.
That'd effectively put every technical support rep out of work.
That is until Sandy Berger stuffs a copy down his pants.
Bah. LAME --aps is the way to go.
It's the only comparison that makes sense. Comparing news outlets only against eachother means you're always going to find Fox News hard to the right, whereas compared to the "average" American's view (as represented by Congress), Fox News (Special Report in particular) is "centrist" and CBS is liable to fall off the left edge of the seesaw.
The word you're looking for is "focus" or "hypocenter."
If they don't have earthquake insurance, they're idiots, but you can't expect much in the way of a simple majority of firing neurons in the heads of people that choose to live on active fault zones in the first place.
There are a couple other mailing lists there, though probably not as much interest to you as the bigquake one. Mainly >3.5 in California/Nevada, and >4.5 in the United States. About three minutes after the 5.6 (later downgraded to 5.2) hit Anza I got a message from CISN.
Um, epicenters have no depth. The epicenter is the surface point above where the quake hit. Generally the deeper the quake is, the less damage will be incurred (quake-wise) even right at the epicenter.
The number to pay attention to is the Modified Mercalli Intensity rating. That's really what people should be paying attention to as it rates actual damage. That 5.2 that hit Anza was only about a 3 (out of 12) on the MMI scale by the time it hit San Diego.
And no, the proper term is tsunami, only the media and the uneducated call it a "tidal wave", as tsunamis have absolutely nothing to do with the tides.
The natural argument is of course that it inevitably costs more to demolish old, not-to-code buildings and rebuild from scratch than it takes to just wait for a tsunami or earthquake to hit and do it for you for free. Mainly as insurance likely doesn't cover intentional demolishing of your own property.
If you think about it, it actually makes sense, even tying in the events of Enterprise. The Klingons were already an established military power with ships and weapons that could easily rip Earth and any other Alpha Quadrant power a new asshole if provoked. The only thing preventing the Klingons from looking towards Earth with visions of conquering them was the sheer distance between the two powers, and the Klingons likely had issues closer to home to deal with. If skirmishes broke out, it was StarFleet with the inferior technology (they didn't even have shields at the time). The Klingons generally left Earth and the other pre-Federation powers alone so long as they stayed out of the Empire's business.
Contrast to the events leading up to World War II: The Japanese already had the Zero fighter which easily outclassed anything and everything the United States could throw at them (America of the time mainly relied on WWI biplanes). The sheer distance between America and Japan made it such that Japan looked closer to home for its initial conquests, mainly that of China, Korea and the Philippines. The reason why Japan geared up for war in the first place was because of the United States' policies and protests towards Japanese imperialism in China, with trade embargos starving the island nation of the resources (oil, primarily) that it needed to maintain its footing. By the time the two powers went to war, America was still outclassed by the Japanese and sorely needed a new fighter to combat the Japanese Zero.
Actually that was the USS Defiant, NCC-1764.
Except that wasn't "basic command training" that's taught in the Academy and likely lasts a whole year. This was termed the "Bridge Officer's Exam", and demonstrated quite clearly that Star Trek never had the benefit of military advisors (Gene Roddenberry's service in the Army Air Corps notwithstanding), because that sorta crap doesn't exist in real navies. The implication is that all it takes is a crash course in naval command (lasting a couple weeks at most) to turn anyone into a competent naval commander.
That particular era of Federation history was perhaps the one time that StarFleet took itself seriously as a military organization. Their security personnel wore body armor, among other things.