Every time they had an insurmountable engineering problem, the Chief Engineer just says "override the safeties" and everything is fine. Good to know NASA is finally catching up to The Final Frontier!
We don't *need* to "work things out." We already *have* them worked out. You burn your actinides in a breeder reactor until all that's left is negligibly dangerous. You get more power out of a given unit of fuel and you end up with far less waste. What's not to like? Oh, I forgot...the Carter Era put an end to that due to "proliferation concerns." Yeah, we can't have nasty dictators in places like Iran, North Korea, or Pakistan getting nuclear weapons......oh, wait...
I call bullshit. I work in the nuclear power industry. The amount of screening and safeguards in place to prevent a single contaminated Kleenex from getting offsite is beyond belief. And by "contaminated" I mean something that might have a millirem's worth of stuff on it, not something seriously crapped up like you're hinting at. To intimate that substantial hunks of contaminated metals might systematically get offsite and somehow get smelted into a consumer product is so ridiculous as to be easily dismissed. Can you cite an example of "lots of radioactive steel parts" becoming cars?
Oh, and to address your issue of people being arrested/harrassed for googling "pressure cooker", I assume you were referring to this. First, this appears to be an isolated incident, not some law-enforcement pandemic across the nation. Second, this was conducted by local police, not Feds, so again there's no nationwide conspiracy. Third, a subsequent look into the situation seems to indicate the issue was a former employer informing the police of bomb-related searches on a corporate PC associated with the couple, not some vast Google-search dragnet. Overall, the claimaint's Google search history seemed to be almost irrelevant to the reason they got a visit in the first place. The couple has also received significant pushback on their original story and has subsequently declined to do further interviews. If they had a solid civil liberties case I imagine they'd be lawyering up with the ACLU on their side, but they're shutting up and backing off instead.
If you'd read into more than just the surface of this incident you'd know all this. Instead, it looks more like a case of confirmation bias on your part.
Sure, there are some issues everywhere, but I don't give a damn what's written in some document that's regularly ignored. IN PRACTICE, in day-to-day activities, I have less reason to feel anxious about accidentally committing some crime and ending up in prison in most other western countries.
The difference is that US citizens at least have a *basis* to complain about and demand redress for out of their government, whereas citizens of other nations have no such option at all. Is it difficult to get action even with such a basis? Sure. But that's better than having no basis at all.
Frankly, I'm rather offended that the US has never had a non-Christian president.
So what? Why does that matter? The President is chosen by the electorate, not selected based on gender, color, religion, or sexual orientation. If a candidate has a suitable policy platform that's appealing to the electorate, all of those categories are irrelevant.
And anyway, there are numerous non-Christians in the House and the Senate. MInorities and females are well represented given their relative makeup of the population. Granted, they don't have the bully pulpit of the Presidency at their disposal, but they have considerable lawmaking power, something the Presidency itself lacks in many ways.
I find the banning of gay marriage, for example, on exactly the same scale as religious freedom issues. And on this, the US lags behind the Ukraine and Hungary and Thailand and Cyprus and I don't know how many otherwise troubled places.
In this area you and I are in agreement, although I take a somewhat different angle on it: the government has no business being involved in marriage -- gay, straight, whatever -- at all. Civil unions should be the beginning and end of government involvement in this area. "Marriage" is and always has been a religious institution, and government has no business having anything to do with that.
As for the comparisons to the Ukraine, Hungary, Thailand, and Cyprus...you're really reaching there. Political, economic, and religious oppression is much more prevalent in these countries than in the US. You trade one slight (gay marriage) for a host of others. You must weigh things as a whole, and on that basis it's very difficult to find anyplace on the planet that is as free (economically, politically, relgiously) as the US. This is not meant to exonerate the government for its current sins. Far from it. I'm just pointing out that no matter where else you look, you have to give something up to live there. Whether or not that "something" is something *you* value versus something *I* value is debatable, but the whole "giving up" part is not.
On most of these scales, regarding individual rights, freedom of association, freedom of religion, lack of racial issues, integration of society, acceptance of minorities of various sorts and other similar things, large swaths of the US come across looking closer to Greece or Turkey than Belgium or Denmark.
On the scale of individual rights (which includes freedom of association and religion) I find it difficult ot believe any country anywhere in the world offers as much *on paper* as the US Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." You can't get more sweeping than that. At best, West European democracies can *equal* it but not exceed it. However, they do not. Every single one of them has, at the very least, laws abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press in ways that actually matter, not just your "joke at the airport" example. And while free speech and press are definitely under assault in the US right now, as I stated earlier, the Constitution at
as the US is concerned, in that a couple of decades ago you could pretty much assume the US was right at the tip-top, but that ain't so true anymore.
Note this index shows the US lacking in "economic freedom." I didn't dig into what the index defines that as, but a fairly typical definition would probably be the lack of onerous regulations that hamper entrepreneurship. As we slide in a direction where the government regulates more and more of everything around us (healthcare anyone?) I can see why we'd fall down in this index.
I used to think I would go to Australia or New Zealand if I wanted roughly equivalent freedom and needed to leave the US. However, since then, the Aussie's have become pussies and banned firearms, and New Zealand cooperated in the illegal raid and seizure of Kim Dotcom.
There really is nowhere left to go, so I'm making my stand here in the US.
Most european countries i would presume. Or if you want more specific answer, try any country in scandinavia.
Did you even *think* about your comment before you posted it? "Most European countries"? Most of them still have royal families where it's a crime to speak out against them or disrespect them. Great Britain still has a national church. France won't let you work overtime. Germany will imprison you if you have a swastika. All of them have hate-speech laws. And if you think you're free, try purchasing a firearm for personal defense use. And let's not even get started on the onerous, extensive, labyrinthine, and politically-connected maze of economic regulations that come along with being a member of the EU. Yeah, that's got freedom written all over it.
I'm certainly not advocating moving to China or Russia, but the numbers cited are based on international estimates, not "official" numbers.
Mind posting your source then?
I would point out that the US has a number of de facto restrictions, whether it's a joke at the airport, or a google search for "pressure cooker".
Funny, I don't recall anyone ever being arrested for googling "pressure cooker." Perhaps you could cite a source. As for joking at the airport, I can tell all the "chicken that crossed the road" and "my wife is so fat" jokes I want without ever getting arrested. If, however, I tell a "joke" that starts with "I have a bomb and I want to kill people with it" then that gets attention real fast -- as it should. It's the equivalent of shouting "fire!' in a crowded theater, and as such your example is a poor one. Got anything any better?
I live in a multi cultral city with greater diversity than almost anywhere in the US.
Diversity has not a damned thing to do with imprisonment rates, and I challenge you to find a study from a respected, neutral organization that states otherwise.
Having spent a lot of time in various countries in Europe, aside from a few exceptions, I would choose about a dozen places above the US, and there are several other candidates that I might choose if the economics weren't quite as unfavorable.
Then please name these bastions of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom to keep and bear arms, and rights to life, liberty, and property. You obviously know more on this than I do, so please educate me. I, for one, know of nowhere on the planet that puts these guarantees in writing with as much breadth as the U.S. Constitution. Sure, our government is currently flouting said document, but other nations don't even *have* such a document to begin with.
It's always worth pointing out that the US (having less than 5% of the world's population) houses over 30% of the world's prisioners and takes people's freedom at a rate nearly double Russia and China and 10-16 times that of most of Europe.
Did you include all the prisoners in the state-run labor camps of China and Russia when you came up with these numbers? You know, those camps they officially deny the existence of and don't record or publish the numbers on? And that's just the first item that sticks out as not being particularly intelligent. Picking apart your other claims would be in exercise in futility since you clearly don't care to dig down past "USA = bad, everybody else = GOOD!"
I agree the US sucks in these areas, especially given the revelations of the current administration. That said, you can't go anywhere else in the world without dealing with the *official* loss of some freedom of some kind (freedom of speech and freedom of religion being the most common losses, albeit not the only ones). I see Iceland, Switzerland, and Antarctica listed as alternatives. Iceland has hate-speech laws so you can forget about freedom of speech. Switzerland makes it a crime to deny the Holocaust (not that I deny it, but if I did, I should have the freedom to do so without fear of punishment, otherwise speech is not free).
Antarctica is not a sovereign nation, so technically you would be pretty free there in the sense of anarchy being free...except that by international treaty there can be no permanent residents. It's also completely inhospitable to humans so you wouldn't be able to live there long without having to depend on resources sent from some other sovereign nation, thus making you indirectly a subject of their whims.
Time for me to get my passport renewed and learn a new language. Fuck this country. I can get a job anywhere.
And precisely where are you going to go? Name me another country that has less restrictions on free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, right to property, and so forth. Everywhere you look there are governments that have it written right in their version of the Constitution that they can detain you, take your stuff, monitor everything you do or say...the list goes on and on.
You can say "I'm gonna move somewhere where they can't spy on me and arrest me for saying unpopular thing about the government" but I challenge you to find anyplace on the planet where that's guaranteed anymore. The US was the last bastion of this. If it's fallen, you're SOL.
How many white men would change places with a black woman, for example?
Depends on who the black woman is. If it's Oprah, with her vast wealth and media presence, the choice is somewhat easier than if the black woman is a welfare recipient living in public housing with six kids from six different fathers.
It's not always about race, gender, etc. Oprah is a black female who made something of herself instead of suckling off the government teat.
When we evaluate algorithms we consider all cases, with probability and outcome. We should start doing that for nuclear power too.
You are apparently blissfully unaware that such studies *are* done already before siting a nuclear power plant. Permission to construct and operate one of these plants requires extensive studies on what kinds of disasters -- natural or manmade -- the plant could be subject to, how those events would affect the plant, and what steps are taken to mitigate those effects.
All hail our liberal overlords, who know far better than us lowly knuckledraggers what's best for us. Ah, the essence of the liberal paradise, where the entire populace is treated as too stupid to know what it needs and must be told -- or regulated -- into doing what the elite decree.
If it saves the lives of a single person, it's worth it.
If it saves the life of one person but endangers a random number of others, it's no longer worth it. The same argument was used to ban things like DDT. Sure, DDT caused large numbers of people to get cancer, and banning DDT stopped that in its tracks. However, a much *larger* number of people were dying -- and still are dying -- every year from malaria carried by mosquitoes. Yet people like you used the similar "if it saves a single life, it's worth it" argument, completely ignoring the larger consequences.
Nope. The loudest sound is hearing "bang" when you expect to hear "click." Either of these two situations will radically escalate your pucker factor, oddly enough.
Both arguments are equally stupid, and for the same reasons.
A poor analogy that does nothing to prove your point. Firearms, as currently built, work mechanically. Short of a metallurgical failure or an ammunition fault, they're going to work when you pull the trigger. Introducing complex electronic scanners, software code, and batteries into the mix greatly increases the chance of failure. Sure, it may only fail to recognize your hand 0.1%, but if that happens to be the one time you really, really needed it to work, you're likely going to pay for the failure with your life.
I'd expect the price-hikes will be comparable to what happended when the FCC announced that emergency GPS location will be mandatory in cell-phones
Phones already had GPS installed for other reasons that were deemed valuable by phone buyers, namely that of navigation. There is no similar "shared functionality" benefit in smart weapons. Further, cell phones are complex, expensive devices to begin with, and never has anyone's life been completely dependent upon whether or not their phone's GPS worked. Nobody dies if their phone suddenly glitches, or navigates you to the wrong location by mistake.
I don't think anybody is proposing to include a remote killswitch.
And your shortsightedness prevents you from ever thinking that someone in the future just might. Perhaps someone who doesn't have your best interests in mind. Try thinking ahead instead of just what's six inches in front of your face.
Guns need to be dissassembled and cleaned on a regular basis. Charging or replacing a battery does not add much to that procedure.
You clearly don't know much about firearms. Cleaning a firearm is not something regularly done for a stored firearm; there's no real need. Even firearms that see regular use don't *have* to be cleaned all the time: an AK-47 can be buried in mud, run over by a truck, doused in sand, rinsed in a muddy river, and chances are very good it will still fire when you pull the trigger. Right now I can take a revolver, load it, store it for five years, and draw it at a moments notice without ever wondering if it will fire. Throw a battery into the mix and that near-infallible reliability is compromised significantly. If there were anything other than my life on the line I might be willing to make that compromise. My life is quite dear to me, though, so I think I'll pass on your non-panacea panacea.
I said the constitution grants a "well regulated militia" the right to bear arms, which is factual.
You're missing the point. The Constitution says one thing, but the wording is sufficiently vague that it can be -- and has been -- open to interpretation. The Supreme Court is responsible for interpreting how it applies to common situations (yes, that's an oversimplification, but I'm not going to be bothered to explain it in greater detail; you should know already). The issue of "does the 2nd Amendment apply to groups or individuals" has percolated in Constitutional law circles for probably half a century. Quite recently, a case came before the Supreme Court where this question had to be settled, and settled it was: the Court ruled the 2nd Amendment does indeed apply to individuals, not just a "well regulated militia." It is now settled case law, known as "precedent" and will shape future court decisions unless overturned by some other case (very rare) or by a Constitutional Amendment (even rarer). Here's the first article I could find about the court decision: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062802134.html
I submit that you can take any person -- biomarker or no -- and put them in intensely depraved conditions surrounded by pain, death, manipulation, and terror, and after prolonged exposure you will find them reverted to nearly feral state. We keep thinking we're somehow above the rest of the animal kingdom because we've got these highly developed brains and opposable thumbs. We forget we're not all that different from our tree-dwelling relatives, and we all have the ability to be completely animalistic if put in the "right" circumstances.
What I find interesting is you see these school shootings not being done by the school jocks, or the "popular" kids, or even disgruntled staff. It's being done by the quiet, shunned ones who didn't "fit in" and were usually bullied. Make someone a powerless outcast, nurture them with taunts, and remove any possibility of hope, and you will get someone who will lash out. It's not genetic; it's behavioral.
There's a wonderful saying we have in the Marines: if my enemy ever kills me with my own weapon, he better have had to beat me to death with it because it was out of ammo.
But claiming that a device designed to injure, maim or kill is a 'life-saving device' is pushing a point too far for me.
Scumbag comes at me with a knife. I draw my pistol and demand he withdraw or be killed. He withdraws.
1. Had he attacked and I was unarmed, I might be dead. Therefore, the pistol saved my life. 2. He withdrew without being killed based on the threat of being killed. Therefore, merely *brandishing* the pistol saved *his* life.
I'm somewhat dubious that you carried openly in an airport unless you were wearing a uniform at the time or this was a LONG time ago.
Perhaps you're unaware it is perfectly legal to carry in the *public* areas of airports. Go back and re-read his post and you'll see he pointed this out. Sure, you get stares. That's part of the problem: people assume that you're some kind of crazy person just because you're openly carrying a firearm because they've been *conditioned* to think that way.
Nobody is going to attack you in an airport
Unless you somehow live *in* the airport, you must walk from the airport to the parking area to get your car and go home. Predators in the Atlanta area know that people coming from the airport are almost certainly *unarmed* because it's extremely difficult to carry a firearm with you on a trip. Many people are robbed, beaten, and raped in these areas because of this. Criminals aren't uniformly stupid; they look for prey in areas where resistance is unlikely.
I don't think it is unreasonable to register firearms
And if I thought for one moment the government would be responsible and exercise restraint in the area of personal ownership of firearms and respect for the *individual* right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, I wouldn't mind it either. The government, however, has not demonstrated itself worthy of said trust. A sufficiently-liberal judicial branch could quickly nullify the 2nd Amendment; it's not like they haven't tried before, and liberals show no signs of abatement in this area. Without 2nd Amendment protections and armed with a list of gun owners everywhere, the government would have all it needs to strip law-abiding citizens of their firearms or jail them if they don't comply. Meanwhile, unregistered firearms in the hands of criminals would remain in the hands of criminals, giving them the upper hand in any altercation with law-abiding citizens.
*require* safety and competency training, and to conduct background checks.
I'm with you on the safety training, but be careful when defining "competence". It wouldn't be hard for an anti-gun lawmaker to define "competence" in such a way that it's impractical for anyone to qualify, thus effectively ending private firearm ownership. And if you think they wouldn't try, just look at what anti-gun lawmakers have done in states and cities where their anti-gun laws have been shot down (pun intended) by the Supreme Court: crazy taxes on ammunition, onerous procedures and lengthy wait times to obtain licenses to deter all but the most determined from obtaining their firearm, zoning laws that make shooting ranges and gun stores impractical to locate, and so forth. Background checks are already in place.
In many ways it comes down to trust. Firearms owners like myself simply don't trust the government to respect our rights in this area due to a lengthy history of assaults on said rights.
There ARE crazy people out there looking to shoot up schools and movie theaters and public gatherings.
There are millions and millions of gun owners out there who carry every day and *don't* shoot up schools, theaters, and so forth. Would you tread on the rights of 99.9% to try and stop the 0.1%? I'll remind you that, if you follow that logic, you'll need to outlaw driving, as it kills more people every year than any number of crazed gunmen. More people drown in public pools, or die eating fatty foods, than have ever been killed by a nutjob with a gun.
it means that everyone (including you) is a coward
For some, yes. But for most it would mean you're showing a strange and nearly-unknown concept these days: respect for your fellow human being. You'd be nice to people because they were nice to you, because being nice would be the most effective way to get along with your fellow man. Intimidation and violence would carry the potential for serious negative consequences that most rational people would deem not worth the potential cost.
but from a biology standpoint it is quite impossible.
Improbable? Yes. Difficult? Yes. But not impossible. Assuming the initial four were sufficiently procreative -- say, 10-12 children each -- you have enough genetic diversity for a viable start. Inbreeding doesn't mean definite inviable birth defects, stillborns, and so forth. Two or three generations removed from this -- again, assuming sufficient procreativity -- and you have a pretty diverse base to build on due to natural genetic variances and random mutations.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time they had an insurmountable engineering problem, the Chief Engineer just says "override the safeties" and everything is fine. Good to know NASA is finally catching up to The Final Frontier!
We don't *need* to "work things out." We already *have* them worked out. You burn your actinides in a breeder reactor until all that's left is negligibly dangerous. You get more power out of a given unit of fuel and you end up with far less waste. What's not to like? Oh, I forgot...the Carter Era put an end to that due to "proliferation concerns." Yeah, we can't have nasty dictators in places like Iran, North Korea, or Pakistan getting nuclear weapons... ...oh, wait...
I call bullshit. I work in the nuclear power industry. The amount of screening and safeguards in place to prevent a single contaminated Kleenex from getting offsite is beyond belief. And by "contaminated" I mean something that might have a millirem's worth of stuff on it, not something seriously crapped up like you're hinting at. To intimate that substantial hunks of contaminated metals might systematically get offsite and somehow get smelted into a consumer product is so ridiculous as to be easily dismissed. Can you cite an example of "lots of radioactive steel parts" becoming cars?
Oh, and to address your issue of people being arrested/harrassed for googling "pressure cooker", I assume you were referring to this. First, this appears to be an isolated incident, not some law-enforcement pandemic across the nation. Second, this was conducted by local police, not Feds, so again there's no nationwide conspiracy. Third, a subsequent look into the situation seems to indicate the issue was a former employer informing the police of bomb-related searches on a corporate PC associated with the couple, not some vast Google-search dragnet. Overall, the claimaint's Google search history seemed to be almost irrelevant to the reason they got a visit in the first place. The couple has also received significant pushback on their original story and has subsequently declined to do further interviews. If they had a solid civil liberties case I imagine they'd be lawyering up with the ACLU on their side, but they're shutting up and backing off instead.
If you'd read into more than just the surface of this incident you'd know all this. Instead, it looks more like a case of confirmation bias on your part.
Sure, there are some issues everywhere, but I don't give a damn what's written in some document that's regularly ignored. IN PRACTICE, in day-to-day activities, I have less reason to feel anxious about accidentally committing some crime and ending up in prison in most other western countries.
The difference is that US citizens at least have a *basis* to complain about and demand redress for out of their government, whereas citizens of other nations have no such option at all. Is it difficult to get action even with such a basis? Sure. But that's better than having no basis at all.
Frankly, I'm rather offended that the US has never had a non-Christian president.
So what? Why does that matter? The President is chosen by the electorate, not selected based on gender, color, religion, or sexual orientation. If a candidate has a suitable policy platform that's appealing to the electorate, all of those categories are irrelevant.
And anyway, there are numerous non-Christians in the House and the Senate. MInorities and females are well represented given their relative makeup of the population. Granted, they don't have the bully pulpit of the Presidency at their disposal, but they have considerable lawmaking power, something the Presidency itself lacks in many ways.
I find the banning of gay marriage, for example, on exactly the same scale as religious freedom issues. And on this, the US lags behind the Ukraine and Hungary and Thailand and Cyprus and I don't know how many otherwise troubled places.
In this area you and I are in agreement, although I take a somewhat different angle on it: the government has no business being involved in marriage -- gay, straight, whatever -- at all. Civil unions should be the beginning and end of government involvement in this area. "Marriage" is and always has been a religious institution, and government has no business having anything to do with that.
As for the comparisons to the Ukraine, Hungary, Thailand, and Cyprus...you're really reaching there. Political, economic, and religious oppression is much more prevalent in these countries than in the US. You trade one slight (gay marriage) for a host of others. You must weigh things as a whole, and on that basis it's very difficult to find anyplace on the planet that is as free (economically, politically, relgiously) as the US. This is not meant to exonerate the government for its current sins. Far from it. I'm just pointing out that no matter where else you look, you have to give something up to live there. Whether or not that "something" is something *you* value versus something *I* value is debatable, but the whole "giving up" part is not.
On most of these scales, regarding individual rights, freedom of association, freedom of religion, lack of racial issues, integration of society, acceptance of minorities of various sorts and other similar things, large swaths of the US come across looking closer to Greece or Turkey than Belgium or Denmark.
On the scale of individual rights (which includes freedom of association and religion) I find it difficult ot believe any country anywhere in the world offers as much *on paper* as the US Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." You can't get more sweeping than that. At best, West European democracies can *equal* it but not exceed it. However, they do not. Every single one of them has, at the very least, laws abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press in ways that actually matter, not just your "joke at the airport" example. And while free speech and press are definitely under assault in the US right now, as I stated earlier, the Constitution at
as the US is concerned, in that a couple of decades ago you could pretty much assume the US was right at the tip-top, but that ain't so true anymore.
Note this index shows the US lacking in "economic freedom." I didn't dig into what the index defines that as, but a fairly typical definition would probably be the lack of onerous regulations that hamper entrepreneurship. As we slide in a direction where the government regulates more and more of everything around us (healthcare anyone?) I can see why we'd fall down in this index.
I used to think I would go to Australia or New Zealand if I wanted roughly equivalent freedom and needed to leave the US. However, since then, the Aussie's have become pussies and banned firearms, and New Zealand cooperated in the illegal raid and seizure of Kim Dotcom.
There really is nowhere left to go, so I'm making my stand here in the US.
Most european countries i would presume. Or if you want more specific answer, try any country in scandinavia.
Did you even *think* about your comment before you posted it? "Most European countries"? Most of them still have royal families where it's a crime to speak out against them or disrespect them. Great Britain still has a national church. France won't let you work overtime. Germany will imprison you if you have a swastika. All of them have hate-speech laws. And if you think you're free, try purchasing a firearm for personal defense use. And let's not even get started on the onerous, extensive, labyrinthine, and politically-connected maze of economic regulations that come along with being a member of the EU. Yeah, that's got freedom written all over it.
I'm certainly not advocating moving to China or Russia, but the numbers cited are based on international estimates, not "official" numbers.
Mind posting your source then?
I would point out that the US has a number of de facto restrictions, whether it's a joke at the airport, or a google search for "pressure cooker".
Funny, I don't recall anyone ever being arrested for googling "pressure cooker." Perhaps you could cite a source. As for joking at the airport, I can tell all the "chicken that crossed the road" and "my wife is so fat" jokes I want without ever getting arrested. If, however, I tell a "joke" that starts with "I have a bomb and I want to kill people with it" then that gets attention real fast -- as it should. It's the equivalent of shouting "fire!' in a crowded theater, and as such your example is a poor one. Got anything any better?
I live in a multi cultral city with greater diversity than almost anywhere in the US.
Diversity has not a damned thing to do with imprisonment rates, and I challenge you to find a study from a respected, neutral organization that states otherwise.
Having spent a lot of time in various countries in Europe, aside from a few exceptions, I would choose about a dozen places above the US, and there are several other candidates that I might choose if the economics weren't quite as unfavorable.
Then please name these bastions of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom to keep and bear arms, and rights to life, liberty, and property. You obviously know more on this than I do, so please educate me. I, for one, know of nowhere on the planet that puts these guarantees in writing with as much breadth as the U.S. Constitution. Sure, our government is currently flouting said document, but other nations don't even *have* such a document to begin with.
It's always worth pointing out that the US (having less than 5% of the world's population) houses over 30% of the world's prisioners and takes people's freedom at a rate nearly double Russia and China and 10-16 times that of most of Europe.
Did you include all the prisoners in the state-run labor camps of China and Russia when you came up with these numbers? You know, those camps they officially deny the existence of and don't record or publish the numbers on? And that's just the first item that sticks out as not being particularly intelligent. Picking apart your other claims would be in exercise in futility since you clearly don't care to dig down past "USA = bad, everybody else = GOOD!"
I agree the US sucks in these areas, especially given the revelations of the current administration. That said, you can't go anywhere else in the world without dealing with the *official* loss of some freedom of some kind (freedom of speech and freedom of religion being the most common losses, albeit not the only ones). I see Iceland, Switzerland, and Antarctica listed as alternatives. Iceland has hate-speech laws so you can forget about freedom of speech. Switzerland makes it a crime to deny the Holocaust (not that I deny it, but if I did, I should have the freedom to do so without fear of punishment, otherwise speech is not free).
Antarctica is not a sovereign nation, so technically you would be pretty free there in the sense of anarchy being free...except that by international treaty there can be no permanent residents. It's also completely inhospitable to humans so you wouldn't be able to live there long without having to depend on resources sent from some other sovereign nation, thus making you indirectly a subject of their whims.
Time for me to get my passport renewed and learn a new language. Fuck this country. I can get a job anywhere.
And precisely where are you going to go? Name me another country that has less restrictions on free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, right to property, and so forth. Everywhere you look there are governments that have it written right in their version of the Constitution that they can detain you, take your stuff, monitor everything you do or say...the list goes on and on.
You can say "I'm gonna move somewhere where they can't spy on me and arrest me for saying unpopular thing about the government" but I challenge you to find anyplace on the planet where that's guaranteed anymore. The US was the last bastion of this. If it's fallen, you're SOL.
How many white men would change places with a black woman, for example?
Depends on who the black woman is. If it's Oprah, with her vast wealth and media presence, the choice is somewhat easier than if the black woman is a welfare recipient living in public housing with six kids from six different fathers.
It's not always about race, gender, etc. Oprah is a black female who made something of herself instead of suckling off the government teat.
When we evaluate algorithms we consider all cases, with probability and outcome. We should start doing that for nuclear power too.
You are apparently blissfully unaware that such studies *are* done already before siting a nuclear power plant. Permission to construct and operate one of these plants requires extensive studies on what kinds of disasters -- natural or manmade -- the plant could be subject to, how those events would affect the plant, and what steps are taken to mitigate those effects.
+Infinity Funny points to you, sir!
All hail our liberal overlords, who know far better than us lowly knuckledraggers what's best for us. Ah, the essence of the liberal paradise, where the entire populace is treated as too stupid to know what it needs and must be told -- or regulated -- into doing what the elite decree.
If it saves the lives of a single person, it's worth it.
If it saves the life of one person but endangers a random number of others, it's no longer worth it. The same argument was used to ban things like DDT. Sure, DDT caused large numbers of people to get cancer, and banning DDT stopped that in its tracks. However, a much *larger* number of people were dying -- and still are dying -- every year from malaria carried by mosquitoes. Yet people like you used the similar "if it saves a single life, it's worth it" argument, completely ignoring the larger consequences.
Nope. The loudest sound is hearing "bang" when you expect to hear "click." Either of these two situations will radically escalate your pucker factor, oddly enough.
Both arguments are equally stupid, and for the same reasons.
A poor analogy that does nothing to prove your point. Firearms, as currently built, work mechanically. Short of a metallurgical failure or an ammunition fault, they're going to work when you pull the trigger. Introducing complex electronic scanners, software code, and batteries into the mix greatly increases the chance of failure. Sure, it may only fail to recognize your hand 0.1%, but if that happens to be the one time you really, really needed it to work, you're likely going to pay for the failure with your life.
I'd expect the price-hikes will be comparable to what happended when the FCC announced that emergency GPS location will be mandatory in cell-phones
Phones already had GPS installed for other reasons that were deemed valuable by phone buyers, namely that of navigation. There is no similar "shared functionality" benefit in smart weapons. Further, cell phones are complex, expensive devices to begin with, and never has anyone's life been completely dependent upon whether or not their phone's GPS worked. Nobody dies if their phone suddenly glitches, or navigates you to the wrong location by mistake.
I don't think anybody is proposing to include a remote killswitch.
And your shortsightedness prevents you from ever thinking that someone in the future just might. Perhaps someone who doesn't have your best interests in mind. Try thinking ahead instead of just what's six inches in front of your face.
Guns need to be dissassembled and cleaned on a regular basis. Charging or replacing a battery does not add much to that procedure.
You clearly don't know much about firearms. Cleaning a firearm is not something regularly done for a stored firearm; there's no real need. Even firearms that see regular use don't *have* to be cleaned all the time: an AK-47 can be buried in mud, run over by a truck, doused in sand, rinsed in a muddy river, and chances are very good it will still fire when you pull the trigger. Right now I can take a revolver, load it, store it for five years, and draw it at a moments notice without ever wondering if it will fire. Throw a battery into the mix and that near-infallible reliability is compromised significantly. If there were anything other than my life on the line I might be willing to make that compromise. My life is quite dear to me, though, so I think I'll pass on your non-panacea panacea.
I said the constitution grants a "well regulated militia" the right to bear arms, which is factual.
You're missing the point. The Constitution says one thing, but the wording is sufficiently vague that it can be -- and has been -- open to interpretation. The Supreme Court is responsible for interpreting how it applies to common situations (yes, that's an oversimplification, but I'm not going to be bothered to explain it in greater detail; you should know already). The issue of "does the 2nd Amendment apply to groups or individuals" has percolated in Constitutional law circles for probably half a century. Quite recently, a case came before the Supreme Court where this question had to be settled, and settled it was: the Court ruled the 2nd Amendment does indeed apply to individuals, not just a "well regulated militia." It is now settled case law, known as "precedent" and will shape future court decisions unless overturned by some other case (very rare) or by a Constitutional Amendment (even rarer). Here's the first article I could find about the court decision: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062802134.html
I submit that you can take any person -- biomarker or no -- and put them in intensely depraved conditions surrounded by pain, death, manipulation, and terror, and after prolonged exposure you will find them reverted to nearly feral state. We keep thinking we're somehow above the rest of the animal kingdom because we've got these highly developed brains and opposable thumbs. We forget we're not all that different from our tree-dwelling relatives, and we all have the ability to be completely animalistic if put in the "right" circumstances.
What I find interesting is you see these school shootings not being done by the school jocks, or the "popular" kids, or even disgruntled staff. It's being done by the quiet, shunned ones who didn't "fit in" and were usually bullied. Make someone a powerless outcast, nurture them with taunts, and remove any possibility of hope, and you will get someone who will lash out. It's not genetic; it's behavioral.
Could've been a leak of the drinking water supply, unless they no longer have those in the suits.
There's a wonderful saying we have in the Marines: if my enemy ever kills me with my own weapon, he better have had to beat me to death with it because it was out of ammo.
But claiming that a device designed to injure, maim or kill is a 'life-saving device' is pushing a point too far for me.
Scumbag comes at me with a knife. I draw my pistol and demand he withdraw or be killed. He withdraws.
1. Had he attacked and I was unarmed, I might be dead. Therefore, the pistol saved my life.
2. He withdrew without being killed based on the threat of being killed. Therefore, merely *brandishing* the pistol saved *his* life.
I'm somewhat dubious that you carried openly in an airport unless you were wearing a uniform at the time or this was a LONG time ago.
Perhaps you're unaware it is perfectly legal to carry in the *public* areas of airports. Go back and re-read his post and you'll see he pointed this out. Sure, you get stares. That's part of the problem: people assume that you're some kind of crazy person just because you're openly carrying a firearm because they've been *conditioned* to think that way.
Nobody is going to attack you in an airport
Unless you somehow live *in* the airport, you must walk from the airport to the parking area to get your car and go home. Predators in the Atlanta area know that people coming from the airport are almost certainly *unarmed* because it's extremely difficult to carry a firearm with you on a trip. Many people are robbed, beaten, and raped in these areas because of this. Criminals aren't uniformly stupid; they look for prey in areas where resistance is unlikely.
I don't think it is unreasonable to register firearms
And if I thought for one moment the government would be responsible and exercise restraint in the area of personal ownership of firearms and respect for the *individual* right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, I wouldn't mind it either. The government, however, has not demonstrated itself worthy of said trust. A sufficiently-liberal judicial branch could quickly nullify the 2nd Amendment; it's not like they haven't tried before, and liberals show no signs of abatement in this area. Without 2nd Amendment protections and armed with a list of gun owners everywhere, the government would have all it needs to strip law-abiding citizens of their firearms or jail them if they don't comply. Meanwhile, unregistered firearms in the hands of criminals would remain in the hands of criminals, giving them the upper hand in any altercation with law-abiding citizens.
*require* safety and competency training, and to conduct background checks.
I'm with you on the safety training, but be careful when defining "competence". It wouldn't be hard for an anti-gun lawmaker to define "competence" in such a way that it's impractical for anyone to qualify, thus effectively ending private firearm ownership. And if you think they wouldn't try, just look at what anti-gun lawmakers have done in states and cities where their anti-gun laws have been shot down (pun intended) by the Supreme Court: crazy taxes on ammunition, onerous procedures and lengthy wait times to obtain licenses to deter all but the most determined from obtaining their firearm, zoning laws that make shooting ranges and gun stores impractical to locate, and so forth. Background checks are already in place.
In many ways it comes down to trust. Firearms owners like myself simply don't trust the government to respect our rights in this area due to a lengthy history of assaults on said rights.
There ARE crazy people out there looking to shoot up schools and movie theaters and public gatherings.
There are millions and millions of gun owners out there who carry every day and *don't* shoot up schools, theaters, and so forth. Would you tread on the rights of 99.9% to try and stop the 0.1%? I'll remind you that, if you follow that logic, you'll need to outlaw driving, as it kills more people every year than any number of crazed gunmen. More people drown in public pools, or die eating fatty foods, than have ever been killed by a nutjob with a gun.
it means that everyone (including you) is a coward
For some, yes. But for most it would mean you're showing a strange and nearly-unknown concept these days: respect for your fellow human being. You'd be nice to people because they were nice to you, because being nice would be the most effective way to get along with your fellow man. Intimidation and violence would carry the potential for serious negative consequences that most rational people would deem not worth the potential cost.
but from a biology standpoint it is quite impossible.
Improbable? Yes. Difficult? Yes. But not impossible. Assuming the initial four were sufficiently procreative -- say, 10-12 children each -- you have enough genetic diversity for a viable start. Inbreeding doesn't mean definite inviable birth defects, stillborns, and so forth. Two or three generations removed from this -- again, assuming sufficient procreativity -- and you have a pretty diverse base to build on due to natural genetic variances and random mutations.