Unfortunately, this discussion is being fought on the field of emotion, and not with facts or analysis.
A swarm of angry taxi drivers are littering the discussion with "fukin' law-breakers" comments, so I have to tap into the big stores of emotional reserve to have any effect.
You're right, of course. It was a cheap shot, but an easy one.:-)
that is a fallacious argument. You have incorrectly associated an individuals right to civil disobedience with the rights of a company. A company is not a citizen and as such it cannot commit civil disobedience. The world would be a very bad place if companies got to decide on laws, companies don't have the individual consequences associated with civil disobedience.
Hmm...
So by that logic, the New York Times shouldn't have published the Pentagon Papers, and the Guardian shouldn't have published Edward Snowden's revelations.
that report does not address the issues of the differences in inspection requirements, insurance requirements or in some places licensing requirements.
Which is, in essence, my point.
Stop talking about what *might* happen, and cite facts about what *does* happen.
Give us data on how Uber, in flaunting these regs, is worse than taxis!
How about, Time for tech companies to stop thinking local laws don't fucking apply to them. Either obey the law, fight to get the laws changed or get the fuck out of the market.
How about, "Time for taxi drivers to stop posting drivel and stop using "fuck" in every sentence?
The basis of law is justice. When laws are seen to be unjust, they are often struck down through the efforts of concerted civil disobedience. Prime examples are Rosa Parks not moving to the back of the bus, Martin Luthor's sit-ins, and the Boston Tea Party.
There, see that above? The section in bold? That's called an argument.
An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
Today, there's a lot of choice for someone shopping for a moral compass. A tolerant person will agree: Slavery is cool.
It's unfortunate that we don't teach the fundamentals of ethics in the US.
Admittedly there are nuanced and corner cases, schools of thought and arguable principles, but a handful of things are clear cut and we don't teach those.
We should teach that slavery is immoral, and that many religions get this wrong. It's OK to worship what you want in way that you want, but that part is settled *regardless* of what your religion says.
Another one: You can't force other people to conform to your religious views. No killing of infidels, stoning of witches, or swatting of Branch Davidians. Again, it's OK to worship what you want in way that you want, but that part is also settled.
Maybe someone should collect these "morality best practices" and write them down somewhere. In a permanent form, so that they can't be easily erased.
In an attempt to cut through the bullshit of what *might* happen and work directly from evidence, I came across a report of a Cato institute study:
A Cato Institute study shows key differences between rideshare services and taxis, but passenger safety isn't one of them.
The other differences are not as important and will probably get solved by other means. For example, cleanliness of the ride, courtesy of the driver, and gypping the customer can be handled by the Uber feedback system.
The economists here are quick to point out the importance of liquidity, and Uber adds much needed liquidity to the taxi system.
Can anyone justify the expense and bureaucracy of taxi medallions when passenger safety isn't an issue?
science tells you how the world works. religion tells you how to live in the world
The great thing about religions is that there are so many to choose from!
For example, the bible at times recognizes, condones, and even encourages slavery.
Bible:Exodus 21:20 "Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Islam neither ignores nor condemns slavery. In fact, a large part of the Sharia is dedicated to the practice (source).
Muslims are encouraged to live in the way of Muhammad, who was a slave owner and trader. He captured slaves in battle. He had sex with his slaves. And he instructed his men to do the same. The Qur'an actually devotes more verses to making sure that Muslim men know they can keep women as sex slaves than it does to telling them to pray five times a day.
For 3,000 years, the Hindu caste system has held the people of India in the grip of religious slavery.
I wonder what the Flying Spaghetti Monster has to say about slavery?
If the purchase is large or the card isn't swiped, simply send a verification code to the customer's phone for that transaction that they have to enter.
So in order to complete the purchase I have to drive home, get the verification code, and drive back to the store?
I have the sneaking suspicion that this is going to backfire massively. They'll have bad data hither and yon as overworked medicos end up entering the wrong codes (hey, it's a broken femur, who cares which side?) as often as the right ones. They won't get the supposed benefits of more granular data because the data will be so screwed up that they won't be able to draw any conclusions at all.
Nothing like an industry standard to screw things up on a grand scale.
It won't backfire, it'll work perfectly.
The insurance companies sit between the doctor and the patient, view medical care as an expense, and seek to avoid paying by any means.
Having an enormously complicated system of classification gives them many more ways to deny claims, leaving the patient on the hook for the bill.
I've had personal experience with this: for a procedure which was 100% covered, the anesthesiologist put the wrong diagnosis code in his notes and the insurance company wouldn't reimburse him for that reason (but everyone else - doctors, nurses, hospital - was OK).
It took 2 1/2 years and about half a vertical inch of paperwork to straighten it out, and was a nightmare. Some tidbits:
1) The insurance company could tell the doctor that he used the wrong code, but wouldn't say what the right code was. 2) The med techs swore up and down that it was the right code (in fact, the *only* code), the insurance company stated with equal strength that it was not. 3) Since it is a mistake with either the doctor or insurance company, nothing the patient can do will help - they are completely helpless. 4) A doctor can't "just change" their notes, even when they've made a clear and unarguable mistake. 5) If you resubmit a claim, the company will deny it based on the previous denial, even if the mistake has been corrected.
#3 above is the most frustrating. The patient has to convince someone else to spend time and effort to fix something which is not their problem.
This new system is just a bureaucratic boondoggle that lets insurance companies avoid payments.
It's saying, in effect, that they care more for paperwork than they do about providing health care.
There's a less-well-known set of theories under the name Electric Universe that posit electric forces having a large effect on accretion.
It supposes that individual bodies in space can pick an electric charge through various means, and are thus attracted to bodies of the opposite charge. This explains why many bodies seem to be "double lumps" caused by the joining of two prior bodies (and not three or more).
Static is a problem for space travel, so I've heard. With no atmosphere to bleed off the charge, any friction tends to leave behind a static charge, making your helmet visor a magnet for dust, for instance.
I wonder if the solar wind has areas of net positive and net negative charge, so that bodies orbiting in various ways could pick up such an electric charge and thus be attracted to other bodies.
This is one of the really useful experiments that could be more easily done in space. (As opposed to, for example, most of what the space station is used for.)
A laser interferometer in interplanetary space could have an enormous path length quite easily, and would not sense all the vibrations on Earth. It could also be in 3-dimensions, consisting of a satellite hub and 3 corner-cube mirrors at long distances from the hub.
I will say, though, that I disagree with you that a tragedy like Columbine should have some sort of geographical limit to its impact. We live in a connected world, and for better or worse one of the impacts of that is that such tragedies affect the world (or at least the first world) more or less simultaneously. I think the days where you can claim "oh, that happened miles (or thousands of miles) away, it shouldn't impact us" are long gone.
I disagree with you completely on that point.
John Cleese believes that the purpose of solemnity is to enforce control: control over people, over their actions, and over their natures.
Cleese got a lot of shit from making fun of the life of Christ, and that was half a world away and 2000 years ago(*). Because he wasn't solemn about it.
We hear weekly about bombs going off in India or Syria, a cop shoots an unarmed black man every week in the USA (on average), and of late there's an endless string of "baby found dead" stories in the news.
Must we live in a continual state of solemnity?
This is how people get controlled, how their behaviour gets corralled and guided. Comedians are quick to point out that humor is the best way to get us past a tragedy, but I've often wondered whether there's anything special about humor.
Not having the convention because of some unrelated incident is simple emotional control.
Can you give me any rational reasons why I should change my behaviour over... well... anything?
(Rational meaning: not based on emotion.)
(*) And was the first person to say "shit" on British television, the first person to say "fuck" at a British funeral (Graham Chapman's)
Do you have citations for this? I'm not trying to be snarky here; this is a genuine question. I watched Bowling for Columbine about half a life-time ago and didn't pick up on any of that; I would be interested to see if it is the case, but not so interested as to acquire and rewatch the entire movie looking for bad editing.
For the record, I snark at people who are snarky. Honest questions and differences of opinion that *don't* cast personal aspersions are warmly welcomed.
I apologize, I actually thought this was well known.
There are lots of dissections of the film on the net, but the clearest one I read at the time posted Charleton Heston's speech side-by-side with the video dialog. It's available here.
Specifically, Moore cuts and pastes quotes from two of Heston's speeches together, giving the impression that he said both of them in the speech immediately after Columbine. Heston has lavender shirt/tie in one speecn, and white shirt/red tie in another. Moore covers this with a cut scene of a billboard between the video clips, while the narration is seamless.
More specifically, the "cold dead hands" quote from Heston was not made at the speech after Columbine. By seamlessly editing that quote into the supposed speech, he paints Heston as heartless and uncaring.
And as a further note, and I'm doing this from memory of the movie, Moore asks a lot of the convention holders whether they should have cancelled the event out of respect for the Columbine shooters. He gives the distinct impression that the convention was held in callous disregard for the feelings of the affected Columbine families.
In point of fact, *this* is what Heston (NRA president) actually said in that speech:
I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today. Or course, you have a right to be here. As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that.
But it's fitting and proper that we should do this. Because NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity.
And I remember personally, while seeing the movie, noting that the convention (Charlotte, NC) was around 1,500 miles, from Columbine, and wondering how far away does something have to be to not cancel a convention.
I really like controversial movies that make a statement, even ridiculous or logically flawed ones. They are a springboard for debate and discussion, and even the bad ones can help clarify our thoughts. Exactly *where* is his argument wrong? And so on....but they have to be sincere and truthful.
Michael Moore edited and remixed dialog in "Bowling for Columbine" so that people appeared to say things that they didn't actually say. It was done so badly and so blatantly (ie - it's so blatant and pervasive that he can't claim it was accidental), that he lost all credibility.
It's really a shame. I like his earlier works, and Columbine was a ripe subject for political statement, but you just can't gin up a fight by putting words in people's mouths.
You have to show what they *really* said, and in enough context so that their intended meaning comes through.
Sadly, I don't watch Michael Moore works any more. You just can't trust him.
That said I can't imagine buttoning up all that Rube Goldberg contraption, transporting and then setting it to armed without a lot of trepidation that it would just go boom. Maybe the tilt mechanism got stuck in the contact position, maybe there was a short somewhere, maybe maybe maybe.
I'm really curious what his heart rate was the second he threw the switch. Did he have 100% confidence in the design or did he flinch.
How about an indicator LED (or light, in his bomb) that lights up when anything is triggered?
Then you can transport the bomb and look at the light. If it's lit, you know that arming would result in an immediate explosion.
(I always tap a finger against the wire before grabbing it, and from operating X-ray machines in college I got into the habit of tapping *any* metal enclosure before operating a switch or control. Saved my life once when I did this to a refrigerator door handle by reflex and got a shock before actually grabbing it.)
X-ray triggers are exotic parts even today, and very hard to get in 1980. A bomber would have to go to some lengths to get hold of one, and it might be possible to track the purchase afterwards.
Just a footnote to what you said: Any semiconductor diode will detect X-rays, and bigger devices will have a larger capture aperture than smaller ones.
Just sawing the cap off of a transistor will work as a detector. A 2n2222 in metal case has a tiny aperture, but a 2N3055 power transistor has an aperture of about a square CM. I've personally used both as detectors.
As many people have found out, CCD camera arrays are sensitive to X-rays and can be used as detectors. The areas aren't much bigger than a power transistor, but the interface is usually trivial - just process the image and look for bright specs.
I don't disagree with your post at all. Making an X-ray detector would be a separate project and require some electronics expertise, and it seems that people who make bombs are largely ones who don't otherwise have marketable skills.
But if a STEM-educated bomber were to suddenly appear, it's not unreasonable for them to include an X-ray detector.
tl;dr; you and/or your family members are more likely to die if you have a gun in the house.
I do statistics for my day job, and have looked into the "gun ownership" statistics extensively.
What you are citing is narrowly chosen numbers to support one side of the issue. It's one of a vast sea of misleading statistics used to promote one side of the gun control issue. (And the other side does the same thing.)
To show the fallacy, note that this particular statistic can be applied to vaccinations. "You are more likely to die from an allergic response to than to actually get the disease".
Does this mean you shouldn't get vaccinated?
A better statistical view is to look at society as a whole, and all causes of death.
While having a gun may raise your family's chance of death, it *lowers* the chance of death for everyone in your neighborhood. Having someone who could grab a gun and come out onto the porch gives a measure of protection to the neighborhood. It encourages criminals to go elsewhere.
And that particular statistic you cited isn't about "likely to die", it's "likely to die by gunshot".
Even though the likelihood of "death by gunshot" goes up, the total likelihood of death goes *down* with gun ownership.
This is because "total likelihood of death" also takes into consideration things like reduction of lifestyle after being robbed. That $300 from your wallet has to be made up somehow, and the after-effects show up in things like reduced nutrition and health care.
None of this is obvious to the public because there's so much political wrangling on both sides.
But when you look at the total picture, the statics seem to show that gun ownership as a whole, for a society, seems to decrease the mortality rate.
Actually, this isn't true at all. Wind farm owners are participants in ERCOT like any other generation facility; if there's too much power on the grid, they are given directives to throttle down, even to zero if necessary.
What we need is a way to use the excess electricity, or store it.
Storage may be coming within the next 5 years or so. I know, I know, all battery technology is "five to ten years out", but I've been following Donald Sadoway's liquid metal batteries for awhile now. They're slowly building bigger and better versions, figuring out the full-scale details before releasing it on the market. They're now very close, with no appreciable problems.
Usage is another possibility. Nitrogen fixation (via the Haber process) makes Ammonia for fertilizer. It's energy expensive, and uses about 1% of all the world's energy.
Within limits, an ammonia plant can be started and stopped. I won't say "easily", or "instantaneously", but it's entirely possible to build a plant that can run in bursts of a couple of hours.
We could put an ammonia plant in the middle of wind territory and shunt all unused power to making fertilizer.
Or, perhaps a different manufacturing process would suffice - something that can be started and stopped quickly, and without ruining the equipment.
Or, perhaps we could shunt unused power towards liquefying CO2 from the atmosphere and pumping it back into unused oil wells.
Once we have excess power to dispose of, there's a world of possibilities that we couldn't do before, because it would be "too expensive".
Honestly, I never expected him to bring the country together like this. Both left wing and right wing media alike really have it in for him. It's every story, everywhere. I never saw them so together on something, not even in the days after 9/11; not like this.
Interesting times...
It's even worse.
Most of the post-debate polls have Trump increasing his lead over the other candidates.
Looking at some of the article post responses over the net (my own anecdotal evidence), it seems that people really don't mind all the things people complain about Trump. The general tone of response is "I agree he's $X, but at least he's not like those corrupt politicians".
And at least one super PAC has declared war on Trump.
All he has to do is choose a handful of issues that piss people off, and he'll be unstoppable.
Probably just saying that he'd fix the economy and give people jobs would do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, cool analogy. But bad analogy.
Unfortunately, this discussion is being fought on the field of emotion, and not with facts or analysis.
A swarm of angry taxi drivers are littering the discussion with "fukin' law-breakers" comments, so I have to tap into the big stores of emotional reserve to have any effect.
You're right, of course. It was a cheap shot, but an easy one. :-)
that is a fallacious argument. You have incorrectly associated an individuals right to civil disobedience with the rights of a company. A company is not a citizen and as such it cannot commit civil disobedience. The world would be a very bad place if companies got to decide on laws, companies don't have the individual consequences associated with civil disobedience.
Hmm...
So by that logic, the New York Times shouldn't have published the Pentagon Papers, and the Guardian shouldn't have published Edward Snowden's revelations.
Both of which were classified at the time.
You are insulting MLK and Rosa Parks by comparing them to Uber. Mafia is much more appropriate comparison.
You know they're both dead, right?
that report does not address the issues of the differences in inspection requirements, insurance requirements or in some places licensing requirements.
Which is, in essence, my point.
Stop talking about what *might* happen, and cite facts about what *does* happen.
Give us data on how Uber, in flaunting these regs, is worse than taxis!
How about, Time for tech companies to stop thinking local laws don't fucking apply to them. Either obey the law, fight to get the laws changed or get the fuck out of the market.
How about, "Time for taxi drivers to stop posting drivel and stop using "fuck" in every sentence?
The basis of law is justice. When laws are seen to be unjust, they are often struck down through the efforts of concerted civil disobedience. Prime examples are Rosa Parks not moving to the back of the bus, Martin Luthor's sit-ins, and the Boston Tea Party.
There, see that above? The section in bold? That's called an argument.
An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
You want abuse - that's room 12.
Doesn't matter. A law is a law. Period.
Apropos of nothing, how do you feel about Rosa Parks not moving to the back of the bus?
Today, there's a lot of choice for someone shopping for a moral compass. A tolerant person will agree: Slavery is cool.
It's unfortunate that we don't teach the fundamentals of ethics in the US.
Admittedly there are nuanced and corner cases, schools of thought and arguable principles, but a handful of things are clear cut and we don't teach those.
We should teach that slavery is immoral, and that many religions get this wrong. It's OK to worship what you want in way that you want, but that part is settled *regardless* of what your religion says.
Another one: You can't force other people to conform to your religious views. No killing of infidels, stoning of witches, or swatting of Branch Davidians. Again, it's OK to worship what you want in way that you want, but that part is also settled.
Maybe someone should collect these "morality best practices" and write them down somewhere. In a permanent form, so that they can't be easily erased.
In an attempt to cut through the bullshit of what *might* happen and work directly from evidence, I came across a report of a Cato institute study:
A Cato Institute study shows key differences between rideshare services and taxis, but passenger safety isn't one of them.
The other differences are not as important and will probably get solved by other means. For example, cleanliness of the ride, courtesy of the driver, and gypping the customer can be handled by the Uber feedback system.
The economists here are quick to point out the importance of liquidity, and Uber adds much needed liquidity to the taxi system.
Can anyone justify the expense and bureaucracy of taxi medallions when passenger safety isn't an issue?
science tells you how the world works. religion tells you how to live in the world
The great thing about religions is that there are so many to choose from!
For example, the bible at times recognizes, condones, and even encourages slavery.
Bible:Exodus 21:20 "Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,
but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Islam neither ignores nor condemns slavery. In fact, a large part of the Sharia is dedicated to the practice (source).
Muslims are encouraged to live in the way of Muhammad, who was a slave owner and trader. He captured slaves in battle. He had sex with his slaves. And he instructed his men to do the same. The Qur'an actually devotes more verses to making sure that Muslim men know they can keep women as sex slaves than it does to telling them to pray five times a day.
For 3,000 years, the Hindu caste system has held the people of India in the grip of religious slavery.
I wonder what the Flying Spaghetti Monster has to say about slavery?
If the purchase is large or the card isn't swiped, simply send a verification code to the customer's phone for that transaction that they have to enter.
So in order to complete the purchase I have to drive home, get the verification code, and drive back to the store?
No thanks.
I have the sneaking suspicion that this is going to backfire massively. They'll have bad data hither and yon as overworked medicos end up entering the wrong codes (hey, it's a broken femur, who cares which side?) as often as the right ones. They won't get the supposed benefits of more granular data because the data will be so screwed up that they won't be able to draw any conclusions at all.
Nothing like an industry standard to screw things up on a grand scale.
It won't backfire, it'll work perfectly.
The insurance companies sit between the doctor and the patient, view medical care as an expense, and seek to avoid paying by any means.
Having an enormously complicated system of classification gives them many more ways to deny claims, leaving the patient on the hook for the bill.
I've had personal experience with this: for a procedure which was 100% covered, the anesthesiologist put the wrong diagnosis code in his notes and the insurance company wouldn't reimburse him for that reason (but everyone else - doctors, nurses, hospital - was OK).
It took 2 1/2 years and about half a vertical inch of paperwork to straighten it out, and was a nightmare. Some tidbits:
1) The insurance company could tell the doctor that he used the wrong code, but wouldn't say what the right code was.
2) The med techs swore up and down that it was the right code (in fact, the *only* code), the insurance company stated with equal strength that it was not.
3) Since it is a mistake with either the doctor or insurance company, nothing the patient can do will help - they are completely helpless.
4) A doctor can't "just change" their notes, even when they've made a clear and unarguable mistake.
5) If you resubmit a claim, the company will deny it based on the previous denial, even if the mistake has been corrected.
#3 above is the most frustrating. The patient has to convince someone else to spend time and effort to fix something which is not their problem.
This new system is just a bureaucratic boondoggle that lets insurance companies avoid payments.
It's saying, in effect, that they care more for paperwork than they do about providing health care.
There's a less-well-known set of theories under the name Electric Universe that posit electric forces having a large effect on accretion.
It supposes that individual bodies in space can pick an electric charge through various means, and are thus attracted to bodies of the opposite charge. This explains why many bodies seem to be "double lumps" caused by the joining of two prior bodies (and not three or more).
Static is a problem for space travel, so I've heard. With no atmosphere to bleed off the charge, any friction tends to leave behind a static charge, making your helmet visor a magnet for dust, for instance.
I wonder if the solar wind has areas of net positive and net negative charge, so that bodies orbiting in various ways could pick up such an electric charge and thus be attracted to other bodies.
Any astronomers here care to comment?
This is one of the really useful experiments that could be more easily done in space. (As opposed to, for example, most of what the space station is used for.)
A laser interferometer in interplanetary space could have an enormous path length quite easily, and would not sense all the vibrations on Earth. It could also be in 3-dimensions, consisting of a satellite hub and 3 corner-cube mirrors at long distances from the hub.
I will say, though, that I disagree with you that a tragedy like Columbine should have some sort of geographical limit to its impact. We live in a connected world, and for better or worse one of the impacts of that is that such tragedies affect the world (or at least the first world) more or less simultaneously. I think the days where you can claim "oh, that happened miles (or thousands of miles) away, it shouldn't impact us" are long gone.
I disagree with you completely on that point.
John Cleese believes that the purpose of solemnity is to enforce control: control over people, over their actions, and over their natures.
Cleese got a lot of shit from making fun of the life of Christ, and that was half a world away and 2000 years ago(*). Because he wasn't solemn about it.
We hear weekly about bombs going off in India or Syria, a cop shoots an unarmed black man every week in the USA (on average), and of late there's an endless string of "baby found dead" stories in the news.
Must we live in a continual state of solemnity?
This is how people get controlled, how their behaviour gets corralled and guided. Comedians are quick to point out that humor is the best way to get us past a tragedy, but I've often wondered whether there's anything special about humor.
Not having the convention because of some unrelated incident is simple emotional control.
Can you give me any rational reasons why I should change my behaviour over... well... anything?
(Rational meaning: not based on emotion.)
(*) And was the first person to say "shit" on British television, the first person to say "fuck" at a British funeral (Graham Chapman's)
He doesn't. His lies are part of a very long running smear campaign against Moore funded by the GOP.
Actually, I'm not part of that movement, but would be interested to hear what they have to offer.
Do they pay well? Do you have a link?
Charlotte was where Heston was when he made the "cold dead hands" quote, hence my confusion while viewing the movie.
The convention was actually in Denver, and this was stated in the movie, but I picked up on the Heston quote rather than the voiceover.
This wasn't clear in my response above, but it still raises the question:
How long is appropriate to wait, and how far away is far enough?
Do you have citations for this? I'm not trying to be snarky here; this is a genuine question. I watched Bowling for Columbine about half a life-time ago and didn't pick up on any of that; I would be interested to see if it is the case, but not so interested as to acquire and rewatch the entire movie looking for bad editing.
For the record, I snark at people who are snarky. Honest questions and differences of opinion that *don't* cast personal aspersions are warmly welcomed.
I apologize, I actually thought this was well known.
There are lots of dissections of the film on the net, but the clearest one I read at the time posted Charleton Heston's speech side-by-side with the video dialog. It's available here.
Specifically, Moore cuts and pastes quotes from two of Heston's speeches together, giving the impression that he said both of them in the speech immediately after Columbine. Heston has lavender shirt/tie in one speecn, and white shirt/red tie in another. Moore covers this with a cut scene of a billboard between the video clips, while the narration is seamless.
More specifically, the "cold dead hands" quote from Heston was not made at the speech after Columbine. By seamlessly editing that quote into the supposed speech, he paints Heston as heartless and uncaring.
And as a further note, and I'm doing this from memory of the movie, Moore asks a lot of the convention holders whether they should have cancelled the event out of respect for the Columbine shooters. He gives the distinct impression that the convention was held in callous disregard for the feelings of the affected Columbine families.
In point of fact, *this* is what Heston (NRA president) actually said in that speech:
I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today. Or course, you have a right to be here. As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that.
But it's fitting and proper that we should do this. Because NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity.
And I remember personally, while seeing the movie, noting that the convention (Charlotte, NC) was around 1,500 miles, from Columbine, and wondering how far away does something have to be to not cancel a convention.
Google for Bowling for Columbine Truth and such like, there's lots of expose's about it.
Moore was simply going for emotional appeal, and lost his integrity doing it.
Michael Moore "Where to invade next?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I really like controversial movies that make a statement, even ridiculous or logically flawed ones. They are a springboard for debate and discussion, and even the bad ones can help clarify our thoughts. Exactly *where* is his argument wrong? And so on. ...but they have to be sincere and truthful.
Michael Moore edited and remixed dialog in "Bowling for Columbine" so that people appeared to say things that they didn't actually say. It was done so badly and so blatantly (ie - it's so blatant and pervasive that he can't claim it was accidental), that he lost all credibility.
It's really a shame. I like his earlier works, and Columbine was a ripe subject for political statement, but you just can't gin up a fight by putting words in people's mouths.
You have to show what they *really* said, and in enough context so that their intended meaning comes through.
Sadly, I don't watch Michael Moore works any more. You just can't trust him.
That said I can't imagine buttoning up all that Rube Goldberg contraption, transporting and then setting it to armed without a lot of trepidation that it would just go boom. Maybe the tilt mechanism got stuck in the contact position, maybe there was a short somewhere, maybe maybe maybe.
I'm really curious what his heart rate was the second he threw the switch. Did he have 100% confidence in the design or did he flinch.
How about an indicator LED (or light, in his bomb) that lights up when anything is triggered?
Then you can transport the bomb and look at the light. If it's lit, you know that arming would result in an immediate explosion.
(I always tap a finger against the wire before grabbing it, and from operating X-ray machines in college I got into the habit of tapping *any* metal enclosure before operating a switch or control. Saved my life once when I did this to a refrigerator door handle by reflex and got a shock before actually grabbing it.)
You are all Bombs. Bombs do BOOOOOOOM! BOOOOOOOOM bombs BOOOOOOOOOOM! bommmmmmmm make the bombs. YOU EXPLODING BOMBS!!!
And here I thought we were all cows?
There's been one of these in just about every post for a long time now.
Does anyone know what this noise is?
X-ray triggers are exotic parts even today, and very hard to get in 1980. A bomber would have to go to some lengths to get hold of one, and it might be possible to track the purchase afterwards.
Just a footnote to what you said: Any semiconductor diode will detect X-rays, and bigger devices will have a larger capture aperture than smaller ones.
Just sawing the cap off of a transistor will work as a detector. A 2n2222 in metal case has a tiny aperture, but a 2N3055 power transistor has an aperture of about a square CM. I've personally used both as detectors.
As many people have found out, CCD camera arrays are sensitive to X-rays and can be used as detectors. The areas aren't much bigger than a power transistor, but the interface is usually trivial - just process the image and look for bright specs.
I don't disagree with your post at all. Making an X-ray detector would be a separate project and require some electronics expertise, and it seems that people who make bombs are largely ones who don't otherwise have marketable skills.
But if a STEM-educated bomber were to suddenly appear, it's not unreasonable for them to include an X-ray detector.
tl;dr; you and/or your family members are more likely to die if you have a gun in the house.
I do statistics for my day job, and have looked into the "gun ownership" statistics extensively.
What you are citing is narrowly chosen numbers to support one side of the issue. It's one of a vast sea of misleading statistics used to promote one side of the gun control issue. (And the other side does the same thing.)
To show the fallacy, note that this particular statistic can be applied to vaccinations. "You are more likely to die from an allergic response to than to actually get the disease".
Does this mean you shouldn't get vaccinated?
A better statistical view is to look at society as a whole, and all causes of death.
While having a gun may raise your family's chance of death, it *lowers* the chance of death for everyone in your neighborhood. Having someone who could grab a gun and come out onto the porch gives a measure of protection to the neighborhood. It encourages criminals to go elsewhere.
And that particular statistic you cited isn't about "likely to die", it's "likely to die by gunshot".
Even though the likelihood of "death by gunshot" goes up, the total likelihood of death goes *down* with gun ownership.
This is because "total likelihood of death" also takes into consideration things like reduction of lifestyle after being robbed. That $300 from your wallet has to be made up somehow, and the after-effects show up in things like reduced nutrition and health care.
None of this is obvious to the public because there's so much political wrangling on both sides.
But when you look at the total picture, the statics seem to show that gun ownership as a whole, for a society, seems to decrease the mortality rate.
Actually, this isn't true at all. Wind farm owners are participants in ERCOT like any other generation facility; if there's too much power on the grid, they are given directives to throttle down, even to zero if necessary.
What we need is a way to use the excess electricity, or store it.
Storage may be coming within the next 5 years or so. I know, I know, all battery technology is "five to ten years out", but I've been following Donald Sadoway's liquid metal batteries for awhile now. They're slowly building bigger and better versions, figuring out the full-scale details before releasing it on the market. They're now very close, with no appreciable problems.
Usage is another possibility. Nitrogen fixation (via the Haber process) makes Ammonia for fertilizer. It's energy expensive, and uses about 1% of all the world's energy.
Within limits, an ammonia plant can be started and stopped. I won't say "easily", or "instantaneously", but it's entirely possible to build a plant that can run in bursts of a couple of hours.
We could put an ammonia plant in the middle of wind territory and shunt all unused power to making fertilizer.
Or, perhaps a different manufacturing process would suffice - something that can be started and stopped quickly, and without ruining the equipment.
Or, perhaps we could shunt unused power towards liquefying CO2 from the atmosphere and pumping it back into unused oil wells.
Once we have excess power to dispose of, there's a world of possibilities that we couldn't do before, because it would be "too expensive".
Honestly, I never expected him to bring the country together like this. Both left wing and right wing media alike really have it in for him. It's every story, everywhere. I never saw them so together on something, not even in the days after 9/11; not like this.
Interesting times...
It's even worse.
Most of the post-debate polls have Trump increasing his lead over the other candidates.
Looking at some of the article post responses over the net (my own anecdotal evidence), it seems that people really don't mind all the things people complain about Trump. The general tone of response is "I agree he's $X, but at least he's not like those corrupt politicians".
And at least one super PAC has declared war on Trump.
All he has to do is choose a handful of issues that piss people off, and he'll be unstoppable.
Probably just saying that he'd fix the economy and give people jobs would do it.
Whoops - cut-and-paste typo.
The actual link is here.
The tabulated data is correct, it's just the link points to the house roll-call instead of the Senate.
Good catch - thanks for the heads up.