In fairness to the court, doctors were unable to demonstrate that they can distinguish between mentally well and mentally ill people. See for example [wikipedia.org]
My thanks for the link. I'd never heard of this before.
One of my friends mentioned a statistic today that for every attack thwarted by armed self-defense, 34 additional deaths occur [washingtonpost.com] because of armed self-defense.
TFA that you refer to does not support this assertion. What it says is that for every criminal killed in self defense, 34 homicides occur. Not 34 EXTRA homicides, just 34 homicides.
Basically, TFA says that armed self defense accounts for 3% of gun deaths. And possibly stops 3% of murders, of course.
And as they guy who responded first says, it doesn't include the crimes that are stopped by someone showing a criminal a gun. If someone broke into your home, and you pointed a gun at him and told him to lie down while you called the police, that would qualify as "armed self-defense", even though not a shot was fired and noone was killed....
This. Note that this whackjob was given three hours to work on his killing by the police. They were apparently afraid someone would get hurt if they burst in the door shooting...
In three hours, he could have killed that many people with a brace of flintlock pistols (or two caplock revolvers, or a Ruger No. 1 (which is a single shot rifle like a Sharps), much less an AR-15 clone (which is exactly the same, functionally, as a Ruger Mini-14, which was specifically EXEMPTED from being considered an "assault weapon" by the last attempt to ban "scary looking rifles")....
They should have started watching closer after the gun purchase, maybe
He was a professional security guard for Christ's sake! He used guns in his job. There's basically no way he wouldn't be able to buy a gun under any system short of a complete ban on ownership of firearms for non-military types.
And then the massacres would all be done by soldiers....
... It looks like you may have cancer; your insurance company & employer have been notified.
The ACA has some issues, but one of the things it does right is make it illegal for your insurance to dump you for things like cancer, and make it illegal for an insurance company to refuse coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.
The treatment was done 13 years ago, I didn't think they were gene editing back then so I assume they come from donors? Does that mean they require immunosuppressant drugs?
Bone marrow transplant survivor. If it requires immunosuppressant drugs, then there isn't a good enough match, probably. I had a very good match, and George (my new bone marrow) and I have gotten along just fine.
That said, I still think I would rather see the military budget cut to about 1/10th of it's size (which would still be twice as big as the next biggest military in the world) and the entire difference devoted to establishing things like free college, UBI and other social-upliftment programs that pay for themselves in savings eventually but need a big cash-dump to get off the ground.
$600B military budget. 90% of that is $540B. 330M citizens. Which works out to ~$1600 per person per year. So, no, you're not going to pay for free college, UBI and other social uplift programs by reducing military expenditures.
Assuming a UBI of $7.5K per person (man, woman, child), and that the system wasn't gamed, you'd need about $2.5T to cover the costs. Which COULD be paid for by replacing ALL of our existing social programs with a UBI. Or by replacing everything but Medicare plus adjusting tax rates, then using Medicare PLUS all moneys currently spent on health insurance (by employer and employee alike) to cover Universal Healthcare.
Note that the above assumes noone will game the system. Which isn't going to happen. The system will be gamed.
As to the military budget, the last time we had a military as small as the one you're suggesting, we got WW2 for our troubles. When you consider our Treaty obligations all over the world, the military we have now is too small, rather than too large. Yes, we could start withdrawing from treaties. Trump even suggested doing some of that with NATO. Did you notice the howls from Europe and the American Left? Yes, pulling out of treaties is not trivially done.
But then for added fun, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are funded through their own mechanisms and never comes out of the general budget
Umm, no. SSA and Medicare taxes just get tossed into the General Fund like all other taxes. And spent like other taxes. No, there is not a "Social Security Trust Fund", nor is there a means of dealing with the next couple decades as the boomers retire and the outgo from SSA exceeds the income to SSA for the first time.
Same with Medicare. It's spent as fast as it comes in, with outlays mandated by Congress, and income likewise mandated, but no real effort to keep outgo and income matching....
The thing that sucks the government's budgets dry is the military. The COMBINED cost of ALL American social programs is less than 5% of the entire budget.
Interesting theory. Military Budget 2015 was $598B, out of a total Federal budget of $3688B.
Note that social programs can be defined a lot of different ways (people who carp about the military budget tend to exclude SSA and Medicare, for instance, even though both are paid out of the general fund just like any other program), but if we just count "mandatory spending" (which tends to be all social programs), we get a number that looks like $2500B.
Note, if you're unaware, that 2500 >> 600.
Note further that I'm not arguiing that the military budget isn't too large. Though other than the continuing outlays for foreign wars, I'm not sure one way or another.
Note also that I'm not arguing that social programs should be smaller. I rather expect that they're either too small or too large, but no real opinions.
However, there is no doubt that we spend far more on social programs than we do on the military. Note finally that the military is one of those Constitutionally mandated things that the Feds are expected to do. Unlike social programs, which are Constitutionally optional....
Dinosaurs seem to have been ancestrally warm-blooded, ditto crocodilians and so on, but dinosaurs plot right on the expected brain to body size ratio that reptiles have.
You seem to be ignoring absolute brain size here. Especially since small dinosaurs (you know, like parrots) have a brain:body mass ratio considerably larger than humans do (1:12 for small birds, 1:40 for humans).
In any case, brain to body mass ratio is just part of the answer, not a complete picture of the issue of intelligence.
If you can't get a lift vehicle off the ground without problems what good are those bombs?
Their airplanes work just fine. And Peking is within range, as is Tokyo.
Or didn't you know that a nuclear weapon can be delivered by airplane? Hell, you can put a modern one into a large suitcase and deliver it via the daily commericial flight to Peking....
To put it another way, ask yourself this question: What would upset you more, allowing a criminal to go free because evidence cannot be obtained legally, or arresting a criminal using evidence that was obtained illegally? (For the purpose of the question, assume the person has indeed committed a crime.)
What would upset me more? Arresting a criminal using evidence that was obtained illegally. Because if they'll bend the rules that way, the next step is manufacturing evidence out of whole cloth. And when the cops get to decide who in the population is a criminal, we're about half a step PAST tyranny....
If the "good guys" can't be bothered to play by the rules, why should we expect ANYONE to play by the rules?
If we had a better voting system, then the party primaries wouldn't really matter all that much.
A couple of things:
The Party primaries happened because too many people complained about the candidates from each Party being picked in "smoke-filled rooms" by Party bigwigs.
So, the Party bigwigs pulled one of the biggest scams in history by convincing the States to pay for the primaries.
Note that the Primaries, since they're entirely internal concerns of the Parties should NOT be paid for by the taxpayers, nor should people who are not Party members be involved in them (yes, open primaries are a very bad idea - it really helps when you can help select the candidate for the Party you don't belong to).
As to choosing a candidate you want, maybe if more people actually tried voting for the candidate they wanted rather than voting against the candidate they dislike the most, we'd all be better off. Yes, voting Third Party probably won't get your guy elected (though it should be noted that the Republican Party was a "third Party" when they got that tall, skinny guy...what's his name? Link, or Lincoln, or something like that, elected. But you'll make the two major Parties take notice if a lot of people start voting Third Party - if nothing else, they'll have to adjust their policy positions to be nearer to that Third Party's positions, to try to pull voters back into the barn....
dropping out of the sky and killing innocents because you were too lazy to follow FAA regulations is an entirely new level of stupidity.
Interesting notion. So, what you're arguing is that a General Aviation pilot, who is already going to fly from point A to point B, is more likely to crash and kill innocents if he is carrying passengers that help pay for the avgas? Seriously?
Or didn't you know that GA pilots already have to follow a myriad of FAA regulations? Just not the ones meant for large airliners....
On the other hand, if you can provide some evidence that GA pilots are crashing and killing innocent bystanders at a high rate, I'm willing to listen....
There is a reason shouting fire in a crowded theater is illegal
Well, if shouting fire in a crowded theatre were illegal, you might have a point.
Alas, it's not illegal. It's not even illegal to FALSELY shout fire in a crowded theatre, though I expect that if someone DID falsely shout fire in a crowded theatre, and someone died as a result, and charges were brought against the shouter, then the courts MIGHT decide that such an act was not deserving of First Amendment protection, which would open the way for it being made illegal.
And was that a run-on sentence or what? I was trying to figure out a way to add another clause just for fun, but this was enough....
Also, there's no bail out plan. Once you are half way there, if something goes wrong, too bad. You basically have to carry out the mission.
The phrase "Earth Return Trajectory" is probably what you were searching for. In the case of an Earth-Mars trip, you inject the spacecraft into a two year orbit that, left to itself, comes back to Earth. Requires more reaction mass than a Hohmann Transfer, but it has a (reasonably) fail-safe element.
Note that an Earth Return Trajectory uses more reaction mass to put itself into Mars orbit also, so it's definitely non-trivial. Severall km/s extra deltaV (in the vicinity of 2000 m/s between the Earth departure burn and the Mars arrival burn), which will require a lot of extra reaction mass....
If you don't vote, you don't get to complain about how other people voted
First Amendment. Yes, in fact I DO get to complain about how other people voted. Just as I can complain right now about the candidates, in spite of being neither Rep nor Dem and so skipped the whole primary vote thing.
There seems to be an extra 'w' in there, so either the submitter, the editor, or the guy at wherever the quote was taken from is, at best, semi-literate. I'm hoping it's the last, but the number of semi-literates all over makes it a tough call.
Can you say "asteroid"? Did you know that asteroids are made out of metals? And carbon and hydrogen and silicon and a lot of thnigs needed to, well, make things?
And did you know we kept those "asteroids" in space? There are, in fact tens of thousands of them. Including a fair number that come pretty close to Earth (one passed between Earth and Luna a while back, for example)....
Slashdot Mirror
My thanks for the link. I'd never heard of this before.
TFA that you refer to does not support this assertion. What it says is that for every criminal killed in self defense, 34 homicides occur. Not 34 EXTRA homicides, just 34 homicides.
Basically, TFA says that armed self defense accounts for 3% of gun deaths. And possibly stops 3% of murders, of course.
And as they guy who responded first says, it doesn't include the crimes that are stopped by someone showing a criminal a gun. If someone broke into your home, and you pointed a gun at him and told him to lie down while you called the police, that would qualify as "armed self-defense", even though not a shot was fired and noone was killed....
This. Note that this whackjob was given three hours to work on his killing by the police. They were apparently afraid someone would get hurt if they burst in the door shooting...
In three hours, he could have killed that many people with a brace of flintlock pistols (or two caplock revolvers, or a Ruger No. 1 (which is a single shot rifle like a Sharps), much less an AR-15 clone (which is exactly the same, functionally, as a Ruger Mini-14, which was specifically EXEMPTED from being considered an "assault weapon" by the last attempt to ban "scary looking rifles")....
He was a professional security guard for Christ's sake! He used guns in his job. There's basically no way he wouldn't be able to buy a gun under any system short of a complete ban on ownership of firearms for non-military types.
And then the massacres would all be done by soldiers....
He gets to work whenever he wants to, for as long (or as short) as he wants to, and yet he'd rather be classed as a wage slave...
I'm curious as to whether he'll still want to work for Uber if they actually treat him as an employee - regular hours, layoffs, that sort of thing....
How quaint! So 20th Century. Imagine, they used to always do photos on paper, or all things....
The ACA has some issues, but one of the things it does right is make it illegal for your insurance to dump you for things like cancer, and make it illegal for an insurance company to refuse coverage if you have a pre-existing condition.
Okay, TWO of the things it does right.
Bone marrow transplant survivor. If it requires immunosuppressant drugs, then there isn't a good enough match, probably. I had a very good match, and George (my new bone marrow) and I have gotten along just fine.
$600B military budget. 90% of that is $540B. 330M citizens. Which works out to ~$1600 per person per year. So, no, you're not going to pay for free college, UBI and other social uplift programs by reducing military expenditures.
Assuming a UBI of $7.5K per person (man, woman, child), and that the system wasn't gamed, you'd need about $2.5T to cover the costs. Which COULD be paid for by replacing ALL of our existing social programs with a UBI. Or by replacing everything but Medicare plus adjusting tax rates, then using Medicare PLUS all moneys currently spent on health insurance (by employer and employee alike) to cover Universal Healthcare.
Note that the above assumes noone will game the system. Which isn't going to happen. The system will be gamed.
As to the military budget, the last time we had a military as small as the one you're suggesting, we got WW2 for our troubles. When you consider our Treaty obligations all over the world, the military we have now is too small, rather than too large. Yes, we could start withdrawing from treaties. Trump even suggested doing some of that with NATO. Did you notice the howls from Europe and the American Left? Yes, pulling out of treaties is not trivially done.
Umm, no. SSA and Medicare taxes just get tossed into the General Fund like all other taxes. And spent like other taxes. No, there is not a "Social Security Trust Fund", nor is there a means of dealing with the next couple decades as the boomers retire and the outgo from SSA exceeds the income to SSA for the first time.
Same with Medicare. It's spent as fast as it comes in, with outlays mandated by Congress, and income likewise mandated, but no real effort to keep outgo and income matching....
Interesting theory. Military Budget 2015 was $598B, out of a total Federal budget of $3688B.
Note that social programs can be defined a lot of different ways (people who carp about the military budget tend to exclude SSA and Medicare, for instance, even though both are paid out of the general fund just like any other program), but if we just count "mandatory spending" (which tends to be all social programs), we get a number that looks like $2500B.
Note, if you're unaware, that 2500 >> 600.
Note further that I'm not arguiing that the military budget isn't too large. Though other than the continuing outlays for foreign wars, I'm not sure one way or another.
Note also that I'm not arguing that social programs should be smaller. I rather expect that they're either too small or too large, but no real opinions.
However, there is no doubt that we spend far more on social programs than we do on the military. Note finally that the military is one of those Constitutionally mandated things that the Feds are expected to do. Unlike social programs, which are Constitutionally optional....
You seem to be ignoring absolute brain size here. Especially since small dinosaurs (you know, like parrots) have a brain:body mass ratio considerably larger than humans do (1:12 for small birds, 1:40 for humans).
In any case, brain to body mass ratio is just part of the answer, not a complete picture of the issue of intelligence.
Their airplanes work just fine. And Peking is within range, as is Tokyo.
Or didn't you know that a nuclear weapon can be delivered by airplane? Hell, you can put a modern one into a large suitcase and deliver it via the daily commericial flight to Peking....
What would upset me more? Arresting a criminal using evidence that was obtained illegally. Because if they'll bend the rules that way, the next step is manufacturing evidence out of whole cloth. And when the cops get to decide who in the population is a criminal, we're about half a step PAST tyranny....
If the "good guys" can't be bothered to play by the rules, why should we expect ANYONE to play by the rules?
A couple of things:
The Party primaries happened because too many people complained about the candidates from each Party being picked in "smoke-filled rooms" by Party bigwigs.
So, the Party bigwigs pulled one of the biggest scams in history by convincing the States to pay for the primaries.
Note that the Primaries, since they're entirely internal concerns of the Parties should NOT be paid for by the taxpayers, nor should people who are not Party members be involved in them (yes, open primaries are a very bad idea - it really helps when you can help select the candidate for the Party you don't belong to).
As to choosing a candidate you want, maybe if more people actually tried voting for the candidate they wanted rather than voting against the candidate they dislike the most, we'd all be better off. Yes, voting Third Party probably won't get your guy elected (though it should be noted that the Republican Party was a "third Party" when they got that tall, skinny guy...what's his name? Link, or Lincoln, or something like that, elected. But you'll make the two major Parties take notice if a lot of people start voting Third Party - if nothing else, they'll have to adjust their policy positions to be nearer to that Third Party's positions, to try to pull voters back into the barn....
Ahh, yes. TPC (The Phone Company)...I remember it well.
One trillion times as many possible combination, I hope you meant?
Since I am alive and cancer-free today thanks to a bone marrow transplant, George (my new bone marrow) and I thank you and commend you for doing so.
Oh, and I encourage everyone else to do so as well. It's not difficult, painful, or time-consuming, and it just might save a life....
Interesting notion. So, what you're arguing is that a General Aviation pilot, who is already going to fly from point A to point B, is more likely to crash and kill innocents if he is carrying passengers that help pay for the avgas? Seriously?
Or didn't you know that GA pilots already have to follow a myriad of FAA regulations? Just not the ones meant for large airliners....
On the other hand, if you can provide some evidence that GA pilots are crashing and killing innocent bystanders at a high rate, I'm willing to listen....
Well, if shouting fire in a crowded theatre were illegal, you might have a point.
Alas, it's not illegal. It's not even illegal to FALSELY shout fire in a crowded theatre, though I expect that if someone DID falsely shout fire in a crowded theatre, and someone died as a result, and charges were brought against the shouter, then the courts MIGHT decide that such an act was not deserving of First Amendment protection, which would open the way for it being made illegal.
And was that a run-on sentence or what? I was trying to figure out a way to add another clause just for fun, but this was enough....
The phrase "Earth Return Trajectory" is probably what you were searching for. In the case of an Earth-Mars trip, you inject the spacecraft into a two year orbit that, left to itself, comes back to Earth. Requires more reaction mass than a Hohmann Transfer, but it has a (reasonably) fail-safe element.
Note that an Earth Return Trajectory uses more reaction mass to put itself into Mars orbit also, so it's definitely non-trivial. Severall km/s extra deltaV (in the vicinity of 2000 m/s between the Earth departure burn and the Mars arrival burn), which will require a lot of extra reaction mass....
First Amendment. Yes, in fact I DO get to complain about how other people voted. Just as I can complain right now about the candidates, in spite of being neither Rep nor Dem and so skipped the whole primary vote thing.
Specifically, as to who, exactly, wrote:
There seems to be an extra 'w' in there, so either the submitter, the editor, or the guy at wherever the quote was taken from is, at best, semi-literate. I'm hoping it's the last, but the number of semi-literates all over makes it a tough call.
Can you say "asteroid"? Did you know that asteroids are made out of metals? And carbon and hydrogen and silicon and a lot of thnigs needed to, well, make things?
And did you know we kept those "asteroids" in space? There are, in fact tens of thousands of them. Including a fair number that come pretty close to Earth (one passed between Earth and Luna a while back, for example)....
1300 W/m^2. The Sun isn't quite up to putting 1300000 w/m^2 out as far as Earth's orbit. That's more like 5 Gm from the sun....