In an emergency, I'd like to know my position is being sent to rescue craft while I deal with emergency.
Unfortunately, using just an EPIRB, you don't know that.
There is a wonderful story about an NPS ranger, I think it was, going out on a solo weekend patrol in one of the larger national parks. He had his radio, but was out of range after just a couple of hours. He had his GPS, but GPS is receive only. So the NPS was relying on a satellite service like SPOT, if it wasn't SPOT itself.
He's out recording locations of different things, and he's checking in every few hours like he's supposed to using the SPOT. It's got all the correct lights on saying it's working properly. He thinks everything's ok.
Late Saturday he hears an aircraft in the distance, which he assumes is just someone flying by.
Sunday he gets back to the office and finds that they've just started gathering a full response search team to go looking for him. It turns out that his SPOT device was not communicating with anyone and he was seriously overdue for a checkin.
So, no, you do NOT risk your life using an EPIRB as the only means of communicating that you are in an emergency. The EPIRB is a BACKUP and last resort for when other means are not available or don't work.
As such, a large percentage of calls only reach a single tower, not the multiple towers required for easy direction finding.
You don't need multiple towers for direction finding. You just need to have DF equipment installed there. It's not even what you see in the old spy movies with a big rotating loop anymore, it's an array of four or eight antennas and the answer is almost instantaneous.
Vessels use other tricks, but they require active work with specialized gear to do the location, something not practical with a single land based repeater tower.
The same DF gear installed on a ship can be installed on a tower. The ship can move to triangulate on the source if the call is repeated, is all. If the call is a one-off fake, however, neither a ship nor a tower alone can do the triangulation.
On the other hand, while I would never condone prank/improper calls, in many situations they effectively serve as impromptu training for the coasties.
What an asinine statement. The "coasties", as you derisively refer to them, have plenty of training opportunities, all of them more effective than a fake mayday call.
The differences between training and actual rescue missions are several and significant. First, training takes place when there is no actual life at risk. A fake mayday call can draw resources from an area that may wind up needing them for a real mayday call. A helo that is 30 miles out to sea looking for a fake "lost person" cannot also be 30 miles away looking for someone who is actually lost at sea. A helo already tasked with a search for one lost person will not be available to search for another one, but a helo on an exercise mission will immediately divert to the real emergency when necessary.
Second, a training exercise can and will be called on account of safety without any hesitation, but a real search may proceed in less than optimal safety situations. In fact, the act of performing a search has hazards associated with it. Some of those hazards are acceptable when there is a life at stake but not when it is a fake call. You can't properly apply risk management if you don't know the rewards.
These people risk their lives to save yours, when you need it. It's a volunteer service; they could be doing any of a thousand other jobs, but they joined the Coast Guard for a reason.
Trying to excuse fake mayday calls as "training" for the "coasties" is, indeed, condoning them. There is no excuse for them at all.
Ok...hey, let's give them the first one as an accident...it happens.
Bob: "Hey, Dora, you been gettin' a mite fat over the last nine months. Maybe you oughtn'a be eatin' so much?"
Dora: "I ain't eatin' that much, and I been pukin' a lot of it up what'n I do eat, you know? I don't know what's... ungh, OW!" plop. "Hey, look at that! It's a kid!"
Bob: "Yeah, I wonder where that came from. But damn, woman, you're looking a lot trimmer now, let's go have sex to celebrate your sudden weight loss..."
100% of the service people are ready for combat theater deployment. You don't get to stay home because you have a combat ready weakness.
These two statements appear to contradict eachother. Either people who are not combat ready do not get into the military or you do not get to stay home because of a combat ready weakness. Which is it?
You've changed the first statement from "ready for combat theater deployment" to "combat ready." The former statement means "know they can be ordered to, and are expected to pack up and go, when needed". The latter means "ready to deal with it when they get there." Sadly, not everyone who knows they are expected to go are ready to survive the result.
They will only need to declare being transgendered (most possibly, pre-op) to avoid draft.
The only thing they need to do to avoid the draft is be a US citizen. The US military has not drafted anyone for a long time. Should there be a sudden need to reinstate an active draft, the situation will be dire enough that their trans status will be irrelevant to everyone but them.
How would the army verify that you are not transgender?
This is the very question that people who object to trans-cross-bathroom use ask, but they are called bigots when they do. How do you verify that the biological man who is standing naked in the girls locker room shower is pre-op trans and not just a perv looking for naked girls to ogle?
The only time anyone cares about which restroom is which is when you're in some comfy place that isn't in the field.
There is an incredible amount of military real estate that is not "field". Places where there are women who might not want to have men who think they are women walking into the women's restrooms or showers, and there is no compelling reason to allow it. And vice versa. I'd guess that such facilities are where more than 50% of the military personnel work. Maybe even higher. It's certainly where most of the trainees are -- those who are just learning how to behave in military life.
It's not high school, junior.
No, it's not. It's not a high school where we mandate attendance of every person under a specific age and can't prevent someone from attending for such reasons, because we have a good reason to believe that attendance in public education is nearly a right. It's the military where we can avoid issues of who uses what restroom, and protect female troops from being subjected to men who think they are women walking into the communal showers.
It's not a high school where the only "medical care" the public has to pay for is a bandaid and the recipient is expected to be covered by their parent's insurance. It's the military, where the taxpayer is expect to provide medical care and has an expectation that enlistees are not using the system to get an elective surgery.
The question to ask is: does the privilege of a trans person serving in the military outweigh the right to privacy and safety that a female servicemember expects when using a shower or restroom? Is a privilege more important than a right? Or do you not believe that a woman serving in the military has the right to expect that men will not be wandering into the shower facility she's using?
As someone who spent seven years in active service, and trained many soldiers in Canada, worrying about someone's sexual orientation or whatever was dead last on my concerns.
Except for the fact that you had to consider their "orientation" when determining if the trainee met any training standards that were gender-different (and they exist), this is as it should be. Your job was training them, not selecting who could join in the first place, or who would be best to have in the service. But this sounds like you were dealing with the Canadian military, not the US. Different outfit.
Are we sure he's sane?
If you have clinical evidence to the contrary, please do enlighten us all. If all you have is hate, please stop.
2) A restriction of some kind on joining the military.
There are already restrictions on who can join the military. It's not a right.
Affects the population in general who have concerns about having a functioning military.
Unless you can come up with some evidence that shows that trans people in the military are a necessity for a functioning military, then this argument is specious.
3) Bait and Switch in policy change
"Bait and switch" would be advertising one kind of job in the military and then trying to get someone into a different job. Too late to fix that one. You can argue if the existing "bait and switch" is a bad thing, but it already happens. I think it is ok, because someone who comes to a recruiter looking for a specific occupational specialty but has no talent may have talents the military can use elsewhere. Instead of a flat out rejection, the job seeker gets to decide if a different job would work for him.
Changing political decisions is a natural side effect of having a political system.
The military is already, apparently, the largest employer of transgender people in the USA. This is a political decision, not a practical one.
This also WAS a political decision, not a practical one. Political decisions get changed when the politicians change. Did you complain when Obama made his political decision? Then "it's a political decision" is a very unconvincing argument for you to make.
This decision has nothing to do with whether the military can handle it or not; they have been.
They were forced to handle it, now they are not being forced to handle it anymore. Just because they were forced to handle it before doesn't mean it was an optimal situation.
No, no it is not. The military has a job already, and "testbed for social policy" is not it.
you could run experiments as dumb as "does starting brushing ones teeth on the left side improve hygiene?"
That's not a social experiment, nimrod.
Of course, you mean "forcing" people to interact with people that they find strange as a social experiment,
That's a much better example than yours, but no, the experiment is "does allowing non-traditional gender identities in a military force improve the efficiency of that force".
which is weird because that is the basis of a civil society.
Civil society is a much better place to conduct social experiments than a non-civilian military force, the membership in which is a privilege and not a right.
What absolutely flabbergasted me was the report I heard where some military officials said that trans members already in service would continue to serve despite the President's policy change. I don't care if you think the policy itself it bad or good, the policy that the military has a Commander in Chief who makes the ultimate decisions needs to be inviolate. This decision is not illegal or unconstitutional, so the military officials need to shut up and execute the orders of the commander appointed over them.
Just suck out the air. You'd be surprised how well feathers can be compressed.
Better would be to use your alchemist's stone to convert the 40 pounds of feathers to 40 pounds of gold. Three benefits: it's smaller, it's lighter, and it's worth a lot more.
How'd someone with no balls for negotiation like you even get the job you have?
He's great at negotiation. He underbid every other competitor to get the job! And they're getting every penny's worth from what they are paying him. Win win!
I didn't tell everyone the reason or make it up, I'm just telling you what you missed in the summary.
You don't need 12Gb per day to "engage the fans". You don't distribute videos of your performances from a tour bus, you upload them once to a server somewhere. If you are tweeting 12Gb of stuff per day, you are seriously misusing Twitter.
The fact that some old fucks decided it is speech does not change that.
That's not what the decision says. The decision comes to the quite reasonable conclusion that money is required to have effective speech. The days of someone standing on a soapbox for free in the public park being able to have his speech heard are long gone. It takes money to buy airtime and print -- money which the media has ready access to because they own the airtime and print, but which the common citizen does not because he cannot afford it. CU says that people like you and me have First Amendment rights to speak, and that we can combine our money (even under the legal entity of "corporation") to make our speech at least as effective as the corporations collectively called "the media".
This is a Good Thing, not the End of All That is Good And Decent.
No it wasn't. As far as obstructionist oppositions went, the Republicans were pretty successful. You really need a better lie.
Reading comprehension much? I didn't say they were or were not successful. I said what names they were called.
It also says a lot about how bad the Trump government is because instead of bringing up the accomplishments of the current administration, you're still having to talk about how bad you imagined the last one was.
Now I know you didn't read what I wrote and are knee-jerk reacting to the word "Obama". I pointed out what branch of government the regulatory agencies are under. I made no value judgements about that branch or its leader.
It is almost assuredly because of weight restrictions.
It almost assuredly is not. Weight restrictions are not based on what you carry, but on a simple weighing the bag when you check in. Maybe you don't notice, but there is a scale you set your bag on at the checkin counter (at every airport I've been to). The agent sees how much it weighs a long time before it gets to TSA. She doesn't care if you have 49 pounds of comic books or 49 pounds of feathers in the bag. United doesn't care if you have 49 pounds of feathers or 49 pounds of comic books.
United actually wouldn't mind if you have 55 pounds of comic books, because they get to charge you a bundle for an overweight bag.
Anyway as such, my carry on probably weighed as much as I did
That's a common practice. I've carried on stuff that would make my checked bag overweight, too. I even packed it so that I could gate check it if I wanted to. But -- that is a reason why they would NOT want to tell you you can't carry comic books IN YOUR CHECKED BAG. If you're just going to put them in a heavy carryon, then they aren't saving anything on weight, they are making it harder to know the true baggage weights and thus harder to get a good weight and balance number. They're moving the problem from baggage handlers who deal with 50 pound bags all day to the gate agents who have to lug the gate checked bag down the gangway.
No, forcing you to put stuff in your carryon where they cannot charge you for overweight, and where they don't charge you for checking it at the gate, is not the reason United would say "no comic books in checked bags".
Your assertion requires U3 to somehow be wrong. It isn't.
My "assertion" requires U3 to not be the measure of what people would call "unemployed", and indeed, it is not. That makes it wrong to call it "unemployed". Now, the U3 number may be a perfect representation of what U3 is defined to be (but it probably isn't), but that's not the same thing.
How many people are looking for a job really hard, right now. That's it.
Right. And that's not what most people call "unemployed". "Unemployed" means "has no paying job".
You are the one asserting that U3 is a complete picture.
Bull fucking shit. I said no such thing, and not even close.
Which is literally no different than it is for a housespouse or a student. They could, technically, work. But they don't. By choice.
In theory, a student or a housespouse could hold down a 40 hour per week job in addition to being a student or housespouse, and some do. But they suffer as students, and they aren't really a housespouse anymore if they are working. It's a gray line, but in either case, they are unemployed unless they are working a paid job. They just aren't underemployed and should not be counted in that category for employment metrics.
You can try to twist it any way you want, but it's true.
Yes, it is true that they are unemployed, and that they could make other choices. What's the point?
I have a suspicion that this isn't due to weight, but density.
I've had problems with checked bags that have a lot of books.
They aren't opposed to books as books.
They become a black box on the X-ray machines that checked bags go through. I've watched TSA scan my bag and then search exactly the place where the books are, pulling each one out and looking them over. I almost wanted to shout over "it's a book, maybe if you knew how to read you'd know that..." but better judgement prevailed. Other bags packed similarly wound up with the "we searched your stuff" notices inside.
It could be as simple as a comment from an agent at the airport checked scanner to a United baggage handler that a lot of comic books packed together would cause more bag searches. Maybe. Maybe not.
I don't know any reason why United would put up such a notice without some prompting. They're much better off if you check the heavy stuff at the check-in because that allows them to know weight and balance and have the real baggage handlers deal with it, instead of you packing an 80 pound "carry-on" that you then gate check and has to be handled by the gate agents.
Much of what used to protect the American people has been torn away over the last 40 years. And now we have the ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which neither the Democrats or Republicans wish to address.
You mean the decision that the First Amendment was important enough to allow people to exercise their right to political speech despite unconstitutional attempts to restrict it? A decision that protected the First Amendment is tearing away protections? Huh?
Yes, those people happened to have formed a corporation, but by doing so they did not abdicate their First Amendment rights. And you might want to note that the same decision that said that the people forming the corporation called Citizens United had First Amendment rights said that people who form labor unions also do not give up their rights. It was a decision that took the venue of paid political speech away from exclusive control of the media and allowed the public to band together to pay for speech they would otherwise be unable to afford.
I'd argue if the DNC was serious about going after corporate behavior that harms Americans, there would be talk from the main-stream Democrats to deal with the Citizens United ruling,
Yeah, Democrats would get a lot of political mileage by angering the labor unions that spend a lot of money on political speech supporting Democrats, and by becoming the party that opposes the First Amendment rights of the people.
but I really haven't seen anything but hot air.
I've see a lot of hot air about CU vs. FEC, but I've also read the decision and know the truth. Trying to claim that CU hurts Americans is only one warm front amongst many.
Somehow Democrats and Obama did this while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.[1]
The DOJ, FCC, and FTC are executive branch agencies, controlled by the Chief Executive. A decision by the DOJ not to prosecute under anti-trust law, or the FTC/FCC to allow a merger, are executive branch decisions.
Republicans controlled the House for the last six of Obama's eight years in office, and the Senate for the last two.
And every time they tried to oppose something Obama wanted they were called racist or obstructionist.
Slashdot Mirror
In an emergency, I'd like to know my position is being sent to rescue craft while I deal with emergency.
Unfortunately, using just an EPIRB, you don't know that.
There is a wonderful story about an NPS ranger, I think it was, going out on a solo weekend patrol in one of the larger national parks. He had his radio, but was out of range after just a couple of hours. He had his GPS, but GPS is receive only. So the NPS was relying on a satellite service like SPOT, if it wasn't SPOT itself.
He's out recording locations of different things, and he's checking in every few hours like he's supposed to using the SPOT. It's got all the correct lights on saying it's working properly. He thinks everything's ok.
Late Saturday he hears an aircraft in the distance, which he assumes is just someone flying by.
Sunday he gets back to the office and finds that they've just started gathering a full response search team to go looking for him. It turns out that his SPOT device was not communicating with anyone and he was seriously overdue for a checkin.
So, no, you do NOT risk your life using an EPIRB as the only means of communicating that you are in an emergency. The EPIRB is a BACKUP and last resort for when other means are not available or don't work.
As such, a large percentage of calls only reach a single tower, not the multiple towers required for easy direction finding.
You don't need multiple towers for direction finding. You just need to have DF equipment installed there. It's not even what you see in the old spy movies with a big rotating loop anymore, it's an array of four or eight antennas and the answer is almost instantaneous.
Vessels use other tricks, but they require active work with specialized gear to do the location, something not practical with a single land based repeater tower.
The same DF gear installed on a ship can be installed on a tower. The ship can move to triangulate on the source if the call is repeated, is all. If the call is a one-off fake, however, neither a ship nor a tower alone can do the triangulation.
On the other hand, while I would never condone prank/improper calls, in many situations they effectively serve as impromptu training for the coasties.
What an asinine statement. The "coasties", as you derisively refer to them, have plenty of training opportunities, all of them more effective than a fake mayday call.
The differences between training and actual rescue missions are several and significant. First, training takes place when there is no actual life at risk. A fake mayday call can draw resources from an area that may wind up needing them for a real mayday call. A helo that is 30 miles out to sea looking for a fake "lost person" cannot also be 30 miles away looking for someone who is actually lost at sea. A helo already tasked with a search for one lost person will not be available to search for another one, but a helo on an exercise mission will immediately divert to the real emergency when necessary.
Second, a training exercise can and will be called on account of safety without any hesitation, but a real search may proceed in less than optimal safety situations. In fact, the act of performing a search has hazards associated with it. Some of those hazards are acceptable when there is a life at stake but not when it is a fake call. You can't properly apply risk management if you don't know the rewards.
These people risk their lives to save yours, when you need it. It's a volunteer service; they could be doing any of a thousand other jobs, but they joined the Coast Guard for a reason. Trying to excuse fake mayday calls as "training" for the "coasties" is, indeed, condoning them. There is no excuse for them at all.
Ok...hey, let's give them the first one as an accident...it happens.
Bob: "Hey, Dora, you been gettin' a mite fat over the last nine months. Maybe you oughtn'a be eatin' so much?" ... ungh, OW!" plop. "Hey, look at that! It's a kid!"
Dora: "I ain't eatin' that much, and I been pukin' a lot of it up what'n I do eat, you know? I don't know what's
Bob: "Yeah, I wonder where that came from. But damn, woman, you're looking a lot trimmer now, let's go have sex to celebrate your sudden weight loss..."
100% of the service people are ready for combat theater deployment. You don't get to stay home because you have a combat ready weakness.
These two statements appear to contradict eachother. Either people who are not combat ready do not get into the military or you do not get to stay home because of a combat ready weakness. Which is it?
You've changed the first statement from "ready for combat theater deployment" to "combat ready." The former statement means "know they can be ordered to, and are expected to pack up and go, when needed". The latter means "ready to deal with it when they get there." Sadly, not everyone who knows they are expected to go are ready to survive the result.
They will only need to declare being transgendered (most possibly, pre-op) to avoid draft.
The only thing they need to do to avoid the draft is be a US citizen. The US military has not drafted anyone for a long time. Should there be a sudden need to reinstate an active draft, the situation will be dire enough that their trans status will be irrelevant to everyone but them.
How would the army verify that you are not transgender?
This is the very question that people who object to trans-cross-bathroom use ask, but they are called bigots when they do. How do you verify that the biological man who is standing naked in the girls locker room shower is pre-op trans and not just a perv looking for naked girls to ogle?
The only time anyone cares about which restroom is which is when you're in some comfy place that isn't in the field.
There is an incredible amount of military real estate that is not "field". Places where there are women who might not want to have men who think they are women walking into the women's restrooms or showers, and there is no compelling reason to allow it. And vice versa. I'd guess that such facilities are where more than 50% of the military personnel work. Maybe even higher. It's certainly where most of the trainees are -- those who are just learning how to behave in military life.
It's not high school, junior.
No, it's not. It's not a high school where we mandate attendance of every person under a specific age and can't prevent someone from attending for such reasons, because we have a good reason to believe that attendance in public education is nearly a right. It's the military where we can avoid issues of who uses what restroom, and protect female troops from being subjected to men who think they are women walking into the communal showers.
It's not a high school where the only "medical care" the public has to pay for is a bandaid and the recipient is expected to be covered by their parent's insurance. It's the military, where the taxpayer is expect to provide medical care and has an expectation that enlistees are not using the system to get an elective surgery.
The question to ask is: does the privilege of a trans person serving in the military outweigh the right to privacy and safety that a female servicemember expects when using a shower or restroom? Is a privilege more important than a right? Or do you not believe that a woman serving in the military has the right to expect that men will not be wandering into the shower facility she's using?
This has NOTHING to do with any type of policy other than hatred. Everyone needs to stand up to the clueless, out of touch, orange douchbag
I bet the irony of this message is completely lost on the author.
As someone who spent seven years in active service, and trained many soldiers in Canada, worrying about someone's sexual orientation or whatever was dead last on my concerns.
Except for the fact that you had to consider their "orientation" when determining if the trainee met any training standards that were gender-different (and they exist), this is as it should be. Your job was training them, not selecting who could join in the first place, or who would be best to have in the service. But this sounds like you were dealing with the Canadian military, not the US. Different outfit.
Are we sure he's sane?
If you have clinical evidence to the contrary, please do enlighten us all. If all you have is hate, please stop.
2) A restriction of some kind on joining the military.
There are already restrictions on who can join the military. It's not a right.
Affects the population in general who have concerns about having a functioning military.
Unless you can come up with some evidence that shows that trans people in the military are a necessity for a functioning military, then this argument is specious.
3) Bait and Switch in policy change
"Bait and switch" would be advertising one kind of job in the military and then trying to get someone into a different job. Too late to fix that one. You can argue if the existing "bait and switch" is a bad thing, but it already happens. I think it is ok, because someone who comes to a recruiter looking for a specific occupational specialty but has no talent may have talents the military can use elsewhere. Instead of a flat out rejection, the job seeker gets to decide if a different job would work for him.
Changing political decisions is a natural side effect of having a political system.
The military is already, apparently, the largest employer of transgender people in the USA. This is a political decision, not a practical one.
This also WAS a political decision, not a practical one. Political decisions get changed when the politicians change. Did you complain when Obama made his political decision? Then "it's a political decision" is a very unconvincing argument for you to make.
This decision has nothing to do with whether the military can handle it or not; they have been.
They were forced to handle it, now they are not being forced to handle it anymore. Just because they were forced to handle it before doesn't mean it was an optimal situation.
Sounds to me like a neat way to avoid being drafted
The US has not had an active draft for many years now. You must still register when you turn 18.
This is exactly the situation in which ad hominems are not logical phallacies.
I see what you did there. You misspelled "phallusies".
Yes, yes it is.
No, no it is not. The military has a job already, and "testbed for social policy" is not it.
you could run experiments as dumb as "does starting brushing ones teeth on the left side improve hygiene?"
That's not a social experiment, nimrod.
Of course, you mean "forcing" people to interact with people that they find strange as a social experiment,
That's a much better example than yours, but no, the experiment is "does allowing non-traditional gender identities in a military force improve the efficiency of that force".
which is weird because that is the basis of a civil society.
Civil society is a much better place to conduct social experiments than a non-civilian military force, the membership in which is a privilege and not a right.
What absolutely flabbergasted me was the report I heard where some military officials said that trans members already in service would continue to serve despite the President's policy change. I don't care if you think the policy itself it bad or good, the policy that the military has a Commander in Chief who makes the ultimate decisions needs to be inviolate. This decision is not illegal or unconstitutional, so the military officials need to shut up and execute the orders of the commander appointed over them.
Just suck out the air. You'd be surprised how well feathers can be compressed.
Better would be to use your alchemist's stone to convert the 40 pounds of feathers to 40 pounds of gold. Three benefits: it's smaller, it's lighter, and it's worth a lot more.
How'd someone with no balls for negotiation like you even get the job you have?
He's great at negotiation. He underbid every other competitor to get the job! And they're getting every penny's worth from what they are paying him. Win win!
It's only one or the other, huh?
I didn't tell everyone the reason or make it up, I'm just telling you what you missed in the summary.
You don't need 12Gb per day to "engage the fans". You don't distribute videos of your performances from a tour bus, you upload them once to a server somewhere. If you are tweeting 12Gb of stuff per day, you are seriously misusing Twitter.
The fact that some old fucks decided it is speech does not change that.
That's not what the decision says. The decision comes to the quite reasonable conclusion that money is required to have effective speech. The days of someone standing on a soapbox for free in the public park being able to have his speech heard are long gone. It takes money to buy airtime and print -- money which the media has ready access to because they own the airtime and print, but which the common citizen does not because he cannot afford it. CU says that people like you and me have First Amendment rights to speak, and that we can combine our money (even under the legal entity of "corporation") to make our speech at least as effective as the corporations collectively called "the media".
This is a Good Thing, not the End of All That is Good And Decent.
No it wasn't. As far as obstructionist oppositions went, the Republicans were pretty successful. You really need a better lie.
Reading comprehension much? I didn't say they were or were not successful. I said what names they were called.
It also says a lot about how bad the Trump government is because instead of bringing up the accomplishments of the current administration, you're still having to talk about how bad you imagined the last one was.
Now I know you didn't read what I wrote and are knee-jerk reacting to the word "Obama". I pointed out what branch of government the regulatory agencies are under. I made no value judgements about that branch or its leader.
It is almost assuredly because of weight restrictions.
It almost assuredly is not. Weight restrictions are not based on what you carry, but on a simple weighing the bag when you check in. Maybe you don't notice, but there is a scale you set your bag on at the checkin counter (at every airport I've been to). The agent sees how much it weighs a long time before it gets to TSA. She doesn't care if you have 49 pounds of comic books or 49 pounds of feathers in the bag. United doesn't care if you have 49 pounds of feathers or 49 pounds of comic books.
United actually wouldn't mind if you have 55 pounds of comic books, because they get to charge you a bundle for an overweight bag.
Anyway as such, my carry on probably weighed as much as I did
That's a common practice. I've carried on stuff that would make my checked bag overweight, too. I even packed it so that I could gate check it if I wanted to. But -- that is a reason why they would NOT want to tell you you can't carry comic books IN YOUR CHECKED BAG. If you're just going to put them in a heavy carryon, then they aren't saving anything on weight, they are making it harder to know the true baggage weights and thus harder to get a good weight and balance number. They're moving the problem from baggage handlers who deal with 50 pound bags all day to the gate agents who have to lug the gate checked bag down the gangway.
No, forcing you to put stuff in your carryon where they cannot charge you for overweight, and where they don't charge you for checking it at the gate, is not the reason United would say "no comic books in checked bags".
Your assertion requires U3 to somehow be wrong. It isn't.
My "assertion" requires U3 to not be the measure of what people would call "unemployed", and indeed, it is not. That makes it wrong to call it "unemployed". Now, the U3 number may be a perfect representation of what U3 is defined to be (but it probably isn't), but that's not the same thing.
How many people are looking for a job really hard, right now. That's it.
Right. And that's not what most people call "unemployed". "Unemployed" means "has no paying job".
You are the one asserting that U3 is a complete picture.
Bull fucking shit. I said no such thing, and not even close.
Which is literally no different than it is for a housespouse or a student. They could, technically, work. But they don't. By choice.
In theory, a student or a housespouse could hold down a 40 hour per week job in addition to being a student or housespouse, and some do. But they suffer as students, and they aren't really a housespouse anymore if they are working. It's a gray line, but in either case, they are unemployed unless they are working a paid job. They just aren't underemployed and should not be counted in that category for employment metrics.
You can try to twist it any way you want, but it's true.
Yes, it is true that they are unemployed, and that they could make other choices. What's the point?
I've had problems with checked bags that have a lot of books. They aren't opposed to books as books. They become a black box on the X-ray machines that checked bags go through. I've watched TSA scan my bag and then search exactly the place where the books are, pulling each one out and looking them over. I almost wanted to shout over "it's a book, maybe if you knew how to read you'd know that..." but better judgement prevailed. Other bags packed similarly wound up with the "we searched your stuff" notices inside.
It could be as simple as a comment from an agent at the airport checked scanner to a United baggage handler that a lot of comic books packed together would cause more bag searches. Maybe. Maybe not.
I don't know any reason why United would put up such a notice without some prompting. They're much better off if you check the heavy stuff at the check-in because that allows them to know weight and balance and have the real baggage handlers deal with it, instead of you packing an 80 pound "carry-on" that you then gate check and has to be handled by the gate agents.
Much of what used to protect the American people has been torn away over the last 40 years. And now we have the ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which neither the Democrats or Republicans wish to address.
You mean the decision that the First Amendment was important enough to allow people to exercise their right to political speech despite unconstitutional attempts to restrict it? A decision that protected the First Amendment is tearing away protections? Huh?
Yes, those people happened to have formed a corporation, but by doing so they did not abdicate their First Amendment rights. And you might want to note that the same decision that said that the people forming the corporation called Citizens United had First Amendment rights said that people who form labor unions also do not give up their rights. It was a decision that took the venue of paid political speech away from exclusive control of the media and allowed the public to band together to pay for speech they would otherwise be unable to afford.
I'd argue if the DNC was serious about going after corporate behavior that harms Americans, there would be talk from the main-stream Democrats to deal with the Citizens United ruling,
Yeah, Democrats would get a lot of political mileage by angering the labor unions that spend a lot of money on political speech supporting Democrats, and by becoming the party that opposes the First Amendment rights of the people.
but I really haven't seen anything but hot air.
I've see a lot of hot air about CU vs. FEC, but I've also read the decision and know the truth. Trying to claim that CU hurts Americans is only one warm front amongst many.
Somehow Democrats and Obama did this while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.[1]
The DOJ, FCC, and FTC are executive branch agencies, controlled by the Chief Executive. A decision by the DOJ not to prosecute under anti-trust law, or the FTC/FCC to allow a merger, are executive branch decisions.
Republicans controlled the House for the last six of Obama's eight years in office, and the Senate for the last two.
And every time they tried to oppose something Obama wanted they were called racist or obstructionist.