No, I have a right to lobby my legislators to stop the irresponsible spread of killing weapons in America.
And you'd have my support if that's all you wanted to do. Alas, your side of the fence seems to have a problem with firearms in general, not merely with the firearms used by bad actors.
The VAST majority of US agency and employees do not like and won't except bribes.
It's illegal to give the Town Supervisor a handful of cash to get your permit application moved to the top of the pile. It's not illegal however to offer his son a job, assuming he has some marketable skill you need, and it's not an obvious quid-pro-quo.
Greasing the palms in the United States rarely involves obvious bribery.
Condoms have limited efficacy against herpes and HPV, both of which you'll get to enjoy for the rest of your life if you manage to catch them. To each their own, but I'd reconsider the hooker suggestion and just stick with the porn, there's no orgasm worth a lifetime affliction....
He who comes to a fistfight with a gun is the one who is a coward. Kerry could man up and guarantee Snowden bail and a trial in an open court with no special evidence and testimony restrictions.
Why would Snowden get bail? He's a demonstrated flight risk. You think there's a Judge anywhere in the United States that would give you bail for any felony offense after you previously fled the jurisdiction?
You said it, not me. The legal term you're looking for is facilitation. It's a crime in many jurisdictions.
I make no comment on whether or not it should be, or whether or not it should apply in this case. I just think it's absurd to apply the label "political prisoner" to Mr. Sunde.
You cheapen the term "political prisoner" when you apply it to someone who goes to jail for something as mundane as piracy.
You may think it should be perfectly legal, or that it should be a civil matter (this is where I fall, FWIW) rather than a criminal one, but no matter what your opinion you do "the cause" a disservice when you conjure up images of Gandhi or Mandela, which is what comes to mind for most people when they hear "political prisoner".
Yes, the innocent are never imprisoned for political reasons.
Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were imprisoned for political reasons. This guy is being imprisoned because he helped to facilitate media piracy on a mass scale. You may disagree with that outcome but please don't try and paint him as some sort of oppressed political dissent.
Depends on the personality. Some people would be very happy marrying their "high school sweetheart" and would never wonder about other partners. Other people would find that it nagged at them and ultimately undermined that first relationship.
Either way, I think you've got a problem if you're looking for self-esteem in sexual intercourse. You have to like yourself before someone else can like you enough to sleep with you, unless we're talking about drunken one night stands, but even those require some level of connection to be successful.
So we come off as "awkward", and don't understand why successful men can walk up to pretty women, strike up a conversation, and take her home to bed, and when the introverts try the exact same thing, they get nowhere (or worse, denigrated as "creepy").
I would posit that you've already lost if you're deriving your self-esteem from one night stands. In fairness, it took me a long time to come to that realization, and I never would have accepted it as a virgin (*), but once I learned that life lesson it was very liberating. I've had the best sex of my life in medium/long-term relationships. Hook-ups and flings? Eh, they meet a biological need, but so does porn and a bottle of Astroglide.
As it is I've been without since last September. It sucks from the aforementioned biological standpoint (whatever did people do before the internet?), but my last relationship was with a complete psychopath, that I rushed into because it seemed better than being alone, and I have no desire to repeat that experience. I'll meet someone when the time is right, until then, well, there are other outlets for sexual frustration. Exercise helps a lot, and comes with the added advantages of making you more attractive and increasing your life expectancy.
(*) I lost my virginity late, by American male standards, at 23. I'm 32 now, so I invite the reader to take my "wisdom" for what it's worth.
Geeks are frustrated because they don't have good luck with women.
Introverts don't have good luck with the ladies, regardless of how geeky they are. As you correctly note, making new friends (platonic and otherwise) requires putting yourself out there, which is very difficult for an introverted personality to do.
You're just demonstrating sheer ignorance. It won't stop one unless you get a damn lucky shot off. It's easy to aim for vitals when you're stalking prey, but ridiculously difficult when a bear suddenly charges at you from a hidden position in a nearby tree line.
You continue to demonstrating an impressive selective reading ability. "My choice would be the.30-06 for bear hunting and the 12 gauge for self-defense in bear country, but to each their own." The guides that took us through the Kodiak Peninsula all carried 12 gauges, with slugs or alternating buckshot/slugs. I'll trust their experience more than some random idiot loser that casually dismisses a.30-06 as though it's some sort of water pistol.
but not until it decimates the first couple waves.
Decimates the first couple waves? Do you understand anything about animals? It's going to do its utmost to run away, because even a minor injury in the animal kingdom may spell death if it gets infected. They don't stand their ground and fight unless cornered, and if you think any animal can "decimate" a coordinated group of humans equipped with even primitive weapons you're delusional.
Actually, MOST guns aren't large enough to kill a grizzly.
I see you're as knowledgeable about firearms as you are about reading. A.30-06 is plenty of gun for a grizzly, with proper shot placement, no extreme wildcat caliber required. Shotgun slugs are effective too, maybe more so than a rifle. Practically every deer hunter in North America has a.30-06 and/or 12 gauge, we're not talking about rare guns here. My choice would be the.30-06 for bear hunting and the 12 gauge for self-defense in bear country, but to each their own.
and you specifically mentioned making "spears" and said:
I also said that humans work in groups, but you've clearly decided to ignore that part of my statement. Grizzly vs. coordinated group of humans = dead grizzly.
And they'll have a human brain, too, a few seconds after they attack you.
They'll be lying on the ground bleeding out from a bullet hole a few seconds after they decide to attack me.
You are utterly delusional if you think you'd be able to kill a very large predator with a spear.
And you have a talent for selective reading, because I also said "I can communicate tactics and strategy with my friends/family members". You think a grizzly can defeat a coordinated group of homo sapiens equipped even with primitive weapons (never mind modern ones)?
Brains and endurance defeat brawn. We're the smartest species on the planet and rank in the top 10 (maybe even top 5) for endurance. The combination is unstoppable.
Mosquitoes aren't predators, they're effectively parasites. That's a key difference. They don't really kill us anyhow, they're carriers for diseases that can occasionally kill us and invariably make our lives miserable. You can survive a mosquito bite and malaria. You aren't terribly likely to survive a predatory encounter with a salt water croc, nor is he likely to survive a predatory encounter with a group of pissed off humans.
We have very low strength for our body mass. Compare us to chimps, cats, etc., and we're weaklings.
That's irrelevant. We have two things they don't: opposable digits and the human brain.
You go out, naked, into the wilderness of Alaska, and see how you do up against the first grizzly bear or a pack of wolves you come across...
Why would I do that when I could go there with ten of my friends, the proper gear, and a collection of ranged weaponry? Seriously, this statement is stupid. You might as well say that my cat gets her ass kicked if I send her out into the wild after being declawed and detoothed.
Take away modern technology and humans still win. I can make a spear with a decent sized stick and a sharp rock. I can communicate tactics and strategy with my friends/family members. The grizzly still loses. The only difference between the spear and a.30-06 is the likelihood of the grizzly taking one or more humans out with him. At the end of the day he still loses. So does the wolf pack if they're stupid enough to take on a group of humans, which they usually aren't, but that's besides the point.
And we die by poisonous snakes, spiders, scorpions, jellyfish, plants; disease carriers like rats, cockroaches, etc; And just about anything that we poke/prod/otherwise mistreat that has large claws/horns/etc or that is just large enough to pummel us to death like apes, elephants, and even kangaroos.
They don't prey on us, which was my whole point. Lions get bitten by venomous snakes too, but the snakes aren't preying on them. It's a defensive measure, same as when a snake bites a human.
It even looks to me like it's trying to be critical of the organic movement. I'll reserve my opinion of that kind of thing, but in this case, "organic" means what it actually means, not the hippie non-term it has become. I'd rather they say it was because they switched from clay-based to plant-based kitty litter.
In my experience organic cat litter is inferior, in every meaningful measure. Clumping, odor control, and the most important one: My cat's willingness to use it, vs. expressing her disapproval by shitting on the carpet, which she has done every time I've tried a non-clay litter, no matter how gradually it was introduced.
Can't say that I have any hands on experience with radioactive waste disposal, but I'll certainly be sticking with clay litter for my more mundane needs.
Plenty of species have benefited from humans without becoming primary sources of food for them. Easy example: Cats and Dogs. Other examples: Squirrels, pigeons, and rats.
Let's hope the rest of the earth's species don't adopt this plan to control the invasive naked apes.
Homo sapiens is pretty tough prey. We're tough enough catch and kill on an individual basis, on a group basis it becomes virtually impossible, even if you take away our technology.
The only predators that can kill humans in comparative safety are ambush predators (salt water crocodiles) and predators more adapted to their environment than we are (sharks). The former are probably the biggest man eaters on the planet and the latter don't regard us as optimal prey, because we're not energy dense enough for them (insert obese American joke here) when compared to their preferred prey.
Good. Let costs reflect reality, it's the only way a market oriented system can work. In any case, I would dispute that food prices are low because of rural-specific subsidies. They're low because of economy of scale, which is why I can't green bell peppers in the grocery store from anywhere besides California even though they'll grow in all 50 States. One would like to believe the current drought there would teach us the value of not putting all our eggs in one basket, but history suggests we'll forget all about it in short order.
No, I expect people to pay the actual cost to receive service at their location, not to treat the internet like the USPS that charges me the same to deliver a letter from PO Box 1 to PO Box 2 as it does to deliver it from New York to Hawaii.
we got very good service as a whole, with reasonable rates
How old are you? Are you old enough to remember the concept of "long distance"? Of paying $0.10/min - $0.25/min for the privilege of calling your friends and family across the country? Rounded up of course. Don't tell me Ma Bell had "reasonable rates". Their rates were highway robbery even with the technological limitations of those days.
Innovation and regulated monopolies don't go hand in hand either. The theoretical underpinnings of what we now call DSL were well known in the 50s and workable technology was field tested by the 80s. It went nowhere because AT&T saw it as a threat, we can't sell dedicated data lines if we bring data and voice in on the same pair. That technology was left to collect dust on the shelf until DOCSIS was on the horizon and they realized they had a competitor.
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No, I have a right to lobby my legislators to stop the irresponsible spread of killing weapons in America.
And you'd have my support if that's all you wanted to do. Alas, your side of the fence seems to have a problem with firearms in general, not merely with the firearms used by bad actors.
You do know that people don't HAVE to pay rent, right? Teens CAN live with their parents. Adults can too, or they can get roommates.
Ah, the new American Dream.... living with your parents.
I wonder if that message will be a winner at the ballot box?
The VAST majority of US agency and employees do not like and won't except bribes.
It's illegal to give the Town Supervisor a handful of cash to get your permit application moved to the top of the pile. It's not illegal however to offer his son a job, assuming he has some marketable skill you need, and it's not an obvious quid-pro-quo.
Greasing the palms in the United States rarely involves obvious bribery.
Dude, get a box of condoms and try a hooker.
Condoms have limited efficacy against herpes and HPV, both of which you'll get to enjoy for the rest of your life if you manage to catch them. To each their own, but I'd reconsider the hooker suggestion and just stick with the porn, there's no orgasm worth a lifetime affliction....
He who comes to a fistfight with a gun is the one who is a coward. Kerry could man up and guarantee Snowden bail and a trial in an open court with no special evidence and testimony restrictions.
Why would Snowden get bail? He's a demonstrated flight risk. You think there's a Judge anywhere in the United States that would give you bail for any felony offense after you previously fled the jurisdiction?
to the point some say he advocated it
You said it, not me. The legal term you're looking for is facilitation. It's a crime in many jurisdictions.
I make no comment on whether or not it should be, or whether or not it should apply in this case. I just think it's absurd to apply the label "political prisoner" to Mr. Sunde.
If you split that hair any further you'll be looking at it on a subatomic level.
You cheapen the term "political prisoner" when you apply it to someone who goes to jail for something as mundane as piracy.
You may think it should be perfectly legal, or that it should be a civil matter (this is where I fall, FWIW) rather than a criminal one, but no matter what your opinion you do "the cause" a disservice when you conjure up images of Gandhi or Mandela, which is what comes to mind for most people when they hear "political prisoner".
Yes, the innocent are never imprisoned for political reasons.
Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were imprisoned for political reasons. This guy is being imprisoned because he helped to facilitate media piracy on a mass scale. You may disagree with that outcome but please don't try and paint him as some sort of oppressed political dissent.
By that logic, Hugh Laurie would be a great doctor because of all those years on House.
Lose the elitism dude. You don't need a bloody PhD to encourage kids to read. You must be a real hit at parties.....
Depends on the personality. Some people would be very happy marrying their "high school sweetheart" and would never wonder about other partners. Other people would find that it nagged at them and ultimately undermined that first relationship.
Either way, I think you've got a problem if you're looking for self-esteem in sexual intercourse. You have to like yourself before someone else can like you enough to sleep with you, unless we're talking about drunken one night stands, but even those require some level of connection to be successful.
So we come off as "awkward", and don't understand why successful men can walk up to pretty women, strike up a conversation, and take her home to bed, and when the introverts try the exact same thing, they get nowhere (or worse, denigrated as "creepy").
I would posit that you've already lost if you're deriving your self-esteem from one night stands. In fairness, it took me a long time to come to that realization, and I never would have accepted it as a virgin (*), but once I learned that life lesson it was very liberating. I've had the best sex of my life in medium/long-term relationships. Hook-ups and flings? Eh, they meet a biological need, but so does porn and a bottle of Astroglide.
As it is I've been without since last September. It sucks from the aforementioned biological standpoint (whatever did people do before the internet?), but my last relationship was with a complete psychopath, that I rushed into because it seemed better than being alone, and I have no desire to repeat that experience. I'll meet someone when the time is right, until then, well, there are other outlets for sexual frustration. Exercise helps a lot, and comes with the added advantages of making you more attractive and increasing your life expectancy.
(*) I lost my virginity late, by American male standards, at 23. I'm 32 now, so I invite the reader to take my "wisdom" for what it's worth.
Geeks are frustrated because they don't have good luck with women.
Introverts don't have good luck with the ladies, regardless of how geeky they are. As you correctly note, making new friends (platonic and otherwise) requires putting yourself out there, which is very difficult for an introverted personality to do.
You're just demonstrating sheer ignorance. It won't stop one unless you get a damn lucky shot off. It's easy to aim for vitals when you're stalking prey, but ridiculously difficult when a bear suddenly charges at you from a hidden position in a nearby tree line.
You continue to demonstrating an impressive selective reading ability. "My choice would be the .30-06 for bear hunting and the 12 gauge for self-defense in bear country, but to each their own." The guides that took us through the Kodiak Peninsula all carried 12 gauges, with slugs or alternating buckshot/slugs. I'll trust their experience more than some random idiot loser that casually dismisses a .30-06 as though it's some sort of water pistol.
but not until it decimates the first couple waves.
Decimates the first couple waves? Do you understand anything about animals? It's going to do its utmost to run away, because even a minor injury in the animal kingdom may spell death if it gets infected. They don't stand their ground and fight unless cornered, and if you think any animal can "decimate" a coordinated group of humans equipped with even primitive weapons you're delusional.
Actually, MOST guns aren't large enough to kill a grizzly.
I see you're as knowledgeable about firearms as you are about reading. A .30-06 is plenty of gun for a grizzly, with proper shot placement, no extreme wildcat caliber required. Shotgun slugs are effective too, maybe more so than a rifle. Practically every deer hunter in North America has a .30-06 and/or 12 gauge, we're not talking about rare guns here. My choice would be the .30-06 for bear hunting and the 12 gauge for self-defense in bear country, but to each their own.
and you specifically mentioned making "spears" and said:
I also said that humans work in groups, but you've clearly decided to ignore that part of my statement. Grizzly vs. coordinated group of humans = dead grizzly.
And they'll have a human brain, too, a few seconds after they attack you.
They'll be lying on the ground bleeding out from a bullet hole a few seconds after they decide to attack me.
You are utterly delusional if you think you'd be able to kill a very large predator with a spear.
And you have a talent for selective reading, because I also said "I can communicate tactics and strategy with my friends/family members". You think a grizzly can defeat a coordinated group of homo sapiens equipped even with primitive weapons (never mind modern ones)?
Brains and endurance defeat brawn. We're the smartest species on the planet and rank in the top 10 (maybe even top 5) for endurance. The combination is unstoppable.
Mosquitoes aren't predators, they're effectively parasites. That's a key difference. They don't really kill us anyhow, they're carriers for diseases that can occasionally kill us and invariably make our lives miserable. You can survive a mosquito bite and malaria. You aren't terribly likely to survive a predatory encounter with a salt water croc, nor is he likely to survive a predatory encounter with a group of pissed off humans.
We have very low strength for our body mass. Compare us to chimps, cats, etc., and we're weaklings.
That's irrelevant. We have two things they don't: opposable digits and the human brain.
You go out, naked, into the wilderness of Alaska, and see how you do up against the first grizzly bear or a pack of wolves you come across...
Why would I do that when I could go there with ten of my friends, the proper gear, and a collection of ranged weaponry? Seriously, this statement is stupid. You might as well say that my cat gets her ass kicked if I send her out into the wild after being declawed and detoothed.
Take away modern technology and humans still win. I can make a spear with a decent sized stick and a sharp rock. I can communicate tactics and strategy with my friends/family members. The grizzly still loses. The only difference between the spear and a .30-06 is the likelihood of the grizzly taking one or more humans out with him. At the end of the day he still loses. So does the wolf pack if they're stupid enough to take on a group of humans, which they usually aren't, but that's besides the point.
And we die by poisonous snakes, spiders, scorpions, jellyfish, plants; disease carriers like rats, cockroaches, etc; And just about anything that we poke/prod/otherwise mistreat that has large claws/horns/etc or that is just large enough to pummel us to death like apes, elephants, and even kangaroos.
They don't prey on us, which was my whole point. Lions get bitten by venomous snakes too, but the snakes aren't preying on them. It's a defensive measure, same as when a snake bites a human.
It even looks to me like it's trying to be critical of the organic movement. I'll reserve my opinion of that kind of thing, but in this case, "organic" means what it actually means, not the hippie non-term it has become. I'd rather they say it was because they switched from clay-based to plant-based kitty litter.
In my experience organic cat litter is inferior, in every meaningful measure. Clumping, odor control, and the most important one: My cat's willingness to use it, vs. expressing her disapproval by shitting on the carpet, which she has done every time I've tried a non-clay litter, no matter how gradually it was introduced.
Can't say that I have any hands on experience with radioactive waste disposal, but I'll certainly be sticking with clay litter for my more mundane needs.
Plenty of species have benefited from humans without becoming primary sources of food for them. Easy example: Cats and Dogs. Other examples: Squirrels, pigeons, and rats.
Let's hope the rest of the earth's species don't adopt this plan to control the invasive naked apes.
Homo sapiens is pretty tough prey. We're tough enough catch and kill on an individual basis, on a group basis it becomes virtually impossible, even if you take away our technology.
The only predators that can kill humans in comparative safety are ambush predators (salt water crocodiles) and predators more adapted to their environment than we are (sharks). The former are probably the biggest man eaters on the planet and the latter don't regard us as optimal prey, because we're not energy dense enough for them (insert obese American joke here) when compared to their preferred prey.
Good. Let costs reflect reality, it's the only way a market oriented system can work. In any case, I would dispute that food prices are low because of rural-specific subsidies. They're low because of economy of scale, which is why I can't green bell peppers in the grocery store from anywhere besides California even though they'll grow in all 50 States. One would like to believe the current drought there would teach us the value of not putting all our eggs in one basket, but history suggests we'll forget all about it in short order.
No, I expect people to pay the actual cost to receive service at their location, not to treat the internet like the USPS that charges me the same to deliver a letter from PO Box 1 to PO Box 2 as it does to deliver it from New York to Hawaii.
we got very good service as a whole, with reasonable rates
How old are you? Are you old enough to remember the concept of "long distance"? Of paying $0.10/min - $0.25/min for the privilege of calling your friends and family across the country? Rounded up of course. Don't tell me Ma Bell had "reasonable rates". Their rates were highway robbery even with the technological limitations of those days.
Innovation and regulated monopolies don't go hand in hand either. The theoretical underpinnings of what we now call DSL were well known in the 50s and workable technology was field tested by the 80s. It went nowhere because AT&T saw it as a threat, we can't sell dedicated data lines if we bring data and voice in on the same pair. That technology was left to collect dust on the shelf until DOCSIS was on the horizon and they realized they had a competitor.