Guns kill animals and only idiots think "guns kill people." I don't have a gun, but thes anti-gun sentiments are brain-dead stupid. I have a lot of friends who hunt, and I appreciate the game meat they often give me.
For most hunting, single shot relatively low calibre rifles, or a shotgun are what you need. No hunters that I know of use handguns or automatic assault rifles.
And yet in the UK you had about twelve thousand gun offenses recorded this past year.
That figure includes (a) imitation firearms and (b) air weapons, so it's nowhere near as high as it seems. Anyway, the figure you need to look at is actual incidents involving shots, simply having a gun while you rob someone is not at all the same thing as actually using it to shoot or kill someone.
That is a pretty stupid argument. Military assault rifles use.22 ammunition. You don't need a.50 calibre bullet to kill people quite easily, especially if they have no body armour, helmets or other protection, like, say, a bunch of teachers and school kids.
Yes they do and guns have more purposes other than killing innocents.
Handguns and assault weapons have no real purpose other than killing people, and anyone who is shot before being found guilty in a court of law is innocent.
The hunting justification is another matter entirely, there is absolutely no reason why you can't have sensibly regulated laws on the possession of weapons designed for hunting like most European countries do.
Because some crazy fucker walking into a gym with a pipe bomb would be much better.
You need a fair amount of practise and forward thinking to construct an effective pipe bomb. It's a lot, lot easier to pick up a few of the guns and boxes of ammo you have legally lying around your house if you lose your temper one day.
It's a bit like how, if you could just push a big red button to commit suicide instead of having to shoot or hang yourself, a lot more people would end up dead through temporary insanity (or whatever you want to call it).
Guns elevate the power of the powerless. A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can. You may never be able to match the power of an oppressive government, but you can become more equal by being armed.
That's the "if I'm armed I can fight off a would-be mugger" argument. All that happens is that muggers organise themselves a bit better, and use ambushes instead of walking up to you and saying face to face "hand me your wallet" while giving you enough time to draw your weapon and fire, assuming they aren't carrying a gun themselves.
And having handguns isn't going to do you a lot of good up against a properly equipped army with automatic weapons, helicopter gunships, tanks and so on., you're better off relying on roadside bombs and ambushes like the Taliban.
No kidding - I've experienced -52 C (it was closer to -60 C with the wind chill.) That's pretty cold.
Yes, definitely. At around -50, the batteries in your discman stop delivering a charge and your headphone cables get really stiff. Happened to me walking to work some years ago, it was worth a few laughs with the coworkers, since the cold weather is an inside joke where I'm from.
Do you work at the south pole or something? Seriously, I had no idea that anywhere habitable got down to -50C. And you walk to work?
And in the winter w can talk about the weather being in the 20s or teens, or perhaps near 0. It has to get pretty cold before we need to go negative (although there are plenty of places up north that need to do that regularly).
In the UK we just like to know whether it's above or below freezing point. To be honest, whether it's -1C or -15C doesn't really make that much difference, you're still going to have iced up cars, roads like skid pans, trains cancelled and schools shut and so on.
I have never encountered freezing seawater, and will quite happily die without ever having encountered freezing seawater. I do not care what the temperature of freezing seawater is, any more than I care what the temperature of molten lava is. If I'm anywhere near either of them, the only thing I want to know is how to get away from them.
Fahrenheit neatly boxes what humans regularly experience between the values 0 and 100 while managing to have the freezing point of water at 2^5.
You Americans are coming up with the most fantastical justifications. I'm English and was brought up using Fahrenheit (and then later had to learn Celsius) but even I fail to see the magic advantage of having the freezing point of water as 2^5 degrees.
Also, 0F is -18C and 100F is 38F and that is a peculiarly arbitrary set of limits to what humans regularly experience. In the UK, the range is more like -10C to 32C, in the Middle East it would be up to 45C and in Scandinavia down to -25C, and there's nothing particularly meaningful about it being 113F or -13F respectively.
The difference between 71F and 73F is not exactly something a human is tuned to.
Having a home with poor air circulation and a thermostat which runs warm as a consequence, I have to disagree: in the winter, a few degrees Fahrenheit in the 66-72 range are definitely noticeable.
Nobody's saying that there isn't a noticeable difference between 66F and 72 F (19C and 22C)
It just has no bearing on whether there's a noticeable difference between 71F and 73F (22 and 23C), which for any normal person there wouldn't be.
No - you may not need a tenfold increase in precision, but Fahrenheit does have double. The difference between 39 and 40 degrees Celsius is almost 2 degrees in fahrenheit.
So what? It's not like 40 degrees instead of 39 Celsius is somehow going to kill you. Have you ever been in a situation where it has made any difference whatsoever whether it's 104 degrees Fahrenheit or just 103?
I'm just saying that for weather and body temp measurement, there are demonstrable advantages to Fahrenheit, simply because it has a finer numbering scale in those specific areas.
0.1 of a degree is far finer a difference than any normal person would ever use to measure body temperature by, and as for weather, the nearest degree is fine in everyday use whether it's F or C.
There's more integers between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. So if you don't use decimal points, Fahrenheit is of a higher precision
That is by far the feeblest argument I have ever seen in defence of anything. Ever.
If you're going for higher precision than the nearest degree, you need decimal points anyway. E.g. if you want the average human body temperature you have to write 98.6 F anyway. And if you're talking about the weather the difference between 71 and 72 F is as irrelevant as the difference between 21 and 22 C
This will only happen in countries that grant secure private ownership to land. For example, most Ethiopian farmers do not own their land - it is owned by the government, and they can not mortgage nor sell it.
So what? The government can just forcibly combine all the small farms into bigger nationalised ones, and pay the ex-farmers to get a proper job.
The real problem is our assumption that every single person should work, and if they don't, they're a drain on society. For all of human history that has largely (but not entirely) been true
In most of human history it was assumed there should be an upper class who certainly did not work, but instead spent their time writing poetry, making love, hunting deer on horseback, or whatever. The work was basically done by slaves.
As Oscar Wilde said in The Soul of Man Uncer Socialism, in the modern world machines should be the slaves, and all human beings should live like aristocrats.
You are using the usual slashdot black/white false dichotomy line of reasoning, namely that you either have to work really long hours and earn a lot of money, or be unemployed and earn nothing.
What people are saying is that everyone should work shorter hours, for somewhat less pay that will still leave them with more than enough to provide the basics and something on top to enjoy the extra leisure time.
What will eventually happen when we discover free energy? It means everyone will effectively be rich.
I wouldn't use that as an argument, since the idea of free energy is physically impossible according to our current understanding of how the universe works, just like FTL travel.
Rather, you should use the idea of "incredibly cheap, and therefore practically free energy" to stop the obvious criticism.
Slashdot Mirror
Guns kill animals and only idiots think "guns kill people." I don't have a gun, but thes anti-gun sentiments are brain-dead stupid. I have a lot of friends who hunt, and I appreciate the game meat they often give me.
For most hunting, single shot relatively low calibre rifles, or a shotgun are what you need. No hunters that I know of use handguns or automatic assault rifles.
And yet in the UK you had about twelve thousand gun offenses recorded this past year.
That figure includes (a) imitation firearms and (b) air weapons, so it's nowhere near as high as it seems. Anyway, the figure you need to look at is actual incidents involving shots, simply having a gun while you rob someone is not at all the same thing as actually using it to shoot or kill someone.
I only use my guns to shoot targets, an activity i enjoy thoroughly.
Take up archery then. I don't think the preservation of a hobby outweighs all other considerations.
A .22 bullet is tiny
That is a pretty stupid argument. Military assault rifles use .22 ammunition. You don't need a .50 calibre bullet to kill people quite easily, especially if they have no body armour, helmets or other protection, like, say, a bunch of teachers and school kids.
Yes they do and guns have more purposes other than killing innocents.
Handguns and assault weapons have no real purpose other than killing people, and anyone who is shot before being found guilty in a court of law is innocent.
The hunting justification is another matter entirely, there is absolutely no reason why you can't have sensibly regulated laws on the possession of weapons designed for hunting like most European countries do.
Because some crazy fucker walking into a gym with a pipe bomb would be much better.
You need a fair amount of practise and forward thinking to construct an effective pipe bomb. It's a lot, lot easier to pick up a few of the guns and boxes of ammo you have legally lying around your house if you lose your temper one day.
It's a bit like how, if you could just push a big red button to commit suicide instead of having to shoot or hang yourself, a lot more people would end up dead through temporary insanity (or whatever you want to call it).
Guns elevate the power of the powerless. A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can. You may never be able to match the power of an oppressive government, but you can become more equal by being armed.
That's the "if I'm armed I can fight off a would-be mugger" argument. All that happens is that muggers organise themselves a bit better, and use ambushes instead of walking up to you and saying face to face "hand me your wallet" while giving you enough time to draw your weapon and fire, assuming they aren't carrying a gun themselves.
And having handguns isn't going to do you a lot of good up against a properly equipped army with automatic weapons, helicopter gunships, tanks and so on., you're better off relying on roadside bombs and ambushes like the Taliban.
No kidding - I've experienced -52 C (it was closer to -60 C with the wind chill.) That's pretty cold.
Yes, definitely. At around -50, the batteries in your discman stop delivering a charge and your headphone cables get really stiff. Happened to me walking to work some years ago, it was worth a few laughs with the coworkers, since the cold weather is an inside joke where I'm from.
Do you work at the south pole or something? Seriously, I had no idea that anywhere habitable got down to -50C. And you walk to work?
I feel like a right wuss now.
And in the winter w can talk about the weather being in the 20s or teens, or perhaps near 0. It has to get pretty cold before we need to go negative (although there are plenty of places up north that need to do that regularly).
In the UK we just like to know whether it's above or below freezing point. To be honest, whether it's -1C or -15C doesn't really make that much difference, you're still going to have iced up cars, roads like skid pans, trains cancelled and schools shut and so on.
0 is about the temperature of freezing seawater
I have never encountered freezing seawater, and will quite happily die without ever having encountered freezing seawater. I do not care what the temperature of freezing seawater is, any more than I care what the temperature of molten lava is. If I'm anywhere near either of them, the only thing I want to know is how to get away from them.
horses per submarine per twatwaffle
Mod parent up.
Just saying. After all, it's our language...
Fahrenheit neatly boxes what humans regularly experience between the values 0 and 100 while managing to have the freezing point of water at 2^5.
You Americans are coming up with the most fantastical justifications. I'm English and was brought up using Fahrenheit (and then later had to learn Celsius) but even I fail to see the magic advantage of having the freezing point of water as 2^5 degrees.
Also, 0F is -18C and 100F is 38F and that is a peculiarly arbitrary set of limits to what humans regularly experience. In the UK, the range is more like -10C to 32C, in the Middle East it would be up to 45C and in Scandinavia down to -25C, and there's nothing particularly meaningful about it being 113F or -13F respectively.
Having a home with poor air circulation and a thermostat which runs warm as a consequence, I have to disagree: in the winter, a few degrees Fahrenheit in the 66-72 range are definitely noticeable.
Nobody's saying that there isn't a noticeable difference between 66F and 72 F (19C and 22C)
It just has no bearing on whether there's a noticeable difference between 71F and 73F (22 and 23C), which for any normal person there wouldn't be.
I guess I've been thinking in terms of measuring a fever where 1 degree makes a huge difference even in Fahrenheit and not so much the weather.
If you're measuring a fever you should use decimal places whether it's F or C.
No - you may not need a tenfold increase in precision, but Fahrenheit does have double. The difference between 39 and 40 degrees Celsius is almost 2 degrees in fahrenheit.
So what? It's not like 40 degrees instead of 39 Celsius is somehow going to kill you. Have you ever been in a situation where it has made any difference whatsoever whether it's 104 degrees Fahrenheit or just 103?
I'm just saying that for weather and body temp measurement, there are demonstrable advantages to Fahrenheit, simply because it has a finer numbering scale in those specific areas.
0.1 of a degree is far finer a difference than any normal person would ever use to measure body temperature by, and as for weather, the nearest degree is fine in everyday use whether it's F or C.
There's more integers between 32 and 212 than between 0 and 100. So if you don't use decimal points, Fahrenheit is of a higher precision
That is by far the feeblest argument I have ever seen in defence of anything. Ever.
If you're going for higher precision than the nearest degree, you need decimal points anyway. E.g. if you want the average human body temperature you have to write 98.6 F anyway. And if you're talking about the weather the difference between 71 and 72 F is as irrelevant as the difference between 21 and 22 C
When only a few men in the world control all the world's production through automation, and no one else has jobs... What then?
The 99.99% expropriate those few men's production facilities and run it for the good of the majority.
If you let 20-30 million people starve to death in your country, it's not socialism. Call it what you like, but it's not socialism.
This will only happen in countries that grant secure private ownership to land. For example, most Ethiopian farmers do not own their land - it is owned by the government, and they can not mortgage nor sell it.
So what? The government can just forcibly combine all the small farms into bigger nationalised ones, and pay the ex-farmers to get a proper job.
hard to believe that not too long ago housing and food used up almost an entire paycheck
They still do for a lot of poor people even in well off developed countries, never mind India or whatever.
The real problem is our assumption that every single person should work, and if they don't, they're a drain on society. For all of human history that has largely (but not entirely) been true
In most of human history it was assumed there should be an upper class who certainly did not work, but instead spent their time writing poetry, making love, hunting deer on horseback, or whatever. The work was basically done by slaves.
As Oscar Wilde said in The Soul of Man Uncer Socialism, in the modern world machines should be the slaves, and all human beings should live like aristocrats.
What people are saying is that everyone should work shorter hours, for somewhat less pay that will still leave them with more than enough to provide the basics and something on top to enjoy the extra leisure time.
What will eventually happen when we discover free energy? It means everyone will effectively be rich.
I wouldn't use that as an argument, since the idea of free energy is physically impossible according to our current understanding of how the universe works, just like FTL travel.
Rather, you should use the idea of "incredibly cheap, and therefore practically free energy" to stop the obvious criticism.