The second amendment was because the Founding Fathers feared a standing army.
That reason is only one of multiple reasons for the 2A. Read some of the letters and other writings of Washington, Jefferson, etc. Read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers and Common Sense.
"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence ⦠from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable ⦠the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference â" they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." - George Washington
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ⦠Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." - Thomas Paine
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason - Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
It's impossible to eliminate guns in the US short of turning it into N. Korea.on steroids and locking pretty much everyone up in camps. As long as the US Government has guns and large, ridiculously-porous borders, the criminals will be armed and they will be the only civilians with guns.
If a civil war broke out in the US, it's guaranteed the military will fracture. Not only is the US military all-volunteer, but much of it is currently made up of National Guard. They ain't all gonna snap a salute and frag grandma and the babies, regardless of being labeled "domestic terrorists/rebels/insurgents", or whatever lame dissociative label the government attaches to them. They're not all dumb enough to believe obvious BS, or to all go along with it.
More than you think will instead reply to such orders with something like; "I'm sorry Sir, that's an illegal order. Under the UCMJ and standing/general orders, I and those under my command are forced to disobey your illegal order and obligated to immediately inform your superiors in the command chain of the details of this incident." (Not sure of the exact wording and language. Probably varies by the branch of service. Didn't feel like doing the search.)
Please. The 2nd Amendment has never, ever done anything to prevent the government from steadily eroding 1st-Amendment, 4th-Amendment, or any-other-Amendment rights.
Wrong.
Might want to research what occurred in Athens, TN in the 1946 "Battle of Athens".
The 2A isn't about civilians going toe-to-toe with a regular army. It's about making it a very costly proposition for enemies of the people of the US both foreign and domestic.
That is a question to ask NSA public affairs, not HR recruiters.
If some government organization tries to sell someone with anything like a sense of right & wrong, and/or simply not a damned sociopath, on joining them in targeting individuals and groups, naturally the first question should be "Exactly what type and nature of individuals and groups?"
If you expect that answer from them your expectations should probably be adjusted.
Wrong. They need to be able to answer the questions. They work for the people and must be accountable. Secret courts and secret rulings on secret laws are in no way Constitutional, and are gross violations of everyone's civil rights.
They have access now to technology and information systems Orwell could never have dreamed of. Such power must be tightly chained and the ability to abuse it eliminated. Turn the giant NSA data storage centers over to public scientific research use or something similarly open and benign. If it can be abused, it will be abused. It is human nature.
Government power must be as distributed and as localized as possible to avoid corruption and suborning, for the same reasons that it's much easier to compromise a network consisting of a central server and terminals than it is a network of autonomous machines, each with their own defenses.
In a way, the Founding Fathers were genius network programmers, as the US Constitution is the "program" for the system known as "government".
The intergalactic war is getting closer. We can hear the explosions now.
Yeah, I get your point, and I see the possibility.
Could also just as easily be "warp signatures" rather than explosions, and have absolutely nothing to do with us at all That's even granting it were some intelligence and assuming on top of that, that it both knows of our existence and/or is capable of caring (or even "knowing" as we think of it).
Back a few weeks ago, I posted in a/. story about the plans a group of researchers had to set up a continuous interstellar radio beacon, and in a thread therein concerning the questionable wisdom in advertising our existence to any other possible interstellar species/civilizations.
Reasoning being that other species may well take the not-illogical attitude that they are safest in a survival sense to immediately wipe out any other developing intelligent species/civilizations they detect to eliminate any possible present or future threat to their specie's survival and dominance, and then maybe study the rubble later.
Some say our regular radio & TV signals over the last century make it too late to worry about attracting attention, but that's uneducated hogwash from those who know nothing of radio or radio propagation.
You're talking about omni-directional broadcasting in the case of radio & TV. You could take a dish to the orbit of Mars and point it at Earth and be lucky to catch brief, weak signals from even the strongest terrestrial radio/TV broadcast stations. The signals would be far, far under the noise-floor and undetectable before you got past Jupiter.
A strong, focused beam at optimal interstellar-distance-detectability frequencies is different.
Is it really a robot if it doesn't fulfill a practical purpose? Robot is derived from a word meaning "slave" because it does work in place of a person. If it is unable to do work, by conjoining AI with mobility, does it really fit the bill? What makes a windmill not a robot? What makes a drill not a robot?
All it took was 40 years to transform a modern island into something that looks like Mayan ruins. If something ever happens to humanity, in only a century or two we'll have been erased from history.
My first thought was that it looks just like large sections of Detroit,MI looks right now. Seriously, it's true. I know, as I don't live too far away. Search YT & Google.
Well, four decades has been about the same length of time that Detroit and Wayne county have remained solidly under one political party's control. The government made Detroit part of their "Model Cities" program. That fomented an orgy of over-regulation and local corruption & cronyism of every sort. Allowing the labor unions to gain and use the stranglehold they held on the Detroit auto industry along with ever-growing rafts of federal regulations combining to drive the auto companies to collapse was the final kill-shot. I'm old enough to have watched this go down since the 1960s. Everything since has been manifestations of the city's suicidal death-throes.
There are black bears and packs of feral dogs roaming in daylight. The Governor has had to appoint an emergency manager.
As a life-long musician, it really pisses me off because Detroit has such a great musical history and had a huge music scene with myriads of clubs that payed bands well if they were good. Now it's nearly a ghost town compared to just 30 years ago.
Hell, they'd have to fix the place up if they wanted to shoot another Robocop sequel in Detroit to match the decay levels in the Dystopian and post-apocalyptic OCP-Detroit from the previous films, not create fake destruction & decay!
But hey, the elites and their cronies both in and out of government gained tons of power and wealth from Detroit's destruction, so at least it worked out great for somebody, right?
The problem with putting cute things in space is that it will degrade quite rapidly. Any volatiles boil off faster and plastics - even (consumer grade) nylon - shrinks in space. Eventually it cracks up and falls apart. All that happens much faster than down on the surface. So plastics designed for space is different and more expensive.
I thought pretty much the same thing. My first thought was "Yeah, they'll look like small blobs of carbon and a few other materials surrounded by a small cloud of out-gassed material after being exposed in a vacuum, plus going from ridiculously-cold in shadow, and then suddenly exposed to ridiculously-intense direct solar radiation for a few hours/days."
Any idea if how long these things last is part of the experiment, as in a materials-science test of possible future space-worthy materials for space suits, habitats/vessels, etc?
A major advance in materials-science that produced a relatively cheap-to-produce material that could make a major impact on the mass needed to be lifted from a gravity well, and reduce the amount of mass, once in space, that you wanted to accelerate/decelerate and/or change direction plus be relatively resistant to radiation would be a major boost to space exploration and utilization.
[OT] OMG!!...That's it!!....That's the reason for the Japanese fascination with robots all this time! This has been their plan all along! The Japanese will rule outer space with millions of plastic robot-ships...with LASERS!!...But strangely the robots will feel a curious sense of sadness and spiritual angst that will play out among them in multitudes of awkward & overly-melodramatic social situations for eons afterwards./kidding
"The legality of such action is unknown, since Brazilian laws prohibit this kind of wiretapping."
This caught my eye too. Poster needs to make up his mind. If Brazilian laws prohibit this then the legality is not "unknown" it's illegal. I have no idea what the relevant Brazilian law says, and I am guessing the submitter doesnt either.
No, the poster is correct. Obviously, the Brazilian government holds to the same school of thought as the US government. It's not unlawful/un-Constitutional if we do it because of the current scary and propaganda-hyped boogeyman-du-jour.
Civil rights are taking a beating everywhere these days along with those advocating for them, it seems. All the recent US government "scandals" are actually just symptoms of the government attacking and violating civil rights in general. Every one of the so-called "scandals" are actually the government violating/ignoring/abusing/attacking/denying the civil rights of all the people, not just a particular group.
We need *real* civil rights leaders. Not the current jokes that bill themselves as such. It's time for another civil rights movement (NOT some "Arab Spring" violent revolution based on hate). Everywhere.
This is an incredible amount of exposure, considering half that absorption kills a human, predictably, within 14 days.
You could infer... that the weapon is potentially more dangerous to the human, than to the fly.
I grant that my examples were more for comedic effect than scientific accuracy. It's like an old Robin Williams stand-up line, that after a total nuclear war, all that will be left alive with all the radiation will be the cockroaches and Keith Richards.
The point still stands that even for humans (barring Keith Richards), the amount of power required for such a weapon to generate any where near a fatal dose within the space of one or two minutes or less at distances of 20 meters or more (say, from a curbside vehicle into the interior of the proximate building) from the X-ray emitter, given the inverse-square rule concerning effective power at a given distance from a radiation source, would be quite impressive to say the least. Five minutes with a calculator should have convinced them to move on.
This whole thing sounds like one of those wacky FBI "sting" operations where the FBI comes up with some lame plan and method, then finds a moron or three to play it off on until the morons incriminate themselves sufficiently for charges to be brought.
I can't imagine any actual terrorists that wouldn't do at least a little checking to make certain their Dr. Evil-esque "weapon" will even have any serious life-threatening effect, other than what one would get from a year or two of regular business air travel, before they started plotting an attack.
The department of game and wildlife might like to have a few words with you, about that device that is not a lawful hunting weapon:)
Wow, DNR regulates hunting of mosquittos & houseflies?!?
Talk about mission-creep! Ha!
GP never stated what he intended to hunt with his X-ray gun. Due to energy storage/weight/size considerations, anything man-portable might...assuming a brilliant design...be able to kill a very tiny insect-size creature at very close range at best. Ever looked at the amount of hardware and power required to irradiate food pouches for non-refrigerated storage/transport, just to kill bacteria?
Now, of course, if he went all Dr. Evil with a giant X-ray laser on the moon...
Exactly my thought. Whatever happened to my right to murder someone and get away with it because of technicalities!
Really? You're going there?
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"....as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England. It is commonly known as "Blackstone's Formulation".
Benjamin Franklin stated it as, "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer".
John Adams also expanded upon the rationale behind Blackstone's Formulation when he stated:
"It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished.... when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, 'it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.' And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever."
YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you. You can't really expect the government to stop doing these things when so many people support it.
The internet can be like an echo chamber, especially in places like Slashdot where a lot of like-minded people come together. With all the outrage that you see, it's easy to be blind to the reality of the situation.
You need to work on changing the minds of the public, then maybe you'll see changes in the government.
How was that poll conducted, as in what question was actually asked?
There's a huge difference between:
"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor phones to catch terrorists?"
To which most people would say "Yes, monitor their (the terrorist's) phones."
And:
"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor everyone's phone and permanently store the data in case it's needed to catch terrorists?"
To which most people would say "Hell no, get a warrant!"
As far as the claims and promises being made as reported in TFS/TFA, too late. Too many officials have obviously lied over and over. NSA, FBI, Benghazi, IRS, F&F, etc. There is no trust, nor any logical reason for trust, given their track record on honesty and truthfulness. If they said "water is wet" I'd have to see the results of multiple scientific studies by multiple independent and prestigious international sources. And I'd still have doubts given who we're talking about.
The U.S. did not invent republics, they did not invent human rights, they did not invent democracy.
The US is the first and only nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That's the part you're missing. That everyone is born a sovereign person with natural rights, and that the government only has certain limited powers, set out as an exclusive list called the Constitution, that the people temporarily loan the government to carry out the will of the people, and can be withdrawn from the government if it should fail to obey the will of the people. It does not restrict the people, it restricts the government.
Right now, the U.S. is in a rather embarrassing position internationally considering its tolerance towards liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, they claim organizations like "Amnesty International" are all wrong about all the things that happen in the U.S., but the fact is that the U.S. is not all that far off from the all the dictatorial regimes it supports for expediency.
Many, many Americans feel the same way including myself. As I've stated in another post above, the US has become a de-facto police state and hegemonic crony-capitalist oligarchy. The two political parties are evil tweedledum & tweedledummer, and both are hellbent on stealing even more power and wealth while making serfs under constant and total surveillance out of the citizens to ensure their power remains unchallenged.
You know, we Americans (the people) are a pretty good lot and have historically done a lot of good and helped a lot of people and nations with our blood & treasure before these bastards seized control. We, the American people, could really use help instead of hate in trying to halt and reverse this trend by the government.
Help us wake other people in the US up. They're spying on you, too, don't forget. Put pressure on your governments and other groups to put pressure on the US government. The system the US is building is a global threat to everyone on the planet. It's a data collection and analysis WMD.
I mean, you don't really think they'll stop with subjugating only US citizens under their jackboots, do you?
You must be one of the Dominionists who believe that the Constitution is the inspired Word of God.
No. I believe that the Constitution is a giant leap forward in human civilization. It is the first time in 5,000 years of human history where men rule themselves by common agreement and their natural rights recognized and protected, and where the government is the servant and answerable to the people it governs. When it dies, it may well be another 5,000 years before it happens again.
I would like you to cite where Jefferson says that hangings "should occur every 20 years or so".
Maybe what you're thinking of is that Jefferson wanted, every 20 years or so, for the whole Constitution to be thrown out and rewritten by future constitutional conventions.
""I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787
BlueStrat, I think you have a childish, mythical view of what the Constitution is and does.
I think you have a solipsist and cynical view of what the Constitution is and does, and are all too ready to allow whatever re-interpretation allows government to do whatever it wants as long as it's "your team" in power.
The Constitution was written in plain language and does not require advanced education to understand the plain meaning of it's words. All the tortured re-interpretations that seek to redefine the plain meaning of the Constitution are attempts to circumvent the Constitution and avoid the Amendmen
It doesn't, but there is enough ambiguity in the language that layers upon layers of court cases have created this authority.
There is no ambiguity in the Constitutional language. Just because they (courts & politicians) try to muddy the water with semantic word games, solipsist reasoning, and tortured re-interpretations of the meaning of plain words and got some judges to buy it is meaningless. It's just a way to render the protections granted under the Constitution, and the restrictions upon government power, meaningless.
If someone exceeds constitutional authority and then it's upheld by the Court, it becomes de facto Constitutional until further suits are brought to challenge it.
Yes, that's the way it has traditionally worked. But by keeping the spying a state secret, there has been no court challenges possible. This avoids another check on government power.
It's not like the Constitution is a rule book, and it's certainly not like the Supreme Court is anything but a bunch of politicians in robes. We have too much faith in both.
That's the problem. The Constitution *IS* the rulebook upon which our entire nation is founded. Government granting itself extra-Constitutional powers and authority is the root cause of the majority of problems the US is and has been increasingly suffering for over 100 years. Besides, with the kind of data the government holds against everyone, including SC Judges, one has to wonder how much of what the SCOTUS decides is affected by blackmail.
The SCOTUS is NOT the final arbiter of Constitutionality. We the People are the final arbiters of what is and is not Constitutional.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
They can claim anything they like is Constitutional. Doesn't matter if the People en-masse drag them all out and hang them from the nearest tree. Thomas Jefferson was of the opinion that this should occur every 20 years or so, so as to keep Federal power in check and keep politicians in fear of We the People.
Like a lot of folks on Wall Street, the Guardian sees two points and draws a trend line. Only it's more like one point so far. The US Government intentionally, across multiple departments & agencies, with malice aforethought, massively violating the US Constitution and the Rights of it's citizens in nearly every way possible. Well, except house troops in our homes. We can give them that. For now..
Thanks. I hadn't heard of the four boxes before. And it seems to me then that the aim (so to speak) of gun ownership is to avoid the sort of thing that's happening in Syria.
No problem, you're welcome.
Well, I think you grasp the basic principle, but the Syria situation (as are almost every uprising/civil war, but triply-so in the current ME) is quite complicated, one complication being that NONE of the sides/groups involved view the US as anything more than the Western "Great Satan" that must be destroyed. Another is that the US has quietly been sending arms to rebel forces in Syria for some time. The Benghazi incident where US Amb. Stevens was killed is part of that little "extracurricular activity" playing out and why State Dept. and other officials have been so reticent and evasive when answering Congressional questions.
Here's an excellent-quality and fascinating (warning: it is a bit graphic) documentary on the global history of civilian gun ownership world wide over the last ~150 years, and the actual historical results of the consequences of governments disarming a populace or a segment of a populace. The concepts expressed in the documentary are the reason for the 2A.
Historical fact: The British troops on their way to Concord & Lexington were sent to locate and destroy civilian-owned muskets, cannon (yes, civilian cannon...think hostile Indians/raiders/etc), powder, etc, when that famous battle occurred.
The current US government no longer operates with the will of the governed as expressed by the restrictions placed upon it, and therefor is no longer a legitimate government.
This is not intended as a troll, but as a serious question...
What are the pro-gun ownership people doing about it? Isn't that the main argument that people in the US use to reserve the right to own a wide variety of military weaponry?
Or have I misunderstood the gun control debate? (Note: I don't live in the US.)
Turning to the 2A is the last resort. Contrary to how media has portrayed gun owners as a bunch of dangerous hicks just looking to shoot somebody, in actuality there are vanishingly few like that. They tend to quickly end up in prison or as testaments to Darwin. We will try to work through the system as much and as far as possible before turning to violence.
There's a saying in the US about the four boxes to be used in the defense of freedom; the soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box, to be used in that order. We are still in the soap & ballot box stage, and entering the jury box stage.
Guns in civilian hands are just one deterrent against tyranny, not the first or the only deterrent.
It will not be gun-owning US civilians who start shooting first. It WILL be US civilians who shoot last if the government starts shooting, however.
The only way the US government could win a shooting war against the US population is if the government used WMDs to kill most of the population, but that doesn't leave much to rule over. Not to mention, the rest of the world might have a problem with the US government employing nuclear/chemical/biological weapons on a large scale for domestic genocide.
I sincerely hope that story is pure BS, but at the same time, the US government's behavior over the last few decades and particularly over the last decade or so makes it at least somewhat plausible. Particularly in light of all the recent large-scale military/police drills & rehearsals that have alarmed people across the US that the authorities are very reluctant to be forthcoming about, apparently by the type and nature of the forces and their tactics, preparing for large-scale domestic urban combat actions against large numbers of unarmed/lightly-armed civilians such as protesters and rioters.
Interesting times, indeed. Damn you unknown ancient Chinese writer of proverbs/curses!
Slashdot Mirror
The second amendment was because the Founding Fathers feared a standing army.
That reason is only one of multiple reasons for the 2A. Read some of the letters and other writings of Washington, Jefferson, etc. Read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers and Common Sense.
"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence ⦠from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable ⦠the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference â" they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." - George Washington
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ⦠Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." - Thomas Paine
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason - Co-author of the Second Amendment
during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
It's impossible to eliminate guns in the US short of turning it into N. Korea.on steroids and locking pretty much everyone up in camps. As long as the US Government has guns and large, ridiculously-porous borders, the criminals will be armed and they will be the only civilians with guns.
If a civil war broke out in the US, it's guaranteed the military will fracture. Not only is the US military all-volunteer, but much of it is currently made up of National Guard. They ain't all gonna snap a salute and frag grandma and the babies, regardless of being labeled "domestic terrorists/rebels/insurgents", or whatever lame dissociative label the government attaches to them. They're not all dumb enough to believe obvious BS, or to all go along with it.
More than you think will instead reply to such orders with something like; "I'm sorry Sir, that's an illegal order. Under the UCMJ and standing/general orders, I and those under my command are forced to disobey your illegal order and obligated to immediately inform your superiors in the command chain of the details of this incident." (Not sure of the exact wording and language. Probably varies by the branch of service. Didn't feel like doing the search.)
Strat
Please. The 2nd Amendment has never, ever done anything to prevent the government from steadily eroding 1st-Amendment, 4th-Amendment, or any-other-Amendment rights.
Wrong.
Might want to research what occurred in Athens, TN in the 1946 "Battle of Athens".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
Might also want to find out what's happened through history to people who have been disarmed by their governments.
Innocents Betrayed: The True Story of Gun Control http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPMqfXIJpNE
The 2A isn't about civilians going toe-to-toe with a regular army. It's about making it a very costly proposition for enemies of the people of the US both foreign and domestic.
Strat
A "packing" pachyderm?
Boy, those ivory poachers are in for a BIG surprise!
Everyone has heard that elephants never forget.
What they never told anyone was that elephants also never miss.
Strat
I knew this was happening, warned people, and anyone who didn't know is a moron!!!
BTW, YEOWWW!! my nards are hurting :)
Did you mean "Ow, My Balls!"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAg1r6zw7Bg
Strat
socialism. ideas so good, they have to be mandatory.
Great minds...(see my sig)
Strat
That is a question to ask NSA public affairs, not HR recruiters.
If some government organization tries to sell someone with anything like a sense of right & wrong, and/or simply not a damned sociopath, on joining them in targeting individuals and groups, naturally the first question should be "Exactly what type and nature of individuals and groups?"
If you expect that answer from them your expectations should probably be adjusted.
Wrong. They need to be able to answer the questions. They work for the people and must be accountable. Secret courts and secret rulings on secret laws are in no way Constitutional, and are gross violations of everyone's civil rights.
They have access now to technology and information systems Orwell could never have dreamed of. Such power must be tightly chained and the ability to abuse it eliminated. Turn the giant NSA data storage centers over to public scientific research use or something similarly open and benign. If it can be abused, it will be abused. It is human nature.
Government power must be as distributed and as localized as possible to avoid corruption and suborning, for the same reasons that it's much easier to compromise a network consisting of a central server and terminals than it is a network of autonomous machines, each with their own defenses.
In a way, the Founding Fathers were genius network programmers, as the US Constitution is the "program" for the system known as "government".
Strat
The intergalactic war is getting closer. We can hear the explosions now.
Yeah, I get your point, and I see the possibility.
Could also just as easily be "warp signatures" rather than explosions, and have absolutely nothing to do with us at all That's even granting it were some intelligence and assuming on top of that, that it both knows of our existence and/or is capable of caring (or even "knowing" as we think of it).
Back a few weeks ago, I posted in a /. story about the plans a group of researchers had to set up a continuous interstellar radio beacon, and in a thread therein concerning the questionable wisdom in advertising our existence to any other possible interstellar species/civilizations.
Reasoning being that other species may well take the not-illogical attitude that they are safest in a survival sense to immediately wipe out any other developing intelligent species/civilizations they detect to eliminate any possible present or future threat to their specie's survival and dominance, and then maybe study the rubble later.
Some say our regular radio & TV signals over the last century make it too late to worry about attracting attention, but that's uneducated hogwash from those who know nothing of radio or radio propagation.
You're talking about omni-directional broadcasting in the case of radio & TV. You could take a dish to the orbit of Mars and point it at Earth and be lucky to catch brief, weak signals from even the strongest terrestrial radio/TV broadcast stations. The signals would be far, far under the noise-floor and undetectable before you got past Jupiter.
A strong, focused beam at optimal interstellar-distance-detectability frequencies is different.
Keep an eye on the dolphins.
If they start leaving, be afraid.
Be very afraid. :)
Strat
Is it really a robot if it doesn't fulfill a practical purpose? Robot is derived from a word meaning "slave" because it does work in place of a person. If it is unable to do work, by conjoining AI with mobility, does it really fit the bill? What makes a windmill not a robot? What makes a drill not a robot?
Android: sure, robot: I'm not convinced.
["CrocodileDundee"]
"Hah! That's not a robot!..."
"...THIS is a ROBOT!!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj7DgklsZDk
[/"CrocodileDundee']
Strat
Snowden wouldn't be going to Gitmo. Although it wouldn't be much of a consolation.
More like what the Spacing Guild representative threatened the Padishah Emperor-of-the-Known-Universe Shaddam IV with should he fail them;
"...You will live out your life in a pain amplifier!"
Strat
All it took was 40 years to transform a modern island into something that looks like Mayan ruins. If something ever happens to humanity, in only a century or two we'll have been erased from history.
My first thought was that it looks just like large sections of Detroit,MI looks right now. Seriously, it's true. I know, as I don't live too far away. Search YT & Google.
Well, four decades has been about the same length of time that Detroit and Wayne county have remained solidly under one political party's control. The government made Detroit part of their "Model Cities" program. That fomented an orgy of over-regulation and local corruption & cronyism of every sort. Allowing the labor unions to gain and use the stranglehold they held on the Detroit auto industry along with ever-growing rafts of federal regulations combining to drive the auto companies to collapse was the final kill-shot. I'm old enough to have watched this go down since the 1960s. Everything since has been manifestations of the city's suicidal death-throes.
There are black bears and packs of feral dogs roaming in daylight. The Governor has had to appoint an emergency manager.
As a life-long musician, it really pisses me off because Detroit has such a great musical history and had a huge music scene with myriads of clubs that payed bands well if they were good. Now it's nearly a ghost town compared to just 30 years ago.
Hell, they'd have to fix the place up if they wanted to shoot another Robocop sequel in Detroit to match the decay levels in the Dystopian and post-apocalyptic OCP-Detroit from the previous films, not create fake destruction & decay!
But hey, the elites and their cronies both in and out of government gained tons of power and wealth from Detroit's destruction, so at least it worked out great for somebody, right?
Strat
The problem with putting cute things in space is that it will degrade quite rapidly. Any volatiles boil off faster and plastics - even (consumer grade) nylon - shrinks in space. Eventually it cracks up and falls apart. All that happens much faster than down on the surface. So plastics designed for space is different and more expensive.
I thought pretty much the same thing. My first thought was "Yeah, they'll look like small blobs of carbon and a few other materials surrounded by a small cloud of out-gassed material after being exposed in a vacuum, plus going from ridiculously-cold in shadow, and then suddenly exposed to ridiculously-intense direct solar radiation for a few hours/days."
Any idea if how long these things last is part of the experiment, as in a materials-science test of possible future space-worthy materials for space suits, habitats/vessels, etc?
A major advance in materials-science that produced a relatively cheap-to-produce material that could make a major impact on the mass needed to be lifted from a gravity well, and reduce the amount of mass, once in space, that you wanted to accelerate/decelerate and/or change direction plus be relatively resistant to radiation would be a major boost to space exploration and utilization.
[OT] /kidding
OMG!!...That's it!!....That's the reason for the Japanese fascination with robots all this time! This has been their plan all along! The Japanese will rule outer space with millions of plastic robot-ships...with LASERS!!...But strangely the robots will feel a curious sense of sadness and spiritual angst that will play out among them in multitudes of awkward & overly-melodramatic social situations for eons afterwards.
Strat
Simon Phoenix, after reprogramming Dr. Cocteau's house lights;
"Nah, I changed that."
"Illuminate"
"De-luminate"
"Ah, Isn't that much better?"
(I swear, the US is looking and feeling more and more like the fictional "Greater SanAngeles" from the movie with every day that passes.)
Strat
No, the poster is correct. Obviously, the Brazilian government holds to the same school of thought as the US government. It's not unlawful/un-Constitutional if we do it because of the current scary and propaganda-hyped boogeyman-du-jour.
Civil rights are taking a beating everywhere these days along with those advocating for them, it seems. All the recent US government "scandals" are actually just symptoms of the government attacking and violating civil rights in general. Every one of the so-called "scandals" are actually the government violating/ignoring/abusing/attacking/denying the civil rights of all the people, not just a particular group.
We need *real* civil rights leaders. Not the current jokes that bill themselves as such. It's time for another civil rights movement (NOT some "Arab Spring" violent revolution based on hate). Everywhere.
Strat
This is an incredible amount of exposure, considering half that absorption kills a human, predictably, within 14 days.
You could infer... that the weapon is potentially more dangerous to the human, than to the fly.
I grant that my examples were more for comedic effect than scientific accuracy. It's like an old Robin Williams stand-up line, that after a total nuclear war, all that will be left alive with all the radiation will be the cockroaches and Keith Richards.
The point still stands that even for humans (barring Keith Richards), the amount of power required for such a weapon to generate any where near a fatal dose within the space of one or two minutes or less at distances of 20 meters or more (say, from a curbside vehicle into the interior of the proximate building) from the X-ray emitter, given the inverse-square rule concerning effective power at a given distance from a radiation source, would be quite impressive to say the least. Five minutes with a calculator should have convinced them to move on.
This whole thing sounds like one of those wacky FBI "sting" operations where the FBI comes up with some lame plan and method, then finds a moron or three to play it off on until the morons incriminate themselves sufficiently for charges to be brought.
I can't imagine any actual terrorists that wouldn't do at least a little checking to make certain their Dr. Evil-esque "weapon" will even have any serious life-threatening effect, other than what one would get from a year or two of regular business air travel, before they started plotting an attack.
Strat
Wow, DNR regulates hunting of mosquittos & houseflies?!?
Talk about mission-creep! Ha!
GP never stated what he intended to hunt with his X-ray gun. Due to energy storage/weight/size considerations, anything man-portable might...assuming a brilliant design...be able to kill a very tiny insect-size creature at very close range at best. Ever looked at the amount of hardware and power required to irradiate food pouches for non-refrigerated storage/transport, just to kill bacteria?
Now, of course, if he went all Dr. Evil with a giant X-ray laser on the moon...
Strat
To become "The Man of Gorilla-Glass"??
Hey now, at least I didn't go for "Polyvinyl-Chloride Man".
Besides, even a super-Jobs is no match for Powdered Toast Man!
Strat
Exactly my thought. Whatever happened to my right to murder someone and get away with it because of technicalities!
Really? You're going there?
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer". ...as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England. It is commonly known as "Blackstone's Formulation".
Benjamin Franklin stated it as, "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer".
John Adams also expanded upon the rationale behind Blackstone's Formulation when he stated:
"It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished.... when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, 'it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.' And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever."
Tyrannies have excellent conviction rates.
Strat
YOU say that, but the majority of the US, who these officials represent, serve, and are employed by, disagree with you. You can't really expect the government to stop doing these things when so many people support it.
See: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/
The internet can be like an echo chamber, especially in places like Slashdot where a lot of like-minded people come together. With all the outrage that you see, it's easy to be blind to the reality of the situation.
You need to work on changing the minds of the public, then maybe you'll see changes in the government.
How was that poll conducted, as in what question was actually asked?
There's a huge difference between:
"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor phones to catch terrorists?"
To which most people would say "Yes, monitor their (the terrorist's) phones."
And:
"Do you think the NSA should secretly monitor everyone's phone and permanently store the data in case it's needed to catch terrorists?"
To which most people would say "Hell no, get a warrant!"
As far as the claims and promises being made as reported in TFS/TFA, too late. Too many officials have obviously lied over and over. NSA, FBI, Benghazi, IRS, F&F, etc. There is no trust, nor any logical reason for trust, given their track record on honesty and truthfulness. If they said "water is wet" I'd have to see the results of multiple scientific studies by multiple independent and prestigious international sources. And I'd still have doubts given who we're talking about.
Strat
The U.S. did not invent republics, they did not invent human rights, they did not invent democracy.
The US is the first and only nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That's the part you're missing. That everyone is born a sovereign person with natural rights, and that the government only has certain limited powers, set out as an exclusive list called the Constitution, that the people temporarily loan the government to carry out the will of the people, and can be withdrawn from the government if it should fail to obey the will of the people. It does not restrict the people, it restricts the government.
Right now, the U.S. is in a rather embarrassing position internationally considering its tolerance towards liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, they claim organizations like "Amnesty International" are all wrong about all the things that happen in the U.S., but the fact is that the U.S. is not all that far off from the all the dictatorial regimes it supports for expediency.
Many, many Americans feel the same way including myself. As I've stated in another post above, the US has become a de-facto police state and hegemonic crony-capitalist oligarchy. The two political parties are evil tweedledum & tweedledummer, and both are hellbent on stealing even more power and wealth while making serfs under constant and total surveillance out of the citizens to ensure their power remains unchallenged.
You know, we Americans (the people) are a pretty good lot and have historically done a lot of good and helped a lot of people and nations with our blood & treasure before these bastards seized control. We, the American people, could really use help instead of hate in trying to halt and reverse this trend by the government.
Help us wake other people in the US up. They're spying on you, too, don't forget. Put pressure on your governments and other groups to put pressure on the US government. The system the US is building is a global threat to everyone on the planet. It's a data collection and analysis WMD.
I mean, you don't really think they'll stop with subjugating only US citizens under their jackboots, do you?
Strat
You must be one of the Dominionists who believe that the Constitution is the inspired Word of God.
No. I believe that the Constitution is a giant leap forward in human civilization. It is the first time in 5,000 years of human history where men rule themselves by common agreement and their natural rights recognized and protected, and where the government is the servant and answerable to the people it governs. When it dies, it may well be another 5,000 years before it happens again.
I would like you to cite where Jefferson says that hangings "should occur every 20 years or so".
Maybe what you're thinking of is that Jefferson wanted, every 20 years or so, for the whole Constitution to be thrown out and rewritten by future constitutional conventions.
""I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787
BlueStrat, I think you have a childish, mythical view of what the Constitution is and does.
I think you have a solipsist and cynical view of what the Constitution is and does, and are all too ready to allow whatever re-interpretation allows government to do whatever it wants as long as it's "your team" in power.
The Constitution was written in plain language and does not require advanced education to understand the plain meaning of it's words. All the tortured re-interpretations that seek to redefine the plain meaning of the Constitution are attempts to circumvent the Constitution and avoid the Amendmen
There is no ambiguity in the Constitutional language. Just because they (courts & politicians) try to muddy the water with semantic word games, solipsist reasoning, and tortured re-interpretations of the meaning of plain words and got some judges to buy it is meaningless. It's just a way to render the protections granted under the Constitution, and the restrictions upon government power, meaningless.
If someone exceeds constitutional authority and then it's upheld by the Court, it becomes de facto Constitutional until further suits are brought to challenge it.
Yes, that's the way it has traditionally worked. But by keeping the spying a state secret, there has been no court challenges possible. This avoids another check on government power.
It's not like the Constitution is a rule book, and it's certainly not like the Supreme Court is anything but a bunch of politicians in robes. We have too much faith in both.
That's the problem. The Constitution *IS* the rulebook upon which our entire nation is founded. Government granting itself extra-Constitutional powers and authority is the root cause of the majority of problems the US is and has been increasingly suffering for over 100 years. Besides, with the kind of data the government holds against everyone, including SC Judges, one has to wonder how much of what the SCOTUS decides is affected by blackmail.
The SCOTUS is NOT the final arbiter of Constitutionality. We the People are the final arbiters of what is and is not Constitutional.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
They can claim anything they like is Constitutional. Doesn't matter if the People en-masse drag them all out and hang them from the nearest tree. Thomas Jefferson was of the opinion that this should occur every 20 years or so, so as to keep Federal power in check and keep politicians in fear of We the People.
Strat
Like a lot of folks on Wall Street, the Guardian sees two points and draws a trend line. Only it's more like one point so far. The US Government intentionally, across multiple departments & agencies, with malice aforethought, massively violating the US Constitution and the Rights of it's citizens in nearly every way possible. Well, except house troops in our homes. We can give them that. For now..
FTFY
Strat
Thanks. I hadn't heard of the four boxes before. And it seems to me then that the aim (so to speak) of gun ownership is to avoid the sort of thing that's happening in Syria.
No problem, you're welcome.
Well, I think you grasp the basic principle, but the Syria situation (as are almost every uprising/civil war, but triply-so in the current ME) is quite complicated, one complication being that NONE of the sides/groups involved view the US as anything more than the Western "Great Satan" that must be destroyed. Another is that the US has quietly been sending arms to rebel forces in Syria for some time. The Benghazi incident where US Amb. Stevens was killed is part of that little "extracurricular activity" playing out and why State Dept. and other officials have been so reticent and evasive when answering Congressional questions.
Here's an excellent-quality and fascinating (warning: it is a bit graphic) documentary on the global history of civilian gun ownership world wide over the last ~150 years, and the actual historical results of the consequences of governments disarming a populace or a segment of a populace. The concepts expressed in the documentary are the reason for the 2A.
Innocents Betrayed -The True Story of Gun Control World Wide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7vNj2sb_00
Historical fact: The British troops on their way to Concord & Lexington were sent to locate and destroy civilian-owned muskets, cannon (yes, civilian cannon...think hostile Indians/raiders/etc), powder, etc, when that famous battle occurred.
Strat
Turning to the 2A is the last resort. Contrary to how media has portrayed gun owners as a bunch of dangerous hicks just looking to shoot somebody, in actuality there are vanishingly few like that. They tend to quickly end up in prison or as testaments to Darwin. We will try to work through the system as much and as far as possible before turning to violence.
There's a saying in the US about the four boxes to be used in the defense of freedom; the soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box, to be used in that order. We are still in the soap & ballot box stage, and entering the jury box stage.
Guns in civilian hands are just one deterrent against tyranny, not the first or the only deterrent.
It will not be gun-owning US civilians who start shooting first. It WILL be US civilians who shoot last if the government starts shooting, however.
The only way the US government could win a shooting war against the US population is if the government used WMDs to kill most of the population, but that doesn't leave much to rule over. Not to mention, the rest of the world might have a problem with the US government employing nuclear/chemical/biological weapons on a large scale for domestic genocide.
Strat
What is worse, is that this might have nothing to do with terrorism, and more to do with spying:
Or maybe it has more to do with this: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749
I sincerely hope that story is pure BS, but at the same time, the US government's behavior over the last few decades and particularly over the last decade or so makes it at least somewhat plausible. Particularly in light of all the recent large-scale military/police drills & rehearsals that have alarmed people across the US that the authorities are very reluctant to be forthcoming about, apparently by the type and nature of the forces and their tactics, preparing for large-scale domestic urban combat actions against large numbers of unarmed/lightly-armed civilians such as protesters and rioters.
Interesting times, indeed. Damn you unknown ancient Chinese writer of proverbs/curses!
Strat