I did point out there has been no massive marine mammal deaths in the vicinity of San Diego and Norfolk. One of San Diego's biggest tourist attractions is Whale Watching. IF Sonar hurts whales THEN there would be no whales to watch since the Navy has been transmitting 235db of Sonar off the coast of San Diego for 50+ years. IF Sonar killed whales, La Jolla beach would be covered in dead whales. Since it is not, I have to make the assumption that Sonar does not harm whales.
Let me start by saying I'm a retired Sonar technician. I spent 20 years in the US Navy working on various Sonar systems. Never mind the fact active Sonar is the best way to catch a diesel powered submarine. Never mind the fact almost every country in the world has diesel submarines, including Iran. Lets just focus on whether or not Sonar hurts marine mammals.
The Navy has been using Sonar for over 50 years and there hasn't been a mass extinction of marine mammals due to Sonar. If you believe the environmentalists and then consider the number of ship's that have been blasting sonar into the ocean in the vicinity of San Diego, CA and Norfolk, VA, the natural assumption would be massive marine mammal deaths in those areas. Guess what? It hasn't happened. In fact, one of the joys of my job was the listening to the dolphins that were attracted by the Sonar. They certainly didn't appear stressed. The Navy has spent millions of dollars trying to determine if Sonar hurts marine mammals. The Navy already complies with most of the environmentalist requests just in case Sonar "might" hurt a marine mammal. I was personally involved in an investigation over the death of a dozen beak whales off of the Canary islands. There was 5 Spanish ships and 1 US ship. The Spanish ships were closer to shore than the US ship. Guess who got blamed for these whales beaching themselves? In the end, it was determined the whales beached themselves trying to get away from the shipping traffic, not the Sonar. The Spanish ships sonar operate in the same frequency range as the US. Since these ships transmit in this area on a regular basis and there have been no mass deaths of beak whales Sonar was absolved of the cause.
There still has been no definitive proof after 50 years. If you want to protect marine mammals, go after the industries that regularly dump trash and industrial waste. Have whales beached themselves? Yes! Does anyone know why? No! "Hmmm look around...oh yeah! The Navy has money, lets sue them for research dollars!" It's a frivolous lawsuit by a bunch of folks that have nothing better to do than hate their own government.
20 Years in the Navy has taught me two important things about Unix. 1. It doesn't like to have the power shutdown on it suddenly. 2. It's a b1tch to reload all the software when this inevitably happens. Ever been on a Warship? The power has a tendency to be less than stable. UPS you say? Yeah, they work like crap on the old HP/UX machines the military likes to use. Maintenance training was "...if it breaks, call tech support." Heh, kinda hard to do when you are in the middle of a fire fight in the Persian Gulf. I hate windows, but it's more forgiving and more widely known to the average 18 year old kid that I have working for me. The Airforce guy was on the money.
Umm... homicides by firearm aren't even in the top ten causes of death for people between the ages of 1-65 in 2002. Suicide by firearm comes in at number 10. The same website has all the statistics you could ever want to slant opinion one way or the other. Its all about how it's presented.
As the other person said, are you willing to ban motor vehicles since they are the cause of 36,778 deaths? How about foods high in fat since 128,135 people died from heart disease in 2002? Blaming guns for homicide is like blaming forks for fat people.
A quick search on Bureau of Justice Statistics for 2003 finds that the average number of homicides at school per year from 1992 to 1999 was 32. While there was a dip in homicides in 2000-2001 trying to claim the increase in 2002-2003 was due to video games is just wrong. It took me less than 15 minutes to find these numbers. Here is a quote from the Indicators of School Crime and Safety:2004 from the NCES
"No difference was detected in the percentages of students ages 12-18 victimized at school between 2001 and 2003. However, the percentage of students who reported being victims of crime at school decreased from 10 percent to 5 percent between 1995 and 2003. This included a decrease in theft (from 7 percent to 4 percent) and a decrease in violent victimization (from 3 percent to 1 percent) over the same time period."
The guy is just trying to further his agenda by playing a shell game with the statistics. Censorship is bad and is no substitute for good parenting.
ROFL The difference is Fox has the intestinal fortitude to actually refer to their story as 70% opinion whereas the "supposedly biased networks" try to pass off their opinions as 100% news. You bought into it. Who is deceiving whom? I guess you are one of those uneducated Americans. All news is going to be opinion slanted by the journalist that wrote it. I watch both sides and make my own mind up about what I believe. The reason Fox news is successful is they are the only network that shares the conservative opinion. The liberal opinion is split amongst several networks. If there were only one liberal network you would probably see better ratings. The election made it very clear there is a pretty even split between liberals and conservatives. Fox is cashing in on being the only conservative network. It's a good business model. No competition.
Slashdot Mirror
I, for one, welcome our new Spider-like overlords!
I for one, welcome our new chondrite overlords!
I did point out there has been no massive marine mammal deaths in the vicinity of San Diego and Norfolk. One of San Diego's biggest tourist attractions is Whale Watching. IF Sonar hurts whales THEN there would be no whales to watch since the Navy has been transmitting 235db of Sonar off the coast of San Diego for 50+ years. IF Sonar killed whales, La Jolla beach would be covered in dead whales. Since it is not, I have to make the assumption that Sonar does not harm whales.
Let me start by saying I'm a retired Sonar technician. I spent 20 years in the US Navy working on various Sonar systems. Never mind the fact active Sonar is the best way to catch a diesel powered submarine. Never mind the fact almost every country in the world has diesel submarines, including Iran. Lets just focus on whether or not Sonar hurts marine mammals. The Navy has been using Sonar for over 50 years and there hasn't been a mass extinction of marine mammals due to Sonar. If you believe the environmentalists and then consider the number of ship's that have been blasting sonar into the ocean in the vicinity of San Diego, CA and Norfolk, VA, the natural assumption would be massive marine mammal deaths in those areas. Guess what? It hasn't happened. In fact, one of the joys of my job was the listening to the dolphins that were attracted by the Sonar. They certainly didn't appear stressed. The Navy has spent millions of dollars trying to determine if Sonar hurts marine mammals. The Navy already complies with most of the environmentalist requests just in case Sonar "might" hurt a marine mammal. I was personally involved in an investigation over the death of a dozen beak whales off of the Canary islands. There was 5 Spanish ships and 1 US ship. The Spanish ships were closer to shore than the US ship. Guess who got blamed for these whales beaching themselves? In the end, it was determined the whales beached themselves trying to get away from the shipping traffic, not the Sonar. The Spanish ships sonar operate in the same frequency range as the US. Since these ships transmit in this area on a regular basis and there have been no mass deaths of beak whales Sonar was absolved of the cause. There still has been no definitive proof after 50 years. If you want to protect marine mammals, go after the industries that regularly dump trash and industrial waste. Have whales beached themselves? Yes! Does anyone know why? No! "Hmmm look around...oh yeah! The Navy has money, lets sue them for research dollars!" It's a frivolous lawsuit by a bunch of folks that have nothing better to do than hate their own government.
20 Years in the Navy has taught me two important things about Unix. 1. It doesn't like to have the power shutdown on it suddenly. 2. It's a b1tch to reload all the software when this inevitably happens. Ever been on a Warship? The power has a tendency to be less than stable. UPS you say? Yeah, they work like crap on the old HP/UX machines the military likes to use. Maintenance training was "...if it breaks, call tech support." Heh, kinda hard to do when you are in the middle of a fire fight in the Persian Gulf. I hate windows, but it's more forgiving and more widely known to the average 18 year old kid that I have working for me. The Airforce guy was on the money.
Umm... homicides by firearm aren't even in the top ten causes of death for people between the ages of 1-65 in 2002. Suicide by firearm comes in at number 10. The same website has all the statistics you could ever want to slant opinion one way or the other. Its all about how it's presented. As the other person said, are you willing to ban motor vehicles since they are the cause of 36,778 deaths? How about foods high in fat since 128,135 people died from heart disease in 2002? Blaming guns for homicide is like blaming forks for fat people.
A quick search on Bureau of Justice Statistics for 2003 finds that the average number of homicides at school per year from 1992 to 1999 was 32. While there was a dip in homicides in 2000-2001 trying to claim the increase in 2002-2003 was due to video games is just wrong. It took me less than 15 minutes to find these numbers. Here is a quote from the Indicators of School Crime and Safety:2004 from the NCES "No difference was detected in the percentages of students ages 12-18 victimized at school between 2001 and 2003. However, the percentage of students who reported being victims of crime at school decreased from 10 percent to 5 percent between 1995 and 2003. This included a decrease in theft (from 7 percent to 4 percent) and a decrease in violent victimization (from 3 percent to 1 percent) over the same time period." The guy is just trying to further his agenda by playing a shell game with the statistics. Censorship is bad and is no substitute for good parenting.
ROFL The difference is Fox has the intestinal fortitude to actually refer to their story as 70% opinion whereas the "supposedly biased networks" try to pass off their opinions as 100% news. You bought into it. Who is deceiving whom? I guess you are one of those uneducated Americans. All news is going to be opinion slanted by the journalist that wrote it. I watch both sides and make my own mind up about what I believe. The reason Fox news is successful is they are the only network that shares the conservative opinion. The liberal opinion is split amongst several networks. If there were only one liberal network you would probably see better ratings. The election made it very clear there is a pretty even split between liberals and conservatives. Fox is cashing in on being the only conservative network. It's a good business model. No competition.