The second amendment says nothing about defensive arms, or defense against criminals. It is so you can be an effective member of the militia, ie: the citizens being capable of fighting against an army.
I doubt that school is for you. I doubt school as implemented in our society is for students at all, although that is more obvious with some people than others. (For those of you who liked school, that's not my point, for those of you who are teachers, you don't control the implementation and I'm not insulting your character)
Hope you get something out of it. Maybe even inspiration for your search to find a place in society.
The difficulty people have with your position is that you haven't come up with step one yet. Until then, I'm in favour of shorter terms for copyright (say 14 years) but not abolishment of copyright, as it has proved to be a very effective incentive to create works, which a replacement incentive needs to be in place before copyright is abolished in my opinion.
Even with 14+14, I don't think it can be easily argued that if all copyrighted works created before 1980 were released to the public domain that the worlds culture and advancement would be crippled by the temporary copyright protection of the works created since then.
From the project website: "The project provides a ready-to-use interface for the julius CSR engine for a handicapped child which is not able to use the keyboard well. It integrates into X11 and Windows." (emphasis mine)
I'm not that interested in speech-to-text either, but if you can't use a keyboard I imagine it would be a huge benefit.
I take mild offense at having what i feel to be a fairly rational response to something reduced to 'irrational fear.'
To be fair, you did say that holding a gun weirds you out. I don't think it is unjust of me to interpret that as 'irrational fear.' It doesn't seem to me that someone can credibly claim to be similtaneously weirded out and rational on the same topic.
Regarding the germans benefiting from having the banking capitol of europe remain neutral, they would have been just as willing to invade and appropriate all the wealth of the banks. It's been a long while since I read Mein Kampf, but I'm pretty sure the acquisition of wealth through military force was fairly well intergrated into Germany's politics and strategy at the time. I doubt the presence of banks had any effect in disuading them from invading Switzerland.
On the contrary, accidents happen. all the time. not all are caused by negligence. sometimes competency is not sufficient to prevent them. I think if might be helpful if you consider 'worry' instead of 'fear.' I'd be afraid of an unrestrained wild tiger being loose in my apartment. I worry that an accident might occur when handling a dangerous object. Does that make more sense?
In firearms handling, fatal accidents and competence are mutually exclusive. Among other precautions, simply do not muzzle anything you are not willing to destroy. It takes action on someones part to discharge a firearm. Tigers on the other hand can kill you without any mishandling on your part. There is a huge difference between a wild animal and an inanimate object. If a firearm is dangerous to you, there seem to be three possible causes.
1. The person in possession of it requires futher training in safe gunhandling.
2. The person in possession of it is an enemy. Removing the gun is not sufficient. The enemy must be removed (or changed)
3. The gun is mechanically unsound. This is a reason for removing that gun, but not guns in general.
Firearms can indeed be used to secure the rights of people today. They are supposed to be the last resort though, not that you take a gun to court and force a favourable judgement. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed." - Declaration of Independence. However, while I'm sure there are valid complaints against the US government, if we compare (again from the Declaration of Independence):
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his
Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and
destroyed the lives of our people.
it doesn't seem to me that the US is really at the point where it's time to start shooting. I think that both the founders of the US and sane people now would be prepared to do much more within the system than to start another civil war or revolution. It doesn't seem to me that it's even close to the point that armed revolution causes less harm than continuing with the system in place. Firearms ownership just gives you the power to secure those rights should you need to. The system is designed in the hope that you will not need to (separation of powers etc).
This discussion reminded me of this wired science video I saw yesterday. Talks about how in the late 40's early 50's there was said to be a chemistry set in every house where there was a child. Now many of the sets are considered to dangerous. I presume that some sort of regulation or the risk of being sued is involved here. The implications of this ought to be obvious.
I agree with you that government should keep out of education. It seems to me that if state education systems had been around when the bill of rights was written, they may well have been mentioned in the first amendment along with state established religion. How can you be a free person if the government takes the major role in teaching you how to think?
I think he means, "the taxation is bad, but not as bad as anywhere else". Just because it's better than anywhere else doesn't make it good, just less bad. Lesser of two (or many) evils.
The problem is that at this point, laws limiting gun ownership being left to stand as constitutionally sound isnt reinterpretation, its the standing interpretation. Thus begins the debate between the Plain Words Doctrine folks and those who favor judicial review and the dominance of precedent.
Yes indeed. It's a difficult situation to sort out.
people fear silly things all the time and are otherwise rational. I can't deal with heights. That fear is neither rational nor unjustified. Falling from great heights would be a lame way to go. Fear of high-powered assault rifles is pretty much the same.
People knowingly living with irrational fear have no valid case to introduce legislation on the subject of their fear.
I see no way in which the ability of an individual to arm could have any possible effect on resisting a well-organized 1st-world national army.
I know how you feel. I felt the same way. When I checked it out though, this is what I found. Germany didn't invade Switzerland in WW2, a decision most likely influenced by the armed citizenry. If you understand the necessity of having troops on the ground to control territory, it becomes more obvious. It has been said that war is politics by other means. If the goal of the attackers is genocide, they must be met with overwhelming force for which personally armed individuals will almost certainly not suffice. If the goal is occupation and control an armed population can make it next to impossible even for forces with vastly superior armament. Do some reading on the growing role of snipers in warfare and you will see. Also see Vietnam, Iraq. A shooting populace, and particularly a hunting populace, are very dangerous to invaders. In any case, the effectiveness or otherwise of armed civilians in repelling invasion ought to affect the drafting of law, not the interpretation.
Holding in my hands an object whose sole purpose is to end life weirds me out in a way that holding an axe, or machete, or any other of the lethal tools i own does.
Fear of inanimate objects is irrational. Fear of inanimate objects you are controling could be rational if you are not confident of your ability to handle it. Otherwise, not rational. An axe or machete in your hands, competently handled, has no capacity to hurt you and to fear it is simply foolishness.
The existence of potentially lethal objects elsewhere has little bearing on the regulated use of objects whose sole intended purpose is to be lethal.
I was responding to your assertion that you generally avoid lethal objects. It is impossible to avoid lethal objects without someone taking complete care of you.
You seem want everyone controled by legislation based on irrational fears. This does not seem to be a position you would be willing to change based on facts of history or reason. Nevetheless, consider that all the rights of the citizen in the US have their basis in armed resistance to the government, from the Magna Carta (including habeas corpus), through the English Civil War and on to the American revolution and the forming of the USA. If you give up the means by which your rights are secured, you give up your rights. I fail to see how this could be regarded as less important than almost any other political issue.
In my opinion, the judiciary ought not be reinventing the law to suit current tastes. "What does this law mean as written", "how does it affect this situation", no problem, that's the purpose of the system. "What do we want it to mean today" is circumventing the system.
There is still a bunch of uneducated people 'right on the bottom', but nobody at least somewhat educated, somewhat influential, somewhat famous takes creationism seriously.
There's Andrew McIntosh Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds.
Personally, I think it was in a different historical context, but the appropriate response is not reinterpretation of the constitution but amendment, for which there is a proper procedure. I think the US constitution (2nd amendment) is fairly clear and in the context of the revolution seems to mean full military armament. Taken in the context of a world in which nuclear weapons etc exist, I do not think this is a good idea. However, if the constitution is reinterpreted according to every change in technology (or other historical context) it ceases to be really usefull as a constitution as I understand it.
Where we draw the line between personal nuclear arms and total weapons bans is not the point as I see it. The point is that the government is supposed to be regulated/limited by the constitution. Where the government is freed to reinterpret the constitution at will this is no longer the case and political liberty is effectively over. Under such a system, you no longer have rights in any real sense, you have priveleges granted or revoked by the government.
I dont believe he ever said he wasn't scared of machetes.
I put the comments about fear of inanimate objects and machetes in separate paragraphs for a reason. It is two separate points being (1) It is silly to fear inanimate objects, and (2) prohibition of firearms does not prevent murder or mass murder. Point (2) is not opinion, it is demonstrable fact. Sure it is easier with more advanced weapons, but that makes people equal, rather than the weak being subject to the violence of the strong.
You're not afraid of inanimate objects designed specifically to kill people? how strange. You're getting at the 'guns dont kill people, people kill people' thing, and you know what? people using guns kill people with surprisingly more efficiency than people without guns killing people.
No, I'm not afraid of objects designed specifically to kill people. I've owned guns in the past and they never struck fear into me. I've known other people, police etc that have guns and they didn't strike fear into me. In any case, firearms regulation where I live has given rise to a thriving illegal gun trade, according to media reports. I don't really see the point of the laws. Any anyone with high school level chemistry and some initiative can make high explosives anyway. For people that don't know how, there are always molotov cocktails. I can see it's possible to prevent people having nukes, but for personal weapons it just seems to be a waste of time to legislate against them.
We are all surrounded by things that can kill, electricity, knives, cars. If we are going to let everyone buy petrol, without restriction and without license, then laws against personal firearms are just a farce.
"If premiums were to be given to merchants, to build and employ in their
service ships mounted with twenty, thirty, forty or fifty guns,
(the premiums to be in proportion to the loss of bulk to the merchants)
fifty or sixty of those ships, with a few guardships on constant duty,
would keep up a sufficient navy, and that without burdening ourselves
with the evil so loudly complained of in England, of suffering their fleet,
in time of peace to lie rotting in the docks."
His advice was to have privately owned cannon, on privately owned ships, subsidised by the government to compensate for loss of trading ability, as the basis of the navy.
Handguns strike me as "murder weapons" and "weapons to be used in self-defense against other handgun-toting criminals"
You consider using a pistol for self-defense to be a criminal act?
Larger weapons scare me a lot less...
Weapons scare you? Why do you fear inanimate objects? How strange!
Do you ever consider the Rwandan genocide in which many of the protagonists were armed with machetes? 500,000+ dead.
At my local markets, a man sells ornamental swords. They do not have shrapened edges, because in my country that would mean they had to be registered as weapons, which would make them very difficult to buy or sell. A few steps away, machetes and other edged instruments are available without restriction for a few dollars. It's ludicrous. Most weapons legislation I've seen is ludicrous. It doesn't prevent murder, it doesn't prevent mass murder. It just gives the advantage to the physically strong.
We evil socialists are so wicked that we then want to pay for your retirement and your college education! Muahahah.
And in the style you'd like us to have it, too. We don't even have to choose! YAY!
Personally, I'd rather choose the education I want rather than fund one I don't want. I'd also rather choose my retirement than have the government dictate my lifestyle. Something about freedom, now what was that...
Of course, I still can and do choose these things, I just get to pay for the socialists as well.
the tuatara has vestigal third eye. According to wikipedia...
Widipedia does not refer to it as vestigial, it gives some possible functions:
"Its purpose is unknown, but it may be useful in absorbing ultraviolet rays to manufacture vitamin D,[7] as well as to determine light/dark cycles, and help with thermoregulation.[8] Of all extant tetrapods, the parietal eye is most pronounced in the tuatara. The parietal eye is part of the pineal complex, another part of which is the pineal gland, which in tuatara secretes melatonin at night.[8] It has been shown that some salamanders use their pineal body to perceive polarised light, and thus determine the position of the sun, even under cloud cover, aiding navigation."
it is interesting that the pineal gland is thought to be a vestigal third eye.
Neither is the pineal gland thought to be vestigial. The reference to the "third eye" in the "Mythologies, cultures and philosophies" section.
there is a clear relation between visualisation/consciousness and an eye.
A relationship between visualisation and eyes? You don't say!
My answer would be to have Free software for most purposes, but have MS Office taught in the last 1-2 years of school. It doesn't take that long to learn, and what is going on in the workplace is not a reason to choose particular software packages for elementary students.
Public school in the United States is poorly designed to accomplish any goal other than "keep kids off the street and pay a bunch of bureaucrats salaries".
You are quite wrong. The US population used to be approx 90% people having independent livelyhood, now most people work for a corporation. The public school system is designed to extend the age of childhool well beyond natural limits and produce a dependent population that will take orders in a job without demanding too much in the way of compensation.
The public school system achieves this goal in exceptional fashion, and is very successful.
I'm sure people mostly just got on with their lives, but in trying to relate to it, it doesn't sound fun.
Yes. It does also depend though, on the context the killings happened in. How many gunned down at random while doing their business vs how many gunned down during a drunken argument. Stay out of the bars and be safe? Probably very difficult to tell now, but the fact that it appears towns played up their reputation for violence to gain tourist trade seems to indicate that you could live quite safely.
If you got your impression of modern day levels of violence from films, you would have a very different picture than reality, also I think the west was the same. Many people moved west with their families, presumably not usually to known trouble spots. It was probably generally quite safe.
I wondered that too, I remember seeing something about incidence armed robbery being lower, but I don't have a source. I think the "die violently" part of the quote "Dodge City alone saw 15 people die violently from 1876-1885--an average of 1.5 per year" probably is indicating gun deaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_City 1880 census 996 for Dodge city, so still very high, but considering that Dodge City was a famously wild place it seems likely to me that most of the west was not that bad. Even at 1/664 it's not exactly "I quivering in my boots" type stuff. Good chance of a large proportion of them happening at bars or other avoidable situations and that you could go about your business without much risk.
The article I linked to in my previous post also indicates that there was a notable increase in violent crime after the civil war, both in the west and the east, which is an interesting point, but not pertinent to whether the wild west was more dangerous than posting on the net.
Did you ever fear being gunned down like a dog while running your shell account?
There is some doubt you would have had this fear in the "wild west" anyway.
http://www.mises.org/story/1449 There would probably be places in the now "civilised" US that you would be more likely to be killed than in the wild west.
"in many places like Dodge City, tales of violence were actually accentuated to appeal to the tourist trade in the latter years of the Frontier."
"the excitement in the Old West in general has been much overstated. All the big cattle towns of Kansas combined saw a total of 45 murders during the period of 1870-1885. Dodge City alone saw 15 people die violently from 1876-1885--an average of 1.5 per year. Deadwood, South Dakota and Tombstone, Arizona (home of the O.K. Corral), during their worst years of violence saw four and five murders respectively. Vigilante violence appears to not have been much worse."
The translation should be understood according to its context.
There is no context of Genesis that would cause it to be understood as anything other than a 24 hour day. In fact, it repeatedly refers to the evening and morning of each day. Unless of course you take science as providing the context for biblical interpretation, in which case, you should also reinterpret the giving of the law (stones written on by the finger of God is unscientific), the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ etc, etc.
The Sabbath was a symbolic observance, a symbol of the day (or "era") of rest. Not only was it not as long as the literal day of rest
You state this emphatically, but you don't provide a scrap of biblical justification for this position.
Exodus 20: 8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates;for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.
The same word is used in the Hebrew for the day they were to rest and the day after creation that God rested. There is no indication anywhere that the same word used in the same passage means 24 hours in one instance and long ages in another. It's preposterous to interpret any text like that. The only reason to do so is the percieved conflict between observable science and the bible. If you want to place science as a higher source of truth than the bible, then do so, but be open about it instead of claiming abiguity in the text of the bible where there is none.
However, evolution is an entire branch of science encompassing many more theories than that of universal common descent. The Bible does not contradict the theory that animals are able to adapt (or "evolve") within their "kinds".
Some of us are at least willing to accept that the ancient word translated "day" in Genesis has more possible translations than "a 24 hour period"
Exodus 20: 8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates;for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.
Since the genesis account is interpreted to mean six 24 hour periods in the ten commandments...
Exodus 31: 16,17 Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.'
... and in other parts of OT law...
Mark 10: 6-9 But from the beginning of the creation, 'God made them male and female. For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will join to his wife, and the two will become one flesh,' so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
... and Jesus teaching on marriage and divorce seems based on a literal interpretation of Genesis, specifically that "from the beginning of the creation, 'God made them male and female'" which directly contradicts evolution, it would seem that some one who wants to interpret the creation account in any other way is effectively claiming that Jesus was mistaken about creation. For such a person to claim to be a follower of Jesus as the Messiah is problematic to say the least, as they are effectively judging some of his teaching to be false.
As for the possibility of dinosaurs walking with humans, I encourage you to consider two things:
1. The historical artifacts depicting dinosaurs pictured on this site: http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/ancient .htm
2. The fact that when soft tissue was found in dinosaur bones there has been no questioning of the age of the bones, it has been widely and automatically accepted that soft tissue can last for 65 million years, even though it was previously "known" that this couldn't happen. This seems to bring into serious question the objectivity of mainstream scientists. Why has the age of the bones not been questioned?
Slashdot Mirror
The second amendment says nothing about defensive arms, or defense against criminals. It is so you can be an effective member of the militia, ie: the citizens being capable of fighting against an army.
I want to believe I have a place in society, but if it's a society of cookie-cutter people, then I may not.
:http://www.altruists.org/downloads/search/?restype=0&rescategory=0&resauthors=John+Taylor+Gatto&restitle=Enter+Keyword
I suggest you check out John Taylor Gatto's material if you haven't already. It will help explain the origin and implementation of the "cookie-cutter" society, although I don't think he uses that term.
http://johntaylorgatto.com/
Also audio downloads of some of his speeches
I doubt that school is for you. I doubt school as implemented in our society is for students at all, although that is more obvious with some people than others. (For those of you who liked school, that's not my point, for those of you who are teachers, you don't control the implementation and I'm not insulting your character)
Hope you get something out of it. Maybe even inspiration for your search to find a place in society.
aha, so:
1) ?????
2) abolish copyright
3) profit!
The difficulty people have with your position is that you haven't come up with step one yet. Until then, I'm in favour of shorter terms for copyright (say 14 years) but not abolishment of copyright, as it has proved to be a very effective incentive to create works, which a replacement incentive needs to be in place before copyright is abolished in my opinion.
Even with 14+14, I don't think it can be easily argued that if all copyrighted works created before 1980 were released to the public domain that the worlds culture and advancement would be crippled by the temporary copyright protection of the works created since then.
From the project website: "The project provides a ready-to-use interface for the julius CSR engine for a handicapped child which is not able to use the keyboard well. It integrates into X11 and Windows." (emphasis mine)
I'm not that interested in speech-to-text either, but if you can't use a keyboard I imagine it would be a huge benefit.
I take mild offense at having what i feel to be a fairly rational response to something reduced to 'irrational fear.'
To be fair, you did say that holding a gun weirds you out. I don't think it is unjust of me to interpret that as 'irrational fear.' It doesn't seem to me that someone can credibly claim to be similtaneously weirded out and rational on the same topic.
Regarding the germans benefiting from having the banking capitol of europe remain neutral, they would have been just as willing to invade and appropriate all the wealth of the banks. It's been a long while since I read Mein Kampf, but I'm pretty sure the acquisition of wealth through military force was fairly well intergrated into Germany's politics and strategy at the time. I doubt the presence of banks had any effect in disuading them from invading Switzerland.
On the contrary, accidents happen. all the time. not all are caused by negligence. sometimes competency is not sufficient to prevent them. I think if might be helpful if you consider 'worry' instead of 'fear.' I'd be afraid of an unrestrained wild tiger being loose in my apartment. I worry that an accident might occur when handling a dangerous object. Does that make more sense?
In firearms handling, fatal accidents and competence are mutually exclusive. Among other precautions, simply do not muzzle anything you are not willing to destroy. It takes action on someones part to discharge a firearm. Tigers on the other hand can kill you without any mishandling on your part. There is a huge difference between a wild animal and an inanimate object. If a firearm is dangerous to you, there seem to be three possible causes.
1. The person in possession of it requires futher training in safe gunhandling.
2. The person in possession of it is an enemy. Removing the gun is not sufficient. The enemy must be removed (or changed)
3. The gun is mechanically unsound. This is a reason for removing that gun, but not guns in general.
Firearms can indeed be used to secure the rights of people today. They are supposed to be the last resort though, not that you take a gun to court and force a favourable judgement. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." - Declaration of Independence. However, while I'm sure there are valid complaints against the US government, if we compare (again from the Declaration of Independence):
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
it doesn't seem to me that the US is really at the point where it's time to start shooting. I think that both the founders of the US and sane people now would be prepared to do much more within the system than to start another civil war or revolution. It doesn't seem to me that it's even close to the point that armed revolution causes less harm than continuing with the system in place. Firearms ownership just gives you the power to secure those rights should you need to. The system is designed in the hope that you will not need to (separation of powers etc).
You had better mention that to Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. Director, National Human Genome Research Institute who is also a christian.
This discussion reminded me of this wired science video I saw yesterday. Talks about how in the late 40's early 50's there was said to be a chemistry set in every house where there was a child. Now many of the sets are considered to dangerous. I presume that some sort of regulation or the risk of being sued is involved here. The implications of this ought to be obvious.
I agree with you that government should keep out of education. It seems to me that if state education systems had been around when the bill of rights was written, they may well have been mentioned in the first amendment along with state established religion. How can you be a free person if the government takes the major role in teaching you how to think?
I think he means, "the taxation is bad, but not as bad as anywhere else". Just because it's better than anywhere else doesn't make it good, just less bad. Lesser of two (or many) evils.
The problem is that at this point, laws limiting gun ownership being left to stand as constitutionally sound isnt reinterpretation, its the standing interpretation. Thus begins the debate between the Plain Words Doctrine folks and those who favor judicial review and the dominance of precedent.
Yes indeed. It's a difficult situation to sort out.
people fear silly things all the time and are otherwise rational. I can't deal with heights. That fear is neither rational nor unjustified. Falling from great heights would be a lame way to go. Fear of high-powered assault rifles is pretty much the same.
People knowingly living with irrational fear have no valid case to introduce legislation on the subject of their fear.
I see no way in which the ability of an individual to arm could have any possible effect on resisting a well-organized 1st-world national army.
I know how you feel. I felt the same way. When I checked it out though, this is what I found. Germany didn't invade Switzerland in WW2, a decision most likely influenced by the armed citizenry. If you understand the necessity of having troops on the ground to control territory, it becomes more obvious. It has been said that war is politics by other means. If the goal of the attackers is genocide, they must be met with overwhelming force for which personally armed individuals will almost certainly not suffice. If the goal is occupation and control an armed population can make it next to impossible even for forces with vastly superior armament. Do some reading on the growing role of snipers in warfare and you will see. Also see Vietnam, Iraq. A shooting populace, and particularly a hunting populace, are very dangerous to invaders. In any case, the effectiveness or otherwise of armed civilians in repelling invasion ought to affect the drafting of law, not the interpretation.
Holding in my hands an object whose sole purpose is to end life weirds me out in a way that holding an axe, or machete, or any other of the lethal tools i own does.
Fear of inanimate objects is irrational. Fear of inanimate objects you are controling could be rational if you are not confident of your ability to handle it. Otherwise, not rational. An axe or machete in your hands, competently handled, has no capacity to hurt you and to fear it is simply foolishness.
The existence of potentially lethal objects elsewhere has little bearing on the regulated use of objects whose sole intended purpose is to be lethal.
I was responding to your assertion that you generally avoid lethal objects. It is impossible to avoid lethal objects without someone taking complete care of you.
You seem want everyone controled by legislation based on irrational fears. This does not seem to be a position you would be willing to change based on facts of history or reason. Nevetheless, consider that all the rights of the citizen in the US have their basis in armed resistance to the government, from the Magna Carta (including habeas corpus), through the English Civil War and on to the American revolution and the forming of the USA. If you give up the means by which your rights are secured, you give up your rights. I fail to see how this could be regarded as less important than almost any other political issue.
In my opinion, the judiciary ought not be reinventing the law to suit current tastes. "What does this law mean as written", "how does it affect this situation", no problem, that's the purpose of the system. "What do we want it to mean today" is circumventing the system.
There is still a bunch of uneducated people 'right on the bottom', but nobody at least somewhat educated, somewhat influential, somewhat famous takes creationism seriously.
There's Andrew McIntosh Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds.
Personally, I think it was in a different historical context, but the appropriate response is not reinterpretation of the constitution but amendment, for which there is a proper procedure. I think the US constitution (2nd amendment) is fairly clear and in the context of the revolution seems to mean full military armament. Taken in the context of a world in which nuclear weapons etc exist, I do not think this is a good idea. However, if the constitution is reinterpreted according to every change in technology (or other historical context) it ceases to be really usefull as a constitution as I understand it.
Where we draw the line between personal nuclear arms and total weapons bans is not the point as I see it. The point is that the government is supposed to be regulated/limited by the constitution. Where the government is freed to reinterpret the constitution at will this is no longer the case and political liberty is effectively over. Under such a system, you no longer have rights in any real sense, you have priveleges granted or revoked by the government.
I dont believe he ever said he wasn't scared of machetes.
I put the comments about fear of inanimate objects and machetes in separate paragraphs for a reason. It is two separate points being (1) It is silly to fear inanimate objects, and (2) prohibition of firearms does not prevent murder or mass murder. Point (2) is not opinion, it is demonstrable fact. Sure it is easier with more advanced weapons, but that makes people equal, rather than the weak being subject to the violence of the strong.
You're not afraid of inanimate objects designed specifically to kill people? how strange. You're getting at the 'guns dont kill people, people kill people' thing, and you know what? people using guns kill people with surprisingly more efficiency than people without guns killing people.
No, I'm not afraid of objects designed specifically to kill people. I've owned guns in the past and they never struck fear into me. I've known other people, police etc that have guns and they didn't strike fear into me. In any case, firearms regulation where I live has given rise to a thriving illegal gun trade, according to media reports. I don't really see the point of the laws. Any anyone with high school level chemistry and some initiative can make high explosives anyway. For people that don't know how, there are always molotov cocktails. I can see it's possible to prevent people having nukes, but for personal weapons it just seems to be a waste of time to legislate against them.
We are all surrounded by things that can kill, electricity, knives, cars. If we are going to let everyone buy petrol, without restriction and without license, then laws against personal firearms are just a farce.
I don't think you could seriously argue that the second amendment covers cannons, mortars, bombs, and landmines.
I suggest you read "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine.
"If premiums were to be given to merchants, to build and employ in their service ships mounted with twenty, thirty, forty or fifty guns, (the premiums to be in proportion to the loss of bulk to the merchants) fifty or sixty of those ships, with a few guardships on constant duty, would keep up a sufficient navy, and that without burdening ourselves with the evil so loudly complained of in England, of suffering their fleet, in time of peace to lie rotting in the docks."
His advice was to have privately owned cannon, on privately owned ships, subsidised by the government to compensate for loss of trading ability, as the basis of the navy.
Handguns strike me as "murder weapons" and "weapons to be used in self-defense against other handgun-toting criminals"
You consider using a pistol for self-defense to be a criminal act?
Larger weapons scare me a lot less...
Weapons scare you? Why do you fear inanimate objects? How strange!
Do you ever consider the Rwandan genocide in which many of the protagonists were armed with machetes? 500,000+ dead.
At my local markets, a man sells ornamental swords. They do not have shrapened edges, because in my country that would mean they had to be registered as weapons, which would make them very difficult to buy or sell. A few steps away, machetes and other edged instruments are available without restriction for a few dollars. It's ludicrous. Most weapons legislation I've seen is ludicrous. It doesn't prevent murder, it doesn't prevent mass murder. It just gives the advantage to the physically strong.
oh boy. that's a law like any law and thus changeable. why do people think that these "constitution" thing will protect them in the end?
2nd Amendment.
We evil socialists are so wicked that we then want to pay for your retirement and your college education! Muahahah.
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And in the style you'd like us to have it, too. We don't even have to choose! YAY!
Personally, I'd rather choose the education I want rather than fund one I don't want. I'd also rather choose my retirement than have the government dictate my lifestyle. Something about freedom, now what was that
Of course, I still can and do choose these things, I just get to pay for the socialists as well.
the tuatara has vestigal third eye. According to wikipedia ...
Widipedia does not refer to it as vestigial, it gives some possible functions:
"Its purpose is unknown, but it may be useful in absorbing ultraviolet rays to manufacture vitamin D,[7] as well as to determine light/dark cycles, and help with thermoregulation.[8] Of all extant tetrapods, the parietal eye is most pronounced in the tuatara. The parietal eye is part of the pineal complex, another part of which is the pineal gland, which in tuatara secretes melatonin at night.[8] It has been shown that some salamanders use their pineal body to perceive polarised light, and thus determine the position of the sun, even under cloud cover, aiding navigation."
it is interesting that the pineal gland is thought to be a vestigal third eye.
Neither is the pineal gland thought to be vestigial. The reference to the "third eye" in the "Mythologies, cultures and philosophies" section.
there is a clear relation between visualisation/consciousness and an eye.
A relationship between visualisation and eyes? You don't say!
Mixed networks are sloooooooly making a comeback.
:)
It's true, I've even been considering having a windows box on my network!
I keed, I keed.
My answer would be to have Free software for most purposes, but have MS Office taught in the last 1-2 years of school. It doesn't take that long to learn, and what is going on in the workplace is not a reason to choose particular software packages for elementary students.
Public school in the United States is poorly designed to accomplish any goal other than "keep kids off the street and pay a bunch of bureaucrats salaries".
e rs/education/
You are quite wrong. The US population used to be approx 90% people having independent livelyhood, now most people work for a corporation. The public school system is designed to extend the age of childhool well beyond natural limits and produce a dependent population that will take orders in a job without demanding too much in the way of compensation.
The public school system achieves this goal in exceptional fashion, and is very successful.
Sites to check out: http://johntaylorgatto.com/
http://www.altruists.org/downloads/by_subject/oth
I'm sure people mostly just got on with their lives, but in trying to relate to it, it doesn't sound fun.
Yes. It does also depend though, on the context the killings happened in. How many gunned down at random while doing their business vs how many gunned down during a drunken argument. Stay out of the bars and be safe? Probably very difficult to tell now, but the fact that it appears towns played up their reputation for violence to gain tourist trade seems to indicate that you could live quite safely.
If you got your impression of modern day levels of violence from films, you would have a very different picture than reality, also I think the west was the same. Many people moved west with their families, presumably not usually to known trouble spots. It was probably generally quite safe.
I wondered that too, I remember seeing something about incidence armed robbery being lower, but I don't have a source. I think the "die violently" part of the quote "Dodge City alone saw 15 people die violently from 1876-1885--an average of 1.5 per year" probably is indicating gun deaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_City 1880 census 996 for Dodge city, so still very high, but considering that Dodge City was a famously wild place it seems likely to me that most of the west was not that bad. Even at 1/664 it's not exactly "I quivering in my boots" type stuff. Good chance of a large proportion of them happening at bars or other avoidable situations and that you could go about your business without much risk.
The article I linked to in my previous post also indicates that there was a notable increase in violent crime after the civil war, both in the west and the east, which is an interesting point, but not pertinent to whether the wild west was more dangerous than posting on the net.
Did you ever fear being gunned down like a dog while running your shell account?
There is some doubt you would have had this fear in the "wild west" anyway. http://www.mises.org/story/1449 There would probably be places in the now "civilised" US that you would be more likely to be killed than in the wild west.
"in many places like Dodge City, tales of violence were actually accentuated to appeal to the tourist trade in the latter years of the Frontier."
"the excitement in the Old West in general has been much overstated. All the big cattle towns of Kansas combined saw a total of 45 murders during the period of 1870-1885. Dodge City alone saw 15 people die violently from 1876-1885--an average of 1.5 per year. Deadwood, South Dakota and Tombstone, Arizona (home of the O.K. Corral), during their worst years of violence saw four and five murders respectively. Vigilante violence appears to not have been much worse."
The translation should be understood according to its context.
There is no context of Genesis that would cause it to be understood as anything other than a 24 hour day. In fact, it repeatedly refers to the evening and morning of each day. Unless of course you take science as providing the context for biblical interpretation, in which case, you should also reinterpret the giving of the law (stones written on by the finger of God is unscientific), the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ etc, etc.
The Sabbath was a symbolic observance, a symbol of the day (or "era") of rest. Not only was it not as long as the literal day of rest
You state this emphatically, but you don't provide a scrap of biblical justification for this position.
Exodus 20: 8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates;for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.
The same word is used in the Hebrew for the day they were to rest and the day after creation that God rested. There is no indication anywhere that the same word used in the same passage means 24 hours in one instance and long ages in another. It's preposterous to interpret any text like that. The only reason to do so is the percieved conflict between observable science and the bible. If you want to place science as a higher source of truth than the bible, then do so, but be open about it instead of claiming abiguity in the text of the bible where there is none.
However, evolution is an entire branch of science encompassing many more theories than that of universal common descent. The Bible does not contradict the theory that animals are able to adapt (or "evolve") within their "kinds".
Yes, we agree here.
I tried finding regular, old, telnet the other day. On Vista, nonexistant. On cygwin, nonexistant. On FC6, nonexistant.
x /core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/telnet-0.17-37.i386.rp m
Telnet definitely exists on FC6
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linu
Some of us are at least willing to accept that the ancient word translated "day" in Genesis has more possible translations than "a 24 hour period"
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... and in other parts of OT law ...
... and Jesus teaching on marriage and divorce seems based on a literal interpretation of Genesis, specifically that "from the beginning of the creation, 'God made them male and female'" which directly contradicts evolution, it would seem that some one who wants to interpret the creation account in any other way is effectively claiming that Jesus was mistaken about creation. For such a person to claim to be a follower of Jesus as the Messiah is problematic to say the least, as they are effectively judging some of his teaching to be false.
t .htm
Exodus 20: 8-11 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You shall labor six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You shall not do any work in it, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates;for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.
Since the genesis account is interpreted to mean six 24 hour periods in the ten commandments
Exodus 31: 16,17 Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.'
Mark 10: 6-9 But from the beginning of the creation, 'God made them male and female. For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will join to his wife, and the two will become one flesh,' so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
As for the possibility of dinosaurs walking with humans, I encourage you to consider two things:
1. The historical artifacts depicting dinosaurs pictured on this site: http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/ancien
2. The fact that when soft tissue was found in dinosaur bones there has been no questioning of the age of the bones, it has been widely and automatically accepted that soft tissue can last for 65 million years, even though it was previously "known" that this couldn't happen. This seems to bring into serious question the objectivity of mainstream scientists. Why has the age of the bones not been questioned?