It's so easy to say, "just keep track of your stuff and you don't have to worry". Well, since the punishment can be as high as first degree murder, "as if he pulled the trigger" then I'd say this is something to be concerned about.
What ever happened to the punishment fitting the crime?
This could've made sense if you provided a reference to backup such a ridiculous claim. Here allow me to help: http://www.vpc.org/press/state...
Look at what that "report" shows and compare it to my claim. I said that stricter gun laws correlate to higher murder rates. What does VPC claim? Look closely. They claim stricter gun laws reduce gun death rates. Do you see the distinction? I am looking at murders regardless of the weapons used because I'm not a heartless bastard that thinks stabbing people to death is somehow "better" than shooting a person to death.
Then look at how "gun deaths" are defined.
The deaths include gun homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings.
They include a self inflicted gun shot resulting in death, a suicide, as a "gun death" for their statistics. Four of those top five states on the VPC "report" have suicide rates above the national average, and the fifth? That is Louisiana with a suicide rate so close to the average that it is difficult to find the difference from the national score.
When looking at the 5 lowest "gun death" states we see Hawaii has an above average suicide rate, by a small margin. The other four are below average on suicide rates.
It seems the evidence shows mostly that those that choose suicide tend to do so with a gun. There is also a tendency for an armed populace to reduce murders,and an unarmed populace to choose suicide by some non-firearm means.
Why is it when people discuss wanting to remove some of the more stupid gun control laws that there is always someone that comes back with, "but nuclear warheads!!"
I could just ignore you. I could say you are just being an idiot for suggesting such a thing and THEN ignore you. Instead, at risk of making this worse and not better, I'll answer your question.
What is a nuclear weapon? I mean, what does it do that makes it any more distinctive than any other weapon? In the end a nuclear weapon is just a really powerful bomb. A bomb made with highly energetic components. Let's just, for the sake of argument, limit this to just a simple uranium weapon for now. Is uranium dangerous? Certainly. Is it carcinogenic? Yes. Is gasoline dangerous? Of course. Is gasoline carcinogenic? Many components of gasoline are.
Now, when you fill up your car at a filling station, do you ponder on how many napalm bombs you could make with the fuel in your tank? How many grass hut villages you could burn down with that? How many villagers would perish if that was done? No, you might think about how many miles it will carry you, or how much money this is costing you. Gasoline is a very dangerous substance, and if not handled properly it can cause considerable damage. If it contaminates ground water then it can be carcinogenic for those that consume it.
How do we keep people from making napalm from gasoline? We don't really. If people use gasoline as a weapon then we look for them after the fact, for the most part. If people catch word of people planning to make napalm then we'll do what we can to stop them before they can harm others. To prevent accidental harm from gasoline we have rules on how it is contained, transported, and so forth. We don't often ask people to provide proof that the rules are followed if the amounts of gasoline used is small but those that deal with it regularly will have training, licensing, and inspections. We also train firefighters and other emergency response people on how to deal with gasoline if there is a fire, leak, or people ingest it. We've effectively decided that the benefits of gasoline outweigh it's costs and so we use it regularly and without much thought.
Let's now equate this with uranium. We arbitrarily decided that uranium is somehow special. Because we can build big bombs from it that people cannot use uranium for anything unless it serves some government interests. It is effectively banned for people to possess. We know what uranium is, how to handle it safely, and we know this because the government does so regularly. The government is so afraid that someone will build a bomb out of uranium that even people that promise not to build bombs, and use it for energy, are routinely denied access to uranium. It's not that people cannot simply dig it up out of the ground, like gasoline, but if the government catches anyone doing so they will be treated as if they were set on mass murder even though they had no such intention.
Do I want people to have personal nuclear weapons? Not really, but I do understand that nuclear weapons is a genie we cannot put back in that bottle. If someone wants to build one then it's not like the ban we have on them is really stopping any one. What stops people from getting them is that they are really hard to build. If we set up some sane rules on the sale, transport, containment, and so forth on uranium then perhaps we would not be burning so much gasoline.
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. The government knows criminals and so everything they see looks like a weapon. Rather than seeing a plastic single shot pistol as a piece of sporting equipment they look at it as a weapon. Rather than seeing uranium as an energy source they see it as a weapon. I sometimes wonder how a government as paranoid as ours even allows people to get gasoline so freely. Why do they not see this as a weapon too?
It is when I see the potential weaponizing of any technology or material that
Concerning your comment about the OECD and their low murder rates I have to point something out. America is not like many of the other OECD nations, we don't have nationwide gun laws. The federal government sets certain minimums on guns laws but states are generally free to enact more restrictive laws. There is a tendency for stricter state gun laws to coincide with higher murder rates in those states.
Where people are able to carry weapons freely the violent crime rate tends to be low. In the more populous states, which tend to also have restrictive laws on the carry of weapons, murder rates are high. When taken as a total people outside of the USA hear about how people in Phoenix carry a pistol on their hip to get groceries and of people getting gunned down daily in Chicago they assume that the laws are the same in the two places, they are not. People in Chicago, until a few years ago, were barred from carrying a weapon on their person. The courts ruled this law could not stand. While in theory people in Chicago can lawfully carry a pistol on their hip to get groceries the laws to get a permit are so restrictive that effectively the ban continues. Since people cannot defend themselves from the few criminals that carry weapons in spite of the law people still die. Arizona passed a law a few years ago that people were no longer required to have a permit to carry a weapon on their person and the murder rate did not increase. This was likely due to the fact that the laws on carrying weapons were lax even before that.
I suspect that Chicago would be as safe as Phoenix if only it had the same laws. I also suspect that we will find out if that is true in time since the courts are slowly seeing the right of self defense as something protected by the Constitution.
Liberty includes being able to lock my door and go on a two week vacation to visit my sister in another state and not have to worry about someone squatting in my house, burning my house down, or taking my stuff.
Freedom means being able to say what I like and not have to worry about a mob taking offense and cutting me to pieces for it. There's a certain kind of freedom in being able to join such a mob and not be too concerned about a bigger mob coming along to punish me for cutting someone to pieces because I didn't like what they said, but that is a rather fleeting freedom. I can only do that so long as I am valuable to the mob, right?
I recall seeing a very interesting and informative video that describes the different forms of government. I'll try to summarize it. Government is a spectrum, from nobody in charge, anarchy, to one person in charge, a monarchy. A monarchy is not practical since no one person can manage a government, it takes a lot of people. This group of a ruling class is an oligarchy, rule by a few. There is also no such thing as true anarchy, since in time people will band together to create tribes and such. This will evolve into a matter of mere numbers in time, a democracy, rule by a majority. These are the two extremes of government that tend to be stable the longest, the oligarchy and the democracy. Even then that doesn't mean people have freedom, it just means those with power or numbers tend to be able to keep things relatively peaceful.
There is a third kind of government which is stable and maximizes freedom, the republic, the rule by law. It's not a person or a group that rules but a kind of societal agreement that there is a set of laws all must follow so that people can maximize liberty and peace. We've seen people experiment with how these laws need to be set in order to keep this delicate balance. There is a minimum set of laws that are required to maintain this balance. A few of them are things like courts, enforceable contracts, and the freedom to keep arms. If people are not free to defend themselves then things can devolve into mob rule or an oligarchy real quick.
Being able to join a roaming mob and hack, slash, and burn as one wishes is a certain kind of freedom but it's not liberty. One can keep that freedom until the mob turns on you. Living in a republic doesn't mean one is free from being robbed or killed since crime is still possible, nothing can free us from that. What a republic does is create an environment where people can more easily keep that delicate balance that is liberty, and so human nature tends to work towards keeping it intact rather than one mob constantly warring with another, or oligarchs stepping on the rest of society.
That's a better answer than you deserve in response to your mindless rant but I had a few minutes to type this out. I doubt you'll grasp the concept here but I hope someone gets the idea.
We should be careful about broadcasting our presence around the 'verse.
I'm pretty sure we haven't and likely won't for a long time. I vaguely remember someone doing the math on how far out into space our radio signals could be detected from the noise of the sun and other radiation sources. As I recall no one is going to hear us if they are outside of the solar system.
Even if that estimate is off by a few orders of magnitude that still doesn't get us a signal out very far. Then we'd have to get their attention long enough to be interesting. Just the time for the signal to travel will give us a long time to prepare for a response, assuming anyone is around with the technology to receive a reply.
If we want to broadcast our position then we'd have to do a combination of a large enough signal and far enough from the sun so it doesn't get drowned out. We'd also have to do it in a way that the sun doesn't block the signal either, so that means launching more than just one. It will be a while before we have the technology to build such a beacon. It will also take time for the beacon to get into proper position. Then there is the time for the signal of the beacon to propagate. Then we'd have to be able to hear a reply, which would probably take another two or more listening posts outside of the solar system.
There's a lot of things that can affect things like crime rates, income, and general quality of life. What I'm quite sure of is that people are fleeing many of these "gun free zones" we call dictatorships. You can cherry pick a few nations where the people are disarmed and live generally happy lives but if I show you a hellhole of a nation I can be fairly certain the people were disarmed by their government.
If you think the Second Amendment is only to ensure the public is sufficiently armed to take down the government,
That is one reason. The Second Amendment is also there to make sure people can protect themselves from criminals, animals, zombies, or whatever. The purpose is so the government cannot leave people defenseless from whatever potential harm may come their way. That harm includes government action but is by no means limited to it.
The case that is the subject of TFA is far far far from over.
Whether that is true or not is, IMHO, irrelevant. We just had 2 out of 3 judges rule that the 1st and 2nd Amendments to our Bill of Rights can be suspended because... TERRORISTS!
How many times can we allow this to happen before you wake up and see the tyranny?
I do want an open and unrestricted flow of weapons and ammunition because I know that I have more to fear from my government than any criminal. We should be keeping track of the criminals, not the weapons. If we put the criminals away when we catch them then things like background checks and registration is pointless. But there are those in government don't want to govern, they want to rule. It's real hard to rule if the people can defend themselves against tyranny.
There's two separate issues there. First, a stolen gun will not have a record of who stole it and quite possibly there will be no record of when or where it was stolen. Second, if stolen and reported the police would have to believe the firearm was actually stolen. Through malice or negligence on the part of the police the firearm could be considered gifted or sold rather than stolen. How does one prove a firearm was stolen after the fact?
Rather than pin granny with the murder let's set up another scenario. Imagine a guy going off to college and renting an apartment with some buddies of his. The first couple years he parties it up, get in a bit of trouble, but nothing serious. A couple public intox charges, a few moving violations, but nothing that wouldn't be resolved with a fine and an overnight stay in jail. He cleans up, moves to a different place to get away from his buddies that have now dropped out of college and smoke weed all day. Years pass, he's got a job and is taking graduate classes at night. His former roommates one night are robbing a liquor store while he's taking a midterm exam, and one of the customers is shot to death. Oh, and they are doing so with the shotgun they stole from him while they were roommates.
This guy is now considered a murderer, "just as if he pulled the trigger" as it was posed before. He had no idea the shotgun was stolen. It was missed while he moved out because while he remembers bringing it with him to college so he could shoot clay pigeons with the college club but he thought he left the shotgun at his parents' place after hunting turkeys one year. Since he was spending his time studying he didn't have time to go to the range with the shotgun club anymore. He simply lost track of it during his move and the thought it might be used in a crime later never crossed his mind.
So, now the prosecution needs only prove the gun was his at some time and that it was given to his former stoner buddies by him. The stoners will swear on a stack of bibles that they were given the shotgun since that gets them a lighter sentence. The guy can prove he had nothing to do with the liquor store shooting because he has 100 witnesses that say he was taking his exams at that time. The prosecutor looks good with this because he's got one more person to lock up to show she's "tough on crime" by getting another guy that used the "gun show loophole" to sell a gun to some "drug dealers". You think that won't happen? If you do then you need to get out more.
We've turned the presumption of innocence into presumption of guilt. Is that how you want the law to work?
It's the Constitution that, you know, "constitutes" the government. If the government cannot follow the rules it was created under then we don't have the rule of law any more. What we'd have is a government that is based on the whimsy of a handful of politicians and judges. The Second Amendment for me but not for thee, will become the norm.
If the government can't play by their own rules then why should anyone else? Have you considered where that leads?
If you have an argument with the "bible" that created this nation then have it changed. It's not like it hasn't been done before. If you think the Second Amendment is no longer useful then have it repealed. Just understand that this court ruled that a computer file is now a weapon. What do you think that repealing the Second Amendment would do to the First Amendment.
If you want to go down that road then I have no problem with it, just don't take me with you. There's a lot of places on Earth you can go where the right of self defense does not exist. I suggest you move there because those of us that like the US Constitution as it is have no other place to go, thanks to petty tyrants like yourself.
How far you willing to carry that? Some old lady had her double barrel shotgun stolen by a couple thugs, they cut it down to fit under a coat, kill a man, rape his girlfriend, and then burn down the house in the hope to hide the crime. Now you have granny on death row for murder, rape, arson, and an unregistered short barreled shotgun. Good job there, Tex. That will teach the thugs that got away. See granny didn't get their names. Can't prove she didn't sell it to them. So what if she filed a police report of the theft, that's another crime of filing a false report.
Another outcome. No one sells a gun any more. They sell scrap metal pieces, 3D printers, and a small computer loaded with the files to make a gun. The guns won't have serial numbers because someone along the line left out that little piece of code to print the number on the barrel. OOPSIE! Now instead of a couple dozen firearm manufacturers which are watched over like hawks there are now millions of people making their own guns in spare bedrooms, garages, and basements. Perhaps a few of them just "forgot" that they aren't supposed to sell these firearms without a serial number and registering the sale with the local sheriff.
The first scenario is not likely to every happen because that means so many things have gone wrong with our legal system. We've been looking at the gun instead of the criminal. The second scenario is nearly inevitable. People like the idea of do it yourself. It's become a kind of lifestyle of people building their own furniture, growing their own food, making their own clothes. It's a small leap from that to making their own firearms, especially if that same device that prints the firearm can print things like faucets, teacups, and kitchen utensils
Have you learned nothing from the "war on some drugs", or the "war on poverty", or the "war on bootleggers". All of them failed. If you declare a war on the gun trade then it will fail just like the wars on everything else. We didn't get less from these wars, we got more.
I clicked on a bunch of your links (the youtube has suffered a takedown, btw) and almost all of those are re: assault weapons and high capacity weapons/magazines. I'm not surprised people get more upset about those when they really are overkill for any hunter worth their salt (and yes, I've hunted with bows and arrows as well as rifles... never saw the need for semi-automatics).
If you think the Second Amendment is about hunting ducks and deer then you've missed the whole point.
I tend to favor letting people own them, but I also favor registering them and having robust training and licensing. The NRA seems to want unlimited rights with no regulations, precautions or monitoring, apparently.
We just saw a court rule that a computer file can be banned because it describes how to build a single shot pistol. I'd think that might wake you up that perhaps the NRA isn't just paranoid here. They didn't rule that the files could only be available domestically, or just to people licensed and trained in firearm use, or both. They ruled the files themselves were banned from distribution.
This is quite simply a weapons ban, and the weapon is a computer file. Words are weapons here, according to them. They seem to fear foreign nationals might be able to build these single shot weapons to... do what exactly? Invade the USA? They are already smuggling in machine guns so that makes no sense. Especially when the machine guns that they smuggle into the USA were sold to them by the US government.
The governemnt don't want to disarm these foreign nationals, they are already arming them. They don't want me and you armed is all. If it wasn't about disarming Americans then they'd have said the files need to be sent to people with a US address, proper training, and registration. They didn't say that, they said the files cannot be shared.
Interesting. What, if anything, prevents Defense Distributed from also using this tactic to distribute the CAD designs for their 3D printed gun?
I know there is the matter of the government cracking down on "with a computer" actions but if the goal is to distribute information as freely as possible then I'd think that all means of communication should be utilized. Use the internet, print, semaphore, whatever.
Send it to the NRA and see if they'll print it in one of their magazines.
Did you just compare the iPaperBag to the invention of the telephone, car and airplane?
No, I said anything can sound absurd if worded the right way. That includes some of the greatest technology achievements in human history.
The advance this made in human civilization was quite small here but then I imagine so many patents are. So many big things come from so many small things. We have the airplanes we fly today because of trivial little advancements like developing a better rivet. An advancement like that could be introduced with, "Company Inc. Patents New Rivet!" or "New Rivet Reduces Aircraft Aerodynamic Drag by 5%!"
The writing of bad headlines is so common its become a comedic trope. Compare, "Dwarf Psychic Escapes Prison!" to "Small Medium At Large!"
I'm not saying this is some leap in technology here. It's a cute little story about Apple, which a lot of people here might find interesting. The title though is so bad I have to wonder if it was an attempt at Apple bashing, an attempt at click bait, or someone just not taking pride in their work.
I've seen another technology that can track eyes to measure dilation of pupils, heart rate from changes in skin color on the face, as well as breathing. A bit more to estimate body temperature from the infrared. I wonder if it is possible to measure blood pressure, not just that blood pressure falls and rises but something like those inflatable cuffs, without touching the person.
Measuring emotional response from questioning certainly has benefits for a police interrogator, especially if that detective's job is to find out if the suspect is human. I can see this as useful to quickly and easily measure a person's health. Problems with breathing while asleep would be easier with this machine. Put it at the entrance to a hospital and set certain limits on where it might flag someone for more attention. Not to replace more traditional diagnostic tools but to augment it.
If this could allow for removing some of the wires and such from a patient in a hospital and make them more comfortable. The emotional state stuff was already there before, they just automated it a bit more. Only then it was called a polygraph.
Anything sounds absurd if worded the right way. Examples:
Alexander Bell patents talking to a wire.
Henry Ford builds a mechanical horse.
Wright Brothers claim wood and fabric allow a man to float through the air.
Americans fly Eagle to the moon.
Saying that Apple patented a paper bag is so missing the point that it's bound to be mocked. If one actually reads the linked article (I know, this is Slashdot) then it becomes clear how the title is almost certainly intended to be misleading.
Is it so hard to come up with something that wouldn't be so laughable? How about, "Apple Patents New Ideas on Humble Paper Bag"?
What is the law of the sea say about abandoned ships? Would not this law also apply to abandoned spacecraft?
As I recall if a ship or cargo is abandoned at sea anyone can come along and claim it as their own, especially if the flotsam and jetsam is a navigation hazard. I'd like to see some private company raise funds to capture this space station, restore it to a stable orbit, and claim it as their own.
Why a private organization and not NASA? Because I don't expect any government space agency would be willing to to this if only because of the funding involved but also because it might be a political problem. A private company could, maybe, avoid the political problems. I'd also think that there would be a lot of bragging rights in pulling this off.
This space station is expected to fall out of the sky within a year, can anyone plan a capture and re-orbit mission in that time?
I'm assuming the legal issues can be solved in that time, China doesn't just shoot it down, and there's enough value in doing this. Bragging rights gets one only so far, is there anything else of value to be gained here? As in, what use is the space station assuming someone can grab it.
Actually I was thinking more about how Dead Like Me started. If the toilet seat from this space station kills a young lady on the west coast USA then we have some sort of... something. Prescient?
Not like I wish anyone dead from this but if someone did die then I'd laugh at the absurdity of it. I'd also wonder what else that show got right.
With today's technology, maybe (though I don't think that's well established anyway). But obviously this "math" was based on some current assumptions.
All we have now is today's technology. Assuming that we can get solar power that is "better" (depending on how you define it) than today's technology is never a safe assumption. Waiting for solar power to be able to beat out nuclear is waiting for a boat that might never come to port. What do you propose we do until then? Keep burning coal?
Nuclear power is a technology that exists today. It is cheaper than solar and wind, and competitive with coal. Nuclear is the safest energy source we have, by a HUGE margin, when comparing lives lost to MWh produced. The only energy source with a lower carbon footprint than nuclear is hydro and we are running out of rivers to dam.
It may not be today's solar panels and batteries that solve the problem, but it doesn't take "doing the math" to realize that SOME FORM of solar - or, yes, somewhat, derivative solar like wind - plus STORAGE (batteries are just one example) will be the only was the human race survives ourselves...
That one wind turbine would produce something like 3 MW with optimum winds. In the best locations it will do so with an expected capacity factor of 35%, a capacity factor of 20% is more typical. Compare that to a nuclear power plant, that produces something like 1 GW at a capacity factor of about 90%. Tell me, because I'm too lazy to do the math right now, which one takes up less land area per MWh produced?
Not that it matters a whole lot. Nuclear power uses less concrete and steel, produces power at lower cost, and does so with less carbon output per MWh no matter how the wind blows. All of that counting against wind power and you want to "correct" me on the land area used?
Unless you can show me otherwise I will maintain that more land is paved over with wind power than nuclear power. Again, not that it matters much since wind power [ahem] blows on every other metric compared to nuclear. Normally I'd just let this go and concede the point just to move on but if you want to pick nits on this, of all things, then I'll play. Show me your math and then I'll show you mine.
Basement stuff? I was kidding -- or being sarcastic if you prefer -- because while no, one cannot do it in a literal garage, it is still a technology well within the reach of middle-tier proliferation risks who might have a comparatively hard time getting their hands on Uranium.
I'd call it hyperbole. That's just me though.
but there is little doubt that one can make bombs from Thorium, and further, that the bombs you make are the nice, easy to manage Uranium bombs and not the nasty, prematurely detonating fizzling fissioning (unless you build them just right) plutonium bombs.
There is a lot of doubt that anyone can build a thorium bomb because no one has done so yet. Even using thorium to breed U-233 for a bomb is theoretical.
Your claim that someone can "simply" extract U-233 from a breeder is idiotic. Thorium breeders operate on slim margins of neutrons, extracting too many neutrons risks the reactor going sub-critical. Going sub-critical means the reaction stops. Removing U-233 means removing neutrons.
Thorium reactors require a fissile starter fuel to operate. This usually takes the form of enriched U-235 but Pu-239 and U-233 have been used and proposed as well. If one has the means to obtain the U-235 or Pu-239 to start their thorium reactor then why would they bother with the U-233 to make a bomb?
I've communicated with real nuclear engineers online about the proliferation resistance of thorium breeder reactors and while using them to produce weapons grade material is theoretically possible it is highly impractical. If one has a breeder reactor and chemical separation facilities capable of handling radioactive materials then it would be much easier to get weapon grade plutonium than use the much more dangerous to handle U-233 to make a weapon.
You seem to claim that one can just dig up thorium from beach sand, run it through a breeder reactor, and weapon grade U-233 poops out. What is missing is the starter fuel, which needs to come from a particle accelerator, some other kind of reactor, or some kind of enrichment process. That starter fuel for the thorium reactor, whatever it's form, would be much more useful for a weapon than the U-233 that comes out of the thorium breeder.
What is more probable is using a thorium breeder to produce weapon grade plutonium. The problem is that the rate of production would be very slow but the purity would be very high. How slow? How pure? It depends on the reactor. The benefit with this reactor is that one can start with a low quality fuel, like low enriched uranium, and end up with a high quality fuel, weapon grade plutonium.
Read your source citation again. They claim it is theoretically possible but they make no claims on its practicality compared to other materials. They also show no evidence of a successful test.
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It's so easy to say, "just keep track of your stuff and you don't have to worry". Well, since the punishment can be as high as first degree murder, "as if he pulled the trigger" then I'd say this is something to be concerned about.
What ever happened to the punishment fitting the crime?
This could've made sense if you provided a reference to backup such a ridiculous claim. Here allow me to help: http://www.vpc.org/press/state...
Look at what that "report" shows and compare it to my claim. I said that stricter gun laws correlate to higher murder rates. What does VPC claim? Look closely. They claim stricter gun laws reduce gun death rates. Do you see the distinction? I am looking at murders regardless of the weapons used because I'm not a heartless bastard that thinks stabbing people to death is somehow "better" than shooting a person to death.
Then look at how "gun deaths" are defined.
The deaths include gun homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings.
They include a self inflicted gun shot resulting in death, a suicide, as a "gun death" for their statistics. Four of those top five states on the VPC "report" have suicide rates above the national average, and the fifth? That is Louisiana with a suicide rate so close to the average that it is difficult to find the difference from the national score.
When looking at the 5 lowest "gun death" states we see Hawaii has an above average suicide rate, by a small margin. The other four are below average on suicide rates.
It seems the evidence shows mostly that those that choose suicide tend to do so with a gun. There is also a tendency for an armed populace to reduce murders,and an unarmed populace to choose suicide by some non-firearm means.
References:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/...
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Why is it when people discuss wanting to remove some of the more stupid gun control laws that there is always someone that comes back with, "but nuclear warheads!!"
I could just ignore you. I could say you are just being an idiot for suggesting such a thing and THEN ignore you. Instead, at risk of making this worse and not better, I'll answer your question.
What is a nuclear weapon? I mean, what does it do that makes it any more distinctive than any other weapon? In the end a nuclear weapon is just a really powerful bomb. A bomb made with highly energetic components. Let's just, for the sake of argument, limit this to just a simple uranium weapon for now. Is uranium dangerous? Certainly. Is it carcinogenic? Yes. Is gasoline dangerous? Of course. Is gasoline carcinogenic? Many components of gasoline are.
Now, when you fill up your car at a filling station, do you ponder on how many napalm bombs you could make with the fuel in your tank? How many grass hut villages you could burn down with that? How many villagers would perish if that was done? No, you might think about how many miles it will carry you, or how much money this is costing you. Gasoline is a very dangerous substance, and if not handled properly it can cause considerable damage. If it contaminates ground water then it can be carcinogenic for those that consume it.
How do we keep people from making napalm from gasoline? We don't really. If people use gasoline as a weapon then we look for them after the fact, for the most part. If people catch word of people planning to make napalm then we'll do what we can to stop them before they can harm others. To prevent accidental harm from gasoline we have rules on how it is contained, transported, and so forth. We don't often ask people to provide proof that the rules are followed if the amounts of gasoline used is small but those that deal with it regularly will have training, licensing, and inspections. We also train firefighters and other emergency response people on how to deal with gasoline if there is a fire, leak, or people ingest it. We've effectively decided that the benefits of gasoline outweigh it's costs and so we use it regularly and without much thought.
Let's now equate this with uranium. We arbitrarily decided that uranium is somehow special. Because we can build big bombs from it that people cannot use uranium for anything unless it serves some government interests. It is effectively banned for people to possess. We know what uranium is, how to handle it safely, and we know this because the government does so regularly. The government is so afraid that someone will build a bomb out of uranium that even people that promise not to build bombs, and use it for energy, are routinely denied access to uranium. It's not that people cannot simply dig it up out of the ground, like gasoline, but if the government catches anyone doing so they will be treated as if they were set on mass murder even though they had no such intention.
Do I want people to have personal nuclear weapons? Not really, but I do understand that nuclear weapons is a genie we cannot put back in that bottle. If someone wants to build one then it's not like the ban we have on them is really stopping any one. What stops people from getting them is that they are really hard to build. If we set up some sane rules on the sale, transport, containment, and so forth on uranium then perhaps we would not be burning so much gasoline.
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. The government knows criminals and so everything they see looks like a weapon. Rather than seeing a plastic single shot pistol as a piece of sporting equipment they look at it as a weapon. Rather than seeing uranium as an energy source they see it as a weapon. I sometimes wonder how a government as paranoid as ours even allows people to get gasoline so freely. Why do they not see this as a weapon too?
It is when I see the potential weaponizing of any technology or material that
Concerning your comment about the OECD and their low murder rates I have to point something out. America is not like many of the other OECD nations, we don't have nationwide gun laws. The federal government sets certain minimums on guns laws but states are generally free to enact more restrictive laws. There is a tendency for stricter state gun laws to coincide with higher murder rates in those states.
Where people are able to carry weapons freely the violent crime rate tends to be low. In the more populous states, which tend to also have restrictive laws on the carry of weapons, murder rates are high. When taken as a total people outside of the USA hear about how people in Phoenix carry a pistol on their hip to get groceries and of people getting gunned down daily in Chicago they assume that the laws are the same in the two places, they are not. People in Chicago, until a few years ago, were barred from carrying a weapon on their person. The courts ruled this law could not stand. While in theory people in Chicago can lawfully carry a pistol on their hip to get groceries the laws to get a permit are so restrictive that effectively the ban continues. Since people cannot defend themselves from the few criminals that carry weapons in spite of the law people still die. Arizona passed a law a few years ago that people were no longer required to have a permit to carry a weapon on their person and the murder rate did not increase. This was likely due to the fact that the laws on carrying weapons were lax even before that.
I suspect that Chicago would be as safe as Phoenix if only it had the same laws. I also suspect that we will find out if that is true in time since the courts are slowly seeing the right of self defense as something protected by the Constitution.
You confuse anarchy with liberty.
Liberty includes being able to lock my door and go on a two week vacation to visit my sister in another state and not have to worry about someone squatting in my house, burning my house down, or taking my stuff.
Freedom means being able to say what I like and not have to worry about a mob taking offense and cutting me to pieces for it. There's a certain kind of freedom in being able to join such a mob and not be too concerned about a bigger mob coming along to punish me for cutting someone to pieces because I didn't like what they said, but that is a rather fleeting freedom. I can only do that so long as I am valuable to the mob, right?
I recall seeing a very interesting and informative video that describes the different forms of government. I'll try to summarize it. Government is a spectrum, from nobody in charge, anarchy, to one person in charge, a monarchy. A monarchy is not practical since no one person can manage a government, it takes a lot of people. This group of a ruling class is an oligarchy, rule by a few. There is also no such thing as true anarchy, since in time people will band together to create tribes and such. This will evolve into a matter of mere numbers in time, a democracy, rule by a majority. These are the two extremes of government that tend to be stable the longest, the oligarchy and the democracy. Even then that doesn't mean people have freedom, it just means those with power or numbers tend to be able to keep things relatively peaceful.
There is a third kind of government which is stable and maximizes freedom, the republic, the rule by law. It's not a person or a group that rules but a kind of societal agreement that there is a set of laws all must follow so that people can maximize liberty and peace. We've seen people experiment with how these laws need to be set in order to keep this delicate balance. There is a minimum set of laws that are required to maintain this balance. A few of them are things like courts, enforceable contracts, and the freedom to keep arms. If people are not free to defend themselves then things can devolve into mob rule or an oligarchy real quick.
Being able to join a roaming mob and hack, slash, and burn as one wishes is a certain kind of freedom but it's not liberty. One can keep that freedom until the mob turns on you. Living in a republic doesn't mean one is free from being robbed or killed since crime is still possible, nothing can free us from that. What a republic does is create an environment where people can more easily keep that delicate balance that is liberty, and so human nature tends to work towards keeping it intact rather than one mob constantly warring with another, or oligarchs stepping on the rest of society.
That's a better answer than you deserve in response to your mindless rant but I had a few minutes to type this out. I doubt you'll grasp the concept here but I hope someone gets the idea.
We should be careful about broadcasting our presence around the 'verse.
I'm pretty sure we haven't and likely won't for a long time. I vaguely remember someone doing the math on how far out into space our radio signals could be detected from the noise of the sun and other radiation sources. As I recall no one is going to hear us if they are outside of the solar system.
Even if that estimate is off by a few orders of magnitude that still doesn't get us a signal out very far. Then we'd have to get their attention long enough to be interesting. Just the time for the signal to travel will give us a long time to prepare for a response, assuming anyone is around with the technology to receive a reply.
If we want to broadcast our position then we'd have to do a combination of a large enough signal and far enough from the sun so it doesn't get drowned out. We'd also have to do it in a way that the sun doesn't block the signal either, so that means launching more than just one. It will be a while before we have the technology to build such a beacon. It will also take time for the beacon to get into proper position. Then there is the time for the signal of the beacon to propagate. Then we'd have to be able to hear a reply, which would probably take another two or more listening posts outside of the solar system.
I think we have time.
Oh, wait! I have another...
Blizzard Online Next Generation.
How does that fit with your ideology?
I prefer freedom over the promise of safety.
There's a lot of things that can affect things like crime rates, income, and general quality of life. What I'm quite sure of is that people are fleeing many of these "gun free zones" we call dictatorships. You can cherry pick a few nations where the people are disarmed and live generally happy lives but if I show you a hellhole of a nation I can be fairly certain the people were disarmed by their government.
If you think the Second Amendment is only to ensure the public is sufficiently armed to take down the government,
That is one reason. The Second Amendment is also there to make sure people can protect themselves from criminals, animals, zombies, or whatever. The purpose is so the government cannot leave people defenseless from whatever potential harm may come their way. That harm includes government action but is by no means limited to it.
The case that is the subject of TFA is far far far from over.
Whether that is true or not is, IMHO, irrelevant. We just had 2 out of 3 judges rule that the 1st and 2nd Amendments to our Bill of Rights can be suspended because... TERRORISTS!
How many times can we allow this to happen before you wake up and see the tyranny?
I do want an open and unrestricted flow of weapons and ammunition because I know that I have more to fear from my government than any criminal. We should be keeping track of the criminals, not the weapons. If we put the criminals away when we catch them then things like background checks and registration is pointless. But there are those in government don't want to govern, they want to rule. It's real hard to rule if the people can defend themselves against tyranny.
There's two separate issues there. First, a stolen gun will not have a record of who stole it and quite possibly there will be no record of when or where it was stolen. Second, if stolen and reported the police would have to believe the firearm was actually stolen. Through malice or negligence on the part of the police the firearm could be considered gifted or sold rather than stolen. How does one prove a firearm was stolen after the fact?
Rather than pin granny with the murder let's set up another scenario. Imagine a guy going off to college and renting an apartment with some buddies of his. The first couple years he parties it up, get in a bit of trouble, but nothing serious. A couple public intox charges, a few moving violations, but nothing that wouldn't be resolved with a fine and an overnight stay in jail. He cleans up, moves to a different place to get away from his buddies that have now dropped out of college and smoke weed all day. Years pass, he's got a job and is taking graduate classes at night. His former roommates one night are robbing a liquor store while he's taking a midterm exam, and one of the customers is shot to death. Oh, and they are doing so with the shotgun they stole from him while they were roommates.
This guy is now considered a murderer, "just as if he pulled the trigger" as it was posed before. He had no idea the shotgun was stolen. It was missed while he moved out because while he remembers bringing it with him to college so he could shoot clay pigeons with the college club but he thought he left the shotgun at his parents' place after hunting turkeys one year. Since he was spending his time studying he didn't have time to go to the range with the shotgun club anymore. He simply lost track of it during his move and the thought it might be used in a crime later never crossed his mind.
So, now the prosecution needs only prove the gun was his at some time and that it was given to his former stoner buddies by him. The stoners will swear on a stack of bibles that they were given the shotgun since that gets them a lighter sentence. The guy can prove he had nothing to do with the liquor store shooting because he has 100 witnesses that say he was taking his exams at that time. The prosecutor looks good with this because he's got one more person to lock up to show she's "tough on crime" by getting another guy that used the "gun show loophole" to sell a gun to some "drug dealers". You think that won't happen? If you do then you need to get out more.
We've turned the presumption of innocence into presumption of guilt. Is that how you want the law to work?
It's the Constitution that, you know, "constitutes" the government. If the government cannot follow the rules it was created under then we don't have the rule of law any more. What we'd have is a government that is based on the whimsy of a handful of politicians and judges. The Second Amendment for me but not for thee, will become the norm.
If the government can't play by their own rules then why should anyone else? Have you considered where that leads?
If you have an argument with the "bible" that created this nation then have it changed. It's not like it hasn't been done before. If you think the Second Amendment is no longer useful then have it repealed. Just understand that this court ruled that a computer file is now a weapon. What do you think that repealing the Second Amendment would do to the First Amendment.
If you want to go down that road then I have no problem with it, just don't take me with you. There's a lot of places on Earth you can go where the right of self defense does not exist. I suggest you move there because those of us that like the US Constitution as it is have no other place to go, thanks to petty tyrants like yourself.
How far you willing to carry that? Some old lady had her double barrel shotgun stolen by a couple thugs, they cut it down to fit under a coat, kill a man, rape his girlfriend, and then burn down the house in the hope to hide the crime. Now you have granny on death row for murder, rape, arson, and an unregistered short barreled shotgun. Good job there, Tex. That will teach the thugs that got away. See granny didn't get their names. Can't prove she didn't sell it to them. So what if she filed a police report of the theft, that's another crime of filing a false report.
Another outcome. No one sells a gun any more. They sell scrap metal pieces, 3D printers, and a small computer loaded with the files to make a gun. The guns won't have serial numbers because someone along the line left out that little piece of code to print the number on the barrel. OOPSIE! Now instead of a couple dozen firearm manufacturers which are watched over like hawks there are now millions of people making their own guns in spare bedrooms, garages, and basements. Perhaps a few of them just "forgot" that they aren't supposed to sell these firearms without a serial number and registering the sale with the local sheriff.
The first scenario is not likely to every happen because that means so many things have gone wrong with our legal system. We've been looking at the gun instead of the criminal. The second scenario is nearly inevitable. People like the idea of do it yourself. It's become a kind of lifestyle of people building their own furniture, growing their own food, making their own clothes. It's a small leap from that to making their own firearms, especially if that same device that prints the firearm can print things like faucets, teacups, and kitchen utensils
Have you learned nothing from the "war on some drugs", or the "war on poverty", or the "war on bootleggers". All of them failed. If you declare a war on the gun trade then it will fail just like the wars on everything else. We didn't get less from these wars, we got more.
I clicked on a bunch of your links (the youtube has suffered a takedown, btw) and almost all of those are re: assault weapons and high capacity weapons/magazines. I'm not surprised people get more upset about those when they really are overkill for any hunter worth their salt (and yes, I've hunted with bows and arrows as well as rifles... never saw the need for semi-automatics).
If you think the Second Amendment is about hunting ducks and deer then you've missed the whole point.
I tend to favor letting people own them, but I also favor registering them and having robust training and licensing. The NRA seems to want unlimited rights with no regulations, precautions or monitoring, apparently.
We just saw a court rule that a computer file can be banned because it describes how to build a single shot pistol. I'd think that might wake you up that perhaps the NRA isn't just paranoid here. They didn't rule that the files could only be available domestically, or just to people licensed and trained in firearm use, or both. They ruled the files themselves were banned from distribution.
This is quite simply a weapons ban, and the weapon is a computer file. Words are weapons here, according to them. They seem to fear foreign nationals might be able to build these single shot weapons to... do what exactly? Invade the USA? They are already smuggling in machine guns so that makes no sense. Especially when the machine guns that they smuggle into the USA were sold to them by the US government.
The governemnt don't want to disarm these foreign nationals, they are already arming them. They don't want me and you armed is all. If it wasn't about disarming Americans then they'd have said the files need to be sent to people with a US address, proper training, and registration. They didn't say that, they said the files cannot be shared.
Interesting. What, if anything, prevents Defense Distributed from also using this tactic to distribute the CAD designs for their 3D printed gun?
I know there is the matter of the government cracking down on "with a computer" actions but if the goal is to distribute information as freely as possible then I'd think that all means of communication should be utilized. Use the internet, print, semaphore, whatever.
Send it to the NRA and see if they'll print it in one of their magazines.
Did you just compare the iPaperBag to the invention of the telephone, car and airplane?
No, I said anything can sound absurd if worded the right way. That includes some of the greatest technology achievements in human history.
The advance this made in human civilization was quite small here but then I imagine so many patents are. So many big things come from so many small things. We have the airplanes we fly today because of trivial little advancements like developing a better rivet. An advancement like that could be introduced with, "Company Inc. Patents New Rivet!" or "New Rivet Reduces Aircraft Aerodynamic Drag by 5%!"
The writing of bad headlines is so common its become a comedic trope. Compare, "Dwarf Psychic Escapes Prison!" to "Small Medium At Large!"
I'm not saying this is some leap in technology here. It's a cute little story about Apple, which a lot of people here might find interesting. The title though is so bad I have to wonder if it was an attempt at Apple bashing, an attempt at click bait, or someone just not taking pride in their work.
How about Blizzard Inc. Technology Connection Homepage?
Use the acronym for short.
I've seen another technology that can track eyes to measure dilation of pupils, heart rate from changes in skin color on the face, as well as breathing. A bit more to estimate body temperature from the infrared. I wonder if it is possible to measure blood pressure, not just that blood pressure falls and rises but something like those inflatable cuffs, without touching the person.
Measuring emotional response from questioning certainly has benefits for a police interrogator, especially if that detective's job is to find out if the suspect is human. I can see this as useful to quickly and easily measure a person's health. Problems with breathing while asleep would be easier with this machine. Put it at the entrance to a hospital and set certain limits on where it might flag someone for more attention. Not to replace more traditional diagnostic tools but to augment it.
If this could allow for removing some of the wires and such from a patient in a hospital and make them more comfortable. The emotional state stuff was already there before, they just automated it a bit more. Only then it was called a polygraph.
Actually I think nuclear is a good idea in the medium term. Much better than coal or gas - as long as we make sure corners are not cut, of course.
That's close enough to what I needed from you to say I'm done here.
Anything sounds absurd if worded the right way. Examples:
Alexander Bell patents talking to a wire.
Henry Ford builds a mechanical horse.
Wright Brothers claim wood and fabric allow a man to float through the air.
Americans fly Eagle to the moon.
Saying that Apple patented a paper bag is so missing the point that it's bound to be mocked. If one actually reads the linked article (I know, this is Slashdot) then it becomes clear how the title is almost certainly intended to be misleading.
Is it so hard to come up with something that wouldn't be so laughable? How about, "Apple Patents New Ideas on Humble Paper Bag"?
What is the law of the sea say about abandoned ships? Would not this law also apply to abandoned spacecraft?
As I recall if a ship or cargo is abandoned at sea anyone can come along and claim it as their own, especially if the flotsam and jetsam is a navigation hazard. I'd like to see some private company raise funds to capture this space station, restore it to a stable orbit, and claim it as their own.
Why a private organization and not NASA? Because I don't expect any government space agency would be willing to to this if only because of the funding involved but also because it might be a political problem. A private company could, maybe, avoid the political problems. I'd also think that there would be a lot of bragging rights in pulling this off.
This space station is expected to fall out of the sky within a year, can anyone plan a capture and re-orbit mission in that time?
I'm assuming the legal issues can be solved in that time, China doesn't just shoot it down, and there's enough value in doing this. Bragging rights gets one only so far, is there anything else of value to be gained here? As in, what use is the space station assuming someone can grab it.
Actually I was thinking more about how Dead Like Me started. If the toilet seat from this space station kills a young lady on the west coast USA then we have some sort of... something. Prescient?
Not like I wish anyone dead from this but if someone did die then I'd laugh at the absurdity of it. I'd also wonder what else that show got right.
With today's technology, maybe (though I don't think that's well established anyway). But obviously this "math" was based on some current assumptions.
All we have now is today's technology. Assuming that we can get solar power that is "better" (depending on how you define it) than today's technology is never a safe assumption. Waiting for solar power to be able to beat out nuclear is waiting for a boat that might never come to port. What do you propose we do until then? Keep burning coal?
Nuclear power is a technology that exists today. It is cheaper than solar and wind, and competitive with coal. Nuclear is the safest energy source we have, by a HUGE margin, when comparing lives lost to MWh produced. The only energy source with a lower carbon footprint than nuclear is hydro and we are running out of rivers to dam.
It may not be today's solar panels and batteries that solve the problem, but it doesn't take "doing the math" to realize that SOME FORM of solar - or, yes, somewhat, derivative solar like wind - plus STORAGE (batteries are just one example) will be the only was the human race survives ourselves...
I believe you assume too much.
That one wind turbine would produce something like 3 MW with optimum winds. In the best locations it will do so with an expected capacity factor of 35%, a capacity factor of 20% is more typical. Compare that to a nuclear power plant, that produces something like 1 GW at a capacity factor of about 90%. Tell me, because I'm too lazy to do the math right now, which one takes up less land area per MWh produced?
Not that it matters a whole lot. Nuclear power uses less concrete and steel, produces power at lower cost, and does so with less carbon output per MWh no matter how the wind blows. All of that counting against wind power and you want to "correct" me on the land area used?
Unless you can show me otherwise I will maintain that more land is paved over with wind power than nuclear power. Again, not that it matters much since wind power [ahem] blows on every other metric compared to nuclear. Normally I'd just let this go and concede the point just to move on but if you want to pick nits on this, of all things, then I'll play. Show me your math and then I'll show you mine.
Why not Zoidberg?
Basement stuff? I was kidding -- or being sarcastic if you prefer -- because while no, one cannot do it in a literal garage, it is still a technology well within the reach of middle-tier proliferation risks who might have a comparatively hard time getting their hands on Uranium.
I'd call it hyperbole. That's just me though.
but there is little doubt that one can make bombs from Thorium, and further, that the bombs you make are the nice, easy to manage Uranium bombs and not the nasty, prematurely detonating fizzling fissioning (unless you build them just right) plutonium bombs.
There is a lot of doubt that anyone can build a thorium bomb because no one has done so yet. Even using thorium to breed U-233 for a bomb is theoretical.
Your claim that someone can "simply" extract U-233 from a breeder is idiotic. Thorium breeders operate on slim margins of neutrons, extracting too many neutrons risks the reactor going sub-critical. Going sub-critical means the reaction stops. Removing U-233 means removing neutrons.
Thorium reactors require a fissile starter fuel to operate. This usually takes the form of enriched U-235 but Pu-239 and U-233 have been used and proposed as well. If one has the means to obtain the U-235 or Pu-239 to start their thorium reactor then why would they bother with the U-233 to make a bomb?
I've communicated with real nuclear engineers online about the proliferation resistance of thorium breeder reactors and while using them to produce weapons grade material is theoretically possible it is highly impractical. If one has a breeder reactor and chemical separation facilities capable of handling radioactive materials then it would be much easier to get weapon grade plutonium than use the much more dangerous to handle U-233 to make a weapon.
You seem to claim that one can just dig up thorium from beach sand, run it through a breeder reactor, and weapon grade U-233 poops out. What is missing is the starter fuel, which needs to come from a particle accelerator, some other kind of reactor, or some kind of enrichment process. That starter fuel for the thorium reactor, whatever it's form, would be much more useful for a weapon than the U-233 that comes out of the thorium breeder.
What is more probable is using a thorium breeder to produce weapon grade plutonium. The problem is that the rate of production would be very slow but the purity would be very high. How slow? How pure? It depends on the reactor. The benefit with this reactor is that one can start with a low quality fuel, like low enriched uranium, and end up with a high quality fuel, weapon grade plutonium.
Read your source citation again. They claim it is theoretically possible but they make no claims on its practicality compared to other materials. They also show no evidence of a successful test.