The reason you don't understand this is because you are ignorant (perhaps willingly so) of how the people that want to ban weapons have thought out their plan. These people know that banning handguns, or most any weapon really, is the goal but they also know that banning handguns is difficult politically.
To understand this best we must go back in time by nearly a century. The National Firearms Act of 1934 placed a prohibitively high tax on a number of weapons, among them were machine guns, firearm report suppressors ("silencers"), "destructive devices" (grenades, landmines, large bore ammunition, etc.), the curious catch-all "any other weapon", and the also curious "short barreled" rifles and shotguns.
Let's talk about that "short barrel" category. The 1934 NFA originally had the intent to ban handguns and to prevent people from making handgun analogs from the not banned rifles and shotguns they made sure that people would not be allowed to shorten the barrels on these "long guns". Because of resistance from a number of powerful groups the ban on handguns went away but the "short barrel" designation remained. This law created the distinction among "handguns", "long guns", and "short barrel" arms where none existed before.
Forty years later the group Handgun Control Incorporated was created, with the (obvious) intent to ban handguns. Again this was met with resistance politically, few people in politics wanted to be associated with a group of that name. In 1981 James Brady was seriously injured in the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. HCI found themselves a new "mascot" and renamed themselves to the Brady Campaign. James Brady was shot with a.22 caliber revolver, which seems like a perfect mascot for an organization that wanted to ban handguns.
At about 1989 HCI renamed themselves Brady Campaign but still kept their original intent on banning handguns. The difference now is that they didn't wear this intent on their sleeves. It was now more politically acceptable to be an advocate for those injured by "gun violence" in general, leaving out that the ultimate goal is still banning handguns if not all firearms.
As the decades passed the banning of handguns became even less politically viable. People wanted personal defense weapons and a handgun makes a reasonable weapon for this task. The people today that call for "reasonable" gun control can draw a direct lineage to those people that wanted to ban handguns nearly a century ago. Given the age of many of these politicians and public figures I have to wonder if these aren't the same people that signed the 1934 National Firearms Act into law.
These bans on "assault weapons", magazine limitations, and background checks are all part of the boiling the frog, oiling up that slippery slope, or what have you that will lead us to banning handguns. These people have tried for over a century now to ban handguns but the majority of the people won't have it. They are still working on sharpening the point of the wedge between people and their personal defense arms. They think that by creating the idea that limits on some arms should bring us down the path to limits on all arms. That once we create the idea that the government should be able to dictate with what tools we are permitted to defend ourselves that at some future point in time the government would be able to dictate that the people cannot have any tools of self defense.
This has been going on for a long time in the USA, the best that they've been able to do is place some rather trivial limits on the people's ability to arm themselves. What I find interesting about these advancements in 3D printing is that it makes all those laws irrelevant. They can make it illegal to manufacture these weapons but the people that feel the government should not be able to dictate how the people may arm themselves will find these bans exceedingly difficult to enforce.
This is a question I've asked myself many times, is a law really a law if the govern
Considering that these are high dollar custom built cars I suspect that putting in an over sized starter motor would be both a minimal additional cost and a selling point.
Also, I recall my high school physics teacher stating something similar about a car he owned. He said he'd use the starter to move a "dead" car to the side of the road.
Another data point is a former co-worker told me how he built a go-cart that was propelled by a starter motor from an old truck. He use a set of automotive batteries and had to put two solenoids in parallel to handle the current. The problem was not with the motor getting too hot but the contacts on the solenoid would. Using two kept them from getting too hot.
Does it matter to me WHY they chose to tell the feds to jump in a lake? Not really. Because they chose to offer a device that has some level of assurance that the government isn't snooping on me illegally they have gained some trust from me, and that means I am more likely to buy their stuff in the future.
The primary purpose of any entity is to ensure its continued existence. If people lose trust in Apple then people stop buying their stuff. Of course this will make them money. I'm just not sure why you think this is a bad thing.
We can estimate fairly well how much those costs are so that amount should be paid by those companies back to society.
The coal companies pay that back to society by keeping prices low. Think of how many people would die from starvation, freezing, or what not if they did not have cheap and reliable electricity. Conceivably we could compute for that too. If we did so I suspect we'd find out we are not paying the coal burners enough.
Shut up already about the "cost to society" that coal power produces. If it weren't for coal power you'd be cooking a rat on a spit over a charcoal fire instead of being cozy in front of your computer while sipping on overpriced coffee.
The amount of subsidies, on kWh produced basis, is tiny compared to solar. The coal subsidies, assuming they even exist, look huge because they produce 30% or more of our electricity. Same for nuclear and natural gas as they also each produce roughly 30% of our electricity. That last 10% that is not produced by oil, coal, and nuclear is largely from wind. The fraction of a percent of the electricity that solar power produces gets them HUGE subsidies.
Several comments on this thread pointed out that solar energy gets 1000x the amount of subsidies that coal gets based on kWh produced.
I have no issue with the subsidies that nuclear, oil, gas, and hydroelectric get because those subsidies are miniscule compared to solar. I will agree that all energy subsidies must end, but solar subsidies are on a whole different level than the others.
Stop complaining about how much oil get subsidized, IMHO, it makes you look like a fool.
Not only that, define a "computer". Is an iPhone a computer? What about those electronic picture frames? A television? Televisions now have enough features, on board storage, and such that the distinction is getting foggy. A digital camera? Not a computer in common usage but it certainly contains the ability to gather, process, store, and output data.
If people fail to report child porn upon seeing it on a device not typically considered a "computer" could they be prosecuted under this law? What makes seeing child porn on a computer any different than, for example, seeing it on a Polaroid?
This is all ignoring the fact that it would be almost impossible to prove that someone did in fact see child porn on a digital device but failed to report it. If they did not report it then how would law enforcement prove that they even saw it?
Very stupid law, the people that created this law should be ashamed.
Spot electricity prices are typically higher during the day but that is not always so. Imagine a situation where a large number of people on a local grid had grid tied solar. On a cool sunny day it is conceivable for the spot electricity price to go negative. Would the people with the solar panels be then expected to pay the utility for taking their electricity? Perhaps the utility should have the choice to simply not buy their electricity at that time.
As the laws are typically written for rooftop solar the utility must, *MUST*, purchase the electricity from the homeowner at the retail rate. This is awesome for early adopters, and perhaps even for the utility. The problem arises when the number of rooftop solar customers exceed what the utility can handle. Too much solar power and the electric grid is now "running backwards" along some runs, the grid is not designed for that. An electric utility certainly can make an electric grid to handle rooftop solar but then the people with the rooftop solar are no longer "customers" in the traditional sense, they are producers. As producers they should be no different from other producers. Failing that then the economics start to break down, people with rooftop solar could conceivably be paid for the privilege of getting back-up power from the utility. Too many people doing this and the utility will have to raise prices. The income from the utility to the rooftop solar people goes up and the people that cannot have rooftop solar, apartment dwellers (typically the poorer people) and industry see their rates go up.
Solar subsidies like paying rooftop solar producers retail rates is a wealth redistribution from the poor to the wealthy. It's time for it to stop.
Solar power is now a mature technology, we don't need subsidies to encourage adaption anymore. Solar makes sense on its own, we don't need to prop it up with government mandates and subsidies. Solar subsidies are now just corporate welfare and regressive taxation.
It's like having the police able to disable your gun is a bad thing. You would love to shoot at the police unhindered, wouldn't you?
I can think of a few times and places where shooting at the police would actually be a good thing. It seems you are quite ignorant of history. Assuming you are located in the USA there are several cases of people finding a need to defend themselves from police even in a "free" nation like ours. What few might dispute as the penultimate example is the American Revolution. Perhaps that is an insufficient example as at the time the people on American soil were not yet citizens of the USA, as it did not exist yet.
I'm drawing a blank on the specifics but there was a case of a sheriff in the USA shortly after World War 2 fixing an election so that he could stay in office. In order to get the election approved the sheriff kidnapped several people, held them in the prison, and forced them to sign off on his "winning" the election. The issue was resolved when several National Guardsmen "borrowed" weapons from the nearby Army armory and forced the sheriff to release those he kept captive. Fortunately no one was killed and the sheriff was removed from office, and the weapons were returned to the Army.
What is to prevent a repeat of this in the USA, with a much less fortunate ending, from being repeated in the USA? I know, by not allowing the government to have a monopoly on lethal force.
From the article since it seems many have missed this point in the past:
Gun advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association and the NSSF have said they do not oppose smart gun technology. They simply do not want the technology to be mandated.
Let's have a safe firearm. After all these people will claim they don't want to take our deer rifles so let's build a "safe" deer rifle.
We don't want this rifle going off without the intent of the user, so we have a thumb safety placed conveniently so the user may enable and disable the safety while in a firing position. We want this rifle to be accurate since we don't want the bullet to hit anything other than the game it was sighted upon. In doing so we will have as standard equipment a proven sighting system with a ring rear sight and a post front sight. This sight shall have simple and easy means to adjust for elevation and windage. For better accuracy let's give people the option to mount any other sighting system they choose, perhaps a laser sight if gaming laws allow.
To make sure the rifle can be controlled when firing, so that the sight does not leave the target when the trigger is pulled, let's have an ergonomic grip. As a rifle barrel can get exceedingly hot upon firing even once then let's put a finger guard around the barrel so that people will not inadvertently burn their finders. This guard should be sufficiently insulated and sturdy so that it can be used to grip the rifle for better control upon firing.
Since this is a deer rifle we should choose a caliber that is sufficient to kill with a single shot but not so large that it imposes unnecessary recoil upon the hunter. We should make it out of a mix of modern materials to reduce weight where we can and keep heavy hardened steel where we must for reliability. This should be a rifle that is simple to disassemble with minimal training for cleaning, a dirty rifle is a dangerous rifle. To assist in keeping the internals clean the ejection port should have a cover, and to avoid the dangers of having the cover closed upon firing it should open automatically when the first shot is fired.
To minimize fire hazards the rifle should have a means to minimize muzzle flash. Reducing muzzle flash also minimizes eye strain for the hunter so that any game shot but not yet down can be tracked. The finger guard around the barrel also minimizes this risk as a hot barrel cannot touch dried underbrush. Additionally the flash ports can be positioned in a way to reduce muzzle climb and dangerous sparks hitting the ground before they cool in the air. Having the ports facing up but on either side of the line of sight can reduce muzzle climb, reduce fire hazards, while protecting the hunter's eyesight.
Noise from firing can also be a hazard. This rifle should have at least an option on the means to reduce the report if it is not standard equipment. A barrel that is threaded on the end would allow a user to remove the standard flash hider and attach something that controls the report as well as the flash. If flash and report hazards are not a concern but recoil is then the threaded barrel allows for the attachment of a recoil compensator. These devices are known to reduce recoil significantly at the cost of some weight and increase in report volume.
As a curious side effect the addition of a recoil compensator, report suppressor, and/or flash control device all tend to improve the accuracy of the rifle. A hunter is more likely to kill the deer than wound it. A hunter is also much less likely to miss and do damage to property or leave lead bullets behind.
The hunter should be able to unload the rifle quickly, the ammunition should be in a container that can be separated from the rifle with the single press of a button. The means by which the rifle is loaded should give indication from afar as to whether the rifle is loaded or not, as such the ammunition box should be visible from the front and sides when mated to the rifle. An addi
There is also the possibility that people can produce their own alcohol, tobacco, or whatever else they choose to consume medicinally or recreationally.
The materials to produce a wine, beer, or liquor are nearly impossible to distinguish from common home baking items. Even if someone was to buy a home brew kit from a grocery store, using their credit card and discount club card, there is no means by which someone can track the amount produced. This is especially true if someone uses things like apples from their own tree, honey from their own bees, or whatever to produce their alcohol.
I've noticed that there tends to be a large overlap on the people that view alcohol consumption as an evil we must do away with, and the people that believe we should invest in "green" energy. Here's something that I'd like this group of people to consider, alcohol prohibition set back bio fuel research by a century in my estimation. I also believe that until we get some sane policies on the taxation and subsidies of ethanol for fuel and recreation that we will never see bio fuels become common. Farmers were brewing their own ethanol for powering their tractors before Prohibition. Until people are free to do so again without fear of the "revenuers" putting them in prison we will continue to burn fossil fuels. Fossil fuels aren't cheap just because it's so plentiful, it's cheap because we have taxed all the competition into niche markets.
I believe it is impossible to have both cheap ethanol fuel and somehow keep people from drinking it. Ethanol sold for fuel must be "denatured" with an additive to prevent people from drinking it. What is it denatured with? Gasoline. Remove that stupid law and we'd have green energy without the fossil fuels.
I have no doubt that the powers that be want to eliminate cash but not only for the reasons you give. The government might want to eliminate cash to track your movements but that is not the end of it, why do they want to track you? Some businesses and most banks want to see cash go away, but again why? Tracking your movement is part of this, that way they can know more about your wants, needs, and habits so that they can sell you want you want before someone else does. The ultimate reason anyone would want to do away with cash is so that they can have a piece of it.
Every time someone uses a credit card, debit card, EBT, Apple Pay, or whatever there is a middleman to move money from your pocket to the business you are buying products from. The business pays a fee for the privilege of having the ability to move that money electronically. Sometimes this is advantageous to the business, people may be more likely to buy if they don't see paper money leave their wallet for example. A business might like this because it lowers the risk of theft and/or the time it takes to balance their books. It may also be a cost that cuts into their profit margin.
I believe we will never have a truly cashless society. Too many entities rely on small items of nontrivial value to survive. Charities love penny and dime drives, it gets large numbers of people to hand over small amounts of money that can add up quickly. There is also grey market and black market transactions. If cash goes away then something else will take it's place for these. I recall reading on how laundry detergent was used as a means to launder drug money. The drug dealers wouldn't take cash but they'd take laundry detergent. Gold and silver coins have been used for payment even before biblical times, and continues today.
I like cash. It is rare to see anyone turn down cash as payment for anything. Ever since I started paying for things like fuel and groceries in cash I noticed the amount of junk mail I get reduced considerably. I refuse to get "club cards" at stores since I found out that they are used to just sell my name to all kinds of advertisers. I'm seeing more stores go towards a cash only policy. Credit card companies are becoming their own worst enemy with the fees they charge and the targeted advertising they do.
While I agree with you generally on the perils of removing cash from society I do not share the level of concern you seem to have on the ability of anyone actually being successful in doing so.
Black electrician tape? What if I don't know a black electrician?
Go ahead and moan over the lame joke, I won't mind.
On a more serious note I do keep in mind where my cameras are pointing. I'm thinking of upgrading my phone from a relatively stupid flip phone (it has a camera but it's almost always in a pocket or on a table) to an iPhone. An iPhone has two cameras and, assuming I use it much like my iPod touch, will rarely be in a pocket. I would be tempted to cover the cameras with tape.
I'm sure there is a market for these but I haven't looked yet, are there iPhone cases with built-in shutters over the camera lenses? I'd buy one.
because no one is making enough new plants to specs that the old plants could never achieve.
The reason we had disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl is because we stopped building new reactors at the rate we were before. If we kept building reactors at the same rate then we'd have seen new reactors replace the old. Instead we now run the reactors until they fail. Considering how these old reactors were built they tend to fail spectacularly.
Water cooled reactors with solid fuel separate the hot fuel from the water with zirconium metal. If the zirconium gets too hot it will burn, using the water as an oxygen source. This releases hydrogen gas into the reactor vessel, building pressure. If the gas is not released in a manner to prevent ignition then you have the makings of a large fuel-air bomb, sitting right on top of some very hot (and now likely molten) radioactive sludge. BOOM! Then radioactive debris, still molten and/or burning, now rains down over the reactor site. Good job guys, let's keep these things running for the next fifty years, because God knows we can't build them better than this.
Oh, but we can build them better. We can build air cooled reactors. No water needed. Not only do we do away with an oxygen rich coolant (and don't fool yourself, water is largely made of oxygen, air not so much) that is corrosive, but we do away with the zirconium cladding too. Other benefits to air cooling is that the reactor does not need to be near water, and the water nearby is not super heated by the reactor, the fishes would be pleased.
We can use liquid fuel, fuel that is already molten so it cannot "melt down" like a solid fuel reactor. A solid fuel reactor that turns itself, through meltdown, into a liquid fuel reactor will burn itself a new reactor vessel into the floor of the previous vessel. It will burn itself into a nice spherical shape to assure a good neutron economy making sure it gets nice and hot. A liquid fuel reactor cannot do this because the floor of the reactor would be built in a way that, in the unlikely event it happens, if containment it lost the fuel will spread out. Without concentrating the fuel the fission chain is broken, and cannot restart.
The arguments against nuclear power are based on building new reactors with the same flaws that existing reactors have. We can build new ones without those flaws. That's not saying these new designs will be flawless, but at least the new flaws will not result in the reactor undergoing rapid self disassembly on worldwide television. These molten fuel reactors could fail but at least they won't spread burning radioactive pieces all over the place.
What war can do, and has done in the past, is set up a nation for an economic boom. A pre-war nation might have a poor economy but during a war that nation is fighting for survival, it gives the nation a common enemy and a common goal. That pre-war nation might find itself held back by infighting, a lack of purpose, or whatever.
A nation at war needs everyone contributing. People that could not find work before will be compelled to work one way or another. People will be sought out to do whatever they can for that common goal of surviving and/or defeating the common enemy. People that are able to work, but choose not to, are likely to find themselves jailed for "aid and comfort to the enemy" or something. While in jail these people could be put to work sewing uniforms or something, or face further punishment. Any destruction of infrastructure from enemy attack clears an area for new and improved infrastructure to take its place. Those sent off to fight will have to be replaced, so people that were not skilled laborers before will find themselves being trained for skilled labor. Again this will be either by choice, due to many new job opportunities, or force.
After the war all those skilled laborers that survived the war can return to work with new skills. Those that were skilled laborers before were tasked in war with a similar job and/or placed in a leadership position, and can now return to work with more experience than if there was no war. Those tasked with a war time job different than what they did before will now have new skills to leverage in finding work. All that infrastructure to build weapons, uniforms, and so forth can now be redirected to peace time products. These products can now be produced at a cost lower than before the war because the capital expenses were paid for by the government or wiped clean by other means.
There is no doubt that a nation at war will find things difficult. A post-war nation can find itself in a position for an economic boom.
Well, a state doesn't have to get rid of the license completely, just don't require it for travel within the state. Get other states to go along with it so people can drive state to state. We've been seeing "mission creep" on the drivers license for a long time. Even people that can't drive, or don't want to drive, still get to experience the DMV to get an ID to vote, get a bank account, or any of a number of things. This DMV issued, non-driver, ID is increasingly needed to travel by bus, plane, boat, or train. It's not a drivers license any more, its an internal passport.
The federal government can only push the states around as long as the states allow them to. Case in point, marijuana possession is illegal but yet no federal agency will even dare prosecute for this in those states that legalized it. The states have considerable power over the federal government, they can tell them where to go if they only grew a backbone.
Perhaps getting rid of the drivers license is too much just because the TSA wants to use it as an internal passport. What this is though is just one of many reasons on how what is supposed to be a record that one can pilot an automobile safely has gone well beyond this and has become a means by which the federal government can impose itself upon us.
Also, what few people will tell you is that it is perfectly legal to travel by commercial aircraft without government ID. You don't need an ID to fly, but everyone will tell you that you do. You might get hassled, delayed, and searched thoroughly but it's not illegal to travel without ID. As of yet we don't have a requirement to carry ID to travel, but the powers that be are working to change that.
At night is when all those solar panels the "greenies" want us to build will not work. There are two ways to solve this issue, coal and nuclear. Coal is just shifting the carbon output from the tailpipe to the power plant. One might argue that the carbon output is reduced even if the car is coal powered but one cannot argue this coal powered vehicle is "zero emissions". Nuclear power would provide a truly "zero emission" power source (or at least closer to zero than wind or solar) and ample base load for charging electric vehicles over the night.
Without nuclear fission power plants these cars are not zero emissions. Not only do wind and solar produce more carbon than nuclear, are inherently unreliable, they are also prohibitively expensive. The government has made wind and solar profitable by a false economy mandate. Coal and nuclear do not require such a mandate to be profitable. Electric cars alone will not cause an electric grid capacity issue, wind and solar mandates will. Much of the economy that make wind and solar viable is this reduced load on the electric grid at night, allowing for storage and/or load shifting. If we also rely on this reduced load at night to charge electric vehicles then this supposed surplus is diminished or simply gone. Combining electric cars, wind and solar power, and no nuclear fission for base load and you have either continued burning of fossil fuels or prohibitively expensive energy.
Seems to me that the largest complaint against this registry is that the registration is required for these small remote controlled aircraft even if they are not operated in the public airspace.
For your analogy to hold between cars and drone I would not be legally required to register a drone that I operated within the confines of my property up to 200 feet above it. It appears that the FAA feels that even if this drone never leaves that legally defined private property box that I am still required to register it. There are many reasons to stop this registration, I just gave what is the gravest violation of civil rights.
I can hear the replies now, what if the wind takes the drone off your property? Well then if I had not registered it then I'd be in violation, just as if the wind took my unregistered car into the street as I was driving it on my private track. Then I'd hear, but the wind won't blow your car while it can certainly carry a drone. My response is, apparently you've never been to Oklahoma. You've probably heard of it, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain?
Heinigerâ(TM)s call-to-arms, reproduced in at least one local paper, predicts that solar farms could shift land use to such an extent that âoeit is highly unlikely this land will ever be farmed again.â Heiniger also denounced solar energy as a government-subsidized boondoggle that is âoehighly inefficient at producing energy.â
I keep hearing on how solar panels will be, or should be, only put in places where we couldn't grow crops. Now we see that solar panels are replacing farmland. Tell me, what will this farmland look like after the 20 year expected lifespan of this solar farm? I lived on a farm and I know that if farmland is not tended well year after year it can become worthless. Decades of shade will no doubt kill anything that wants to grow beneath these panels. Wind and rain will erode topsoil away.
I remember when my dad built a new machine shed. I wondered how we'd get the sand in the shed like we did in the others. I saw how it worked in short order. That land where we had grass growing before turned to sand.
I also remember what an expert on solar power has said about what solar panel operators will do if anything does actually grow around their solar panels. You see that if something does grow in the vicinity of a solar panel it will have a tendency to shade the panel in time. This is bad for the profitability of the solar panel. To prevent this from happening the operators will do what they can to control plant growth at the lowest cost. They will spread herbicides.
Solar photovoltaic panels are in fact highly inefficient at producing energy. Solar power is one of the most expensive means to produce energy. The only reason it survives as well as it does it because the government taxes energy that is profitable, like coal, nuclear fission, and natural gas, to subsidize solar. Solar power is profitable only because the government mandates it so.
I say we get our green energy and our farmland too. Build more nuclear fission power plants. Instead of covering many square miles of fertile farmland in solar panels we can build a nuclear power plant that will produce power day and night, in any weather.
Any claims on issues of nuclear waste, meltdown threats, or what not are based on how we did nuclear power decades ago. We can build a reactor now that will produce very little waste, and can in fact destroy existing stockpiles of waste. We can build a reactor now that is highly unlikely to meltdown, and if it does the damage would be contained to the reactor site, they simply cannot create a radioactive plume that will cover a countryside. We can do this not because of some kind of magic, but because we learned from our mistakes.
Perhaps sometime in the future we can have our solar power and keep our farmland. Until then solar power is best left for satellites and science fairs.
I did give a serious answer. The reason I cannot come up with a specific example of "something better" is that I do not understand the problem. I do know that in every case in which registration has been tried to reduce crime it has not worked. Why should I expect this to be any different?
Perhaps someone could explain to me how registration is going to solve whatever problems it is supposed to solve. Then, perhaps, I can come up with a better answer.
The idea of banning all Muslims is a reaction to an irrational fear.
Trump did not suggest banning Muslims from entering the country. What he did say is that there is a tendency for criminals from outside the country to come from Islamic theocracies, therefore we need to bar people from immigrating from these nations until we can be sure these immigrants won't just kill us once they get here.
He did not suggest that any Muslim that wished to immigrate here should be prevented from doing so. How would that even be done? It's not like such people cannot lie, in fact Muslims are encouraged to lie and cheat nonbelievers to reach their ends. The test would be on which nation these people come from. Is the nation controlled by Muslim leaders? Does this nation treat Sharia as law? If so then we should not be allowing anyone to immigrate from these nations, no matter what faith they claim to follow.
This does have other political pitfalls. Some of our supposed allies could fit this definition of "Muslim nation" as Trump spelled out. Barring people from immigrating from Saudi Arabia would be a problem politically.
While I can agree with Trump to some extent I also don't think we need to have people lie about what he said to make this look like a bad idea. It's a bad idea for many reasons, politically and in practice. What would be a better idea, IMHO, is to stop all immigration or at least reduce it significantly. Such a policy would also have problems politically and practically. What it would not do is allow the opposition to claim racism or religious bigotry.
A blanket ban on immigration would not only stop people immigrating to cause panic and death, it would have other benefits as well. We are seeing many well paid jobs in the USA being taken by immigrants at a time when unemployment is very high. Wage slavery of immigrants is a problem. Stop that and we should see more Americans getting hired. It might mean a drop in average wages but at least people will be working. Working people buy stuff, they are healthier, and happier. This all leads to a much better America.
Trump says he wants to make America great again. If he wants to do that then I think he should revise his statement and say all immigration needs to be stopped for a while. That gives us time to figure out a way to properly vet those that want to come here, so that perhaps we won't have immigrants shooting up Christmas parties and making pipe bombs.
To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.
I see this often but few seem to even know where it comes from or what it would mean for society. Tell me, who enforces this policy? Who determines what an individual needs? How can one honestly determine what a person is capable of doing?
The answer is simple, it is the government that makes these determinations. It would be the government that determines a person's needs and their abilities. What do you do to a person that does not live up to their abilities? Are they punished? How would they be punished? Again the answer is the government. In other words that phrase would be more accurately put as, "The government takes and the government provides."
This has been tried many times in our history and a policy of government taking and giving is bound to fail. A society free to own their own property is not only very prosperous but also very generous to those with less. This is just human nature. Another tidbit on human nature, "Power corrupts." A government capable of giving you everything you need is also capable of taking all that you have.
It's not that registration will not be 100% effective that is the problem. The problem is that it will be a step backwards. It will be lots of money spent and next to nothing to show for it. It will distract from real investigations by leaning on registration to find bad actors.
You suggest I provide a better solution? Anything but registration. Divining rods would be more effective than registration.
No, we shouldn't bother because there are better means to find the bad actors than creating a cost and inconvenience for the good actors.
We saw this with gun registration. In US states where compliance was very high the gun registration system was worthless. If a registered gun was found on a crime scene there were three common situations, there was little doubt the registered owner committed the crime (there was ample other evidence to implicate the accused), the gun was stolen (thieves don't register their guns), or the serial number was obliterated.
What will we see with registering drones? If the registration does trace back to someone you'd still have to prove the registration was accurate because, again, people move, property trades hands, people steal stuff, and records are not perfect. What is to keep a bad actor from simply obliterating any identifying information from the drone before they commit a crime with it?
It is not just that compliance cannot be 100%, it is that even with 100% compliance there is still reasonable doubt because records are never perfect. I seem to recall that a state with mandated gun registration claimed with pride how registering millions of guns "helped" them solve dozens of crimes. Millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars spent so that they could go to court a dozen times and say how the registration system "helped" them catch the accused. That's a lot of money poorly spent IMHO.
The "success" of registration also proved another thing, out of millions of people there are only a handful that are bad actors. The most common "gun crime" in states with registration laws is violating the registration laws. They don't catch the murderers with these laws, even though the murder rates are higher then other states, what they catch are otherwise honest people that most likely didn't know the law. I know that ignorance of the law is no excuse but I believe that is only true if the law makes sense. I should not have to register my drone or handgun any more than I should have to register my iPod or my toaster oven.
Want to hear another spectacular failure of registration? I believe it was in Mexico that there was a problem of people buying no contract "burner" cell phones to call in ransoms for kidnapped children of wealthy businesspeople. Their solution? Every phone had to be registered by providing an ID at the time of sale. What happened? ID fraud increased. Cell phone thefts increased. Kidnappings continued. No doubt the kidnapped child would often have a cell phone, the animals in human skin could just use the child's phone to call in a ransom. Major fail.
Is that what you want? Bigger government and no increase in security to show for it?
I heard an interesting comparison between driving and flying. With driving you aren't actually moving in two dimensions, you are moving in one. You are confined by the road boundaries and all you can really do is move yourself along this very long one dimensional space called "roads". Not even speed/time comes into play much here as your speed is highly regulated by law, traffic, or whatever.
In flying there are four dimensions, north/south, east/west, up/down, and speed. This is why he explained that flying is so much more liberating and enjoyable than driving.
Concerning why we don't have flying cars yet the answer is quite simple really. It's not that people would have difficulty safely navigating the airways. With a sufficiently agile aircraft the ability to navigate through four dimensions will make collisions rare. What is keeping people from having flying cars is the cost of fuel. At leas that is IMHO. It is simply so cheap and easy to drive somewhere that flying is just out of the question. If energy gets cheap enough that the cost of flying versus that of driving drops to that of the price of a cup of coffee then we''ll see flying cars.
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The reason you don't understand this is because you are ignorant (perhaps willingly so) of how the people that want to ban weapons have thought out their plan. These people know that banning handguns, or most any weapon really, is the goal but they also know that banning handguns is difficult politically.
To understand this best we must go back in time by nearly a century. The National Firearms Act of 1934 placed a prohibitively high tax on a number of weapons, among them were machine guns, firearm report suppressors ("silencers"), "destructive devices" (grenades, landmines, large bore ammunition, etc.), the curious catch-all "any other weapon", and the also curious "short barreled" rifles and shotguns.
Let's talk about that "short barrel" category. The 1934 NFA originally had the intent to ban handguns and to prevent people from making handgun analogs from the not banned rifles and shotguns they made sure that people would not be allowed to shorten the barrels on these "long guns". Because of resistance from a number of powerful groups the ban on handguns went away but the "short barrel" designation remained. This law created the distinction among "handguns", "long guns", and "short barrel" arms where none existed before.
Forty years later the group Handgun Control Incorporated was created, with the (obvious) intent to ban handguns. Again this was met with resistance politically, few people in politics wanted to be associated with a group of that name. In 1981 James Brady was seriously injured in the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. HCI found themselves a new "mascot" and renamed themselves to the Brady Campaign. James Brady was shot with a .22 caliber revolver, which seems like a perfect mascot for an organization that wanted to ban handguns.
At about 1989 HCI renamed themselves Brady Campaign but still kept their original intent on banning handguns. The difference now is that they didn't wear this intent on their sleeves. It was now more politically acceptable to be an advocate for those injured by "gun violence" in general, leaving out that the ultimate goal is still banning handguns if not all firearms.
As the decades passed the banning of handguns became even less politically viable. People wanted personal defense weapons and a handgun makes a reasonable weapon for this task. The people today that call for "reasonable" gun control can draw a direct lineage to those people that wanted to ban handguns nearly a century ago. Given the age of many of these politicians and public figures I have to wonder if these aren't the same people that signed the 1934 National Firearms Act into law.
These bans on "assault weapons", magazine limitations, and background checks are all part of the boiling the frog, oiling up that slippery slope, or what have you that will lead us to banning handguns. These people have tried for over a century now to ban handguns but the majority of the people won't have it. They are still working on sharpening the point of the wedge between people and their personal defense arms. They think that by creating the idea that limits on some arms should bring us down the path to limits on all arms. That once we create the idea that the government should be able to dictate with what tools we are permitted to defend ourselves that at some future point in time the government would be able to dictate that the people cannot have any tools of self defense.
This has been going on for a long time in the USA, the best that they've been able to do is place some rather trivial limits on the people's ability to arm themselves. What I find interesting about these advancements in 3D printing is that it makes all those laws irrelevant. They can make it illegal to manufacture these weapons but the people that feel the government should not be able to dictate how the people may arm themselves will find these bans exceedingly difficult to enforce.
This is a question I've asked myself many times, is a law really a law if the govern
Considering that these are high dollar custom built cars I suspect that putting in an over sized starter motor would be both a minimal additional cost and a selling point.
Also, I recall my high school physics teacher stating something similar about a car he owned. He said he'd use the starter to move a "dead" car to the side of the road.
Another data point is a former co-worker told me how he built a go-cart that was propelled by a starter motor from an old truck. He use a set of automotive batteries and had to put two solenoids in parallel to handle the current. The problem was not with the motor getting too hot but the contacts on the solenoid would. Using two kept them from getting too hot.
I was thinking more like there was a "flying Dutchman" joke in there somewhere, but I like what you are thinking.
Does it matter to me WHY they chose to tell the feds to jump in a lake? Not really. Because they chose to offer a device that has some level of assurance that the government isn't snooping on me illegally they have gained some trust from me, and that means I am more likely to buy their stuff in the future.
The primary purpose of any entity is to ensure its continued existence. If people lose trust in Apple then people stop buying their stuff. Of course this will make them money. I'm just not sure why you think this is a bad thing.
We can estimate fairly well how much those costs are so that amount should be paid by those companies back to society.
The coal companies pay that back to society by keeping prices low. Think of how many people would die from starvation, freezing, or what not if they did not have cheap and reliable electricity. Conceivably we could compute for that too. If we did so I suspect we'd find out we are not paying the coal burners enough.
Shut up already about the "cost to society" that coal power produces. If it weren't for coal power you'd be cooking a rat on a spit over a charcoal fire instead of being cozy in front of your computer while sipping on overpriced coffee.
The amount of subsidies, on kWh produced basis, is tiny compared to solar. The coal subsidies, assuming they even exist, look huge because they produce 30% or more of our electricity. Same for nuclear and natural gas as they also each produce roughly 30% of our electricity. That last 10% that is not produced by oil, coal, and nuclear is largely from wind. The fraction of a percent of the electricity that solar power produces gets them HUGE subsidies.
Several comments on this thread pointed out that solar energy gets 1000x the amount of subsidies that coal gets based on kWh produced.
I have no issue with the subsidies that nuclear, oil, gas, and hydroelectric get because those subsidies are miniscule compared to solar. I will agree that all energy subsidies must end, but solar subsidies are on a whole different level than the others.
Stop complaining about how much oil get subsidized, IMHO, it makes you look like a fool.
Not only that, define a "computer". Is an iPhone a computer? What about those electronic picture frames? A television? Televisions now have enough features, on board storage, and such that the distinction is getting foggy. A digital camera? Not a computer in common usage but it certainly contains the ability to gather, process, store, and output data.
If people fail to report child porn upon seeing it on a device not typically considered a "computer" could they be prosecuted under this law? What makes seeing child porn on a computer any different than, for example, seeing it on a Polaroid?
This is all ignoring the fact that it would be almost impossible to prove that someone did in fact see child porn on a digital device but failed to report it. If they did not report it then how would law enforcement prove that they even saw it?
Very stupid law, the people that created this law should be ashamed.
Spot electricity prices are typically higher during the day but that is not always so. Imagine a situation where a large number of people on a local grid had grid tied solar. On a cool sunny day it is conceivable for the spot electricity price to go negative. Would the people with the solar panels be then expected to pay the utility for taking their electricity? Perhaps the utility should have the choice to simply not buy their electricity at that time.
As the laws are typically written for rooftop solar the utility must, *MUST*, purchase the electricity from the homeowner at the retail rate. This is awesome for early adopters, and perhaps even for the utility. The problem arises when the number of rooftop solar customers exceed what the utility can handle. Too much solar power and the electric grid is now "running backwards" along some runs, the grid is not designed for that. An electric utility certainly can make an electric grid to handle rooftop solar but then the people with the rooftop solar are no longer "customers" in the traditional sense, they are producers. As producers they should be no different from other producers. Failing that then the economics start to break down, people with rooftop solar could conceivably be paid for the privilege of getting back-up power from the utility. Too many people doing this and the utility will have to raise prices. The income from the utility to the rooftop solar people goes up and the people that cannot have rooftop solar, apartment dwellers (typically the poorer people) and industry see their rates go up.
Solar subsidies like paying rooftop solar producers retail rates is a wealth redistribution from the poor to the wealthy. It's time for it to stop.
Solar power is now a mature technology, we don't need subsidies to encourage adaption anymore. Solar makes sense on its own, we don't need to prop it up with government mandates and subsidies. Solar subsidies are now just corporate welfare and regressive taxation.
It's like having the police able to disable your gun is a bad thing. You would love to shoot at the police unhindered, wouldn't you?
I can think of a few times and places where shooting at the police would actually be a good thing. It seems you are quite ignorant of history. Assuming you are located in the USA there are several cases of people finding a need to defend themselves from police even in a "free" nation like ours. What few might dispute as the penultimate example is the American Revolution. Perhaps that is an insufficient example as at the time the people on American soil were not yet citizens of the USA, as it did not exist yet.
I'm drawing a blank on the specifics but there was a case of a sheriff in the USA shortly after World War 2 fixing an election so that he could stay in office. In order to get the election approved the sheriff kidnapped several people, held them in the prison, and forced them to sign off on his "winning" the election. The issue was resolved when several National Guardsmen "borrowed" weapons from the nearby Army armory and forced the sheriff to release those he kept captive. Fortunately no one was killed and the sheriff was removed from office, and the weapons were returned to the Army.
What is to prevent a repeat of this in the USA, with a much less fortunate ending, from being repeated in the USA? I know, by not allowing the government to have a monopoly on lethal force.
From the article since it seems many have missed this point in the past:
Gun advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association and the NSSF have said they do not oppose smart gun technology. They simply do not want the technology to be mandated.
Let's have a safe firearm. After all these people will claim they don't want to take our deer rifles so let's build a "safe" deer rifle.
We don't want this rifle going off without the intent of the user, so we have a thumb safety placed conveniently so the user may enable and disable the safety while in a firing position. We want this rifle to be accurate since we don't want the bullet to hit anything other than the game it was sighted upon. In doing so we will have as standard equipment a proven sighting system with a ring rear sight and a post front sight. This sight shall have simple and easy means to adjust for elevation and windage. For better accuracy let's give people the option to mount any other sighting system they choose, perhaps a laser sight if gaming laws allow.
To make sure the rifle can be controlled when firing, so that the sight does not leave the target when the trigger is pulled, let's have an ergonomic grip. As a rifle barrel can get exceedingly hot upon firing even once then let's put a finger guard around the barrel so that people will not inadvertently burn their finders. This guard should be sufficiently insulated and sturdy so that it can be used to grip the rifle for better control upon firing.
Since this is a deer rifle we should choose a caliber that is sufficient to kill with a single shot but not so large that it imposes unnecessary recoil upon the hunter. We should make it out of a mix of modern materials to reduce weight where we can and keep heavy hardened steel where we must for reliability. This should be a rifle that is simple to disassemble with minimal training for cleaning, a dirty rifle is a dangerous rifle. To assist in keeping the internals clean the ejection port should have a cover, and to avoid the dangers of having the cover closed upon firing it should open automatically when the first shot is fired.
To minimize fire hazards the rifle should have a means to minimize muzzle flash. Reducing muzzle flash also minimizes eye strain for the hunter so that any game shot but not yet down can be tracked. The finger guard around the barrel also minimizes this risk as a hot barrel cannot touch dried underbrush. Additionally the flash ports can be positioned in a way to reduce muzzle climb and dangerous sparks hitting the ground before they cool in the air. Having the ports facing up but on either side of the line of sight can reduce muzzle climb, reduce fire hazards, while protecting the hunter's eyesight.
Noise from firing can also be a hazard. This rifle should have at least an option on the means to reduce the report if it is not standard equipment. A barrel that is threaded on the end would allow a user to remove the standard flash hider and attach something that controls the report as well as the flash. If flash and report hazards are not a concern but recoil is then the threaded barrel allows for the attachment of a recoil compensator. These devices are known to reduce recoil significantly at the cost of some weight and increase in report volume.
As a curious side effect the addition of a recoil compensator, report suppressor, and/or flash control device all tend to improve the accuracy of the rifle. A hunter is more likely to kill the deer than wound it. A hunter is also much less likely to miss and do damage to property or leave lead bullets behind.
The hunter should be able to unload the rifle quickly, the ammunition should be in a container that can be separated from the rifle with the single press of a button. The means by which the rifle is loaded should give indication from afar as to whether the rifle is loaded or not, as such the ammunition box should be visible from the front and sides when mated to the rifle. An addi
There is also the possibility that people can produce their own alcohol, tobacco, or whatever else they choose to consume medicinally or recreationally.
The materials to produce a wine, beer, or liquor are nearly impossible to distinguish from common home baking items. Even if someone was to buy a home brew kit from a grocery store, using their credit card and discount club card, there is no means by which someone can track the amount produced. This is especially true if someone uses things like apples from their own tree, honey from their own bees, or whatever to produce their alcohol.
I've noticed that there tends to be a large overlap on the people that view alcohol consumption as an evil we must do away with, and the people that believe we should invest in "green" energy. Here's something that I'd like this group of people to consider, alcohol prohibition set back bio fuel research by a century in my estimation. I also believe that until we get some sane policies on the taxation and subsidies of ethanol for fuel and recreation that we will never see bio fuels become common. Farmers were brewing their own ethanol for powering their tractors before Prohibition. Until people are free to do so again without fear of the "revenuers" putting them in prison we will continue to burn fossil fuels. Fossil fuels aren't cheap just because it's so plentiful, it's cheap because we have taxed all the competition into niche markets.
I believe it is impossible to have both cheap ethanol fuel and somehow keep people from drinking it. Ethanol sold for fuel must be "denatured" with an additive to prevent people from drinking it. What is it denatured with? Gasoline. Remove that stupid law and we'd have green energy without the fossil fuels.
I have no doubt that the powers that be want to eliminate cash but not only for the reasons you give. The government might want to eliminate cash to track your movements but that is not the end of it, why do they want to track you? Some businesses and most banks want to see cash go away, but again why? Tracking your movement is part of this, that way they can know more about your wants, needs, and habits so that they can sell you want you want before someone else does. The ultimate reason anyone would want to do away with cash is so that they can have a piece of it.
Every time someone uses a credit card, debit card, EBT, Apple Pay, or whatever there is a middleman to move money from your pocket to the business you are buying products from. The business pays a fee for the privilege of having the ability to move that money electronically. Sometimes this is advantageous to the business, people may be more likely to buy if they don't see paper money leave their wallet for example. A business might like this because it lowers the risk of theft and/or the time it takes to balance their books. It may also be a cost that cuts into their profit margin.
I believe we will never have a truly cashless society. Too many entities rely on small items of nontrivial value to survive. Charities love penny and dime drives, it gets large numbers of people to hand over small amounts of money that can add up quickly. There is also grey market and black market transactions. If cash goes away then something else will take it's place for these. I recall reading on how laundry detergent was used as a means to launder drug money. The drug dealers wouldn't take cash but they'd take laundry detergent. Gold and silver coins have been used for payment even before biblical times, and continues today.
I like cash. It is rare to see anyone turn down cash as payment for anything. Ever since I started paying for things like fuel and groceries in cash I noticed the amount of junk mail I get reduced considerably. I refuse to get "club cards" at stores since I found out that they are used to just sell my name to all kinds of advertisers. I'm seeing more stores go towards a cash only policy. Credit card companies are becoming their own worst enemy with the fees they charge and the targeted advertising they do.
While I agree with you generally on the perils of removing cash from society I do not share the level of concern you seem to have on the ability of anyone actually being successful in doing so.
Black electrician tape? What if I don't know a black electrician?
Go ahead and moan over the lame joke, I won't mind.
On a more serious note I do keep in mind where my cameras are pointing. I'm thinking of upgrading my phone from a relatively stupid flip phone (it has a camera but it's almost always in a pocket or on a table) to an iPhone. An iPhone has two cameras and, assuming I use it much like my iPod touch, will rarely be in a pocket. I would be tempted to cover the cameras with tape.
I'm sure there is a market for these but I haven't looked yet, are there iPhone cases with built-in shutters over the camera lenses? I'd buy one.
This deserves repeating:
because no one is making enough new plants to specs that the old plants could never achieve.
The reason we had disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl is because we stopped building new reactors at the rate we were before. If we kept building reactors at the same rate then we'd have seen new reactors replace the old. Instead we now run the reactors until they fail. Considering how these old reactors were built they tend to fail spectacularly.
Water cooled reactors with solid fuel separate the hot fuel from the water with zirconium metal. If the zirconium gets too hot it will burn, using the water as an oxygen source. This releases hydrogen gas into the reactor vessel, building pressure. If the gas is not released in a manner to prevent ignition then you have the makings of a large fuel-air bomb, sitting right on top of some very hot (and now likely molten) radioactive sludge. BOOM! Then radioactive debris, still molten and/or burning, now rains down over the reactor site. Good job guys, let's keep these things running for the next fifty years, because God knows we can't build them better than this.
Oh, but we can build them better. We can build air cooled reactors. No water needed. Not only do we do away with an oxygen rich coolant (and don't fool yourself, water is largely made of oxygen, air not so much) that is corrosive, but we do away with the zirconium cladding too. Other benefits to air cooling is that the reactor does not need to be near water, and the water nearby is not super heated by the reactor, the fishes would be pleased.
We can use liquid fuel, fuel that is already molten so it cannot "melt down" like a solid fuel reactor. A solid fuel reactor that turns itself, through meltdown, into a liquid fuel reactor will burn itself a new reactor vessel into the floor of the previous vessel. It will burn itself into a nice spherical shape to assure a good neutron economy making sure it gets nice and hot. A liquid fuel reactor cannot do this because the floor of the reactor would be built in a way that, in the unlikely event it happens, if containment it lost the fuel will spread out. Without concentrating the fuel the fission chain is broken, and cannot restart.
The arguments against nuclear power are based on building new reactors with the same flaws that existing reactors have. We can build new ones without those flaws. That's not saying these new designs will be flawless, but at least the new flaws will not result in the reactor undergoing rapid self disassembly on worldwide television. These molten fuel reactors could fail but at least they won't spread burning radioactive pieces all over the place.
What war can do, and has done in the past, is set up a nation for an economic boom. A pre-war nation might have a poor economy but during a war that nation is fighting for survival, it gives the nation a common enemy and a common goal. That pre-war nation might find itself held back by infighting, a lack of purpose, or whatever.
A nation at war needs everyone contributing. People that could not find work before will be compelled to work one way or another. People will be sought out to do whatever they can for that common goal of surviving and/or defeating the common enemy. People that are able to work, but choose not to, are likely to find themselves jailed for "aid and comfort to the enemy" or something. While in jail these people could be put to work sewing uniforms or something, or face further punishment. Any destruction of infrastructure from enemy attack clears an area for new and improved infrastructure to take its place. Those sent off to fight will have to be replaced, so people that were not skilled laborers before will find themselves being trained for skilled labor. Again this will be either by choice, due to many new job opportunities, or force.
After the war all those skilled laborers that survived the war can return to work with new skills. Those that were skilled laborers before were tasked in war with a similar job and/or placed in a leadership position, and can now return to work with more experience than if there was no war. Those tasked with a war time job different than what they did before will now have new skills to leverage in finding work. All that infrastructure to build weapons, uniforms, and so forth can now be redirected to peace time products. These products can now be produced at a cost lower than before the war because the capital expenses were paid for by the government or wiped clean by other means.
There is no doubt that a nation at war will find things difficult. A post-war nation can find itself in a position for an economic boom.
Well, a state doesn't have to get rid of the license completely, just don't require it for travel within the state. Get other states to go along with it so people can drive state to state. We've been seeing "mission creep" on the drivers license for a long time. Even people that can't drive, or don't want to drive, still get to experience the DMV to get an ID to vote, get a bank account, or any of a number of things. This DMV issued, non-driver, ID is increasingly needed to travel by bus, plane, boat, or train. It's not a drivers license any more, its an internal passport.
The federal government can only push the states around as long as the states allow them to. Case in point, marijuana possession is illegal but yet no federal agency will even dare prosecute for this in those states that legalized it. The states have considerable power over the federal government, they can tell them where to go if they only grew a backbone.
Perhaps getting rid of the drivers license is too much just because the TSA wants to use it as an internal passport. What this is though is just one of many reasons on how what is supposed to be a record that one can pilot an automobile safely has gone well beyond this and has become a means by which the federal government can impose itself upon us.
Also, what few people will tell you is that it is perfectly legal to travel by commercial aircraft without government ID. You don't need an ID to fly, but everyone will tell you that you do. You might get hassled, delayed, and searched thoroughly but it's not illegal to travel without ID. As of yet we don't have a requirement to carry ID to travel, but the powers that be are working to change that.
At night is when all those solar panels the "greenies" want us to build will not work. There are two ways to solve this issue, coal and nuclear. Coal is just shifting the carbon output from the tailpipe to the power plant. One might argue that the carbon output is reduced even if the car is coal powered but one cannot argue this coal powered vehicle is "zero emissions". Nuclear power would provide a truly "zero emission" power source (or at least closer to zero than wind or solar) and ample base load for charging electric vehicles over the night.
Without nuclear fission power plants these cars are not zero emissions. Not only do wind and solar produce more carbon than nuclear, are inherently unreliable, they are also prohibitively expensive. The government has made wind and solar profitable by a false economy mandate. Coal and nuclear do not require such a mandate to be profitable. Electric cars alone will not cause an electric grid capacity issue, wind and solar mandates will. Much of the economy that make wind and solar viable is this reduced load on the electric grid at night, allowing for storage and/or load shifting. If we also rely on this reduced load at night to charge electric vehicles then this supposed surplus is diminished or simply gone. Combining electric cars, wind and solar power, and no nuclear fission for base load and you have either continued burning of fossil fuels or prohibitively expensive energy.
Seems to me that the largest complaint against this registry is that the registration is required for these small remote controlled aircraft even if they are not operated in the public airspace.
For your analogy to hold between cars and drone I would not be legally required to register a drone that I operated within the confines of my property up to 200 feet above it. It appears that the FAA feels that even if this drone never leaves that legally defined private property box that I am still required to register it. There are many reasons to stop this registration, I just gave what is the gravest violation of civil rights.
I can hear the replies now, what if the wind takes the drone off your property? Well then if I had not registered it then I'd be in violation, just as if the wind took my unregistered car into the street as I was driving it on my private track. Then I'd hear, but the wind won't blow your car while it can certainly carry a drone. My response is, apparently you've never been to Oklahoma. You've probably heard of it, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain?
Heinigerâ(TM)s call-to-arms, reproduced in at least one local paper, predicts that solar farms could shift land use to such an extent that âoeit is highly unlikely this land will ever be farmed again.â Heiniger also denounced solar energy as a government-subsidized boondoggle that is âoehighly inefficient at producing energy.â
I keep hearing on how solar panels will be, or should be, only put in places where we couldn't grow crops. Now we see that solar panels are replacing farmland. Tell me, what will this farmland look like after the 20 year expected lifespan of this solar farm? I lived on a farm and I know that if farmland is not tended well year after year it can become worthless. Decades of shade will no doubt kill anything that wants to grow beneath these panels. Wind and rain will erode topsoil away.
I remember when my dad built a new machine shed. I wondered how we'd get the sand in the shed like we did in the others. I saw how it worked in short order. That land where we had grass growing before turned to sand.
I also remember what an expert on solar power has said about what solar panel operators will do if anything does actually grow around their solar panels. You see that if something does grow in the vicinity of a solar panel it will have a tendency to shade the panel in time. This is bad for the profitability of the solar panel. To prevent this from happening the operators will do what they can to control plant growth at the lowest cost. They will spread herbicides.
Solar photovoltaic panels are in fact highly inefficient at producing energy. Solar power is one of the most expensive means to produce energy. The only reason it survives as well as it does it because the government taxes energy that is profitable, like coal, nuclear fission, and natural gas, to subsidize solar. Solar power is profitable only because the government mandates it so.
I say we get our green energy and our farmland too. Build more nuclear fission power plants. Instead of covering many square miles of fertile farmland in solar panels we can build a nuclear power plant that will produce power day and night, in any weather.
Any claims on issues of nuclear waste, meltdown threats, or what not are based on how we did nuclear power decades ago. We can build a reactor now that will produce very little waste, and can in fact destroy existing stockpiles of waste. We can build a reactor now that is highly unlikely to meltdown, and if it does the damage would be contained to the reactor site, they simply cannot create a radioactive plume that will cover a countryside. We can do this not because of some kind of magic, but because we learned from our mistakes.
Perhaps sometime in the future we can have our solar power and keep our farmland. Until then solar power is best left for satellites and science fairs.
I did give a serious answer. The reason I cannot come up with a specific example of "something better" is that I do not understand the problem. I do know that in every case in which registration has been tried to reduce crime it has not worked. Why should I expect this to be any different?
Perhaps someone could explain to me how registration is going to solve whatever problems it is supposed to solve. Then, perhaps, I can come up with a better answer.
The idea of banning all Muslims is a reaction to an irrational fear.
Trump did not suggest banning Muslims from entering the country. What he did say is that there is a tendency for criminals from outside the country to come from Islamic theocracies, therefore we need to bar people from immigrating from these nations until we can be sure these immigrants won't just kill us once they get here.
He did not suggest that any Muslim that wished to immigrate here should be prevented from doing so. How would that even be done? It's not like such people cannot lie, in fact Muslims are encouraged to lie and cheat nonbelievers to reach their ends. The test would be on which nation these people come from. Is the nation controlled by Muslim leaders? Does this nation treat Sharia as law? If so then we should not be allowing anyone to immigrate from these nations, no matter what faith they claim to follow.
This does have other political pitfalls. Some of our supposed allies could fit this definition of "Muslim nation" as Trump spelled out. Barring people from immigrating from Saudi Arabia would be a problem politically.
While I can agree with Trump to some extent I also don't think we need to have people lie about what he said to make this look like a bad idea. It's a bad idea for many reasons, politically and in practice. What would be a better idea, IMHO, is to stop all immigration or at least reduce it significantly. Such a policy would also have problems politically and practically. What it would not do is allow the opposition to claim racism or religious bigotry.
A blanket ban on immigration would not only stop people immigrating to cause panic and death, it would have other benefits as well. We are seeing many well paid jobs in the USA being taken by immigrants at a time when unemployment is very high. Wage slavery of immigrants is a problem. Stop that and we should see more Americans getting hired. It might mean a drop in average wages but at least people will be working. Working people buy stuff, they are healthier, and happier. This all leads to a much better America.
Trump says he wants to make America great again. If he wants to do that then I think he should revise his statement and say all immigration needs to be stopped for a while. That gives us time to figure out a way to properly vet those that want to come here, so that perhaps we won't have immigrants shooting up Christmas parties and making pipe bombs.
To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.
I see this often but few seem to even know where it comes from or what it would mean for society. Tell me, who enforces this policy? Who determines what an individual needs? How can one honestly determine what a person is capable of doing?
The answer is simple, it is the government that makes these determinations. It would be the government that determines a person's needs and their abilities. What do you do to a person that does not live up to their abilities? Are they punished? How would they be punished? Again the answer is the government. In other words that phrase would be more accurately put as, "The government takes and the government provides."
This has been tried many times in our history and a policy of government taking and giving is bound to fail. A society free to own their own property is not only very prosperous but also very generous to those with less. This is just human nature. Another tidbit on human nature, "Power corrupts." A government capable of giving you everything you need is also capable of taking all that you have.
It's not that registration will not be 100% effective that is the problem. The problem is that it will be a step backwards. It will be lots of money spent and next to nothing to show for it. It will distract from real investigations by leaning on registration to find bad actors.
You suggest I provide a better solution? Anything but registration. Divining rods would be more effective than registration.
No, we shouldn't bother because there are better means to find the bad actors than creating a cost and inconvenience for the good actors.
We saw this with gun registration. In US states where compliance was very high the gun registration system was worthless. If a registered gun was found on a crime scene there were three common situations, there was little doubt the registered owner committed the crime (there was ample other evidence to implicate the accused), the gun was stolen (thieves don't register their guns), or the serial number was obliterated.
What will we see with registering drones? If the registration does trace back to someone you'd still have to prove the registration was accurate because, again, people move, property trades hands, people steal stuff, and records are not perfect. What is to keep a bad actor from simply obliterating any identifying information from the drone before they commit a crime with it?
It is not just that compliance cannot be 100%, it is that even with 100% compliance there is still reasonable doubt because records are never perfect. I seem to recall that a state with mandated gun registration claimed with pride how registering millions of guns "helped" them solve dozens of crimes. Millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars spent so that they could go to court a dozen times and say how the registration system "helped" them catch the accused. That's a lot of money poorly spent IMHO.
The "success" of registration also proved another thing, out of millions of people there are only a handful that are bad actors. The most common "gun crime" in states with registration laws is violating the registration laws. They don't catch the murderers with these laws, even though the murder rates are higher then other states, what they catch are otherwise honest people that most likely didn't know the law. I know that ignorance of the law is no excuse but I believe that is only true if the law makes sense. I should not have to register my drone or handgun any more than I should have to register my iPod or my toaster oven.
Want to hear another spectacular failure of registration? I believe it was in Mexico that there was a problem of people buying no contract "burner" cell phones to call in ransoms for kidnapped children of wealthy businesspeople. Their solution? Every phone had to be registered by providing an ID at the time of sale. What happened? ID fraud increased. Cell phone thefts increased. Kidnappings continued. No doubt the kidnapped child would often have a cell phone, the animals in human skin could just use the child's phone to call in a ransom. Major fail.
Is that what you want? Bigger government and no increase in security to show for it?
I heard an interesting comparison between driving and flying. With driving you aren't actually moving in two dimensions, you are moving in one. You are confined by the road boundaries and all you can really do is move yourself along this very long one dimensional space called "roads". Not even speed/time comes into play much here as your speed is highly regulated by law, traffic, or whatever.
In flying there are four dimensions, north/south, east/west, up/down, and speed. This is why he explained that flying is so much more liberating and enjoyable than driving.
Concerning why we don't have flying cars yet the answer is quite simple really. It's not that people would have difficulty safely navigating the airways. With a sufficiently agile aircraft the ability to navigate through four dimensions will make collisions rare. What is keeping people from having flying cars is the cost of fuel. At leas that is IMHO. It is simply so cheap and easy to drive somewhere that flying is just out of the question. If energy gets cheap enough that the cost of flying versus that of driving drops to that of the price of a cup of coffee then we''ll see flying cars.