That's nice. I'm sure those solar plants are in fact running well in sunny Arizona, Spain, and India. What about us here in snowy Midwestern America?
How much do they cost and how much energy can they produce? I did a quick search of the few that actually had thermal storage and they cost nearly a billion dollars and produce maybe 500 GWh of electricity per year. A nuclear power plant may cost 10 billion dollars but it will also produce 10 times as much electricity, and not take up near as much land to do it.
So, I'll say you got me on the existence of solar thermal storage. I didn't do my homework there. I'm curious on how much this electricity costs compared to nuclear. I have a printout here on my desk from 2009 saying that solar thermal costs twice as much as nuclear, did they manage to bring that price down? A quick look at some of those power plants in the list you linked tells me they didn't.
Apple has enough money to power their factories with unicorn pelts if they chose to, but they instead rely on off shore factories that run on coal...
Here's something most people seem to be ignorant about, China has a near monopoly on rare earth elements and they use this to force manufacturing to their country. They won't export rare earth elements as anything but a finished product. If you want to make a LCD display then it will most likely have to be done in a factory in China, because getting these elements any other way is near impossible under current US federal laws.
Why is it like this? Because most of the world complies with international rules on the production of nuclear weapons. What does nuclear weapons have to do with LCD screens? Elements like thorium and uranium are abundant in the same places where rare earth elements are abundant. If people mine rare earth elements then they will produce thorium and uranium along with it. Since most nations comply with the rules restricting the production of thorium and uranium (either due to treaties or self imposed laws) the production of rare earth elements are confined to the nations that don't much care about producing thorium and uranium. China produces a lot of thorium and they just put it on huge piles until they figure out what to do with it. Given that thorium is not soluble in water, doesn't really blow away in the wind, or pose any real biological hazard there is nothing wrong with this. The uranium is used to fuel nuclear power reactors and make weapons.
Rare earth elements aren't that rare but we can't produce them in any meaningful quantity in the USA because the rules on digging up uranium and thorium make it real expensive. There are rules on how to handle uranium and thorium that are total nonsense, because just having an ore is a long way from making any weapons. If there was a market for this uranium and thorium in the USA, such as nuclear power reactors, then we'd see some rare earth elements being mined here too.
I don't like Apple making their products in China either. I found out why they do it. It's because the USA has stupid laws on the mining of thorium and uranium, and China takes advantage of this by not exporting the materials except in finished products. People can't just dig up the rare earth elements and put the other stuff back in the hole it came from, because just digging it up is considered "producing weapons grade material". Fix that stupid law, or create a market for the uranium and thorium in nuclear power, and we'll get our iPhones with "Made in USA" on the back.
China corners the markets on electronics because WE ALLOWED THEM TO DO SO with our own laws. Don't blame Apple, and don't blame China, this came from our own federal government.
Most of my countries power is from renewable, about 80% I think.
Which country would that be? Or, would you rather we just guess?
It's mostly from hydro power. Wind and solar isn't the only option.
Hydro, wind, and solar are only options if the climate and geography allow it. I'm sure it's nice to have access to such ample supplies of hydroelectric power but that's not available to everyone. Solar power probably works great between the 45th parallels but for those living close to the poles solar doesn't work so well. The wind does blow almost everywhere but that can be a problem in places it blows too much. Then there are issues of the intermittent nature of wind and solar.
Thermal solar plants can produce power at night too. The sun heats up stuff, that heat is used to spin turbines.
That's nice in theory, does it work in practice? Once I see some actual solar thermal storage power plants in operation then I'll believe it works.
Do you know what can also heat up salt to 600C and use that heat to spin turbines? Nuclear fission. Do such facilities exist yet? No, that's why I won't claim them as alternatives to wind, solar, and hydro. I suspect that such solar thermal storage systems will be easily replaced with a nuclear reactor that can keep producing power day and night, keeping that molten salt nice and hot regardless of the weather.
France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear fission right now, so we know it works and produces little CO2 per kWh. I suspect we'll see molten salt cooled systems in 10 or 20 years, and once that happens the problems of nuclear power not load following and such disappear. If solar heated molten salt can load follow, provide backup power, desalinate water, or whatever people claim that solar heated salt can do then nuclear heated salt can do it too. The difference is that nuclear doesn't have to be in a sunny location.
Solar is expensive, takes a lot of valuable land, is unreliable, and produces a lot of waste we don't know how to manage yet. Solar power is just a money pit. Maybe someday it will be competitive but for right now it's the energy source of last resort to anyone without access to government subsidies. Wind and hydro seem like good ideas to me if there are favorable conditions for it.
I've seen countries talk proudly of their "green" energy with hydro and then find out most of the dams are nearly 100 years old. That's not being "green" that's just a previous generation being so desperate for electricity that they'd build these huge dams.
Sounds like a lot of Americans are taking steps to increase their security.
Go ahead, keep talking about banning guns. All that does is increase profits at Smith & Wesson.
Background checks are a rather poor indication of real gun sales because not every check means a gun sold (either because of a denial or police running a check before issuing a permit to purchase a firearm) and a single background check can be run for multiple guns sold (people with a permit to purchase could buy several guns with no additional check). With nearly 3 million background checks run that could mean something like 2 million or 4 million new guns being sold.
You think every gun sold should be registered so we can track gun sales better? Go ahead, propose that in your state or federally, that will just mean more people buy guns before the law goes into effect. You want people to register guns they already own? Well, that would violate ex post facto laws. Then there's another problem with that, the government can't force people to register guns they don't know about.
It's too late to do any kind of gun ban or registration now. Not only are people generally not pleased with government telling them they can't own guns but it's now possible to "print" a gun at home with a computer. Go look up "ghost gun". There cannot be any effective gun laws any more, technology made any kind of gun laws obsolete. I guess legislators will have to think of something else to scare people with. They can try to scare people with gun bans, and then people buy more CNC mills to make their own guns at home.
A 50-year-old gun law makes homemade guns legal to own, and the only way to regulate the firearms is for Congress to take legislative action.
Yeah, good luck with that. What kind of law would stop this? I mean you can ban the making of guns at home but there's no way to enforce it. The government can confiscate the ones they find but someone will just make another just like it.
and there is no place else considered civilised on this planet where so many people gets killed with guns
Why limit this to "civilized" nations? That's just cherry picking the data. We can excuse crime in "uncivilized" nations because that's just something that "uncivilized" nations have a problem with, is that it? Here's an idea, let's consider America an "uncivilized" nation. That way we can compare the USA on equal footing with all those other "uncivilized" nations with higher gun death rates like Mexico and Brazil. I'm pretty sure the people in Mexico and Brazil might be a bit offended on being considered "uncivilized" nations. Venezuela was pretty "civilized" until the communists took over and took everyone's guns away, or at least tried. Now it's a hell hole where murders and suicides by firearms are six times that of the USA.
What makes America a "civilized" nation? Maybe it's just a nation and being "civilized" or not is irrelevant. Seems to me that even though there's enough guns in America to arm every man, woman, child, and household pet that violent crime is pretty average among all nations. America is actually quite safe, especially if people avoid crime ridden places like DC, New York, and Chicago, which by the way has very restrictive gun laws even by international standards.
Also, why limit the death count to just those with guns? I don't care if London is seeing such high murder rates recently because of people being shot, run over by a truck, or stabbed with a knife. They banned all the "assault weapons" in London and banned most every other kind of firearm too. Now what? Ban them again? Start restricting the purchase of knives and make all drivers get a license? I believe they've already done that and for quite some time too. I'm guessing that the UK is going to look as "uncivilized" as the USA pretty soon. They got problems over there and it's not because of the guns. We got problems in the USA too, but that's not because of the guns either.
So give in to a nut with a gun? Why not take away her her gun?
Did anyone even know she had a gun? Did she show criminal tendencies in the past? Or have a history of poor mental health? I'll admit to ignorance here but I saw nothing on how she got the gun. As far as I know nobody knows yet how she got the gun and therefore nobody can claim any kind of gun control would have been effective.
Gun control in Australia slashed gun crimes.
And banning bridges would prevent people from jumping from them. I see your argument but I think it's a very stupid one.
How about instead of focusing on guns and "gun crime" we look at ALL CRIME? I've seen the argument before on how banning guns would prevent people from shooting themselves in suicides. That did happen in every nation in which it was tried, but total suicides didn't go down, people just found different ways to kill themselves. The problem here was a bat guano crazy lady that wanted to inflict physical harm on people at YouTube. If we find out how she go the gun and put in place a law against it then we'll just see some other kind of violence take its place. I see in Europe it has become popular to run people over with vehicles and slash people with knives, a gun ban didn't stop that. I don't see people calling for bans on vehicles. We did see some crazy laws on the buying of knives in some nations, where now people have to show ID and sign a log to buy a pizza cutter.
Trump might be shit scared on the NRA, but the kids in the schools aren't.
I don't believe Trump is scared of the NRA, he spoke at NRA conventions before. Trump and NRA leadership don't agree on everything but they seem to get along just fine. Seems to me that the school kids are scared of the NRA. They'll talk about how the NRA will get them killed. Well the NRA runs the most popular child gun safety programs and few people even know about it. They don't emblazon the NRA logo on the gun safety program because it's not about getting members, it's about keeping kids safe in school. The Brady Campaign likes to call themselves a "gun safety" organization but where are their animated cartoons telling kids to not touch a gun?
What's needed is gun control.
That's presuming an outcome not supported by the evidence. Alaska and New York have similar murder rates. We know why the murder rate in Alaska is so high, depression is a serious problem. That kind of happens in a place where the sun might shine for only three hours per day in the winter, and it's brutally cold. The state also attracts a lot of young men with not much better to do than turn a wrench on a far off oil well, or spend days at sea fishing. They get in fights, they get drunk, and they tend to kill each other. What's New York's excuse? Or London? London just passed New York City in the number of murders for the first time in a long time.
What's London's excuse for such high rates of crime? They already banned all the guns? Are they going to ban them again? Maybe we need crime control to control the crime. Seems sensible to me.
She needed serious mental health care. But mental heath still has this heavy stigma in the US . . . pumping your children full with Ritalin is OK . . . committing your daughter to a mental health institution is not socially acceptable.
It probably doesn't help that the government (state, federal, and local) has been taking guns from people that sought out mental health care. Just because someone is being treated for depression does not make a person homicidal or suicidal. There's still means to take guns from people that pose a high risk to themselves or others without making a blanket determination that anyone seeking care for a temporary bout of depression needs to have their guns taken from them. Just because someone files for powers of attorney for help with their taxes and finances, due to a case of dyslexia or other mental condition, should not make them "mentally deficient" to own a gun.
It's just an idea but perhaps it would help, maybe the government should stop taking people's guns because they sought out some mental health care. That way the people won't be so afraid the government will take their guns if they seek treatment for a mental health condition. It's not paranoia if it's true.
You need a license to drive a car. You need to show that you know the rules to abide by when driving, and that you have sufficient skill and knowledge to minimize the danger you pose to others when driving. This, US citizens are fine with.
I'm not fine with it, and I'm an American citizen.
Licenses to drive are, in my opinion, a waste of money. We have traffic cops to make sure people know how to drive, so I don't know how having a piece of paper in the driver's pocket is supposed to improve things. What if a person doesn't have a license? How would anyone even know unless they broke the law? I don't care if people have licenses, I care that they follow traffic laws.
I know people would ask, how we would know people know the traffic laws before they drive? Well, we don't now. There's nothing that prevents an unlicensed driver from driving. We hear about unlicensed drivers all the time. These tend to be people that lost their license because they had a history of drunken driving, which just proves that taking a class which tells people not to drink and drive has questionable effectiveness. Another problem of unlicensed drivers are illegal aliens that want to minimize interactions with the government as that might mean they get deported. That's just a symptom of a greater problem. We saw states that tried to issue licenses to illegal aliens but that's just states giving implicit permission for people to break federal law. If the state KNOWS this person is in the country illegally and allows them to drive then the state government is aiding foreign invaders, and that sounds real close to treason to me.
We don't need licenses to drive. People should have to learn on their own how to not kill themselves while driving. I took a driver safety course in high school. That wasn't because it was required by law but because it was required by my parents. Maybe instead of licenses to drive we need parents that act like adults.
Oh, and we need states that find illegal aliens to notify the federal government. If you want safer streets then pick up all the illegal aliens that drive while having minimal knowledge of the traffic laws, or even minimal knowledge of the language spoken here. I don't care if they have a license to drive, that just tells me that the state that issued them doesn't enforce the law. If they are willing to give licenses to criminals (because entering the country without permission is a crime) then I have to wonder just how well the state enforced traffic laws.
Then tell me what happened. Last I checked the Australian governments failed to collect 250,000 banned weapons in their confiscation attempts. They know they were sold and not turned in by checking their records. Maybe they were all lost at sea, but I doubt it.
A drill is purposely built to twist things, but I so happen to make bookcases with one. Guns so happen to kill people. Kind of what they're good at. Next.
Cars killed as many people as guns. So, is that what they are good for?
That's great, but not everyone is as responsible with their firearms as you are. Nor can you guarantee they will be just because you stand by your philosophy.
Let's ban cars because a handful of negligent and outright murderous people kill others with them. 100 million guns owner hurt no one today, so we take their guns? That's painting with a broad brush.
Then what is it, exactly? You go hunting with that thing?
Lots of people hunt game with an AR-15. It's also popular with competition shooting. I'll hear the claim that "weapons built for war" don't belong in civilian hands. Well, show me a firearm that was not used in some war at some time. The very popular Remington Model 700 bolt action rifle was used as a sniper rifle since it's creation in 1966. The military uses it in a number of variants they call the M24, M40, or M2010, depending on caliber and other options.
The M16 was adopted by the US military about the same time as the M40. Most every firearm is a "military weapon", it just depends on the military and the time period. Does it matter if it was the military of today versus one of a previous generation?
Your gun to car analogy has issues. Cars are a necessity for most Americans, whereas guns are recreational or defense tools for those who live in high-crime areas with little confidence in the response time for police. Or people who just think that maybe, at some point in time, they might be.
I need to justify my "need" for something to the government to keep it? Do you "need" anything really? I don't need a slice of ham right now, but I'm eating one right now. People will tell me that meat is murder and I could just eat peanut butter instead. Does anyone "need" a car? If we are going to rely on the government for everything then should I have the government drive me everywhere I "need" to go? Maybe what I really "need" is a bicycle and a bus pass. Maybe I don't want to rely on the government to keep the buses running.
The fire department puts out fires. Does that mean I don't "need" a fir extinguisher at home? I just bought a bunch of them, should I turn those over to the government too? Or can I keep them because I'm in a "high fire risk" area? Who gets to decide my risk of fire? Shouldn't that be up to me to decide? What if the government decides that no one has a fire risk sufficient to own a fire extinguisher? What happens if I don't turn in my fire extinguisher? Is the government going to search my house for them?
But a fire extinguisher is not a lethal weapon. Not having it could be lethal though. Just like not having a gun when I need it could be lethal should someone invade my home tonight. I'll sleep much better knowing I have one of those "weapons of war" under my bed. That would be the Remington M870 I have, a pump action shotgun that's used by the military. A friend of mine carried a M870 in combat. He called it a "master key" since it had this ability to open locked doors.
I recall a wise man that said a government that can provide every need can also take everything you have. When I first heard that I thought it meant that I'd merely be taxed into owning nothing. Now I realize that the government could just justify some alternative, regardless of the absurdity of it, so it can take what it wants from me. If the government deems a cast iron skillet something I don't "need" because I could use it to whack someone over the head with it then all it must do is justify an alternative, like a glass skillet. Never mind that it's worthless to fry an egg. The government will just tell me I can cook my eggs in the pan with a microwave oven. Just so long as I don'
The murderous fucker shot himself in the head when the cops had him cornered. He probably realized that premeditated murder would get him the electric chair. So, still a gun death in there. May God forgive me as I didn't shed a tear upon hearing about his death.
Because gathering up all the guns is specifically prohibited by our Constitution.
Also, just imagine what would happen if Congress did in fact pass a law banning the ownership of guns. I'd imagine a lot of hillbillies would not take to kindly to that and they'd be stacking up dead cops like cordwood. You think people wouldn't shoot a cop over them taking their guns? Are you sure you want to find out? Tell you what, you get to be the guy that knocks on the door. I'll just see how that turns out by reading the obituaries in the newspapers.
There's more guns in the USA than people. There's more armed citizens than there are soldiers and police officers combined. That's assuming the people in uniform would go along with the ban. They'd likely join the hillbillies or go run off and hide so they didn't end up dead.
There's an estimated 5 million members of the National Rifle Association and an estimated 2 million members of the US Armed Forces (active and reserves). That alone leaves the military outnumbered 2 to 1. But the Army has tanks! Yeah, that's going to work out well for everybody. Let's just start another civil war in the USA, because that last one only killed off 3% of the population.
I've heard how those gun confiscations turned out in Australia, Canada, even some they attempted in the USA in states like California and New York. They had maybe a 1/3rd compliance rate. They knew how many of these guns were sold, they tracked that much. Only 1/3rd were turned in willingly. Where's the rest of them? How are you planning on getting those? Again, I'll read up on how that turns out in the obituaries.
They can't ban the guns because nobody knows where they all are. I don't even know where all of my guns are. I talked to my mom and brother and they don't know where all their guns are. It's not like they are lost, I have my guns in my house, my mom has her guns in her house, my brother keeps his guns somewhere in his shed. We just have so many we might forget where they all might be if someone came asking.
The government could go around and gather up 300 million guns and there would still be 60 million they didn't find. It's not like a gun is all that complex, people make them in garages just for fun. You think if the government made a pile of 360 million guns that they'd have them all? Nope, people would be making them faster than the government could find them. Go look up "ghost gun" and you'll see what I'm talking about.
There's also no life guards at the lake. So... it evens out?
Kind of like how restriction on carrying a handgun is supposed to reduce murder. What we saw then was a lady getting stabbed to death in her own driveway by her ex-boyfriend while her permit to carry a handgun was being processed. Yep, less "gun death" that way.
The prohibition of armed forces acting on domestic soil applies only to the US Army and US Air Force. This prohibition does not apply to the Coast Guard, National Guard, or the US Marine Corps. Also, this prohibition does not apply to the enforcement of federal law. I'm pretty sure attempted murder is prohibited under federal law, perhaps I'm mistaken.
I remember talking to a guy that lived out by DC. He talked of a military base that had a major highway going through it and USMC military police enforced traffic law there. They will stop people that speed and issue tickets, anyone in uniform had their commanders notified of the ticket as well. Speeding on a military base is a violation of federal law, and members of the military will enforce that law.
The use of Marines to enforce federal law is relatively routine. Did you ever notice that the security detail around the President of the United States is full of Marines? That's because using members of either the Army and Air Force could be considered a violation of the prohibitions laid out in the Constitution of having a standing Army. Perhaps a minor point if the guy is in a Marine uniform instead of an Army one but this is what the law says.
We tried banning liquor. It didn't work out. We tried banning drugs, and that's not working out either. Read a history book.
I so wish I could moderate up your post.
Banning alcohol didn't reduce crime, quite the opposite. I don't know why people believe a gun ban of any kind would be any more effective.
But we just want to ban the "assault weapons"! Hiram Maxim figured out how to turn a lever action rifle into a machine gun in the 1880s, and he wrote down how to do it. Repeating that feat today with internet access and modern power tools is near trivial. What are they going to do next? Ban every lever action rifle? The Gatling Gun was patented in 1861. Replicating that today with modern tools would be trivial as well. Back in 1861 there were no cordless power drills, so it had a crank. What would that Gatling gun look like with an electric motor and a lithium ion battery?
The government can ban something but that won't make it go away. Sometimes it's just better to NOT BAN STUFF.
That's nice but why separate out "gun murders" from the other murders unless you just want to ban the guns? Hmmm?
Total murder rate in Illinois is 5.5, in Texas it's 5.0. Maybe not much of an improvement but it does kind of put a big dent in your point.
I suggest we try to reduce ALL murders, regardless of the weapons used. No one wants to talk about that though because that might mean not banning the guns.
Why should I care about "gun violence"? Shouldn't I be concerned about total violence?
I went to the page you linked to and sorted the list by gun ownership rates and scanned for two states with identical numbers. Here's what I found: State - gun ownership rate - murder rate Indiana - 33.8% - 3.1 Iowa - 33.8% - 1.2
Michigan - 28.8% - 5.6 Vermont - 28.8% - 1.1
I then sort by murder rate and find: State - gun ownership rate - murder rate Nebraska - 19.8% - 2.8 Rhode Island - 5.8% - 2.8
I didn't include all the states, people can go to the source to find that if they want. I just wanted to highlight that claiming that gun ownership does not correlate well to murder rates. Just the examples between Alaska and New York is quite telling. People are often aware of the murders in New York because of the high population but it's got no different of a rate than Alaska. Alaska has a gun ownership rate of over 60%. If you subtract the number of people that are too young to buy a gun then that starts to look like nearly every adult in Alaska owns a gun. In Alaska there's no requirement to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm, so it's quite possible a large percentage of people carry their firearms often.
You may be right but only because you defined the parameters by counting only "gun violence". Why should I care about reducing "gun violence" if that just means I get killed by a lead pipe in the study instead of shot by a revolver in the ballroom?
Can you show any correlation between gun laws and violent crime? I actually did a study on that for a statistics project at university, I found no correlation between gun laws and violent crime.
I'd like to see this correlation you claim.
Don't take my word for it though. I did do a statistical analysis but so did a lot of other people with much more experience in this than I have.
That link is just one example I could find with a short Google search.
I'll hear people make claims about "gun deaths" correlating to gun ownership. I don't care if the person got murdered with a gun, a knife, or by being tossed out a window. If we want to see murder go down then it can't be done with gun laws. We might see "gun deaths" go down but that's like saying "pool drownings" go down by banning pools while total drownings stay the same because now people go swim in a lake instead.
Trust no one. I learned that from an FBI agent. He had a funny name too, "Fox". Who names their kid after an animal? He liked to ramble on about alien abductions. He must have been awesome at his job for the FBI to keep him around.
Yes, they do exist, and I own one too. They were very expensive a long time ago and even more expensive now. They made sense back then when the adapters were $50 and a nice keyboard cost over $100. My point is that people should not expect to be able to keep old hardware working indefinitely, especially something with so many moving parts like a mouse and keyboard.
Also, a protocol converter like that ADB to USB adapter could still require a driver in the OS to get working right. That ADB to USB adapter won't allow use of a scroll wheel mouse, and the keyboard mapping can be funny, if there isn't a driver. I might be able to find a serial port adapter too but that doesn't mean my fancy 16 button mouse from 1998 is going to work now on a new system like it did then with Windows 95 or Mac OS 8. Someone might make case with an ISA slot and connect to a computer by USB but that doesn't mean I can get an old modem card to work on a new OS.
The class was a course on literature, so there was a component of the grade based on classroom discussion. The instructor kept some kind of record on who contributed to discussion and graded that somehow, along with assignments and examinations.
I had one other class that made the class discussion part of the grade, that was a philosophy class. Back then laptops were more like "luggables" than when I had the literature class years later. Laptops then were much heavier and unlikely to keep power without a cord for an hour and half lecture unless the person paid extra for a dual battery option. Also the desks in the classroom were not conducive to having a laptop on them, the problem likely never came up before that the instructor felt the need to mention it.
Those two classes were part of the humanities requirements for my engineering degree, the other courses I took rarely had discussion. I remember having an instructor comment that he didn't care about the laptops in class. I'm guessing either he thought like you mentioned, do the work and pass the tests, or thought that if the laptop meant people would take better notes and/or research things instead of taking lecture time to ask then the laptops added to the learning. Likely a bit of both.
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That's nice. I'm sure those solar plants are in fact running well in sunny Arizona, Spain, and India. What about us here in snowy Midwestern America?
How much do they cost and how much energy can they produce? I did a quick search of the few that actually had thermal storage and they cost nearly a billion dollars and produce maybe 500 GWh of electricity per year. A nuclear power plant may cost 10 billion dollars but it will also produce 10 times as much electricity, and not take up near as much land to do it.
So, I'll say you got me on the existence of solar thermal storage. I didn't do my homework there. I'm curious on how much this electricity costs compared to nuclear. I have a printout here on my desk from 2009 saying that solar thermal costs twice as much as nuclear, did they manage to bring that price down? A quick look at some of those power plants in the list you linked tells me they didn't.
Apple has enough money to power their factories with unicorn pelts if they chose to, but they instead rely on off shore factories that run on coal...
Here's something most people seem to be ignorant about, China has a near monopoly on rare earth elements and they use this to force manufacturing to their country. They won't export rare earth elements as anything but a finished product. If you want to make a LCD display then it will most likely have to be done in a factory in China, because getting these elements any other way is near impossible under current US federal laws.
Why is it like this? Because most of the world complies with international rules on the production of nuclear weapons. What does nuclear weapons have to do with LCD screens? Elements like thorium and uranium are abundant in the same places where rare earth elements are abundant. If people mine rare earth elements then they will produce thorium and uranium along with it. Since most nations comply with the rules restricting the production of thorium and uranium (either due to treaties or self imposed laws) the production of rare earth elements are confined to the nations that don't much care about producing thorium and uranium. China produces a lot of thorium and they just put it on huge piles until they figure out what to do with it. Given that thorium is not soluble in water, doesn't really blow away in the wind, or pose any real biological hazard there is nothing wrong with this. The uranium is used to fuel nuclear power reactors and make weapons.
Rare earth elements aren't that rare but we can't produce them in any meaningful quantity in the USA because the rules on digging up uranium and thorium make it real expensive. There are rules on how to handle uranium and thorium that are total nonsense, because just having an ore is a long way from making any weapons. If there was a market for this uranium and thorium in the USA, such as nuclear power reactors, then we'd see some rare earth elements being mined here too.
I don't like Apple making their products in China either. I found out why they do it. It's because the USA has stupid laws on the mining of thorium and uranium, and China takes advantage of this by not exporting the materials except in finished products. People can't just dig up the rare earth elements and put the other stuff back in the hole it came from, because just digging it up is considered "producing weapons grade material". Fix that stupid law, or create a market for the uranium and thorium in nuclear power, and we'll get our iPhones with "Made in USA" on the back.
China corners the markets on electronics because WE ALLOWED THEM TO DO SO with our own laws. Don't blame Apple, and don't blame China, this came from our own federal government.
Most of my countries power is from renewable, about 80% I think.
Which country would that be? Or, would you rather we just guess?
It's mostly from hydro power. Wind and solar isn't the only option.
Hydro, wind, and solar are only options if the climate and geography allow it. I'm sure it's nice to have access to such ample supplies of hydroelectric power but that's not available to everyone. Solar power probably works great between the 45th parallels but for those living close to the poles solar doesn't work so well. The wind does blow almost everywhere but that can be a problem in places it blows too much. Then there are issues of the intermittent nature of wind and solar.
Thermal solar plants can produce power at night too. The sun heats up stuff, that heat is used to spin turbines.
That's nice in theory, does it work in practice? Once I see some actual solar thermal storage power plants in operation then I'll believe it works.
Do you know what can also heat up salt to 600C and use that heat to spin turbines? Nuclear fission. Do such facilities exist yet? No, that's why I won't claim them as alternatives to wind, solar, and hydro. I suspect that such solar thermal storage systems will be easily replaced with a nuclear reactor that can keep producing power day and night, keeping that molten salt nice and hot regardless of the weather.
France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear fission right now, so we know it works and produces little CO2 per kWh. I suspect we'll see molten salt cooled systems in 10 or 20 years, and once that happens the problems of nuclear power not load following and such disappear. If solar heated molten salt can load follow, provide backup power, desalinate water, or whatever people claim that solar heated salt can do then nuclear heated salt can do it too. The difference is that nuclear doesn't have to be in a sunny location.
Solar is expensive, takes a lot of valuable land, is unreliable, and produces a lot of waste we don't know how to manage yet. Solar power is just a money pit. Maybe someday it will be competitive but for right now it's the energy source of last resort to anyone without access to government subsidies. Wind and hydro seem like good ideas to me if there are favorable conditions for it.
I've seen countries talk proudly of their "green" energy with hydro and then find out most of the dams are nearly 100 years old. That's not being "green" that's just a previous generation being so desperate for electricity that they'd build these huge dams.
https://www.nationalreview.com...
Sounds like a lot of Americans are taking steps to increase their security.
Go ahead, keep talking about banning guns. All that does is increase profits at Smith & Wesson.
Background checks are a rather poor indication of real gun sales because not every check means a gun sold (either because of a denial or police running a check before issuing a permit to purchase a firearm) and a single background check can be run for multiple guns sold (people with a permit to purchase could buy several guns with no additional check). With nearly 3 million background checks run that could mean something like 2 million or 4 million new guns being sold.
You think every gun sold should be registered so we can track gun sales better? Go ahead, propose that in your state or federally, that will just mean more people buy guns before the law goes into effect. You want people to register guns they already own? Well, that would violate ex post facto laws. Then there's another problem with that, the government can't force people to register guns they don't know about.
It's too late to do any kind of gun ban or registration now. Not only are people generally not pleased with government telling them they can't own guns but it's now possible to "print" a gun at home with a computer. Go look up "ghost gun". There cannot be any effective gun laws any more, technology made any kind of gun laws obsolete. I guess legislators will have to think of something else to scare people with. They can try to scare people with gun bans, and then people buy more CNC mills to make their own guns at home.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/l...
A 50-year-old gun law makes homemade guns legal to own, and the only way to regulate the firearms is for Congress to take legislative action.
Yeah, good luck with that. What kind of law would stop this? I mean you can ban the making of guns at home but there's no way to enforce it. The government can confiscate the ones they find but someone will just make another just like it.
A knife is silent, you might not know someone is stabbing people in a crowd until they stab you.
Also, no one stops to reload a knife.
and there is no place else considered civilised on this planet where so many people gets killed with guns
Why limit this to "civilized" nations? That's just cherry picking the data. We can excuse crime in "uncivilized" nations because that's just something that "uncivilized" nations have a problem with, is that it? Here's an idea, let's consider America an "uncivilized" nation. That way we can compare the USA on equal footing with all those other "uncivilized" nations with higher gun death rates like Mexico and Brazil. I'm pretty sure the people in Mexico and Brazil might be a bit offended on being considered "uncivilized" nations. Venezuela was pretty "civilized" until the communists took over and took everyone's guns away, or at least tried. Now it's a hell hole where murders and suicides by firearms are six times that of the USA.
What makes America a "civilized" nation? Maybe it's just a nation and being "civilized" or not is irrelevant. Seems to me that even though there's enough guns in America to arm every man, woman, child, and household pet that violent crime is pretty average among all nations. America is actually quite safe, especially if people avoid crime ridden places like DC, New York, and Chicago, which by the way has very restrictive gun laws even by international standards.
Also, why limit the death count to just those with guns? I don't care if London is seeing such high murder rates recently because of people being shot, run over by a truck, or stabbed with a knife. They banned all the "assault weapons" in London and banned most every other kind of firearm too. Now what? Ban them again? Start restricting the purchase of knives and make all drivers get a license? I believe they've already done that and for quite some time too. I'm guessing that the UK is going to look as "uncivilized" as the USA pretty soon. They got problems over there and it's not because of the guns. We got problems in the USA too, but that's not because of the guns either.
So give in to a nut with a gun? Why not take away her her gun?
Did anyone even know she had a gun? Did she show criminal tendencies in the past? Or have a history of poor mental health? I'll admit to ignorance here but I saw nothing on how she got the gun. As far as I know nobody knows yet how she got the gun and therefore nobody can claim any kind of gun control would have been effective.
Gun control in Australia slashed gun crimes.
And banning bridges would prevent people from jumping from them. I see your argument but I think it's a very stupid one.
How about instead of focusing on guns and "gun crime" we look at ALL CRIME? I've seen the argument before on how banning guns would prevent people from shooting themselves in suicides. That did happen in every nation in which it was tried, but total suicides didn't go down, people just found different ways to kill themselves. The problem here was a bat guano crazy lady that wanted to inflict physical harm on people at YouTube. If we find out how she go the gun and put in place a law against it then we'll just see some other kind of violence take its place. I see in Europe it has become popular to run people over with vehicles and slash people with knives, a gun ban didn't stop that. I don't see people calling for bans on vehicles. We did see some crazy laws on the buying of knives in some nations, where now people have to show ID and sign a log to buy a pizza cutter.
Trump might be shit scared on the NRA, but the kids in the schools aren't.
I don't believe Trump is scared of the NRA, he spoke at NRA conventions before. Trump and NRA leadership don't agree on everything but they seem to get along just fine. Seems to me that the school kids are scared of the NRA. They'll talk about how the NRA will get them killed. Well the NRA runs the most popular child gun safety programs and few people even know about it. They don't emblazon the NRA logo on the gun safety program because it's not about getting members, it's about keeping kids safe in school. The Brady Campaign likes to call themselves a "gun safety" organization but where are their animated cartoons telling kids to not touch a gun?
What's needed is gun control.
That's presuming an outcome not supported by the evidence. Alaska and New York have similar murder rates. We know why the murder rate in Alaska is so high, depression is a serious problem. That kind of happens in a place where the sun might shine for only three hours per day in the winter, and it's brutally cold. The state also attracts a lot of young men with not much better to do than turn a wrench on a far off oil well, or spend days at sea fishing. They get in fights, they get drunk, and they tend to kill each other. What's New York's excuse? Or London? London just passed New York City in the number of murders for the first time in a long time.
http://www.breitbart.com/londo...
What's London's excuse for such high rates of crime? They already banned all the guns? Are they going to ban them again? Maybe we need crime control to control the crime. Seems sensible to me.
She needed serious mental health care. But mental heath still has this heavy stigma in the US . . . pumping your children full with Ritalin is OK . . . committing your daughter to a mental health institution is not socially acceptable.
It probably doesn't help that the government (state, federal, and local) has been taking guns from people that sought out mental health care. Just because someone is being treated for depression does not make a person homicidal or suicidal. There's still means to take guns from people that pose a high risk to themselves or others without making a blanket determination that anyone seeking care for a temporary bout of depression needs to have their guns taken from them. Just because someone files for powers of attorney for help with their taxes and finances, due to a case of dyslexia or other mental condition, should not make them "mentally deficient" to own a gun.
It's just an idea but perhaps it would help, maybe the government should stop taking people's guns because they sought out some mental health care. That way the people won't be so afraid the government will take their guns if they seek treatment for a mental health condition. It's not paranoia if it's true.
You need a license to drive a car. You need to show that you know the rules to abide by when driving, and that you have sufficient skill and knowledge to minimize the danger you pose to others when driving. This, US citizens are fine with.
I'm not fine with it, and I'm an American citizen.
Licenses to drive are, in my opinion, a waste of money. We have traffic cops to make sure people know how to drive, so I don't know how having a piece of paper in the driver's pocket is supposed to improve things. What if a person doesn't have a license? How would anyone even know unless they broke the law? I don't care if people have licenses, I care that they follow traffic laws.
I know people would ask, how we would know people know the traffic laws before they drive? Well, we don't now. There's nothing that prevents an unlicensed driver from driving. We hear about unlicensed drivers all the time. These tend to be people that lost their license because they had a history of drunken driving, which just proves that taking a class which tells people not to drink and drive has questionable effectiveness. Another problem of unlicensed drivers are illegal aliens that want to minimize interactions with the government as that might mean they get deported. That's just a symptom of a greater problem. We saw states that tried to issue licenses to illegal aliens but that's just states giving implicit permission for people to break federal law. If the state KNOWS this person is in the country illegally and allows them to drive then the state government is aiding foreign invaders, and that sounds real close to treason to me.
We don't need licenses to drive. People should have to learn on their own how to not kill themselves while driving. I took a driver safety course in high school. That wasn't because it was required by law but because it was required by my parents. Maybe instead of licenses to drive we need parents that act like adults.
Oh, and we need states that find illegal aliens to notify the federal government. If you want safer streets then pick up all the illegal aliens that drive while having minimal knowledge of the traffic laws, or even minimal knowledge of the language spoken here. I don't care if they have a license to drive, that just tells me that the state that issued them doesn't enforce the law. If they are willing to give licenses to criminals (because entering the country without permission is a crime) then I have to wonder just how well the state enforced traffic laws.
So your basic claim is that a more effective tool for doing X doesn't increase the rate of X?
No, it's not.
Then tell me what happened. Last I checked the Australian governments failed to collect 250,000 banned weapons in their confiscation attempts. They know they were sold and not turned in by checking their records. Maybe they were all lost at sea, but I doubt it.
A drill is purposely built to twist things, but I so happen to make bookcases with one. Guns so happen to kill people. Kind of what they're good at. Next.
Cars killed as many people as guns. So, is that what they are good for?
That's great, but not everyone is as responsible with their firearms as you are. Nor can you guarantee they will be just because you stand by your philosophy.
Let's ban cars because a handful of negligent and outright murderous people kill others with them. 100 million guns owner hurt no one today, so we take their guns? That's painting with a broad brush.
Then what is it, exactly? You go hunting with that thing?
Lots of people hunt game with an AR-15. It's also popular with competition shooting. I'll hear the claim that "weapons built for war" don't belong in civilian hands. Well, show me a firearm that was not used in some war at some time. The very popular Remington Model 700 bolt action rifle was used as a sniper rifle since it's creation in 1966. The military uses it in a number of variants they call the M24, M40, or M2010, depending on caliber and other options.
The M16 was adopted by the US military about the same time as the M40. Most every firearm is a "military weapon", it just depends on the military and the time period. Does it matter if it was the military of today versus one of a previous generation?
Your gun to car analogy has issues. Cars are a necessity for most Americans, whereas guns are recreational or defense tools for those who live in high-crime areas with little confidence in the response time for police. Or people who just think that maybe, at some point in time, they might be.
I need to justify my "need" for something to the government to keep it? Do you "need" anything really? I don't need a slice of ham right now, but I'm eating one right now. People will tell me that meat is murder and I could just eat peanut butter instead. Does anyone "need" a car? If we are going to rely on the government for everything then should I have the government drive me everywhere I "need" to go? Maybe what I really "need" is a bicycle and a bus pass. Maybe I don't want to rely on the government to keep the buses running.
The fire department puts out fires. Does that mean I don't "need" a fir extinguisher at home? I just bought a bunch of them, should I turn those over to the government too? Or can I keep them because I'm in a "high fire risk" area? Who gets to decide my risk of fire? Shouldn't that be up to me to decide? What if the government decides that no one has a fire risk sufficient to own a fire extinguisher? What happens if I don't turn in my fire extinguisher? Is the government going to search my house for them?
But a fire extinguisher is not a lethal weapon. Not having it could be lethal though. Just like not having a gun when I need it could be lethal should someone invade my home tonight. I'll sleep much better knowing I have one of those "weapons of war" under my bed. That would be the Remington M870 I have, a pump action shotgun that's used by the military. A friend of mine carried a M870 in combat. He called it a "master key" since it had this ability to open locked doors.
I recall a wise man that said a government that can provide every need can also take everything you have. When I first heard that I thought it meant that I'd merely be taxed into owning nothing. Now I realize that the government could just justify some alternative, regardless of the absurdity of it, so it can take what it wants from me. If the government deems a cast iron skillet something I don't "need" because I could use it to whack someone over the head with it then all it must do is justify an alternative, like a glass skillet. Never mind that it's worthless to fry an egg. The government will just tell me I can cook my eggs in the pan with a microwave oven. Just so long as I don'
Did you even read my prior post? Alaska and New York have the same murder rate even though there are six times as many guns per person in Alaska.
You think that maybe it's easier to murder tens of people when the victims have knives instead of guns?
The murderous fucker shot himself in the head when the cops had him cornered. He probably realized that premeditated murder would get him the electric chair. So, still a gun death in there. May God forgive me as I didn't shed a tear upon hearing about his death.
Lemme guess, that's not valid because
Because gathering up all the guns is specifically prohibited by our Constitution.
Also, just imagine what would happen if Congress did in fact pass a law banning the ownership of guns. I'd imagine a lot of hillbillies would not take to kindly to that and they'd be stacking up dead cops like cordwood. You think people wouldn't shoot a cop over them taking their guns? Are you sure you want to find out? Tell you what, you get to be the guy that knocks on the door. I'll just see how that turns out by reading the obituaries in the newspapers.
There's more guns in the USA than people. There's more armed citizens than there are soldiers and police officers combined. That's assuming the people in uniform would go along with the ban. They'd likely join the hillbillies or go run off and hide so they didn't end up dead.
There's an estimated 5 million members of the National Rifle Association and an estimated 2 million members of the US Armed Forces (active and reserves). That alone leaves the military outnumbered 2 to 1. But the Army has tanks! Yeah, that's going to work out well for everybody. Let's just start another civil war in the USA, because that last one only killed off 3% of the population.
I've heard how those gun confiscations turned out in Australia, Canada, even some they attempted in the USA in states like California and New York. They had maybe a 1/3rd compliance rate. They knew how many of these guns were sold, they tracked that much. Only 1/3rd were turned in willingly. Where's the rest of them? How are you planning on getting those? Again, I'll read up on how that turns out in the obituaries.
They can't ban the guns because nobody knows where they all are. I don't even know where all of my guns are. I talked to my mom and brother and they don't know where all their guns are. It's not like they are lost, I have my guns in my house, my mom has her guns in her house, my brother keeps his guns somewhere in his shed. We just have so many we might forget where they all might be if someone came asking.
The government could go around and gather up 300 million guns and there would still be 60 million they didn't find. It's not like a gun is all that complex, people make them in garages just for fun. You think if the government made a pile of 360 million guns that they'd have them all? Nope, people would be making them faster than the government could find them. Go look up "ghost gun" and you'll see what I'm talking about.
There's also no life guards at the lake. So... it evens out?
Kind of like how restriction on carrying a handgun is supposed to reduce murder. What we saw then was a lady getting stabbed to death in her own driveway by her ex-boyfriend while her permit to carry a handgun was being processed. Yep, less "gun death" that way.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015...
The prohibition of armed forces acting on domestic soil applies only to the US Army and US Air Force. This prohibition does not apply to the Coast Guard, National Guard, or the US Marine Corps. Also, this prohibition does not apply to the enforcement of federal law. I'm pretty sure attempted murder is prohibited under federal law, perhaps I'm mistaken.
I remember talking to a guy that lived out by DC. He talked of a military base that had a major highway going through it and USMC military police enforced traffic law there. They will stop people that speed and issue tickets, anyone in uniform had their commanders notified of the ticket as well. Speeding on a military base is a violation of federal law, and members of the military will enforce that law.
The use of Marines to enforce federal law is relatively routine. Did you ever notice that the security detail around the President of the United States is full of Marines? That's because using members of either the Army and Air Force could be considered a violation of the prohibitions laid out in the Constitution of having a standing Army. Perhaps a minor point if the guy is in a Marine uniform instead of an Army one but this is what the law says.
We tried banning liquor. It didn't work out. We tried banning drugs, and that's not working out either. Read a history book.
I so wish I could moderate up your post.
Banning alcohol didn't reduce crime, quite the opposite. I don't know why people believe a gun ban of any kind would be any more effective.
But we just want to ban the "assault weapons"! Hiram Maxim figured out how to turn a lever action rifle into a machine gun in the 1880s, and he wrote down how to do it. Repeating that feat today with internet access and modern power tools is near trivial. What are they going to do next? Ban every lever action rifle? The Gatling Gun was patented in 1861. Replicating that today with modern tools would be trivial as well. Back in 1861 there were no cordless power drills, so it had a crank. What would that Gatling gun look like with an electric motor and a lithium ion battery?
The government can ban something but that won't make it go away. Sometimes it's just better to NOT BAN STUFF.
That's nice but why separate out "gun murders" from the other murders unless you just want to ban the guns? Hmmm?
Total murder rate in Illinois is 5.5, in Texas it's 5.0. Maybe not much of an improvement but it does kind of put a big dent in your point.
I suggest we try to reduce ALL murders, regardless of the weapons used. No one wants to talk about that though because that might mean not banning the guns.
"NO TICKET!!"
Why should I care about "gun violence"? Shouldn't I be concerned about total violence?
I went to the page you linked to and sorted the list by gun ownership rates and scanned for two states with identical numbers. Here's what I found:
State - gun ownership rate - murder rate
Indiana - 33.8% - 3.1
Iowa - 33.8% - 1.2
Michigan - 28.8% - 5.6
Vermont - 28.8% - 1.1
I then sort by murder rate and find:
State - gun ownership rate - murder rate
Nebraska - 19.8% - 2.8
Rhode Island - 5.8% - 2.8
Alaska - 61.7% - 4.4
New York - 10.3% - 4.4
Arkansas - 57.9% - 4.5
Kentucky - 42.4% - 4.5
Arizona - 32.3% - 4.5
Georgia - 1.6% - 5.3
Delaware - 5.2% - 5.3
I didn't include all the states, people can go to the source to find that if they want. I just wanted to highlight that claiming that gun ownership does not correlate well to murder rates. Just the examples between Alaska and New York is quite telling. People are often aware of the murders in New York because of the high population but it's got no different of a rate than Alaska. Alaska has a gun ownership rate of over 60%. If you subtract the number of people that are too young to buy a gun then that starts to look like nearly every adult in Alaska owns a gun. In Alaska there's no requirement to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm, so it's quite possible a large percentage of people carry their firearms often.
You may be right but only because you defined the parameters by counting only "gun violence". Why should I care about reducing "gun violence" if that just means I get killed by a lead pipe in the study instead of shot by a revolver in the ballroom?
Can you show any correlation between gun laws and violent crime? I actually did a study on that for a statistics project at university, I found no correlation between gun laws and violent crime.
I'd like to see this correlation you claim.
Don't take my word for it though. I did do a statistical analysis but so did a lot of other people with much more experience in this than I have.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
That link is just one example I could find with a short Google search.
I'll hear people make claims about "gun deaths" correlating to gun ownership. I don't care if the person got murdered with a gun, a knife, or by being tossed out a window. If we want to see murder go down then it can't be done with gun laws. We might see "gun deaths" go down but that's like saying "pool drownings" go down by banning pools while total drownings stay the same because now people go swim in a lake instead.
Trust no one. I learned that from an FBI agent. He had a funny name too, "Fox". Who names their kid after an animal? He liked to ramble on about alien abductions. He must have been awesome at his job for the FBI to keep him around.
There are ADB to USB connectors
Yes, they do exist, and I own one too. They were very expensive a long time ago and even more expensive now. They made sense back then when the adapters were $50 and a nice keyboard cost over $100. My point is that people should not expect to be able to keep old hardware working indefinitely, especially something with so many moving parts like a mouse and keyboard.
Also, a protocol converter like that ADB to USB adapter could still require a driver in the OS to get working right. That ADB to USB adapter won't allow use of a scroll wheel mouse, and the keyboard mapping can be funny, if there isn't a driver. I might be able to find a serial port adapter too but that doesn't mean my fancy 16 button mouse from 1998 is going to work now on a new system like it did then with Windows 95 or Mac OS 8. Someone might make case with an ISA slot and connect to a computer by USB but that doesn't mean I can get an old modem card to work on a new OS.
The class was a course on literature, so there was a component of the grade based on classroom discussion. The instructor kept some kind of record on who contributed to discussion and graded that somehow, along with assignments and examinations.
I had one other class that made the class discussion part of the grade, that was a philosophy class. Back then laptops were more like "luggables" than when I had the literature class years later. Laptops then were much heavier and unlikely to keep power without a cord for an hour and half lecture unless the person paid extra for a dual battery option. Also the desks in the classroom were not conducive to having a laptop on them, the problem likely never came up before that the instructor felt the need to mention it.
Those two classes were part of the humanities requirements for my engineering degree, the other courses I took rarely had discussion. I remember having an instructor comment that he didn't care about the laptops in class. I'm guessing either he thought like you mentioned, do the work and pass the tests, or thought that if the laptop meant people would take better notes and/or research things instead of taking lecture time to ask then the laptops added to the learning. Likely a bit of both.