rkbabang

Apple, meet Orange. Is it really though? The quote about history not repeating, but rhyming comes to mind. You posted this while I was typing my last reply. Great minds think alike.

Oh yeah, that's right, this time we have a reason other than bigotry, even though every generation thinks this. Syrians are violent terrorists with a different religion and culture. Remember history doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme. Ok so how about this one: Irish Immigrant Stereotypes and American Racism http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/images/WildBeast-pg.jpg "The Most Recently Discovered Wild Beast" (1881) is one of a series of nineteenth-century images portraying the Irish as violent and subhuman. In the U.S. survey I use images of this sort when examining the history of anti-immigrant prejudice and its relationship to American racism. Native-born Americans criticized Irish immigrants for their poverty and manners, their supposed laziness and lack of discipline, their public drinking style, their catholic religion, and their capacity for criminality and collective violence. in both words and pictures, critics of the Irish measured character by perceived physical appearance. Political cartoons such as the "Wild Beast" offered an exaggerated version of these complaints. The Irish-American "Dynamite Skunk," clad in patriotic stars and stripes, has diabolical ears and feet and he sports an extraordinary tail. around his waist he is wearing an "infernal machine," a terrorist bomb that was usually disguised as a harmless everyday object, in this case a book....

From the June 6, 1939 Daily Mirror. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5126bbb4e4b08c2e6d1cb6e4/t/517d4105e4b065cfbf62bbd1/1367163143250 Sketching the SS St. Louis

This doesn't worry me too much. I doubt that was pulled off by Syrian refugees. To me it sounds like an inside job by someone who knew that the alarms were disabled. There are plenty of guns in the US already, a dozen more aren't going to make a difference, and I'd much rather the guns be in the hands of civilians than the government anyway. If you buy guns legally, you have to register with FBI background check. Since you know that FBI knows you have guns, you will be more careful when you use it, and I don't think you can buy M4 assault rifles? If you steal guns, you don't need to go through any checks. That's day and night's difference. Muscleman: Yes, a "civilian" can buy M4 assault rifles....You can also buy them WITHOUT ID or any government check/regulation. You must pass a background check WHEN PURCHASING FROM A FFL DEALER. If you are buying from an individual "second hand", the only check is that they ask you if you are felon/criminal. If you are not, you are good to go...If you are a felon/criminal, the seller can't sell, and you can't buy. Another way to purchase rifles is to buy "partially assembled" "lowers". These are not fully formed guns...but they simply require drilling of a hole to complete them. This is also a very inexpensive way. Please see: http://aresarmor.com/store/Category/hmgar15 An individual can also purchase fully automatic machine guns and silencers. These are "class III" weapons, and are heavily regulated. Both the purchaser & seller have to have a "tax stamp" & other paper work. They are also heavily regulated in their movement...I know people who have done this. It is expensive and heavily regulated. Machine guns will sell for $10k, sometimes even more, depending on the model. Almost no crime is committed with these weapons... If you don't want to pay $10k + and still want an "automatic" rifle...you can simply buy a "bumpfire" kit. These cost about $75 or so. I think they only work with AR-15's...not sure about AK's though... There is NO central FEDERAL registry of who owns what weapons. The background check simply checks to make sure you are eligible to purchase and that you are not buying 30 rifles (at one time) or other unusual activity. These records are also supposedly not held on the federal level for longer than 24 hrs. Depending on where you live (state level), you may be required to register pistols/handguns. Of course, most enlightened states don't do this. On a different note, I am concerned on MANY different levels about immigration...but that is a different response... You forgot to mention that thanks to Ronald Reagan's gun control laws, you can only transfer machine guns manufactured and registered with the ATF before May 19, 1986. If the M4s were select fire and manufactured after that date it would be impossible for a civilian to own them (legally anyway).

This doesn't worry me too much. I doubt that was pulled off by Syrian refugees. To me it sounds like an inside job by someone who knew that the alarms were disabled. There are plenty of guns in the US already, a dozen more aren't going to make a difference, and I'd much rather the guns be in the hands of civilians than the government anyway. If you buy guns legally, you have to register with FBI background check. Since you know that FBI knows you have guns, you will be more careful when you use it, and I don't think you can buy M4 assault rifles? If you steal guns, you don't need to go through any checks. That's day and night's difference. I don't see myself being any less careful with my guns depending upon what the FBI knows about me. I also can't see why someone planning a terrorist attack would care much about what the FBI knows about them. They usually plan to die committing the attack, to make Allah happy. You can buy semi-auto only versions of the M4 (basically an M16 with a shorter barrel), but you are correct that the select-fire version is probably what was stolen and you can not buy them. Although you should be able to. I'm not a supporter of background checks, gun registration, or limits on the types of guns you can buy or own.

This doesn't worry me too much. I doubt that was pulled off by Syrian refugees. To me it sounds like an inside job by someone who knew that the alarms were disabled. There are plenty of guns in the US already, a dozen more aren't going to make a difference, and I'd much rather the guns be in the hands of civilians than the government anyway.

I have never had an "obligation" to any so-called "country", nor does anyone else. You are not born with obligations to collectives or land masses.

Neither the Irish, nor the Jews , nor the Italians were considered to be full human beings by many when they were immigrating in large numbers. They were inferior animals with inferior cultures, on a par with blacks (who were also non-human). Not only were they not civilized, but they were uncivilizable (due to the fact that they were not fully human). Today it is the Mexicans and the Middle Easterners. The more things change the more they stay the same...

My only problem with illegal immigration is that it is illegal, there should be no such thing. The people who leave their entire lives behind and come here for a better life despite the various governments trying to stop them are heroes and just the sort of anti-authoritarian/get-it-done folks we need more of. EDIT: Come to think about it, maybe the laws do serve a purpose, it screens for the type of people able to get here despite them.

+1, It is also the only reason our population is growing rather than declining. The two things that made America what it is (immigration and capitalism) are the two things that are constantly under attack. People always seem to want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. A good book to read if you haven't already is "A Renegade History of the United States" by Thaddeus Russell. It basically goes in to great detail about how immigrants and other out-groups (Blacks, Jews, Irish, Italians, prostitutes, bootleggers, gangsters, smugglers, etc...) are responsible in large part for many of the freedoms we enjoy and for making America what it is today. It is a much underappreciated and ignored part of our history, and it is one that is on going as we speak.

WFM @ $29.17 this morning.

Not really related, since he specifically said he wasn't "interested in illegal bullies or government favorites", there is nothing wrong with the third type of monopoly at all. The type of company "that is so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute." These are few and far between however (the vast majority of monopolies are due to government interference in the market) and are fragile, in that if you stop being the best at what you do or you anger a large portion of your customers (bad service, way too high pricing, etc) it will become a huge incentive for others to find a way to compete with you. For an example Google is a type of this rare monopoly, where as Comcast could never in a million years hold its monopoly (in the geographical areas where it has one) without government.

Still TBA, but everyone's invited.

I never did understand what possible purpose allowing corporations to have bankruptcy protection served. It protects the poorly run firm from the consequences of its decisions at the expense of its creditors and competitors. If you just let poorly run firms die and allow the creditors to split up and sell off any assets, then the creditors get something and the better run competitors have one less competitor and can remain strong. Like every form of protectionism it protects the bad actors at the expense of the good actors, inverting the incentives, and makes the entire industry/economy weaker. It's like watering the weeds and poisoning the flowers.

I've mentioned and recommended it before here. It is by far the best podcast out there and one of the only ones I listen to whenever there is a new episode. The other podcasts I listen to occasionally and intermittently, some are Tim Ferris, Bulletproof Executive (mostly health related, I still drink bulletproof coffee every morning), School Sucks (only the first 50-100 episodes or so are really good, downhill after that), Freetalk Live (some good, some boring), Freedomain Radio (listen to the first few thousand shows, his recent psychological craptrap is unlistenable). And lately I've been listening to audiobooks almost exclusively. I find myself listening to books that I've read and remember enjoying. The audio production is a whole different experience and some of them are very well done. I'm listening to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle now, it is something like 70 hours of audio, but very well performed. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were also very well done audio books.

the more i listen to him the more i feel he's an arrogant bastard who thinks he's an expert on everything. Can't seem to stop listening though. LOL. An entertaining arrogant bastard then. I like his show as well.

Shark Attacks

One of the things this article mentioned is a question I had already. With Playboy going non-nude, will it be more of a direct competitor to Maxim? Even with the nude pictures Playboy was classier than Maxim, now it will be no contest. Someone might read Playboy for the articles, but why would you read Maxim at all? I have to wonder what Biglari thought this could become? I don't see it turning out anything but bad.

Magazine capacity bans only effect defensive uses and not offencive uses of firearms. It takes less than 2 seconds to change a magazine. If you are planning an offencive use of your firearm you can carry as many magazines as you think you will use. If you are carrying a firearm for defensive purposes on a daily basis you are not likely to carry any extras. Also if you grab your gun in the middle of the night in an emergency, you might not even be wearing anything which has pockets to put a spare magazine, where the attacker(s) may carry many extras. You limit a person's ability to defend themselves and others, without effecting a criminal planning an attack in any way. The point of all of this was that school shootings are a small problem of which there isn't much we can do anything about and there are much larger problems for which there are solutions (car deaths, hospital infections, etc) which no one thinks about, cares about, or worries about. It has obviously gone off the rails to focus entirely on gun control, so I'll stop here.

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed. Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way. So it's very effective. And if it doesn't work, at least you have burgers. BTW: In 2005 even Canada had a higher suicide rate than the US. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html I intentionally separated out homicides vs suicides expecting you to have the brains to use the homicide number. Guess you are too dumb to do that. The car accidents include everything from distracted driving to drunk/reckless driving, rain/ice/potholes, design defects/tire blowouts and a few dozen other not all of which can be avoided by autonomous cars. Would you like to adjust the 30,000 number down to deaths that can be avoided by autonomous cars and compare that to homicides? You also have no idea if autonomous cars cause their own set of problems. Since you've got no answer to 11,000 homicides vs 30,000 accidents feel free to focus on the suicide and ignore the homicides. The issue with homicides is about the same as suicides. It is cultural. How do you stop people from wanting to kill themselves or others? Taking away their guns isn't solving the problem. 100 years ago when neither country had any guns laws to speak of, London was a much, much safer place than NYC. Now that isn't as much the case. What changed? If anything there are much fewer guns in London than there were. You are trying to make these issues black and white when they aren't.

Just rent a U-Haul truck, park in a remote location, and cook hamburgers over charcoal in a Weber in the back with the rear door closed. Search on Google for indoor BBQ carbon monoxide poisoning -- it's surprising how many people accidentally kill themselves and others this way. So it's very effective. And if it doesn't work, at least you have burgers. BTW: In 2005 even Canada had a higher suicide rate than the US. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/suiciderate.html

Which is so strange. It seems a lot more appealing to put a garden hose in the tailpipe of a car (or just run the car with the garage door closed if you have a garage). Why do people use guns? Be careful about correlation and causation errors in that chart in the story. Studies of limited data-sets or of short time frames may show strange things ( you could make the case that it would be a safer country if the Miss America pageant was limited to women under 20 years of age). Also sometimes things are related but both caused by a third variable not studied. Many of the high suicide states are also the most economically depressed states and I would love to see a chart with number of veterans living in a state vs suicide rates or active military families living in a state vs suicide rates. There are many causes of suicide and many ways to do it. Besides, if you do not want to kill yourself (as I do not) then no law in the world will make you any more or less safe from suicide. Many people probably use guns for suicide, because it is quick and effective. But a look at the numbers shows that at least half do not use guns, so some people are obviously turned off by the messyness. Also the problem with the garage method is that a family member will probably be the one to find you. I know someone who found his father in the garage in this way as a teenager, it would have been much better on his son if he had driven somewhere else and used a gun. Finding a stranger doesn't have the same emotional impact as finding a family member. There are problems with all the other methods as well, hanging can be long and painful if you don't do it right and you can survive with brain damage or other disabilities, drugs can take a long time and someone can find you and revive you, jumping from a high place is something a lot of people just can't do (and what if by some "miracle" you survive? You'll be a mess). Really if it is logical to use the best tool for any job, it really it is surprising that more people don't use guns if they are available to them. Guns may have some small effect on the success rate and on the marginal cases, but guns don't cause suicide any more than bridges, rope, or tall buildings. And besides you can always use a gun to kill yourself even if civilian gun ownership is outlawed. Go to Home Depot, buy a machete (an 8-inch chefs knife will also work, maybe even a baseball bat in a pinch), hold it high above your head, open your eyes as wide as they can go, and run towards the first cop you see screaming the word "die" over and over. Make sure you start from some distance away to give him plenty of time to react. Suicide rates are also very culturally dependant. It is more culturally acceptable to kill oneself in some cultures rather than others, and this can change over time within a culture. If you look at suicide rates by country the US has lower rates than some other countries with far fewer civilian guns, such as Japan, France, Finland, Belgium, Poland, South Korea, etc. If guns caused suicide you'd expect the US to top the list with Japan way at the bottom. There are cultural differences between the different regions of the US as well. If you look at the chart on the story above you can see many of the states grouped together are also in the same regions of the country and may have similar cultures. EDIT: Here's a good one. Stop the science, stop the slaughter! http://www.tylervigen.com/correlation_project/correlation_images/us-spending-on-science-space-and-technology_suicides-by-hanging-strangulation-and-suffocation.png

Just to be clear that is 300 school MURDERS in the last 30 years vs 30,000 deaths from car "ACCIDENTS" in the last year. I know the difference, one is a huge problem the other isn't nearly as large. Also I'd like to take issue with your term "ACCIDENTS", because most traffic deaths aren't any such thing. We might refer to them as such, but anyone that has ever driven in the US knows that the vast majority of accidents are the result of someone doing something they shouldn't have and that they know they shouldn't have done. This negligent misuse of a 2 ton hunk of metal driven at high speeds causing a death should be called negligent homicide or manslaughter, but we (as a society) prefer to say that the guy who tailgates someone and causes a death has caused an "accident" and not charge him with a crime. If you misuse a gun and someone dies, you can be sure that you will be charged with manslaughter and no one will call it an "accident". The same should be true for car crashes as well. The only time people are actually properly charged is when they are drunk, but aggressive drivers, speeders, tailgaters, people who don't pay attention, people who don't yield when they are supposed to, or do yield when they aren't supposed to, or those who are prone to road rage all get away scott free when they kill someone. The number of actually unavoidable accidents on our roads that lead to death is very tiny. 30,000 people die every year mostly from either their own or someone else's negligence. Both internationally and between the states there is no positive correlation between suicide rates and either gun ownership nor gun laws. Look at the suicide rates in Japan for an extreme example. Yes in the US people choose to use a firearm when they kill themselves, whereas in Japan they use other methods, but suicide isn't a gun problem, it is a person who wants to end his own life problem. And murder, depending on the study you look at either has no coorelation to gun ownership or a very slight negative correlation. This is why gun-control advocates always say "gun-violence" not "violence" or "suicide by gun" rather than just talk about "suicides" in total. If you wan't to save A LOT of lives, even more than solving the car-crash issue, convince doctors to properly wash their hands.

Depends on where you live. For most places in USA and developed countries, you are right. Well, yes, I was under the assumption most of the people here live in the developed world.

Do you have children? Your lack of pathos suggests that you do not. You can use statistics to argue for a lot of things, but to suggest that school children being murdered in class is 'no big deal' because we need self driving cars is being almost laughably callous. I do, 2 teenagers. And I know that driving is far more dangerous for them than attending school. EDIT: If anyone here has children and are more worried about them being shot in school than you are about them sitting in the seat of a moving automobile you are insane, completely 100% insane. I'm sorry if that sounds callous, but it is true.