The point remains that "intellectual property", being form of corporate welfare, needs to be eliminated for the creativity market to function undistorted.

First of all, it isn't a point, it's an assertion.

Second of all, you've got so much loaded language that you don't even realize that you've got a simple piece of circular logic there. Breaking it down:

"intellectual property", being form of corporate welfare,

Remove the loaded language of "corporate welfare", and you're left with "intellectual property" law.

to function undistorted

What does "undistorted" mean other than free from the artificial contrivances of IP law?

therefore, you just asserted that:

:: IP Law must be eliminated for the creativity
:: market to function free of IP law.

Well, OK. That's true, but it doesn't prove anything.

For example, it doesn't prove that IP law SHOULD be removed, or even to what degree it should be partially retracted. That statement is functionally meaningless.

The labor-centric view of copyright (copyright pays authors for their labor, like Bounty Hunters are paid) would show that copyright terms are far too long and that the anti-circumvention laws of the DMCA are too monopolistic. But that doesn't mean copyright law in all forms should be abolished.

what makes you think I haven't done this?

Because if you had published the next great american novel under a dominant assurance contract, then you would have posted a URL to that.

Secondly, I can say that it's like trying to be in the airline business competing with Pan-Am

You said dominant assurance contracts work. I said you could try that approach now in parallel with copyright law. you then say that they don't really work as long as copyright law exists because of competition.

But american copyright law doesn't prevent you from writing the next great american novel.

I get frustrated that some will vigorously defend certain rights

Hidden agendas are what I fear the most.

You've taken an anonymous "some", added "hidden agendas", stirred in "fear", and created the perfect conspiracy theory of how the gummint is gonna take your guns.

you invoke a slippery slope argument (if you let this pass, the "hidden agenda" people will just push for more) that you can't prove (because it's hidden) and it can only be disproved if someone could prove the non-existence of a hidden thing, which is impossible because you can always expand the conspiracy of the "hidden agenda" to encompass more and more. Ultimately, we would have to demonstrate that every single person alive is NOT a member of the "hidden agenda" to prove that no hidden agenda exists, and that's impossible.

Instead of disproving the existence of a hidden agenda, the appropriate response is to point out that it is a logical fallicy, an assertion with no evidence to support it.

I never said I was against background checks or limitations on class 3 weapons

You never said you were for any single gun restriction at all. You never said you were for background checks. You never said you were for class restrictions based on the type of weapon.

Your posts in this thread consist of #42, where you make the argument that restricting the right to bear arms will be some slippery slope to restricting other rights. i.e.

::the climate of taking away freedoms can spread- firearms, copying media, carrying a laptop across the border

Your next post was #147, where you argue that gun restrictions of any kind are closing the barn door after the horses have already gotten out. i.e.

::the cat is out of the bag- there are so many guns in both legal and illegal hands that if we did ban them all, we'd only be taking them out of the (reluctant) hands of the legal gun owners.

This doesn't sound like you support ANY sort of gun control restriction of ANY kind. What good would background checks do if "the cat is already out of the bag"?

And while you argue that any sort of restriction would only harm legal owners, I posted @239 hard facts that background checks kept 130,000 guns out of the hands of criminals.

While you argue for an infinite-sized black market for guns, the ATF report I linked showed that criminals had gotten access to 80,000 legal firearms and ended up using them in criminal activities in a two year period. This says that the "black market" source for a lot of criminal's guns is simply legal weapons being sold without any restrictions.

So, why would I assume you were in favor of background checks when you had previously argued that "the cat is out of the bag" and that restrictions would only keep guns out of the hands of legal owners? Why would I assume you were in favor of any gun control measure when your first post makes a slippery slope argument that any gun control measure could essentially be part of some hidden agenda?

Your previous posts argue that any restriction might come with some hidden agenda and would be pointless anyway. If you're now saying you support certain restrictions, then I hope you understand why I might be confused.

A gun is an object, nothing more- it can be used for good, or for evil, but by itself, it can't do anything.

machine guns are objects too. I prefer them to be kept classified as Class 3 weapons, rather than have MAC10's being sold by automated, cash-based vending machines.

I do find it contradictory that the same people that are very anti DRM (digital RIGHTS management) can be very willing to restrict other rights. Is this a matter of...

It's mostly a matter of the fact that DRM doesn't kill 30,000 people a year

Punish the criminal, not the legal users of the items.

God, get over yourself. Is it so terrible that you have to have a driver's license? Is it such a horror that your car must be registered? That you are required to have a license plate? That you have auto insurance? That you have to wear a seatbelt? That you have to wear a helmet if your riding a motorcycle?

Are these such terrible "punishments"? The real criminals are the drunk drivers, the repeat offenders, the car thieves, the speeders, the reckless drivers who endanger the lives of everyone around them. They should be punished, you shouldn't be punished with all these legal requirements around cars just because they screw up?

Such insufferable horrors that you can't even go on with life?

Seriously?

the ATF report said that instant background checks kept 130,000 guns from getting into the hands of criminals in one year. Are background checks such an injustice that you'd do away with them and let those 130,000 guns go into the hands of criminals?

Really?

zuzu@105: But that only reinforces that copyright has nothing to do with property.

I never said it did. I thought I was pretty clear it doesn't.

the fallacy I hear over and over is the naive assumption that copyright is somehow the only way to compensate people for their creative labor. That's a faulty premise.

Since I didn't say that fallacy, I'm not sure what your point is. There are a bunch of different ways to incentivize people to create new works, all of which are various ways to compensate them for their labor plus some profit.

I don't have a problem with copyright being the de facto way of doing this. I have a problem with the current length of terms and the current overmonopolization of rights via anti-circumvention clauses being used to criminalize the bypassing of technological features that do nothing but disable a customer's right to Fair Use.

Get rid of the anti-circumvention laws, and set terms to 42 years fixed from the date of publication, and I'd be satisfied with the results.

Dominant assurance contracts also allow people to be compensated for their investment in creating something which is non-rival and non-exclusive (such as a novel, screenplay, music) without relying on the State issuing permits for exclusive use.

You do realize that you or anyone else could do this, right now, even with copyright laws being what they are. There are websites that are designed so that you can set up some amount of money you want to collect, if you hit that minimum, the site charges everyone, if you don't hit the minimum, no one pays anything.

And you could say that part of you getting paid means that you will not only give donors a copy of your work, you'll release it to the public domain.

The current existing copyright laws do not prevent you from using this very approch today. Rather than simply advocate for that approach, you could demonstrate it yourself by creating a work and selling it that way.

If we had Star Trek style replicators we largely wouldn't need property rights

That's pretty much irrelevant to copyright though. The cost of distribution of copyright works is assymtotically approaching zero already. That doesn't mean we don't need copyrights. Copyright isn't just for paying for the cost of printing and distribution. It's paying for the labor of creation of the work in the first place.

And while some works are distributable and scalable so that lots of people can contribute free labor to a single project (linux, wikipedia, etc), other works aren't quite so distributable and need a single person or small group of people working on it alone (novel, screenplay, music).

cpt.tim, I use lulu.com

Its fun to point to the errors in history but we harbor much fail right here and now

I'm not sure what you're saying here:

two wrongs make a right?

Don't speak ill of the dead?

That we can't criticize the past because we're making mistakes now?

What if we happen to be criticizing the mistakes we're making now? Then is it OK to criticize the mistakes of the past as well?

I'm not sure.

I think that if there is any point at all to free speech, it is to criticize your government when you disagee with its actions. Even if the government has a %51 or more approval rating. Even if you're outnumbered 9 to 1. Bush's approval rating right after 9/11 was 90% and I still vehemently disagreed with about everything he did.

I'm pretty sure that if the right to free speech is limited to only speaking out if the majority of people agree with what you're saying, then that's a pretty useless right.

As far as the bomb goes, most people are talking out their asses, because most people are talking about something with certainty of fact when there is no such thing. No one knows what would have happened if we hadn't dropped the bomb, if we had tried other avenues to victory. Would it be possible that Japan would have surrendered and we could have had the same kind of peace that we had now? Nobody knows the answer to that.

Estimates were for a million dead if we invaded the mainland. But no one has any realistic estimates for how probable invasion was the only alternative to victory.

There's a massive bifurcation going on when discussing this, in that we either (1) drop the bomb or (2) invade and suffer a million dead. And whenever people bifurcate a god-awful complex problem, they're generally full of shit.

And that sort of full-of-shit-ness, that same gross oversimplification, got us into Iraq over their non-involvement with 9/11 and over their non-existent WMD's.

Was the bomb the only way to win the war? I don't know; it's a complicated history. What I do know is that the bifurcation of that complex reality into (1) kill them all or (2) we all die, is the sort of bullshit I'm getting tired of these last few years.

I'm not saying that the bomb wasn't the best of a bunch of shitty choices. I'm saying we can't really know for sure. But what I do know with fair certainty is that when folks reduce a problem to kill/die, when people start acting on one-percent-doctrines, when politicians start worrying about looking good versus doing whats right, then everybody suffers. And I'm fairly certain that those sorts of idiots aren't a local phenomenon to just the last few years.

I'm certain there were people during WW2 who were worried about how they would look if they had spent massive amounts of money to develop the atomic bomb, only to have the bomb not used in the war. I'm certain they would be pushing for it's use, whether its use was truly needed or not.

That doesn't mean the bomb wasn't needed. But it means that its a far more complicated issue than simply kill/die.

cpt.tim,

The original post is about a copyright-maximalist view that as long as someone is willing to pay money for a work, then copyright should cover that work and the money should go to the creator or his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

That isn't arguing for or against the idea that you should be able to have the rights to some work you just created a year ago.

If you want a unanimous ruling on that second question, the internet isn't the place to find it. Most people will say it's infringement. Some people won't. But either way, it's fairly unrelated to the original post.

Legally, if someone were to put your specific work (the 100 copies one) on the net for free, then I believe the court would likely award you a relatively small amount of money, based on the idea that whatever infringement they did, it didn't impact you financially too much.

If someone were to, say, start a website where anyone can upload an MP3 of their favorite song written by someone else, and allow anyone to share those songs with anyone else, and the total membership of the site goes into the tens or hundreds of thousands of poeple, (Napster 1.0)then the courts are much more likely to award a larger sum of money, based on the money the works would have made the rights holders.

If, on the other hand, someone takes your work, modifies it, and somehow sells a hundred thousand copies for ten bucks a copy, and they don't give you any of that money, then the courts will likely award you money based on the money they made, rather than the fact that you didn't make any money with your version.

So, you're asking an absolute question (Is is moral? Is it theft?) when the real world answer in the courts is usually "it's relative". and how relative depends on how much money you made, how much money they made, and a bunch of other factors.

If you didn't make any money and they didn't make any money and the number of people who got copies of your work is relatively small, then any monetary award is going to be "relatively small".

If the question is "SHOULD I be able to control the rights to my work for some period of time?" I believe the majority of people in the country would say yes. But it won't be unanimous. Few things are.

Neener, Whom are you addressing?

Never mind that, I can't even figure out what he's saying.

if someone makes copies of our book and turns it into a pdf and freely distributes it, is that or is that not stealing?

It's copyright infringement. If someone breaks into your apartment and steals your TV, you could report it and the police would take it from there. If someone infringes your copyright, it's mostly up to you to deal with it in civil court. (DMCA violations are criminal violations, and there are other exceptions, so take everything with a grain of salt)

Basically, you'd probably nicely ask the person to stop, if that failed, and if they're making serious money, then get a lawyer and see if a lawsuit is justified. In between, you might use a threat of lawsuit to get the person to stop selling or giving away copies of your work but you might not get money from them for whatever copies they gave away.

This is one of the things that I think becomes obvious BS when you look at copyright as a "bounty" for writers. An offer of payment to whoever is willing to perform the services.

Bounty hunter Bob goes out and catches Evil Eve, gets a $10,000 bounty. A year later, Bob goes to the Mayor and says "Hey, aren't you glad Eve is off the streets?" Mayor says "Sure". Bob says "Well, you can thank me by paying me another $10,000 for catching her."

This repeats and you get infinite rewards and infinite terms. Shakespear's works can still make money, so if one argues that money->copyright then the heirs of shakespear's estate should still be getting paid for the latest Leonardo DiCaprio version.

The even weirder outcome of this is that this argument basically says that copyright should expire only after no one wants the work anymore. And if that's the case, what's the point of having copyright expire in the first place?

Copyright is a bounty, a reward offered by the state for an author's SERVICES of creating new works. Copyright terms can't be based off of VALUE of the work, because intrinsically, any work once created will forever have value.

Public service announcement:
Don't go waving this around in public.

Hey, at least they suspended her.

Tak@196, ok, I think we've veared enough off topic.

Some folks should be made to sit down and watch "Andy Griffith/Mayberry" especially the ones where Andy leaves town and Barney Fife ends up arresting the whole town. There was a good episode where some state police come into town to raid a moonshiner and they want to go in with guns blazing and Andy says something to the effect of "oh, that's Ol' Bill, I'll just go talk to him and tell him he's got to take his moonshine still down".

It's just too bad they didn't have an episode where Barney shot someone else's foot instead of his own.

Gun nuts shouldn't be cops. Common sense, people.

and even residential units

(shudder)

Every police weapons needs one of these mounted on it. And tampering with it is an automatic felony.

You can't fight city hall.

I got a "I want guns and I don't care what cost it puts on the rest of the world" versus common sense.

Most of the people commenting about it on YouTube don't seem to understand this.

s{about it}{};
s{this.}{};

Every escalator I've seen has a kill-switch on both ends.

I hear Khan screaming "Where's the manual override?"

Tastes just like chicken.

Meat spaghetti???

just cut your bacon into strips and call it a night.

you nexus six?

OK, this is getting absurd, this sudden rhyming of words. People don't just burst out into song, the notion is flat out wrong. I've told you at least a million times, no one worth their salt speaks in rhymes. And now this disease has ruined the entire thread, and I can't get this cursed rhyming out of my head.

There was a time, not too long ago, when a talented author such as yourself could expect to be paid for his shorts.

Huh? I just submitted a short to a magazine a couple weeks ago. There seem to be paying markets still.

Isn’t there a zine you can give your work too? Are you a lost lead for Tor? They want to draw people in, give them some free stuff, and promote traffic so they can use the data some how. Such as generating ad revenue. Telling us this on BoingBoing will add to that traffic, of course.

It's like you're just throwing spaghetti and hoping that something hits and something sticks.

Can Tor give any sales figures on their writers whose work has been given away and whose book sales numbers have increased? I might expect them to tell you that number. So, if Cory’s book sales go up 15% after a free short is released, I could see doing it often enough.

When you get something published, you could try it and see for yourself.

If this model of Giving it away for Free really works, why wouldn’t every other Publisher quickly jump on the band wagon?

Do you, like, worship at the alter of the invisible hand of capitalism, or what?

When the first Napster came out, they ended up offering a deal to the music industry, some chunk of money per person or per song or something, and the music industry turned it down. How many years later is it now and iTunes is doing exactly the same thing. Rhapsody charges a flat-fee per month.

But there are still artists you can't access on certain music sites for download, and whether it's because they're afraid of the change, they don't understand the medium, or what, is irrelevant. The point is that the lack of immediate industry adoption doesn't prove it can't make money.

You know like people jumped on when internet stocks were really hot and perceived value was nothing like actual value.

This is more spaghetti.

As for Creative Commons usage: as long as you don’t expect all authors to invite other people to mess with their stuff, then its fine.

I... er... what?

Allowing people to use your art as they see fit in no way invalidates the rights of those who wish to remain in control of what is theirs.

You explaining copyright law to Cory is sort of like you explaining a quadruple bypass to a heart surgeon. Not that I don't find it entertaining in its own way, but just letting you know.

In perpetuity if they so desire.

OK, imagine your explaing that quadruple bypass to heart surgeon, and then imagine that you briefly mention why using leeches to remove "bad blood" is a useful technique in recovery.

It's abundantly clear that you don't understand copyright law or creative commons or publishing.

From page 42:

ATF estimates that trafficking investigations result in the actual seizure of about a quarter of the firearms ultimately shown to be trafficked by the targets. By arresting firearms traffickers, the number of firearms easily available to violent offenders can be reduced.

Which is to say, the "black market" for guns isn't some infinite supply of illegal weapons. That cutting off the source of guns entering the black market combined with law enforcement investigations of crimes removing guns from the black market, the total black market supply of guns can be substantially reduced.

More from that same page:

The National Instant Check System (NICS), launched by the FBI and ATF in 1998, has
resulted in ATF receiving over 130,000 reports of prohibited persons attempting to buy firearms
from FFLs.

Gee, Wally, that doesn't make sense. Everyone knows that gun control laws don't work. Everyone knows you can't keep guns out of the hands of criminals at the source. These are simple immutable facts.

Quoting the opening lines of that report I linked to earlier (it's in the section titled "Foreward by the Director":

http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/pdf/followingthegun_internet.pdf

Virtually every crime gun in the United States starts off as a legal firearm. Unlike narcotics or other contraband, the criminals’ supply of guns does not begin in clandestine factories or with illegal smuggling(*). Crime guns, at least initially, start out in the legal market, identified by a serial number and required documentation. This means that virtually every crime gun leaves some paper trail.

(*) or keebler elves or gun fairies.

for a crackdown on illegal firearms, since the majority of gun crimes are either committed using illegal firearms

BATF statistics say that in a two year period about 80,000 legal firearms were put into the hands of criminals.

OOOOWWWWW!!!!!!

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow

Tak, it's not really clear, what does someone leave under their pillow to get her to deliver a firearm?

Do you honestly think that any criminal gives a damn if the weapon they are about to use to commit a crime is legal or illegal?

Do you think 80,000 legal firearms should simply be sold to criminals?

Do you think 60 years of class 3 background checks with only 4 crimes being committed by legal machine guns in that time period is just an accident? That background checks had nothing to do with it?

Again, do you think the black market gusn are made by magical fairies? Where do you think those guns come from? You think keeping legal guns out of the hands of criminals isn't going to help?

They're actually putting a fair bit of effort into doing something about people who ILLEGALLY own firearms

Great. I'm all for going after black market weapons. But if you don't cut off the source in any reasonable way, if tens of thousands of new guns end up in the hands of criminals every year, you're not going to do anything effective about black market guns.

you completely ignore any and all points that you know you can't effectively fight.

Anecdotes of a woman from 1982 aren't really "points".

If you're against seat belt laws and tell a story about some guy who died in a car accident because his seatbelt was stuck and he couldn't get out of the car before it burned, well, that's one anecdote that ignores the rest of the facts. Statistically, seatbelts save lives.

The only "points" I've seen thus far are anecdotes and fear mongering.

I'm done bashing my head against the wall of your inconsistent and inane logic.

I'm sorry if overwhelming statistics confuse you.

Class 3 weapon background checks have prevented legal machine guns from being sold to criminals for over 60 years.

far less restrictive gun laws have allowed 80,000 legal guns to end up in the hands of criminals over the course of a couple years.

The "inane" logic is that strict background checks and such would help cut off the flood of legal weapons entering the black market every year.

Wow. That's like, rocket science or something.

Would you have to do something about the existing ILLEGAL weapons? Sure, but unless we cut off the SOURCE of those black market weapons, then who is spouting off inane logic?

Yes, lets put some foam on this fire that's burning out of control, but, oh, don't bother turning off that hose that's dumping all that gasoline into the fire. We'll just get more foam. I'm sure it'll be fine.

The entire basis for your argument is that, fundamentally, black market guns come from the Keebler elves. That laws meant to keep new guns from entering teh black market wouldn't be effective, because, because, because black market guns come from magic fairies.

You can't just arbitrarily cut out the illegal weapons. It's called gun CONTROL for a reason

Sure I can. The point of legal class three weapons statistics is that it proves that gun control laws requiring strict background checks pretty much guarantee that no criminals will get a legal machine gun.

That is one of the biggest aspect of gun control laws: background checks, waiting periods, and so on, to make sure no one gets a legal gun to use it in a crime.

And, hey, look at that, the government works. All the background checks it ran on Class 3 weapons WORKED. Not a single person was approved who turned out to be a criminal. (Four over the course of 60 years is pretty damn good).

But you can't acknowledge the government did it right there. You can't acknowledge that background checks actually worked at filtering out people who shouldn't have machine guns.

Why?

Because the entire basis for you owning a stockpile of weapons is (1) to defend yourself from criminals BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT CANT PROTECT YOU FROM CRIMINALS and (2) to overthrow a tyrannical government BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT CAN"T BE TRUSTED.

So, when "The government did something right" is shown by massive statistics over a sixty-year period, what do you do?

Blow a gasket. You can't even comprehend the facts for what they are and are arguing some nonsense about "ignoring the illegal weapons".

Anyone who looks at those numbers for class 3 firearms over the course of 60 years, anyone who isn't rabidly afraid of the government I mean, would say that the restrictions on Class 3 firearms, the background checks, all that, WORKED. They would say THE GOVERNMENT WORKED, it kept legal machine guns from ending up in the hands of criminals.

You? No. Not you. You can't say "class 3 background checks prevented legal machine guns from ending up in the hands of criminals". It goes against everything you believe in about how horrible, inept, and untrustworthy the government is. They CAN"T do something like this right. They just CAN"T.

so long as there exists a black market that is well supplied by weapons the laws aren't CONTROLLING anything except a law abiding citizen's ability to legally purchase the weapon.

Where in God's name do you think black market guns comes from? Some magical firearm fairy? Some keebler elves hiding up in a cave with a bunch of cnc machining tools?

Oh, wait, hey, guess what? EIGHTY THOUSAND LEGAL FIREARMS ended up in the hands of criminals in a two year period. Half of them sold directly to the criminal by a licensed dealer.

if they're so easy to get on the black market, WHY ARE CRIMINALS BUYING THEM THROUGH LEGAL CHANNELS? BY THE TRUCK LOAD? STRAIGHT FROM A DEALER?

The idea of gun control laws is to throttle off this river of weapons flowing into the hands of criminals from the source. Then combine that with law enforcement to reduce the number of black market weapons in circulation.

If we applied the approach of Class 3 weapons, using extensive background checks to make sure no one purchased a weapon that would use it for criminal purposes, if we tracked the firearms so that they don't just disappear without a new background checked owner, then we could throttle off the source of black market guns.

Won't stop it, but sure as hell put a dent in 80,000 weapons flooding teh black market in over a year. And with 30,000 gun deaths a year, it seems worth it.

It's not the gunshow that you have a problem with, it's the private transfers.

Statistically, the biggest source of legal firearms being put into the hands of criminals is through licensed dealers. Almost 40k. After that, three different sources tie at around 20k, gun shows, straw purchases from a licensed seller, and unlicensed sellers.

What I have a problem with is the knuckleheads who see those numbers and insist that nothing can be done to stop it from a gun control, gun law, basis, the idiots who claim the only valid response to all these weapons pouring into the hands of criminals year after year, is for everyone else to buy guns too to defend themselves with.

Yeah. That's logic for you.

Strip away all the bullshit and what you're left with is an assertion that laws can't stop criminals from getting guns. but statistics show machine guns restrictions have made sure that only 4 legal machine guns have ended up in the hands of someone who uses them in a crime, in the thirty years that the restrictions have been in place.

And yet, we can't do anything to restrict who buys a gun, idiots will say, because gun control doesn't work. Instead, buy a gun to defend yourself, the idiots say, that's their "solution".

how did they come up with those statistics?

This is pure bullshit. I quote BATF statistics, and because you don't like them, you question their validity without a shred of evidence.

Well, if you're only response to facts you don't like is "I disbelieve", then I guess we're done having any sort of reality based discussion, because that nonsense only works on other koolaid drinkers.

if your assertion is true

Some gun facts are here:
http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/pdf/followingthegun_internet.pdf

page 8: july 1996 to december 1998, about 84,000 firearms were converted from legal to illegal status.

page 23 explains who were the sources of those diversions of firearms from legal to illegal:

licensed dealer, including pawn broker: 40,365
gun show, flea market: 25,000
straw purchases (someone buys for someone else): 25,000
unlicensed seller: 22,000
stolen from licensed dealer: 6,000
stolen from residence: 3,000

But see how much the more crazed gun nuts will scream bloody murder if you talk about cracking down on illegal sales at gun shows. Not the gun shows, think of the poor defenseless children, they'll howl. Think of the four women in the last thirty years who tried to get a gun but the waiting period got them killed. We cannot restrict gun shows in case it restricts a single defenseless woman. insert gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

Meanwhile, gun shows in a year and a half period ended up beign the source of TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND LEGAL WEAPONS beign put in the hands of criminals and used for criminal activity. Note these are just the weapons just captured from crimes and such. This doesn't include all the guns that got leaked during this time but haven't been recovered.

You want to talk to me about statistics? There's your statistics right there. And they point directly to somethign that gun control advocates have been trying to restrict for a few years now: Gun shows. Twenty-five thousand weapons converted into illegal uses in an 18 month period.

Now, how much have the true-blue gun nuts HOWLED at the mere mention of putting more restrictions on gun shows? Screamed bloody murder? You want to talk about "if my assertion is true"??? Give me a break.

Meanwhile, back to machine guns, according to this highly pro-gun website:
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html

In 1995 there were over 240,000 machine guns registered with the BATF. About half are owned by civilians and the other half by police departments and other governmental agencies.

Also, from that same website, they list FOUR homicides committed with legally owned machine guns during the entire period from 1934 to 1992.

To become a registered machine gun owner, a complete FBI background investigation is conducted, checking for any criminal history or tendencies toward violence, and an application must be submitted to the BATF including two sets of fingerprints, a recent photo, and the signature of a chief law enforcement officer with jurisdiction in the applicant's residence.

Now, we can play games till the cows come home on this, but anyone who looks at all those numbers and all those facts, and insists that the stringent requirements to legally own a machine gun (the background check, the fingerprints, the photo, and signature of a local law enforcement officer) have nothing to do with the total lack of criminal activity from these legal owners, anyone who wants to play that game is smoking crack.

You've got a situation like a gun show where there are few restrictions and little oversight and little accounting of gun sales, and then you've got Class 3 firearms where every single transfer has to go through a very rigid process.

Gun shows leaked TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND guns into criminal hands in just over a year.

A total of FOUR legal class 3 machine guns have been used in homicides in a six-decade period.

Wow. No pattern there, huh?

What does it take to look at those numbers and FAIL to make a correlation between strict background checks and strict accounting -> guns stay out of criminal's hands, verus loosey-goosey gun show rules -> The biggest source in the nation of legal weapons being sold to criminals?

What does it take to be able to stare those blatantly obvious numbers in the face and shrug: Gosh. Hyuck! Hyuck! I just don't see a connection. Durrr.

Tell me again about the woman killed back in 1982 because of a two-week waiting period and I'll tell you about 84,000 legal weapons that made their way into criminal hands in a year and a half, and those weapons all being recovered by police in various criminal investigations.

And you wanna play "If my assertion is true" games?????

Who cares how many crimes are committed by legally owned firearms

Uh, of the many thousands of homocides committed in the US every year, some of them are committed by someone who had legally purchased the weapon.

But of all those homocides, none of them were committed by the legal owner of a legally purchased class 3 weapon.

therefore, restrictions on class 3 weapons work at keeping them out of the hands out of people who would commit crimes with them. That's the point of gun control laws, making sure the only people who can legally purchase a weapon are people who aren't going to use them for criminal activities.

The crimes committed with class 3 weapons involve stolen weapons or illegally modified semi-autos. None of the people legally cleared to purchase class 3 firearms have committed a crime with those weapons. Therefore, restrictions work.

How many crimes have been committed using a legally registered machine gun (or other class 3 weapon) by its legal owner? my understanding is that the answer is either none or really close to none. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this national statistic.

For those keeping score at home, and since no one wants to answer it, this pretty much proves that gun control laws can be implemented in a way such that they allow people to have firearms but the restrictions can help prevent those firearms from getting into the hands of criminals.

The number of crimes committed with legally owned class 3 firearms by their legal owners is statistically approaching zero. Hey, guess what, the gun control laws worked.

Georgia House of Representatives - 1995/1996 Sessions... (1) In 1991, Bonnie Elmasri of Wisconsin (2) In 1990, Catherine Latta of North Carolina

Wow. two examples... in a five year period... that were in other states.

Yeah, that so outweighs the 30,000 people killed every year in the US.

What we have here is standard operating conspiracy theory un-logic. two anecdotes from twenty years ago suddenly outweighs thirty thousand deaths that happen in a year... every year... year after year...

It's like the idiot who finds the story about someone who died in a car fire because he couldn't unhook his seatbelt, and therefore we shouldn't wear seatbelts and seatbelt laws must be a conspiracy by the government to kill everyone.

We're in the borderline crazy-psycho territory now.

Here's a question for all the folks out there:

How many crimes have been committed using a legally registered machine gun (or other class 3 weapon) by its legal owner?

my understanding is that the answer is either none or really close to none. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this national statistic.

Oh, and as a thought about your "sources"

Your scare quotes don't scare me.

The second link points to a fact of history. A judge granted a crazy woman a restraining order againts David Letterman. That same crazy woman shouldn't own a gun, and if a two week waiting period and background check stops her, good.

The first link was used to guesstimate the number of restraining orders in teh US in a year. Their bias is irrelevant to the numbers. If you can find different numbers, I'm all ears. My point was that the number of restraining orders are huge compared to the number of people killed by the person they had the restraining order against.

That was the point of your emotional pleading about women killed by men they had a restraining order against, wasn't it? That they would all die if they had to wait two weeks for a background check for a gun. That restraining orders don't work, and that all these women will die if they have to wait two weeks.

Well, theres a million restraining orders signed every year in the US, and the vast majority of those people don't need personal firepower to make sure the restraining order isn't violated.

You're invocation of "women who are killed because the state failed to protect them and they need personal firearms and can't wait or they'll die" is bogus. It's a nice campfire story, but complete fantasy when one takes a quick look at the numbers.

Of course, the whole basis for your argument for stockpiling weapos is that the government can't be trusted, either to protect you from criminals, or to impose tyranny on you in some post-apocalyptic world. So, when you invoke the women-killed-because-the-government-couldn't-protect-them story, it plays right into your assumptiosn, and you don't feel the need to prove it or present any sort of numbers.

But the numbers say you are out to lunch, and that arguing that we can't have a two-week waiting period because of women-killed-after-restraining-order-fails is bogus.

Not to mention, your fantasy involves a million people filing restraining orders and going out and purchasing their first firearm, ever, and you posit this fantasy as if there would be no negative consequences from that many people going out and buying a firearm, with absolutely no training or experience, and having to use it in a deadly-force situation the next day without any negative consequences that would come from a million untrained weapons-users and whatever sort of situation needed a restraining order.

Fine, don't prove it, DISPROVE it!

Sorry, that isn't how it works. Whowever makes the assertion has to prove it. Whoever asserts that "A 2 week waiting period and/or registration to buy a LEGAL handgun would accomplish about as much as the complete and total prohibition against some drugs" has to prove it. Otherwise, it's nothing but emotive pleading (oooh, drug prohibition) followed by shiftign the burden of proof.

If someone asserts something ludicrous, then fails to prove it in any way, then calling it ludicrous and unproven is fair game. And I don't have to DISPROVE it if it hasn't been PROVEN in the first place.

If executed properly, and accurately, probably not much. However, hmmmm let me think what was the last list that comes to mind that the federal government got involved in. Oh, that's right, the "Do Not Fly" list. The same government that can't stop drugs and drug violence is also the same government that can put congressmen and children on a list meant to catch terrorists and it CAN'T get them off.

Yes, yes, more of the "the government can't do anything right, so we can't trust them to do gun control, we can't trust them to police the criminals, and we can't trust them to do their jobs, therefore I have to".

Just out of curiosity, how is it the government is made of people who can't be trusted to suck an egg correctly, but people who aren't in government are somehow perfect and wise and intelligent and will never abuse the power and technology and anything else they can get their hands on?

The point of gun control is that some people out there can't be trusted with a rocket launcher and so it should be made into a class III weapon requiring a federal firearms license and so on. As long as your arguments forward the notion that the government can be no better than a bunch of IQ50 ijiots, but that every single private citizen could certainly be trusted to not do anything that would ever require a legal restriction on their firearms, then I think we're done with the logical arguments and we're into the fear mongering and conspiracy theories.

Me, I think people are imperfect and I support the idea of government beign split up, checks and balances put into place, various ways to prevent an individual from abusing their power.

And that very same view of imperfect people tells me that we should likewise have some restrictions on firearms so some other idiot doesn't abuse the power he gets from having an RPG in his basement.

this site says the number of restraining orders in the US is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0 million a year. Also, this site would seem to indicate that not every woman who files a restraining order against someone should be issued a gun that same day just because she wants one.

OK, logical arguments have completely left this thread. Googling "restraining order killed women" isn't the same as proving "two-week waiting period for gun period killed woman"

If a person is completely untrained with a firearm, then about the worst thing they can do is buy a gun and expect to use it properly in a life and death situation in the next couple days.

And how many restraining orders are filed every year? And how many of the people who filed that restraining order were killed every year? Most importantly, how many of those killed had tried to get a gun but had to wait two weeks and were killed before the two-week period was up?

A 2 week waiting period and/or registration to buy a LEGAL handgun would accomplish about as much as the complete and total prohibition against some drugs has

The ludicrousness of this statement is simply too much. It's a nice and convenient handwave, but it's so broad and sweeping that it's impossible to seriously attempt to prove in any meaningful way.

And yet you present it as unquestionable truth, and as the opening truth upon which you base your massive post on.

Meanwhile, the simple fact is that a two-week waiting period would harm you almost nothing. Yet you argue VEHEMENTLY against it, which says to me, that you're not basing your judgement on the cost versus the benefits of any particular gun control measure. Rather, you OPPOSE ANY AND ALL gun control measures NO MATTER HOW SMALL, no matter if they actually impede whatever benefit you get from having firearms.

Simple question for you: Would a two-week waiting period harm YOU in any measurable way?

Simple question number two: Is there ANY gun control restriction that you would agree with?

You already posted your treatise as to why you oppose the horrible crushing oppression that is a "two week waiting period". If you oppose that so vehemently, then I assume that you can't possibly agree to any restrictions in any way.

Is there no gun restriction that doesn't massively oppress you that you must resist it with every fiber of your being?

29,338 firearms deaths, but 17,000 were suicides,

Leaving over ten thousand dead every year, about one-third of the total deaths from automobiles every year.

Cars are waaaay more than three times beneficial to America as a whole than firearms are. So, it seems to me that the natioanal cost of firearms (number of gun deaths plus total of gun-related crime) far overshadows the national benefit of firearms, especially when comparing the national cost of automobiles (number of auto deaths and so on) to the national benefit of automobiles.

Therefore, gun control laws seem perfectly reasonable, as a way of attempting to bring the cost more in proportion to the benefit. and as we've already agreed, we can restrict the right to bear arms without being unconstitutional, so, restrict them.

People who want to kill themselves use whatever method available

Actually, that's not true. Men generally (60%) use a firearm to commit suicide. Women generally (40%) use drug overdoses. in 2005, 26,000 men committed suicide, and about 7.000 women committed suicide. So, I think one could reasonably predict that lack of access to firearms would at least reduce the number of some suicides.

The thing is that you assume suicide is rational, it isn't.

A two-week waiting period might be long enough that someone buying a gun to commit suicide might end up seeking help instead (or someone might notice the guy is suicidal and call help for him). Either way, the harm that a two-week waiting period would inflict on the nation as a whole seems pretty miniscule, and the potential benefit seems to far outweigh it.

Seriously, when you go buy a gun, is it absolutely imperitive that you take it home the day you decide you want to go to the store? Will two weeks kill you? That's not a rhetorical question, because NOT having a waiting period might literally end up killing someone. Either by suicide, or someone who bought a gun in anger and wants to go use it against his ex-girlfriend who he just caught cheating on him.

Since the cost of guns in proportion to the benefit of guns seems to be much higher as compared to the cost of automobiles in propotion to the benefit of automobiles, it seems reasonable to try to attempt to reduce the cost that the nation as a whole must bear as a result of individuals having guns.

And since, for example, the cost of a two week waiting period seems miniscule compared to the potential benefit that could occur if a two-week waiting period were to literally save someone's life, can you seriously tell me you cannot stand to have a waiting period to buy a gun because of your interpretation of the second amendment?

A conspiracy theory is impossible to disprove. Evidence to disprove any specific assertions made by the conspiracy theory can always be neutralized by expanding the conspiracy to include the just submitted evidence.

No matter what you come up with, if someone is attached to the conspiracy theory, then they will always find a way to disprove the facts and leave room for their theory.

Which is the reverse of normal logical arguments. normally, whoever makes the assertion must prove it. And a conspiracy theory is an assertion of a conspiracy. But folks making conspiracy assertions never prove it, they only seed enough doubt to satisfy their minds.

Once they have a "truth" based on nothing but doubts, then it is quite easy to expand the doubts anytime anyone tries to prove the conspiracy wrong. They want to believe.

So if guns are equally as beneficial as cars, they can kill at least 42,500 people a year.

OK, fine. quoting this: http://www.neahin.org/programs/schoolsafety/gunsafety/statistics.htm

:: Every day, more than 80 Americans die from gun violence.

80*365=29,000 people killed every year.

This lines up with some other estimates I found on other sites. about 30k people killed every year by guns

that's about 3/4 of car deaths a year.

I tried to find some statistics on the number of guns in teh US, but that's pretty fuzzy. In one decade, about 50 million guns were manufactured or imported.

According to the BTS, there are about 135 million cars in the US as of 2006.

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html

The positive affect of automobiles on the economy is mind bogglingly huge that I'm not even going to go into it, other than to say, I'd be out of work if it weren't for my car, and the ability to drive a non-walkable distance every day, and so would a lot of other people.

Direct positive effects of guns per year? (No, "feel good" isn't a positive in any measurable way)

Takuan,

How many deaths is the price of unlimited guns? One? Ten? One hundred? One thousand? Ten thousand? How much are guns worth? 300,000,000?

This sort of drama really isn't helping. Not everyone arguing for guns are arguing for unlimited guns.

What is the acceptable human sacrifice for unlimited arrows?

Look, this is getting seriously stupid. There isn't a problem with unlimited arrows causing the deaths of massive numbers of people. But as it happens, some states do indeed have restrictions on bows and arrows, some don't allow possession of crossbows, and such and so on. Has anyone died from a gun permit requirement?

And if sixty foot tall trebuchets hurling five ton stones were a common problem throughout the land, causing the deaths of thousands of people every year, then I'd support some sort of permit process or something for trebuchets.

And if trebuchet owners want to howl in protest of the evils of trebuchet-permits, then let them howl.

Guns don't make us barbarians.

Guns don't STOP a person from becoming a barbarian either.

But gawd forbid there's a two-week waiting period, a serious background check, and various other basic requirements for weapon owners, to help separate the barbarians from the nonbarbarians.

You'll take my trebuchet when you pry it from my cold-dead hands!!!!

in the liberal utopia that is/was New Orleans, they decided that only the Gov't should have guns, but as it turns out, some of the police weren't that honorable in those trying times..

Yeah, that was one terrible episode of gun-confiscating, people-rounding-upping-and-shooting, that I've seen in a while.

They even made people leave a national disaster area.

the only reason to take them from law abiding people is so that they can then round up and shoot (them)

Like when they tell you you can't have a firearm on a passenger airliner. All that rounding up and shooting going on in all these airports every day. That's the only reason.

Owning a gun makes you very conscious of the implications of using it.

No. It doesn't. Guns don't come with a mind-meld technology that forces anyone to consider any of the implications of the use of deadly force. They don't even come with the technology to keep you from shooting yourself while you're cleaning it. Guns don't come with anything that force you to be conscious of what you're doing.

At all.

That is the point.

If guns actually did that, then gun control wouldn't be an issue because all those people who are NOT conscious of the implications of killing another human being suddenly would be.

But while you'd probably be one to argue that "guns don't kill people, people do", here you are making a completely opposite argument that guns somehow magically imbue their owners with some special insight into the moral implications of killing.

Guns aren't conscious of moral implications.
And some people aren't either.

May first is “Remember why we never ever ever let the government take away our firearms

What is that?
National Strawman Argument day?
National Slippery Slope day?
National Bifurcation day?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=J7cWBrGAIcc

Katrina was mostly meant as an example of a "catastrophic event" where someone with a firearm could protect and provide for themselves in the event that evacuation was impossible or unavailable.

Most people killed during Katrina were killed by the weather. Most reports of rampant murdering going on in New Orleans was grossly overblown.

No one was using firearms in New Orleans to go hunting and provide for themselves. The only providing was done by scavenging stores for food.

The right to bear arms isn't grounded on the idea of a worst case doomsday catastrophe scenario. If we argue all of our rights, and the design of government itself, from the point of view of worst-case doomsday scenarios, then I think we'd be coming to some very strange and very wrong conclusions.

dragonvpm@131: in the US the answer is you debate the issue and then whoever makes the rules decides what is restricted and not everyone is happy with it

My point being that even though not everyone is going to be happy with it, it doesn't neccessarily mean it's unconsititional, or if you want to get down to tacks, it doesn't mean it's wrong.

So, I'm neither for unfettered access to guns nor a complete outlawing of guns. I'm somewhere in between. Odds are, if I were to compare notes with any individual, our stances on guns would be different in some way. multiply that by a couple hundred million people, and you're not going to get anything that will have unanimous agreement.

And yet, when discussing gun control, from the point of view of "I support some restrictions, and don't think they would be unconstitutional", I get a little tired of alarmists turning it into me trying to confiscate their guns. I'm just a little tired of attitudes like message #2 in this thread. I'm a little tired of the "cold dead hands" response to anything relating to gun control.

The answer to "how do we decide when we dont' agree" is "rule of law" and it means a complex, multi-layered, and messy process. And it'd be nice if I could watch a discussion about gun control without it turning into gross overly simlified black and white representations.

you know?

This actually happened around the corner from my parents.

ya know, a bunch of terrorists hijacked some planes a few years back. Just because that actually happened doesn't mean arming every citizen will improve things.

Put another way, your anecdotal evidence of the existence of a tragedy does nothing to prove the validity of your proposed solution to that tragedy.

dragonvpm@120: Some thoughts on the gun control thing.

My question @115 is open for your answer.

If we acknowledge the second ammendment can be restricted so that people are not allowed to carry firearms on airlines, then we acknowledge the second ammendment can be restricted, and those restrictions can be consititutional.

Given that, how do we decide what restriction are to be allowed? How do we resolve those restrictions when we disagree?

@112: Some restrictions yes

So, how do "We the People" decide which restrictions are allowable and which are not?

Because the RTBA is not an absolute right.

So, we can regulate and restrict the right to bear arms and still be constitutional? We can say "No guns on planes", end of story, and it's constititutional?

Can someone explain to me why my right to bear arms can be completely thrown out the window just because I'm getting on a passenger airliner?

You'd think they'd want some gun-toting civilians around in case some crazy terrorists manage to sneak in a tube of toothpaste that when combined with a bottle of aftershave turns into an aerosol weapon.

Why should I be punished because of other people's mistakes? It's not right.

news flash: Gun nut kills three people yesterday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080801/ap_on_re_us/wisconsin_shooting

Feingold, sic 'em!

Could the same pilot do the same tricks in another helicopter with a different fuselage?

It's not the fuselage, it's the rotor blades and the rotor hub that are the weak points.

I think a normal civilian helo might be rated to plus a couple gees positive and maybe minus one gee or less negative. Any more than that, and rotors brake or the rotor hub itself fails.

And if they don't break, they might flap enough that they slam into the tail boom and cut your tail rotor off. Which is another definition of "very bad things".

So, to do aeorbatics in a chopper, you'd need some super strong, super stiff rotor blades, and a super strong rotor hub and assembly to keep the thing in the air.

In the future, can i be insulted with something other then fascist?

Depends. If in the future there is a debate about the best solution to fighting some terrorist organization who previously attacked the US, will you want to stomp someone, anyone, or will you consider RAND's findings above?

How you answer that question also answers your question.

the only FAA-certified stunt helicopter pilot

Er, it's been years since I've flown, fixed or rotor, but I don't think they have a FAA certification for aeorbatics. Maybe an FAA certification as an aerobatic instructor?

Or is "stunt" some qualification I just hadn't heard of before? Anyone current on their rating?

I see no need for conspiracies to explain the 9/11 attacks.

bin Laden fought the Soviets in Afghanistan for several years. When the Sovs finally pull out in 1989, bin laden says "the credit goes to God, Praise and Glory be to Him, and the Mujahidin in Afghanistan". He sees it as proof that his holy warriors as capable of taking down a superpower.

When the US stations military forces in Saudia Arabia in 1990, in preparation for kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, bin Laden approaches the Saudi king and tells him to expell the US forces and that al Queda will protect saudi arabia from secular iraq. The king declines the offer. US invades Kuwait in 1991. bin Laden becomes publically critical of the Saudi government, and is forced to flee the country.

four years later, Feb 1993, al queda blows up a truck bomb in the world trade center.

The 11-sept-2001 was a continuation of those attacks.

bin laden is a religious extremist who thinks if he takes down the superpowers that somehow his version of the perfect (extremist religious) world will become possible. There is nothing about 9/11 that requires a conspiracy involving the US. One simply has to look at bin laden's history, his actions.

After 9/11 i just really wanted the US to stomp on someone.

OK, now, note the title of this thread: "To destroy Al Qaeda, we must end the war on terror: Rand Corporation".

The question isn't whether it felt good to stomp on someone after getting attacked, the question is whether stomping on someone, anyone, just because you wanted to, is a good way to win the war on terror and stop al queda and others from launching other attacks.

What the RAND corporation is saying is that stomping on someone won't normally stop terrorism. What they're saying is that stomping on someone, might, in the long run, actually harm you and everyone around you.

As for the 9/11 conspiracies, and in answer to your question, I don't believe most of them. But that's irrelevant to the topic of the thread.

Iraq was a good choice because Sadaam and his sons were just total bastards that deserved to die, IMO.

About one million Iraq civilians died as a direct outcome of US-enforced economic sanctions against Iraq. Even the most right-wing pundits will acknowledge at least half a million civilian deaths as a direct result of US sanctions. About half of those who died were children. And if you don't care for Iraqi civilians, why is Saddam a bastard other than for the civilians he killed?

180,000 American troops were permanently disabled during the first gulf war. So far, about 150,000 American troops have been permanently disabled during the Iraq war starting in 2003. That's a third of a million americans permanently disabled to kill Saddam.

And American weapons inspectors said that Saddam had essentially disarmed his WMD program since 1998. US inspectors were saying that in 2000. Blix was saying that in Feb 2003 before the invasion.

Was that a "good choice"?

Or was your desire (and a good chunk of America's desire) to "stomp on someone" after 9/11 clouding your judgement of what was and was not a good choice?

That is the point of what the Rand Corporation is saying. It isn't what you want or what makes you feels good in the moment that is goign to be the best long term solution for a diffuse international problem. If you really want to talk about what is the "good choice", then they're showing you the data. And the data says "stomping on" makes it worse.

choking down my own self-loathing. It often tastes like horseradish, seaweed, soy sauce and saki.

My self loathing tastes like overcooked spinach. I wish I could get a little soy sauce in there to give it some flavor...

bamn, here's a different thought experiment for you. Let's assume that 9/11 was the work of al queda terrorists and the US was caught with its pants down.

Do you think invading Iraq is a good way to defeat al quada? When people argued against invading Iraq in response to 9/11, did you call them soft on terrorism? When people suggest that occupying a country by force until the populace loves us might be a misuse of US military manpower and US taxpayer money, do you think it is accurate to accuse them of having their head up their ass?

Whether 9/11 was a terrorist attack or a conspiracy is irrelevant to whether or not you have an infatuation with military power. If you think every problem can be solved with sufficient application of military force, that the best solution to any problem is force, then the point of the RAND study is that you, bamn, are wrong in that view.

I was trying to find a clip where Sigourney Weaver (and Rick Moranis) gets transformed into a demon dog beast that looks similar to the photo of the thing on teh beach, and then Bill Murray turns to his buddies and says something like, "OK, so, she's a dog". But YouTube didn't seem to have it.

the reason I put the word "parent" in quotes is simple - until you have a child, you aren't a parent.

Oy. What you said was not that, but this:

Adoption of orphans by gay "parents" is a states rights issue

And defending the use of scare quotes based on your own internal assumptions doesn't fly. If you want to argue from a strictly biological point of view, being gay doesn't mean you can't get pregnant. But you assume no one who is gay and adopting couldn't possibly already have children.

Would you equally assume that a hetero couple who is adopting also does not have any children of their own?

If you made that assumption, and people nailed you on it, would you defend it with weird legalisms and language tricks?

Were the debate to be about some adoption restriction around some other subject besides orientation, for example an age restriction, would you resort to scare quotes when talking about potential adoptive "parents" being too old?

If someone pointed out that old parents might already have biological children and therefore your use of scare quoted "parents" is off, would you keep pushing it?

mdhatter@145: Takuan isn't depressing, he's VERY DEPRESSING

I'm getting the impression that depression isn't something Takuan does, but something he is.

Takuan@139: Little "mosquito bites" are always explained away.

Always? from your link @130.

"Riggs was later suspended for 10 days without pay after the IA investigation concluded that he'd used excessive force and failed to make a use-of-force report. He resigned about six months after the incident."

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=16m1fRoZkiY

ohmaar@186: pull our troops before they could get the job done.

Gambling addicts will argue if they could just be allowed to play one more hand, they could win back everything they've lost and come out with a profit. And if you forcibly remove them from the table, they'll blame you for their losses.

And just because they blame you for their losses, doesn't mean they're right. It means they're too stupid to do basic math.

I for one am glad our president is too stupid

Well, I agree he's dumber than dirt, but I'm not quite as happy about that as you.

Just when you think were making some progress,

We're making progress? We keep killing the Number-Two al Queda leader every month for the last six years or so. Six more months and we get a group discount.

just when you think people might have some idea of what terrorism is all about and what should be done

What is terrorism all about?

What should be done?

While we may be one of the most militarized nations since Sparta

Sparta was an oligarchy, i.e. King Leonides. Athens was ruled by a tyrant, Hippias. When Athens overthrew Hippias, an athenian aristrocrat, Isagoras, asked Sparta to install him as the new Athenian tyrant. They do. By force. The Athenians revolt against Isagoras and he is banished. Another athenian is given power and he creates a pseudo democracy where about 1/10th of athenians will get to vote.

When Sparta loses the battle of thermopolae 490 BC, their plan is to fall back to the ismith of corinth, defend sparta, and allow athens to fall. The athenian navy is what defeated the persian army and sent them packing home.

The Athenian empire begins and grows. Sparta forms the Peloponesian League as a counter to athenian influence. By 430 BC, the athenians and spartans are fighting each other in the Pelloponesian war. Athens is defeated and the entire area is thrown into economic ruin. The war marks the end of the golden era of greece.

Which is to say, if you want to compare us to Sparta, that's only a compliment if you look at a tiny sliver of history without any additional context. Sparta was a tyranny ruled by kings, was fighting against democratic athens when it suited them and supported athens when it suited them, and the pelloponesian war they brought upon the area ruined Sparta, Athens, and all of Greece.

The hovering stability looks no worse than that of a small, two-seat helicopter. When you hover something really small, the best way to describe it is that it's like standing on top of a three-foot diameter ball, trying to keep your balance. You're always making minor corrections.

Nobody's going to be flying this to work, even if it flies. Unless they live and work far outside any city and any controlled airspaces, and unless they live and work in some place that is relatively low population density. You can't just take off or land anywhere you want. If it's an ultralight, you can never enter controlled airspace. Just because it's an ultralight doesn't mean the FAA doesn't have restrictions on them.

And if it's a licensed aircraft, you need to keep clear of any building or structure to a five hundred foot radius from your aircraft. No one is going to be taking off in this in their suburban back yard and flying into the city with it. It's waaaaayy too noisy.

Is our reaction too much? again, arguable.

Our response to 9/11 was swift and powerful and completely destroyed the wrong target. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Still doesn't. Never did. Never will.

Was that too much? Hell yes.

And when you get a military force occupying a land against the people's wills, and more and more of those people are willing to fight the occupiers, do you know what you get?

The Boston Massacre.

Back in 1770, British troops were occupying a British colony in Massachusettes, trying to protect the loyalists from the colonial resistance to British rule, especially the Townshend Acts which were unpopular taxes in the colonies.

An argument over whether a british officer owed a Boston wigmaker some money expanded into a larger standoff with gawkers and uninvolved spectators. Some kids threw snowballs, and a british solder, Private White, responded by hitting the wigmaker in the side of the head with a musket. Another British officer saw this and sent in several more British soldiers with fixed bayonets intending to relieve White and extract him. The mob grew and circled around Private White, until there were 300 or 400 colonists in a semicircle around White and about 12 British soldiers with bayonets.

At this point, the colonists were goading the British to fire, and throwing snowballs and rocks at the troops. Someone threw a club at one British solder, Private Montgomery, and knocked him over. When he got up, Montgomery shouted "Fire" as he shot his musket into the crowd. After a pause, the troops fired into the civilians, hitting eleven people. Three died instantly, two died days later, the rest wounded.

250 years later, that moment is still remembered in the US as a moment that showed the British use of force in the colonies as doing nothing but galvanizing the colonists against the British.

How many Boston Massacres have we had in Iraq? Do you think if we have a bunch more, it'll make things better?

The point isn't whether we imagined 9/11 or not. The point is whether military invasion of an uninvolved, sovereign nation is the best response to 9/11. The poitn is that any military operation involving an occupation in foreign lands among increasingly hostile civilians is neccessarily going to create Boston Massacre-like incidents. The point is the longer we stay, the more of those types of incidents we create.

Five civilians. That's all it was. Five colonists who were killed by the British. ANd they were part of an unruly mob goading and harrassing the British troops. And yet, we remember it 250 years later as an example of how horrible the occupying British were and how right our fight for independence was.

You think we're the only people who think that way? Do you think if we switch uniforms, and we're the occupiers and the Iraqi civlians are throwing rocks and US troops fire and kill five civilians, you think that those left alive won't see it the same way we saw the Boston Massacre?

bshock, the guy they're holding is a reporter, not an employee of the company that built the thing. If you want to see some untethered flying, look here

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/29/1230228.aspx

And it's an ultralight, which means it's about as important as ultralights are. Even if some guy develops a rocket belt that only weighs 20 pounds and has five hours of flight time, it'll still be an ultralight, and have a bagillion restrictions that come with ultralights.

you know, someday this farm is gonna end...

I hate the smell of chickens in the morning. Smells like chicken poop.

And that stuff reeeeeks!

Sethum: Vtol ducted rotor belts are a technology limited by thrust/stability requirements

belts?

There's a chart somewhere in aeordynamics 101 that shows the overall efficiency of an engine versus the speed at which the engine is flying. Props are the most efficient thing for the hundred mile an hour deal. Get a couple hundred, and you start looking at turbofans. Faster yet, and it's turbojets. Above that, it was ... something. And above that it was crazy tech like ramjets and similar oddities.

This was just the basic aerodynamic efficiency of producing thrust. So, if you want to move slowly, like hover, you're best off with something like a big honking rotor. These guys must have figured out a way to get a light enough piston engine with enough power to spin a ducted fan fast enough to overcome the fact that it won't be as efficient as a big rotor. A turbojet will be even harder. The smaller you get, the less efficient it is, so I think the only way to generate enough lift for hover is to generate even more so that you overcome the inefficiencies inherent in the system.

So, no, they probably won't make ducted fans smaller. If anything, they'll figure out a way to make turbojets more powerful so they can generate enough power that even with all the inefficiencies, there is still enough power to hover.

ackpht: when the power goes out, so does your lift.

Yeah, that has me worried just a bit. Balistic chutes work at pretty low altitudes, but still. The moller design (paper design as far as I know) had something like 8 engines and 8 fans, or something. Lots of redundancy, with the idea that you could lose any one engine/fan whatever, and still have enough for a controlled landing. The moller beast isn't available yet, though, and I don't think it's flying either. Haven't followed it for a while. Gave up on it long ago.

Did you order the ducted fan?!? I think I deserve an answer. Did you?

My mom was a deputy sherriff long enough to retire. She was a volunteer EMT long enough to end up running the local rescue squad. She still volunteers, but she's handed the administrative crap to someone else. I can't even imagine the number of people she's helped, the lives she's saved, over the years. Several hundred, easily. thousands, maybe.

If you get questioned by the police, get a lawyer. Good advice. You never know who is asking you the questions.

But blanket statements about the internal motives of all police, when those statements are clearly detached from reality, detached from actual people who've been (or are) on the police force, isn't good advice. It isn't a wonderful thing. It might even qualify as trolling. And if it continues after being informed of the facts to the contrary, I can only assume is based on tinfoil, rather than facts of reality.

And since I'm personally biased on this one, since I find the whole thing more than a little insulting, I'm not going to get into a debate about this, other than to report the facts, the anecdotal evidence as it pertains directly to me, and let them speak for themselves. Anyone who wants to debate their psych-theories about all-cops-in-general, can email me off thread.

And you can start your email by letting me know how many lives you've personally saved, and your psychiatric qualifications (training, not treatment) upon which you base your evaluations.

But I won't be posting on this thread again.

something folks might want to get for the next ride, a helmet cam:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/video/980e/

Trent, I'd like to see a seat, but I'm thinking one of the issues they're avoiding is center of gravity. THe thing only weighs 250 pounds. Take a 200 pound pilot, and put him at the same height as the fans at the top, then you've got a naturally unstable machine. Lean forward, and the machine wants to do a forward flip and you're dead.

By having the fans up high, and a lot of the weight hanging down below, they might make it more stable, like a pendulum naturally finds center, instead of like trying to balance a three foot long stick on your hand with a ten pound weight on the end.

Cause if that thing flips, you're dead. And if it's really unstable, it'll tend to want to flip.

This stability problem is probably what's been keeping the Moller Machine as vaporware for ... thirty? years. The center of gravity is at the same height as the fans.

A V4, 200hp, engine drives it. Takuan's link @21 shows that there's a lot of stuff built into the frame directly behind the pilot, possibly the engine itself. Keeps the center of gravity low. That video also shows untethered, but still low (6 foot altitude) flying. It looks "relatively" stable, which is to say, his hovering is about on par with what you would expect from a helicopter or other vtol aircraft that only weighs 250 pounds.

Big big helos benefit from the extra weight giving them more stability.

The article says they're specifically shooting for ultralight status, which makes sense from a legal standpoint. and also explains some otherwise odd engineering decisions.

Huntsu@16, apparently, it's still in the "prototype" stage.

but at least it's "working prototype", not vaporware.

"a gasoline-powered piston engine runs the large rotors"

It's a ducted fan spun by piston engine, not a "jet", not a "turbine" even.

Still, I've hovered helicopters with trees all around me, and this thing could land in a lot smaller space than a chopper.

thirty minute flight time is probably limited by ultralight legal limits. If you could get it listed as an experimental aircraft, put a bigger tank on it, put on that seat and skids I mentioned, and get a vectored thrust rating on your license, hm, nice.

I know the "jet pack" idea is cool, but 250 pounds isn't light enough to walk around with. I wonder if they could mount a seat on the front, put some skids on it to absorb a crash landing, and still keep it under the ultralight limit.

It weighs 250 pounds, it should qualify as an ultralight, meaning you could fly it without a pilots license. Or crazy insane aircraft insurance that would come with vectored thrust private aircraft.

It develops 600 pounds of thrust. And has thirty minutes of flight time. Not too shabby.

I'll let the first few hundred be a test pilot for me before I see if I can find a place that rents one.

Balistic parachute are good to pretty low altitudes on ultralights. fifty feet? hundred feet? I forget.

Obama was asked the "ethanol" question in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/21472234/page/6

He says he views it as a transitional fuel.

deviant: Show me a candidate that has actually tried to espouse sense and reason rather than go with popularity contest viewpoints

Democracy is a popularity contest.

The judicial branch doesn't have direct elections and is meant to act as a stop gap against democracy turning into mob rule.

I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but I think in many ways Obama's campaign embodies the worst of our system.

If by "worst" you mean "not perfect, but better than McCain", then, OK, sure, whatever.

The current realistic choices are Obama and McCain. And given those two choices, I'll go with Obama.

As far as the "questions" go, I'm less interested in what the candidates say and more interested in what they do, and comparing the actions of the two candidates over the years, Obama is the far better candidate imo. Not ideal, but far far better.

Didn't SS1 spin out of control for some time during one of the X prize flights?

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

All my life I've been searching for the six-fingered otter who killed my father.

Just re-read Slaughterhouse Five a month or so ago. Still good.

OK, that's pretty cool.

I'd love to visit there someday.

me@72: Murder, for example, is something I greatly frown upon. So is assault and battery, and rape, and so one and so forth.

waterhouse@73: Nobody's arguing against that. But the state deciding what a kid is going to be raised to believe is several steps too far.

If you're not arguing against it, then you went several steps too far when you summarized people's positions with the strawman: "I think men with guns should force everyone to act the way I do"

Unqualified blanket statements like that are, well, blanket statements.

"I think men with guns should force everyone to act the way I do,"

Murder, for example, is something I greatly frown upon. So is assault and battery, and rape, and so one and so forth. And the state has my permission to enforce my views in those areas.

With guns, if need be.

OK, that was hilarious.

batteries are now good enough.

The US Marines have a laser anti-missile defense platform. It takes up an entire truck to carry it.

safety selector photo of a normal m16

manwhore@53: John McCain has studied positions that he feels are right

John McCain may feel in his gut that his positions are right, but he hasn't studied his own history or his own predictions.

In October 2002, when congress was debating the war authorization to invade Iraq, everything John McCain said was wrong. Everything Obama said has been proven right.

And just recently, John McCain said he is better at military planning than Obama. In deciding whether to bomb bomb bomb Iran, maybe, but apparently, not where it really counts, such as whether its actually a good idea or not.

link

excellent!

bad link. that should be: maybe they're part of a traveling entertainment group.

A story about knowledge missionaries would have to have give them some form of income or barter or trade that doesn't tie them to the land.

Maybe they collect lightning bolts and trade them from town to town. Maybe they have a flying radio show and ask for donations. Maybe they're part of a traveling entertainment group. Maybe they're a ragtag group with neurosurgeons, physicists, mechanics, gunmen, and specialists. Maybe they offer transport for hire or trade.

The thing would be to find a way to carve out a living traveling, rather than carving out a living tied to the land.

I furthermore take offense to the incredibly patronizing assumption that city folk are the bearers of all Smart Things.

I didn't read anything that said someone who works a farm couldn't be part of the outquisition. However, I assumed that they might not be able to go around as missionaries making sure everyone has all the knowledge they need that can help them, because they were busy farming.

Being tied to the land sort of does that. Having grown up on a farm and worked my ass off during that time, I seem to recall not being able to go on missionary type journeys or even vacation much because animals had to be fed, shit had to be shoveled, bedding had to be replaced, water had to be refreshed, and all that.

So, if you are too busy tending the land, and therefore are tied to the land, then you probably will be too busy to go on a missionary type journey to rebuild rural electrification, reestablish communication with other areas, and other stuff beyond the basic "this is how you pull teets" sort of thing.

No one proposing the idea said that "farmers are stupid and need city folk to tell them what to do". The idea sounds more to me like farmers are too busy farming to walk the earth. You can't go on walkabout if you're tied to your crops and livestock.

Ah. I see now.

So, a bunch of independent-minded individualists have gotten their noses tweaked at the mere thought that sometime in the future someone might come out to their farm and, god forbid, offer them suggestions for improving the way they're doing things.

And of course, the way they spin it, it's a bunch of latte sippin' linux heads who grew up in a city who come out to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs (in case anyone is unclear about that idiom, it means it's something so simple that no one needs to be taught it) or tell Independent Farmer John something that Independent Farmer John would already know by virtue of being a farmer. Leave the logging to us, they say. It smacks of arrogance, they say.

So, I made three (count them, 3) mouse-clicks and found an about page about Alex Steffen, the heir apparent to latte sippin linux heads who will tell your grandmother how to suck eggs once the apocalypse comes:

http://www.worldchanging.com/bios/alex.html

Worldchanging has become the most widely-read sustainability-related publication on the Internet, with an archive of over 7,000 articles by leading thinkers around the world. It's played an important role in revealing formerly obscure innovations and groundbreaking ideas, thereby pushing forward the sustainability movement and assisting in the growth of its network.

Steffen was also the editor of Worldchanging's wildly successful first book, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Abrams, 2006), a 600-page compendium of writings from over sixty noted leaders around the world, with a foreword by Al Gore, an introduction by Bruce Sterling, and design by Stefan Sagmeister (winner of the 2005 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award).

And so what Independent Farmer John is saying is that there's nothing Al Gore, Bruce Sterling, or 7,000 other leading thinkers around the world could possibly say that Independent Farmer John wouldn't already know. And Independent Farmer John would like to point out just how arrogant these other people are for even thinking such a thing.

Now, I don't know if this Alex Steffen guy ever pulled teets on a cow. I don't care. Because I'm pretty sure they're not talking about a repository on various ways in which to suck eggs.

Likewise, I don't know if Alex Steffen has anything that he himself built or designed that Independent Farmer John might find useful. But it appears that Alex Steffen has a few thousand friends, and one of them just might.

But by all means, stamp yur feet and pound yur chests about how no high falutin city slicker could ever tell you something you didn't know. Tell us how arrogant they would have to be to even think such a thing.

bucolichooligan@52 :Which is my very point to begin with, it is these individuals with generations of knowledge who are the assets not those who vicariously follow from academia.

Uh, I think you're solving a differnt problem. The problem Cory was looking at was "post apocalyptic scenario" and the solution he was wondering about was whether or not it can be solved without reverting to regional warlords.

"the response to catastrophe isn't lifeboat rules and militias, but humanitarian aid and kick-ass tools."

You're solving a different problem, something along the lines of "big agriculture is not sustainable" and the solution you're looking at is how small farms can implement methods of sustainable farming.

This piece is so self important and although well intentioned is offensive to those of us who live in small rural towns

Is that collec