Basically, yes. This is what's referred to as "non-gravitational forces" (you can Google the term, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to have an article). It makes it harder to predict the orbits of comets under some circumstances.

Having a chance X of reversibility per year for a life sentence is the same as having a different chance Y of reversibility as long as they are on death row and having a zero chance of reversibility after the execution. If there are values for X you accept, there must be values for Y you would accept.

Nobody would want to quote his personal diary if he hadn't committed any heinous acts.

People make jokes in stressful situations. Bombing a plane is a stressful situation. Which makes it entirely plausible that a bomber would joke about bombing.

Of course, it's *stupid* for him to joke about bombing and call attention to himself, but criminals get caught by doing stupid things all the time.

Children aren't clones of their parents. (And even when we discover a way to make clones, they still won't be this kind of clones.)

"I would have benefitted from learning programming early" or even "I did benefit from learning programming early" are terrible reasons to teach your kid programming early unless the benefits apply to most people, not just to you. And they don't.

This is just a variation of the "how do I get my kid interested in sci-fi" or "how do I get my daughter interested in programming" questions we've had before, and the answer is the same.

You can't compare the two because the average person is exposed to a different proportion of criminals than the average police officer, so the increased rate for police may be explained by the police being more likely to run into criminals.

Also, the rate for the general population is driven down because it includes babies, children, old people, and the handicapped who would have a hard time killing someone and would not be eligible to become police.

Where is Fiorina's advocacy?

She's pointing out that it's hypocrisy to advocate for one while refusing to advocate in a much worse case like Saudi Arabia.

She doesn't have to advocate herself in order to say this. She just has to be *consistent*. She can be consistent by not advocating for both just as much as by advocating for both.

Fiorina is being a "concern troll" on these issues.

No, she's not. She's pointing out that someone else is being hypocritical. She didn't say he should get out of Saudi Arabia; she objected to the *combination* of being in Saudi Arabia but not wanting to do business in Indiana.

Ah, that's how you say "debtor's prison" in French.

If enough fines were collected to knock $100 off each property tax bill, the government could raise the property tax rates by just enough to collect $100 more, in effect letting the $100 go to them and not to the people.

If that was actually the reason or giving rich people big fines, then if someone was so badly in trouble financially that even $5 was a major problem for them compared to $1000 for you and me, their ticket price would be reduced to $5. Of course, there's a minimum ticket size--that doesn't happen.

Releasing of elderly prisoners on "compassion" grounds is a lie. Elderly prisoners are released on "compassion" grounds because the elderly have lots of medical expenses at the end of their life and if you keep the elderly prisoner in prison you have to pay all his medical expenses.

So the State, having decided that murder is illegal, resorts to murder as "punishment". That is hypocrisy of the highest order.

"I'll take 'arguments that can be used against prison and kidnapping as well' for 10 points."

That happened because of the combination of 1) medical associations encouraging doctors to ask the questions (for guns alone, not for all things of similar dangerousness) and 2) doctors being mandatory reporters, so having a doctor tell you not to have guns is very intimidating because it's a half step towards losing your children.

In this context, claiming lots of "children" are shot is used to imply that because they are children, they are innocent and the fault is of someone else who made the gun available or used it irresponsibly. It is dishonest to pick an age so high that they start getting shot because they are committing crimes rather than because someone left the gun out and it looked like a toy.

...is that they're basically taking an issue that most people either didn't really know about or didn't really care about too strongly, and are shoving it into everyone else's faces, so that they now have a reason to take a stance against it?

I wonder what you think of gay pride parades. Or even gay people kissing in public.