Interesting thing I once heard about nuclear bombs and radiation:

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it so that the larger the bomb, the less dangerous the fallout is.

With smaller bombs the irradiated matter (soil and other stuff) flies into the air where it is then carried onwards by the wind before raining down as fallout and causing damage.

On the other hand, with large bombs the immidiate damage caused by the blast is huge but the blast is also powerful enough that a fairly large portion of the irradiated materia will be lifter so far up into the atmosphere that the wind will not be able to carry it (there's less/no wind on the upper layers of the atmosphere) and it will not land as fast.

Of course the matter be affected by gravity and come down eventually, but it will be after long enough period so that the resulting fallout is not nearly as bad as with smaller bombs.

This does not mean bigger bombs cause any less deaths because the sheer size of the blast does so much more damage but I found it to be interesting.

Like I said, I am not an expert on the issue so if I got it completely wrong I'd be very pleased if someone corrected me.

Yes, and we're also born naked. Nudity is a natural thing and I haven't seen any scientific proof that seeing a naked person is harmful to the development of children.

While this is true, I still think that restrecting kids that are nearing their teen years (that is, approzimately 9-12 year-olds) all knowledge of sex only helps to make it a mystical thing that, because it's prohibited, they're more likely to try. This is not true in all cases of course, but kids tend to be interested in forbidden things, they're curious by nature.

The fact is that they're going to try it at some point anyway, and if you make it appear like this super secret thing that only adults are allowed to do you're not exactly helping them. Besides, the sex scenes in movies are most often far from those in porn, there is nothing "bad" in them (most often no visible genitals or anything). Sure your child could ask you what was it all about but then you can just tell him/her. There is nothing bad about telling your child what sex is so on - it's a natural thing and telling them about it is a part of being a parent.

If you think you should only start to talk about sex to them at the age of 15-16 you might be sadly late, because by that time many might have tried it already (and there's nothing wrong with that either, however they should be aware of how to use proper protection and so on). So it is best to tell about it to them before they become sexually active.

So no, there is nothing wrong with taking, say an 11 year-old to see Watchmen if you think he/she can handle the violence (it's individual, children develop at different speed).

The sites don't get money from just people who visit the site and see the ads, people have to actually click them. I understand your point but your theory presumes that people who block the ads would click them if they didn't block them.

Before I began using Firefox with adblock I considered ads as mainly a nuisance because, like you said, they were often intrusive and made it harder to find the stuff I was looking for from the site. Due to this I simply learned to ignore the ads and I can count on one hand's fingers the occasions on which I actually clicked some ad.

The problem is not with the people. People block the ads because they're annoying and hence not very interesting. The problem is the ads themselves. The advertisement tactic used in the net is too much based on the same tactic companies use on the streets: The bigger the better. On the streets this work because the bigger and more colourful the ad is the more chance there is that people will notice it. However, when you make the ads on the net big, colourful and often moving (sometimes even with sound effects) and then fill a webpage with these ads they stop working and instead of arousing interest you're just making people annoyed.

I can't see why people would click on ads they consider irritating even if they would see them. Now that there are free and easy-to-use tools that efficiently block the ads of course people will use it, but it's not their "fault", it's the advertisers fault for making ads too damn frustraiting. So in short: Ad blocking is not the cause, it's an effect. The core of the problem lies within the business model of web advertising.

This is yet one more of those things I can't quite grasp with america: The cops. I guess it all depends on which state you're living in but still, arresting a pirate at gunpoint? On behalf of the rest of the world: Wtf.

I understand that certain criminals must be approached with caution but some of these things just boggle my mind. I've even seen clips where a cop pulls a car over for speeding and approaches it with his hand on his weapon because "they might have a gun". I guess it might be a real danger considering that guns are so common in the states.

Still, we are pretty close when it comes to private gun ownership (IIRC Finland is 3rd on the list, USA being the first) and the "doctrines" of police are quite different: The police rarely draw their guns and every time someone is shot (at) by the police it's a big thing (it's always investigated - and reported in the news). Within the last year or so I can recall only one situation in which the police have opened fire.

Of course I do realize that the US has a lot more citizens than Finland does and the nature of crimes is probably different (more violent crimes) but still I can't help thinking if the cops have embraced this cowboy-like style partly on purpose.

And don't even get me started on the fact that they're seriously sending these guys to jail...

DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against americans or anything, but some of these things just seem unbelievable to an outsider.

Exactly. Orwell had a point about this in 1984. And since everybody in /. loves Orwell here it is:

Prophet or not, the man has/had a point there, although it's not directly applicable to modern societies of course.

That's what I was thinking as well. Should the creators of these cartoons be convicted? And what about all those actors in movies who "killed" someone on screen? After all if it is not required that "the minor actually exists" (ie. there is no victim like you said) why should there be the need for the murder victim to "actually exist". On top of that movie actors tend to look more authentic than cartoon figures.

And it doesn't end there. In this case the man was only watching cartoons, but if that can be considered illegal imagine what it does to gaming. I have "murdered" tens of thousands of virtual characters just for the entartainment it offers, should I be held criminally resposible for that? Pure insanity.

Slippery slope they say? No, this is something more. This is a vertical freefall. It won't require many more cases like this and pretty soon people will start to accept that imagining certain things can be considered illegal and thoughtcrime becomes a reality. People should really wake up and do something to stop this sort of lunacy from happening.
 

Emphasis mine.

I'd just like to point out that this isn't exactly how it goes in here, since the Finnish legal system doesn't use juries. In Distric Court the cases are handled by a single district judge (in simple cases) or in more complicated cases three judges.

From Wikipedia:

"Trial by jury does not exist in Finland as such. In most civil cases, there are no non-professional judges involved in the process. In criminal cases, the common sense and popular sense of justice are represented by the three (or four, in complicated matters) Lay Judges. However, they participate both in the trying of fact and of law, as well as in sentencing."

Lay judges are only used in Distict Court though, not in Court of appeal or Supreme Court.