I didn't mean the federal goverment, I meant the States themselves.

It's possible that your interpretation is correct, I'm not American so the matter isn't really of much importance to me. Reading the amendment as ratified by the state, I would have thought that the intention was to allow States to raise their own militias independently of the Federal government.
The wording ratified by the states was as follows:

My point (aside from the detail) from my original point stands - the wording is ambiguous, it could have meant either - or even both (because at the time a militia would have been raised from volunteers with their own firearms?).
The intentions of the framers are irrelevant here, the courts decided that the WORDING of the amendment allowed individuals to keep arms of any kind and that the federal goverment could not infringe that right. If the government doesn't like it, their option is to change the wording to disambiguate it. This is an example of the court interpreting legislation (or consitutional wording in this case) but not legislating themselves. They couldn't have decided that the right to bear arms was disallowed because they didn't like it.

Repeat after me, and say this 10 times.

Patents were not created to encourage innovation.
They were created to DISCOURAGE trade secrets, thus making the invention available to all in return for a temporary monopoly. A trade, if you will.

It was a great idea at the time. It's a less good idea now but it probably still has some value, particularly if the terms were shorter

Lobbying your politicians

Courts were never intended to legislate and should not legislate. They are there to interpret legislation. The intent of the law and "intent" when it comes to the constitution mean nothing. What means something is what's written down. Thus you get narrow decisions based on semantics and even syntax all the time. For instnace, the "right to bear arms" was originally not an individual right, but it has subsequently been interpreted as such by the courts because that's how the document reads. There are countless examples of loose wording letting off people who were clearly guilty under the intent of the law. And there are examples of the law being interpreted in a much wider manner than intended due to loose wording.

That, incidentally, is why lawyers get paid a lot of money - because they not only have to know the law, they have to know it in mind-numbing detail, as well as (in the US anyway) know where precedents can be applied.

Good job of confusing the hell out of me :)

I was reading AGW and anthropogenic global warming (or man-made global warming)

Besides, accepted standard Slashdot nomneclature for anti-global warming is "Denier"

It was yellow on dark blue - which is why it was the default colour for those DOS prompts. It's not strictly "easier on the eye", but it's the best contrast you can get.

Well, yes. And if you think about it you can see why.

A large number of people in their prime productive years get mutilated in a short space of time. And these people work for an organisation that has the resources to spend on looking for a solution. I read recently that 1 in 5 single amputees can return to active duty, and those numbers will rise as solutions get better.

I would disagree slightly about your Uplift Books comment - I liked The Uplift War (uplift book 2) the best out of that series. It had more humour and less pathos

God no, that entire Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series was awful. Boring as hell.
His Otherlands was excellent (although be warned, the ending is not)

The paper makes the claim that the average voter is insufficiently expert to be able to judge the expertise of the candidates on almost any given issue, and certainly not in aggregate.

Funnily enough, the American electoral college system's idea was (aside from the geographic thing) to help ameliorate this - you vote for your local smart guy that you trust and let HIM decide on the candidate. Unfortunately, nonsense like having to register a party preference nulllified that (because it effectively concentrates power into ever smaller groupings and over time voting preference becomes sacrosanct).

The problem is understood generally - in the UK you have the House of Lords, which sometimes does great work by looking cynically at some legislation, and explaining why it's so very wrong. In Ireland the same function was intended for the Senate - certain seats are voted for by certain consituencies (for instance, there's 6 seats where voting is only open to alumni, students and staff of the National University of Ireland) but as in both the mentioned bodies the government can appoint people to it it ends up stuffed with blinkered political appointees whose real constituency is "the guy who appointed me".

Heinlein's essays on this are instructive and entertaining. The best known example is Starship Troopers "only those who serve in the military can vote, not because they're smarter but because they've demonstrated that they care and are willing to do something for the privilege". In other essays he wrote "let there be an all female leadership - frankly they can't do any worse than our current system" (that's paraphrasing, I'd have to look it up again).

No, considering some peoples as property who can be purchased or sold against their will.

That's slavery.

ARF'ING! REALLY?
Christianty had nothing to do with the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent "dark age". The Empire became indolent and riven by civil wars where the prize was the throne. The barbarians took a good look and then promptly burned the lot to the ground, repeatedly, until there was nothing left. The extremeties of the Empire rotted off - anything associated with the Empire was considered bad, the education and security it provided was gone. With no security and medicine life expectancy reduced and life became a struggle for necessities. In this condition, people weren't inclined to spent their energies on technology because the payoff is longer term.

And before the rise of Whabism (sp - the particular sect of radical islam) the Islamic world was a beacon of light. Europe was split, constantly at war and the Middle East and Persia was rich from the silk road and trading in general. At that time mathematics, physics, astronomy and art were highly prized by the Muslim countries. Ghengis Kahn, then the crusades put paid to that, so many resources were put into the war and so much destruction was caused that it took a long time to recover from it. Then along comes el-mental man in the 13th century and suddenly women are property and jihad is on. Sad, really.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

The real question is, how did I miss the dragons!

Yes, triple their wages, causing massive inflation in China making the poor in China even worse off. You cannot dump wealth into an economy like that. The Russians tried it after the fall of the Soviey union and the result was so disasterous that they've ended up with an oligarchy and had to be grateful that a few people sucked up all the money because the economy was a mess.

While I am all for fair-trade, and increased quality of life for the workers, paying them more has harmful knock on effects in that it drives inflation of basic necessities and means those not lucky enough to have a decent income suffer more, not less. It's all about relativity.

Fostering job creation rather than giving aid is the way to go. It gives people something to feel valued for, and makes them self sufficient so you don't have to keep giving aid. Bear in mind that he suicide rate in Foxconn is significantly lower than the Chinese rate of suicide in general.