When my daughter was born, my wife and I were very adamant that she wouldn't have any cultural stereotypes imposed on her. Everything was very gender neutral, but she still ended up being obsessed with Barbie and pink stuff.

Some years later we had a son, and treated him with the same neutrality (and he had an older sister who was always dressing him in pink) - his first word was 'digger'.

You may be right - but you'll have a hard time convincing me.

Maybe not...

By restricting all those people doing legitimate business, maybe those of us hiding behind Tor etc will get better bandwidth and be able to commit our crimes in peace and at speed.

I'm delighted for you.

But Human Rights/Ethics don't work like that - which is why, as I said, "Gun ownership" is neither an ethics issue or anything to do with human rights. It may be that you feel that you have some form of entitlement there - maybe you do, maybe you don't - but it is not a human right.

Human right/Ethics are not reciprocal arrangements.

Do you only grant free speech to those that respect your right to it?

Where are these countries with "historically strict gun control" you talk of - because the places I'm thinking of only introduced gun control in the last 50 years and have seen reduced levels of gun crime as a consequence, for example, the UK.

And I wouldn't argue with that, in fact I'd say that's exactly what the second amendment was for. But given that the effective fire power of the United States is many billions of times greater than it was at the end of the 18th century, which particular colonial power are you so concerned about? And how is an armed militia of geriatrics going to help in this coming war?

"Gun ownership" is neither an ethical issue nor any thing to do with human rights.

Human rights and ethics are about respecting people. Freedom of speech is good example of this, requiring that we respect to opinions of others.

No matter how you use it, a gun is not about respect.

I work in software development you insensitive clod

...if you were arguing strictly from logic.

Unfortunately, none of those arguments are valid when put in the light of the overwhelming evidence coming from other countries that don't have guns.

This leaves the only true reason why guns are so prevalent in the US. People who own guns like the feeling of personal power that they give. However, in a sane society regulators will recognize the consequences of this and act accordingly. Unfortunately in the US the vested interests in the gun lobby are so strong that politicians are powerless (often by choice) to act.

Are we just a figment of a cat's imagination?

But then I realise that this is just pure nonsense - cats don't give a shit.

Good point.

For every successful FOSS company that made it big there are 10 that didn't.

But here's another similar fact:

For every successful company that made it big there are 10 that didn't.

Do you see what I did there?

I seem to remember last December being pretty OK. No one was losing their job, people weren't too concerned about the future and we would laugh at the absurdity of NINJA mortgages.

People don't seem to be laughing so much this December.

But, hey, I must be remembering it wrong - maybe last year it was this bleak. Who am I to argue with NBER about how I feel about the economy?

Having a referendum for every EU treaty is an attempt to manage it though direct democracy.

In a constitutional democracy the constitution provides a mechanism whereby the government doesn't have to have a referendum every time it needs to act. The current EU treaties should be implemented by simple acts of parliament and not by complex referendum processes. If those treaties are in conflict with the constitution then they can be rejected at any time. If the GP has a problem with the constitution then he should work to have it changed so that it can provide the protection he desires.

Unfortunately, most recent referendums on Europe have been polls on national government policy by a disgruntled electorate and nothing to do with the EU.

Yeah! Not only has the bank repossessed your house, now it turns out that you owe them 12 months rent.

Sure they are more accurate but they are mixing up precise esoteric terms with the 'generally understood' terms.

People understand what the general term means in terms of their daily lives and for them "recession" is bad. What started in 2007 it wasn't "bad" for the ordinary Joe - in fact a recovery might have occurred and we'd never have known about it. Now that it's the 2 quarters of negative growth thing, it's a real recession.