Oh, I dunno, hopefully someone who has a clearer memory will be along to help me out, but I thought that his book, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus was a very good book and didn't seem to me to be all that homophobic or racist either. May want to give that one a try.

I believe you are correct. In fact, the only one on record that I can find was done by a cop who is automatically (no pun intended) exempt from the laws regarding ownership of fully automatic firearms in the US.

"On September 15th, 1988, a 13-year veteran of the Dayton, Ohio police department, Patrolman Roger Waller, then 32, used his fully automatic MAC-11 .380 caliber submachine gun to kill a police informant, 52-year-old Lawrence Hileman. Patrolman Waller pleaded guilty in 1990, and he and an accomplice were sentenced to 18 years in prison. The 1986 'ban' on sales of new machine guns does not apply to purchases by law enforcement or government agencies."

Simply put, it doesn't. To be more precise, there are some powers delegated to the government regarding things like search and seizure, but I am fully able to, under the law, "enforce the law" as a common citizen. Some might argue that it is our duty to do so even.

Are you American? If so, you should know this already, if you feel yourself able to make knowledgeable comments on this topic.

That's very wrong. I pay my insurance premiums for decades until at some point when I need to be covered and the very same insurance company can deny coverage for that based on whatever reason. They do not suddenly refund all the premiums I've paid in since that time, do they?

That's the real disconnect when it comes to people and insurance companies. The vast majority of people do not want to rip anyone off; they just want the services for which they've been paying if the situation ever arises -- which is the whole bloody point of insurance, isn't it?

Hopefully this is not a stupid question, but how long would it be, approximately, before much of these data go stale (stale before it becomes useless)?

You can keep trying to insult me and poisoning the well; it does nothing to change the facts as I have already stated.

You wrote "[i]t is dangerous to text at traffic lights. You are more likely to be rear-ended, and more likely to cause a delay (And delays increase congestion and congestion increases crashes)." That is a positive claim against the null hypothesis that texting at stoplights is no more dangerous than just sitting there.

Your positive claim, your burden of proof. That you are not willing to come up with any evidence is fine; it just means that your statement is unevidenced opinion and can be dismissed as such. The null hypothesis stands.

If you'll read what I wrote you'll see that when I quoted your specific words, I used quotation marks. Where I did not quote your specific words, I did not use quotation marks. If conversation and clarification were important to you, you'd have noticed that I paraphrased what I understood your point to be and addressed that rather than playing your little game of trying to distract by attacking me.

A few posts previously, your actual words were "[i]t is dangerous to text at traffic lights. You are more likely to be rear-ended, and more likely to cause a delay (And delays increase congestion and congestion increases crashes)."

This statement is a positive assertion which means the burden is on you to provide some evidence that it's valid and to disprove the null hypothesis.

It's not really that difficult a concept to grasp.

Umm... no, it's called 'logic'. To put a more-formal title to it, it's called 'the null hypothesis' -- in this instance, texting at a stoplight is no more or less dangerous than merely sitting at the light and waiting for it to turn green. You came along and said that texting at stoplights was far more dangerous than sitting there; that's a positive assertion which retains the burden of proof (i.e., show evidence which supports your conclusion and which disproves the null hypothesis).

Also, stating that "a non-moving car at a green light is more likely to be rear-ended" is trivially true; your unstated presumption is that texting while waiting for the light to change is the cause for a sharp increase in these kinds of rear-end collisions (which you'd also need to show).

Yes, thank you. I didn't read Wiki in my relatively brief search, but what I did read meshes with that.

Yup, that's why I sought clarification.

Holy shit, you are such an asshole. Yes, it was King County Sheriff's department. My fucking mistake. I was never arrested; I took the screening polygraph for potential employment and very grateful now that I didn't pass.

Courts still accept polygraphs under strict rules. If you have information to the contrary, I'd like to see it; I would love to be wrong in this instance.

Unfortunately, you are still quite wrong. The United States has courts that accept polygraph tests under strict rules. Dunno why, but it's still true.

How many polygraphs have you taken? I've taken one in my life, personally. This was for King County police (in Washington state) and even being fully truthful, they claimed I failed the test. Since I knew I told the truth, this experience prompted me to study up on polygraphy and to discover to my surprise that it was nonsense.

Oh, and I never sat on anything other than a hard wooden chair. I had the finger thingies put on, the chest band and a blood pressure cuff, sat sideways to the polygrapher and did as I was told.

The reason a human being may show higher galvanic skin sensitivity or increased breathing rates do not map reliably to deception. It's pseudo-science, pure and simple, and is not reliable for what it's supposedly for. The problem with your analogy is that there are only a handful of issues that could cause the idiot light to glow and narrowing down the reason the "low oil" light is lit is straightforward.

The polygraph is a lie; social engineering before the term caught on, really.