1850, say, when personal happiness was a Natural Right?
Happiness was never a right. Pursuit of it was.
As long as you were legally a person and didn't need to ask your owner's or husband's permission?
Yes, as long as you were legally a person.
That a personhood was unjustly denied to some was a travesty, but it has nothing to do with my argument.
you being an idiot and driving your car over a pedestrian infringes on their right to the pursuit of happiness
Sure. And any such idiots ought to be punished — and have their right to drive a car suspended. But this has nothing to do with the preventive prohibition — which is what the license requirement amounts to.
You see, when it comes to behaviors that put others at significant risk
Risky driving — or drone-flying — can be prohibited. People engaging in it may lose their right to drive (or fly drones) at all — or be punished otherwise — that's fine and normal. What I do not approve of, however, is the preemptive requirement to have a government's permission to do anything.
why only punish the ones who were unlucky enough to have the negative outcome actually happen
Because determining, what's really risky and what is not, is only a little bit easier, than detecting a murderer before he kills...
Similarly, Amazon flying drones over residential neighborhoods sounds pretty risky to me
It does, huh? You don't mind the thousands-pounds piloted aircraft flying above your all day, you don't mind the trucks driving around all day (delivering the same stuff), it is the light drones, that keep you awake at night?
not sure this ban is such a bad thing until we can prove suitable precautions are being taken
That, right there, is the key to our disagreement. You want everybody, who wish to fly a drone, to prove, they've "taken precautions". I don't believe, you ought to have the power to impose such a requirement. The burden of proof ought to be on you.
Now, that was philosophical. Now comes the more practical. Amazon being the 800-pound gorilla, can afford to argue with the government — they can not be ignored. They even managed to get the USPS to offer Sunday delivery — though now it seems available to all.
But the FAA simply killed other attempts to use drones — such as for the delivery of flowers. The barrier to entry — to start competing with the incumbent behemoths — was upped, and we the consumers are losing. No wonder, Amazon aren't suing to overturn the FAA's decision — any favorable overcome would apply to all. They are merely asking for exception — for themselves. Crony capitalism much?
They need to ask permission because the FAA specifically banned such behavior last month.
Gone are the days, when pursuit of happiness was understood as a natural right granted to each human being not by their government, but by the Creator.
Today one must get a permission to drive a car, carry a weapon, perform in costume, or, indeed, to fly a drone.
And this prohibition does not even come from Congress directly — having usurped so much control over our lives over the last century, they are simply unable to deal with the minutiae and are forced to delegate more and more of the rule-making to the Executive-run agencies — such as the FAA.
You're just like Fox News now.
Sure. Because the honest and straight-shooting New York Times and MSNBC would publish — indeed, revel in — every piece of bad news...
As long a Republican can be blamed for it — justly or otherwise — of course...
Iraq, for example, was a "quagmire" in 2003 — when the enemy was defeated and on the run. And so it was in 2006, when only minor insurrections remained. But it is not a quagmire today — with the enemy having recaptured vast swaths of the country — the same sophisticated publication is advising us on how to avoid the disaster, not admitting, is has already happened — with the Nobel Peace Prize winner at the helm and a direct result of his decisions and orders.
Right, cause cheap/free VR certainly isn't of interest to the slashdot crowd.
Are you saying, VR pr0n is already available? Nope, not yet...
Seriously, though, it may be "of interest", but not so much interest, that it merits a mention every two weeks. Hardly news — neither for nerds nor for others.
Timothy ended that June 29 post about Cardboard with a promise that before long we'd have 'a video introduction to Cardboard with Google VP Clay Bavor
I thought, my karma entitled me to disabled advertising...
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright flashes of radio waves that last only a few thousandths of a second. Scientists using the Parkes Observatory in Australia have recorded such events for the first time, but the lack of any similar findings by other facilities led to speculation that the Australian instrument might have been picking up signals originating from sources on or near Earth. The discovery at Arecibo is the first detection of a fast radio burst using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope. The position of the radio burst is in the direction of the constellation Auriga in the Northern sky.
“Our result is important because it eliminates any doubt that these radio bursts are truly of cosmic origin,” continues Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysics professor at McGill University in Montreal and Principal Investigator for the pulsar-survey project that detected this fast radio burst. “The radio waves show every sign of having come from far outside our galaxy – a really exciting prospect.”
Exactly what may be causing such radio bursts represents a major new enigma for astrophysicists. Possibilities include a range of exotic astrophysical objects, such as evaporating black holes, mergers of neutron stars, or flares from magnetars — a type of neutron star with extremely powerful magnetic fields.
Be warned: All of the above theories could also be wrong. These fast radio flashes could just as easily turn out to be something entirely unpredicted.
Face it, the US has more or less become the enemies of global freedom and privacy
Far less so than Russia. Instead of detaining the accused and bringing him in, they would've simply poisoned the man.
Warrant issued to force teen to pose nude for cops
From TFA:
A Prince William County judge allowed the 17-year-old to leave the area without the warrant being served or the pictures being taken — yet.
Evidently, the submitter can't read...
you pretentious turd with a persecution complex
Thank you. Your racism will make me stronger.
Thoughts are irrelevant.
Racism, which you proposed to ban earlier is exactly that — a thought... To avoid such semantic problems in the future, do try to use more precise terms.
And in civilised countries racist actions are already banned.
And the Blacks only seem to be worse off over the decades. It is not anybody's "racist action", that causes residents of government housing projects (affectionately known as "ghettos") to pee in the stairwells...
Black racism consists of the assumption that they are criminal, violent and or stupid. Theses are not the assumptions about Asians or Jews.
I'm not exactly sure, what beef American Blacks have with the Asians, but, being myself a European Jew, I do know, what anti-semites claim: we are, supposedly, thieves and cheaters (whom nobody should be hiring, of course), constantly scheming to undermine the nations we happen to live in for the sake of Israel (thus should not be hired into government either). Oh, and we use the blood of Christian babies to make matzos...
Are you going to sincerely claim, such accusations don't affect "employment opportunities"?
Which means they don't suffer the same disadvantages in the employment market that blacks do.
Nonsense. Of course, the disadvantages are the same — or worse. In Russia, for example, there were official limits on how many Jews can enter universities, how many could live outside specially-set areas. Certain trades were closed off completely. Yet, somehow, that didn't prevent the Jews from doing well back then. USSR dispensed with the official racism of the Tsars, but the sentiment remained: my own father, for example, had to go to a different city's university — in the late 1960ies — because Kyiv State University was famous for anti-Semitic admission officers. Yet, that didn't prevent him from succeeding — even he remained sufficiently bitter to move his family to the US upon the first opportunity.
Post-Soviet Russia today remains anti-Semitic (though the other ex-Soviet republics no so much), but Jews manage to strive anyway: there are industrialists (of Russian kind) and politicians in addition to the customary lawyers, doctors, and engineers. Perhaps, that's because nobody tried to be condescending to them — the way American Illiberals are towards Blacks...
That statement was asserted (by you) out of context.
This was a good opportunity for you to provide the surrounding context, but you missed it for some reason...
Which is an altogether different matter.
Is it different? When the same person believes, "the unfit" should be either encouraged to not procreate or simply prohibited from procreating, goes on and establishes a network of abortion clinics, can it really be denied, that the belief and the act are rather connected to each other? Of course, they are...
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
