Animals, most likely.

I can't imagine even a long drop hanging being painless. Think how it'd feel to have your shoulder knocked out of alignment, then imagine that sensation in your neck instead. Consider that the brain can survive for about ten minutes without oxygen, even if unconsciousness would come somewhat sooner. Breaking the neck simply cuts off the brain from the rest of the body and halts its movement--it doesn't instantly kill everything from the noose up.

I'm not interested in joining the death penalty debate, simply putting forth the notion that motionless does not equate painless.

Nowhere it the Constitution are those rights declared. You're thinking of the Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, and property can be taken away with due process of law, and nowhere are you guaranteed happiness or even its pursuit.

They can be good in some situations, where the worker is someone with no real power and is easily abused. I'd rather not go on too much of a tangent here though, so it suffices to say the topic of unions is not a black-and-white situation.

Heh. But I've run into my fair share of good cops, and I appreciate them all the more with every new report on the bad ones.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/0...
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/1...

The good ones may be a dying breed. I'd rather not hasten that by mislabeling them.

http://archive.9news.com/dontm...
http://www.coloradofop.org/ind...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Just one example. tl;dr: Officer shoots someone's dog after it was already restrained as shown on video, gets brought up on charges for it, union summarily declares him innocent of all charges and rallies all available LEOs to "show support" by turning up en masse to pressure the court. But they're totally not part of the problem amirite?

Seems some people are insane about excusing unions no matter what. But I appreciate that you believe I'm unable to fail. :)

Yup, good example of what I referred to in my third sentence.

I'm assuming that's sarcasm? And hence, a straw man? I stated correlation, you turned it into causality.

The latest Jon Katz?

No, there are good cops. They can be found in good PDs where bad cops aren't tolerated. But when you have bad cops, you can be pretty sure their PD, its culture, and their union are all part of the problem.

And naturally the bad ones get the most publicity, which isn't fair even though it's to be expected.

Spoiler: They think it's hilarious. Because they're the good guys. And anyone in those pictures had it coming. And what are you going to do about it anyway?

Why not? I can run the latest Solaris on 12 year old Ultras, and if I had an early '90s Vax I believe I could still run the latest VMS version.

That's right. And anyone who disagrees is clearly unamerican.

Certain topics really bring the mouthbreathers out of the woodwork. So many here are extrapolating on the whole based on limited personal experiences or even conjecture of whatever they think is "reasonable."

Some people treat their animals well. Some mistreat them anywhere from slightly to egregiously. I could likewise share my own anecdotes of horses who were kept like royalty as well as others who got the tar beat out of them regularly for no fault of their own. How are the carriage horses typically treated in NYC or elsewhere? I guarantee the answer isn't in your ass waiting to be plucked out.

Animal labor isn't inherently cruel nor inherently benign. It's like saying all computer hacking is evil, or that no true hacker would ever use his skills for evil--it's very much dependent on the individual.

Not necessarily. Realistic was always an outsourced brand with some very good manufacturers making appearances under that name. You just had to know which models to look for, or luck out as seems to be your case.