Think of the children when you take away their health insurance.
Think of the children when you tax the shit out of the lower class mommys and daddys.
Think of the children when you declare war.

There are many more, but let's be honest, if anyone in the government gave half of a shit about kids, children wouldn't be molested/beaten as much as they are these days. None of the ridiculous shit that the government can do, not even send someone into your house to monitor you 24/7 would stop child abuse of any kind. Keep alcohol legal, keep taxing the hell out of daddy and mommy, keep the streets as full of potholes as possible, keep the police as nervous as hell, keep the ability of corporations to pay government officials to sway law enactment, and you'll never, ever, ever, ever, EVER keep the children, or the adults, safe.

What I don't understand is the lack of concern about security.

Because they don't give a shit about your security or anybody else's, and they're too stupid to realize that by weakening it for them it weakens it for anybody.

They just want unlimited ability to get any piece of data they want without warrant, oversight, or obstacles.

They want it to be illegal for you to have information they can't readily get.

The scary thing is, they couldn't possibly not know that "what about the children" is a bullshit argument designed to get people to go along with it. Every mother in America says "well, if it's to protect the children, it must be good".

In reality, children and terrorism have become the magic keys to unlock the kingdom, and bypass any pesky laws and constitutional protections.

And anybody who disagrees with them is clearly in favor of kiddy fiddlers and terrorists.

If this kind of thing isn't fixed soon, America is marching into becoming a facist state, while pretending to still be defenders of freedom and justice. And people are applauding this as it goes along.

These guys have decided to go straight for the "it's for the children" argument.

It's a stupid argument. It says that in order to protect hypothetical children from hypothetical threats, all people must give up their rights to make it easier for law enforcement to get information without cause or warrant.

And since you've already had your rights taken away, we will also use this for plenty of other things. Like parallel construction of what we charge you for, and whatever else we can think of to misuse this information for.

Fucking lying assholes and fascists.

America is pretty much screwed at this point, and unfortunately, that is affecting everyone else on the damned planet.

Obama is just as happy to create the surveillance state as Bush was. Audacity of Hope is such a fucking lie.

What, like planetary bling or something?

Sort of. ;-)

The quasi-moons are more moon-like than planet like, because the quasi-moons orbit planets and quasi-planets orbit the sun, so in that regard they're almost entirely different, except for how they're not. =)

If the quasi-moon orbited the sun it would be quasi-planet, but then it's too small, so then it just becomes another piece of space debris with an orbit around the sun. And then it's probably an asteroid. Unless it's a really big asteroid, then it's kind of like a planet. Or possibly a quasi-planet.

It's all very complicated. :-P

2014 OL339 is awkward. It sounds like it needs a proper name.

How about Quasimoondo?

Yeah, and when times changed it got amended. But the right to bear arms hasn't been amended, and until it does, it still stands as the law of the land that all arms are included.

Has the 4th amendment been updated?

Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?

Because blanket surveillance, property seizure because police lie and say they suspected drugs, and parallel construction are pretty much in violation of your Constitution as well.

Absolutely! How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny?

Look, you're descending into tyranny now. So, either get on with it, or stop whining about how you'll do it when you get around to it or someone really outlaws jumbo sized soda.

Otherwise, it's just lip service. Your government is already ignoring your Constitution on a large scale, but apparently nobody gives a damn.

As are those, who try to limit the Second Amendment

Everyone who isn't an American often finds themselves wondering at your fascination with weapons.

Because in the rest of the world, cops and soldiers are the only ones walking around with weapons, and the only places where people walk around with weapons have generally degraded into a fairly lawless state.

Honestly, it seems uncivilized to many of us.

yet, you chose to ignore them completely

You know, I assumed you were joking about brass knuckles and swords.

I thus doubt your honesty and sincerity here and am unlikely to respond again.

Awww, I'm utterly heartbroken, can you tell?

Do you bitch this loudly about when they violate your first amendment, or your fourth amendment, or your fifth amendment? Or anything else? Or is it just guns in particular you worry yourself about?

Your government is shitting all over your rights, as well as those of everyone else on the planet ... and you're on a screed about being able to carry swords and brass knuckles.

So, you'll excuse me if I discount you as yet another American gun nut who feels he should be allowed to own an assault rifle.

Most of your Constitutional amendments are to correct previous bits of stupidity, like not letting women vote. It's a recognition that situations change and that an overly simplistic set of laws doesn't help anybody.

That implies people think about these problems and seek solutions.

But when it comes to the second amendment, it comes down to "Yarg! Our guns!" (or swords, apparently).

you can't even carry a freaking sword

Do you somehow find yourself aggrieved by not being able to carry a sword with you? Is it ruining your cyberpunk look or something?

Or are you just looking for things to kvetch about?

I should think there's very little call for walking around with a sword.

A ceremony at Tiananmen Square would release 10,000 pigeons at sunrise to symbolize an era of peace.

I wonder if any appreciates the dichotomy of those two things.

Because, it's not exactly true.

The Cultural revolution wasn't exactly a shining moment. Or the other reason Tiananmen Square is famous. Or many other things that's happened over the last 6 decades.

The pigeons' feathers were checked, and they were given a cavity search as well.

Worst ... job ... ever.

"Oh, hey honey, how was your day at work?"
"You know, the usual, stuck my finger into a couple hundred pigeons, just like every other day."
"*sigh* Looks like I need to clean the poop off your uniform again"

LOL ... so, "bandwidth of a minivan full of magtape" then?

Why am I picturing Recaro baby seats, five point harnesses all around, a NOS system, and an express ticket to the grocery store/soccer match?

Because, really, the mommy buses often seem to be some of the craziest drivers on the road.

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've been cut off by someone with one of those "Baby on Board" signs ... I don't know if they think that gives them license to speed, or if they're just assholes. But don't expect me to be extra safe because you have a kid on board when you're driving like an idiot and cutting me off.

You kids and your fancy cars, with the neon running lights and bass which can be heard for miles making the wiki wiki noises, your pants that don't fit, smoking the mary jane, and texting the person across the table from you.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah ... get off my damned lawn.

It's like red cars. They get a higher amount of tickets, apparently.

Is it because cops target red cars? Or because people who buy red cars are more likely to drive fast?

Who knows.

In the case of the WRX, I'm not surprised ... this is a car which can break any posted speed limit in North America while still accelerating in second gear. I remember being in a friend's as he merged into traffic ... and we went from surface street speeds to passing the cars on the highway in a really short period.

I was quite impressed, since my non-turbo Impreza seemed plenty speedy to me prior to that. Though, I was just as happy with my slower version.

But you would also need a lot of cargo to support those people. In fact, your cargo to person ratio is going to be quite high. It would probably be 10 cargo trips for every human trip, so more like 100,000 trips. And we're talking 100,000 trips of a giant spaceship.

And what is the cost, both in terms of resources and pollution, of launching 100,000 times? Even if you kept it in orbit and brought people up to it it's a huge cost.

And I'm betting 100,000 launches is more than have been done in all of history. By a rather large amount, I'd think.

As usual, when I hear futurists telling us about the awesome the future will be ... I find myself thinking "this is impractical, way more than anybody will ever be able to afford, and probably never going to happen".

It sounds like we'd need to pretty much strip the Earth of resources to pull this off, and unless Musk is paying this out of his own damned pocket, I think the entire idea is doomed to fail. And that doesn't change the fact that you're diverting a huge amount of resources for a relatively small percentage of humanity.

This is flying cars, Mr Fusion, and a vast amount of engineering, plus ponies, unicorns, and cats living with dogs ... all in one big overly-optimistic ball of fantasy.

The sheer amount of energy required to do this is so mind boggling as to make the whole idea laughable.

I think the romantic idea of space colonization is pretty cool. But I don't really think it's quite as viable as people like to think it is. At least not with current energy requirements and sources.

Don't know about you, but my car's speedometer has ... gasp ... both kph and mph on it.

I can magically change from Canada to the US and back again, and still know what speed I'm going in the correct units.

It's really quite a marvelous invention to apply two scales to a dial. I've even seen some of them new-fangled digital ones where you could change all of the units pretty easily. Imagine, the same car can display either at the touch of a button.

Sorry, but requiring car makers to make it possible to have both has been a solved problem for a couple of decades now.

Besides, if it's anything like over here, nobody is going to pay attention to the speed limit anyway. :-P