I wonder how the Mystery Goo is going to behave in that orbit.

Actually, disabling substances are used in the vast majority of rapes. The most common is alcohol (trying to get the victim too drunk to resist or looking for someone who already is, in about two thirds of rapes), but drugs are used in about 20% of additional rapes. Very, very few rapes follow the classic Hollywood script of "stranger leaps out of the bushes with a knife" - so vanishingly few that the scenario is statistically almost nonexistant. Disabling substances are extremely popular because 1) they work very well, 2) the victim often can't remember the attacker well if at all, 3) the victim is not in a state to be making a report until long after the event, 4) the victim's ability to make legally reliable testimony is compromised. Why would people choose the Hollywood way over that?

And I'm sorry, but if you think that you can watch everything you consume every second of every evening you're out and not slip up, you're an idiot. And yes, the reason people get mad at people like you is that the problem is that there are people out there drugging other peoples' drinks en masse and thinking that this is acceptable behavior, not that victims haven't gained supernatural abilities to hyperfocus on everything they may potentially consume at all times and never slip up. "Look, I'm sorry that you're dying of pancreatic cancer, but you should have been getting pancreatic function tests daily and working two jobs to pay for weekly MRI scans to find it before it could have posed a threat to you, and because you weren't, it's your own damned fault, and don't act like I'm a jerk for pointing this out!" That's how you come across when you take that tack. The problem is the f***ing cancer, not the victim.

Right, so women are supposed to walk around at all times with a gun in their hand, never setting it down for anything, and have a proximity radar to warn them if anyone is approaching them where they can't see so that she can pump them full of lead?

Why, I bet the gun will just shoot the rohipnol right out of drinks too!

The percent of rape cases in which having a gun could have helped is probably in in the single digits. And with it of course carries the risk of escalating the risk of getting you seriously injured or killed.

I should add that the Strauss-Kahn red meat is getting old. First off, most of the descriptions of the case are way off, partially inspired by the prosecutors switching from overplaying the case against him to overplaying the case for him. To be clear:

1) If an accusation is made, and the accused is convicted, the legal system has been determined that the person is guilty.
2) If an accusation is made, the accused is not charged, and the accuser is convicted of making a false accusation, then the legal system has determined that it was a false charge.
3) If an accusation is made, the accused is not charged, but neither is the accuser, then the legal system has made no finding in any direction due to insufficient evidence to match the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard in either direction.

This should be obvious, but for some reason, many people are always fixated on interpreting #3 (by far the most common scenario) as #2.

As for Kahn? Since then he's been caught up in one sex related charge after another - and has admitted to parts of them. He's currently out on bail awaiting trial for running a prostitution ring; the trial begins a couple days from now.

Well, that's certainly what the submitter was trying to imply with the two sentences of flamebait about Strauss-Kahn tacked onto the end of an essentially unrelated news story.

My point was all about what happens when the mosquitos are not as infertile as planned.

If some offspring survive that means that they didn't get the gene to kill them for some reason. Aka, they're just like wild populations. So.....?

If chemical companies are going to dump something into my backyard, I will scream and shout just as loud

Your back yard is full of the intentional products of chemical companies. Here we're talking about the intentional products of genetic engineering. You're trying to change the situation by comparing waste products with intentional products.

You seem to claim that people should just trust experts. I claim that experts should attempt to inform the public better, thereby earning their trust...

Sorry, but Joe Blow GED is never going to become an expert on genetic engineering. Ever. Period. And the same goes for the vast majority of the public.

So, rabbits that got released in Australia are the top predator? The Pampas grass in California is the top predator? I can make a long list of invasive species that are not the top predator and still influenced their ecosystem a lot

.

Got any examples that aren't introduced species? We're talking about reducing or eliminating species within an ecosystem, not adding new ones from totally different ecosystem. And part of the reason rabbits were so uncontrolled in Australia anyway was because settlers had killed off almost all of the top predators. One could easily imagine that, for example, tasmanian tigers would have quite enjoyed a rabbit feast. Dingo numbers were also shaply culled in the areas with the highest rabbit populations.

What happens if a small percentage don't?

Then they didn't get the gene to kill them. Your point?

That's because most physics and chemistry experiments don't breed and multiply.

Neither do infertile mosquitoes; your point?

They are talking about something that happens literally in their own backyard.

Really, you think there's no products of modern chemistry in your backyard?

They are right to do a risk assessment.

And there have been risk assessments done, by regulators, taking into account the scientific data. Risk assessments are not something for Joe Bloe and his GED who reads NaturalNews and thinks that "GMO mosquitoes" means that they're going to bite his children and spread a zombie plague.

Changing the balance in an ecosystem can have huge consequences.

Contrary to popular belief, changing the bottom of a food chain rarely has major consequences; it's the changing of the top of a food chain that tends to have the biggest consequences. The higher up the food chain you go, not only do you have more of a profound impact on the landscape (look at how radically, say, deer overpopulation transforms a whole ecosystem), but also the more species tend to be generalists rather than specialists. Generalists means the ability to switch more readily between food sources, meaning changes further down have little impact on them. But if you eliminate a top predator from an area, the consequences further down can be profound.

It depends on how cynical you want to be. Corporations will pull sponsorship from events or people that fail to exhibit traits with which they want to be associated. Drop the shoe deal with the sports star who is exposed as a racist or whatever. Of course, does the company really care about race relations, or do they just want to avoid bad press from a populace who does?

I saw commercials recently that CVS Pharmacy stopped selling cigarettes. I don't think anybody was boycotting them over that, or there was any real notice of their tobacco sales at all. And they must have been making non-zero dollars. But perhaps the decline in smoking and hassle of keeping up with laws made the shelf space more valuable for something else.

There are definitely principled companies that are privately held. Pretty sure Ben and Jerry drink their own koolaid.

You're right, though, it's rare. Zuck's billions are not enough. Gotta make more more more even if it means contributing to the oppression of people living under a censorship regime.

Which is perfectly reasonable. If I ran a website over which I had editorial control, I wouldn't post Muhammed pics either because I'd be scared of getting blowed up and my staff killed. But I'd admit it was out of fear, not "respect." I have no respect for people who would kill because of something said or written or expressed.

That's not what the FB deal is about, though. They're not censoring themselves, they're censoring their users. And they're enforcing the censorship of another government rather than not do business there.

Sure, LifeInvader should operate within the laws of nations where they do business. But if those laws compromise your principles, you shouldn't do business there. That has nothing to do with American arrogance. I wouldn't do business in North Korea if I had to contribute to the oppression of their people. That won't be on me.

Zuck expressed the right principle. "We believe in free speech." If Turkish law says "no Muhammed pics" then let them hunt down people who post them. Sucks, but you don't have to help them. If the Turks ban FB because they won't do their dirty censorship work for them...so be it. That would be the principled stance.

It would send a message to Turks that their culture is fucked up. Lots of people would be upset about no longer having access to FaceBook, and a conversation might break out amongst Turks about the nature of their government's limits on expression. This instead just supports the status quo.

I'm coming at that from my American, free-speech-at-nearly-any-cost point of view. Turks may not care about freedom of expression, and that's their prerogative. But my sentiment echoes what Zuck said (not what he did). For my part, I would not go telling the Turks to change. But I absolutely would not help them censor, either. I would keep my network neutral. Common carrier. You can post whatever you want. If your local authorities want to persecute you for it, that's on them (and your culture). But I'm not going to help them oppress you.

There isn't much of another option. The third party candidate in my last governor's race wanted our state to issue its own currency backed by gold.

So I've got team red, team blue, and team crazy. For whom do you suggest I vote?

Would never work. They would just pass a resolution continuing all current laws for the next sunset period. Same way they do with budgets and re-issuing the blanket surveillance warrants every 90 days.

What we need are specific, limited, necessary, well-crafted laws written in the descriptive spirit of English Common Law on which our legal system was based.

Ah, Americans and their "mammoth snowstorms" - try living on a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic. You know what we call a snowstorm with gale-force winds and copious precipitation? Tuesday ;) Our last one was... let's see, all weekend. The northwest gets hit by another gale-force storm tomorrow. The southeast is predicted to get hurricane-force winds on Thursday morning.

Here's what the job of someone dispatched to maintain antennae for air traffic control services has to deal with here. ;) (those are guy wires)