try 1000 years ago

Further back than that. Europe was fighting the Muslims during Charlemagne's reign (about 800AD)....

When government is huge and has their fingers in every pie, it creates a great deal of motivation to influence those fingers.

Yeppers. There's better than a trillion at stake every year in discretionary spending. With that much money on the line, you can afford to spend a metric buttload of money buying yourself a piece of it....

Toy makers produce toys that they expect to sell better than others. If there's any kind of stereotyping it is not on the side of the toy maker but on the side of the toy buyer.

So, you don't consider it stereotyping for the toy manufacturers to think that pink toys will sell better to girls?

It is generally believed that the earths magnetic field protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. Given that Venus has no (very small) magnetic field, this explains why the planet has such a dense atmosphere.

So, our magnetic field gives Earth a thick atmosphere, but Venus' lack of a magnetic field gives it an even thicker atmosphere?

I'm missing something obviously....

when it comes to 21st century things like mobile data plans and warranties on consumer goods americans are getting shafted.

Really? My monthly mobile data plan costs less than a family dinner at one of our better restaurants. Or two dinners at an average restaurant....

Well, that was an impressive leap!

so, got any evidence of overpopulation among humans? Other than a number that frightens you badly?

Since I was a kid, population has more than doubled, but people are living longer, there are fewer famines (other than those engineered by governments to get rid of undesired minorities), fewer plagues, fewer wars. Basically, double-triple the population but living better than any time in history....

I remember when deer overran our area. They denuded large swaths of land. By the time the local governments got around to doing something to cull the herd, disease and hunger took them down.

Was this back when everyone was whinging that hunting was evil and shouldn't be allowed?

Note that hunting seasons pretty much eliminate that sort of problem, unless of course you make owning firearms illegal....

So, last time I checked (a couple of days back, when this first appeared in the news), "background extinction rate" is a great deal of SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).

We don't know the total number of species alive now or at any particular time in the past. We never have, and it's likely we never will (until that number is 1). Which makes any estimate of the rate of extinction now or in the past more guess than science.

Without an accurate guesstimate of number of species at any given time, "background extinction rate" is an even less accurate guesstimate.

And with the denominator of (current extinction rate/background extinction rate) a guesstimate, the number produced (114 in this case) is another guesstimate (we don't even know the number of species going extinct now, much less the average number - what we know is the number of species that we notice going extinct).

So, I'm less than excited by this particular prediction. Maybe in a century or two we'll know enough to make this a major concern (note that 114x background rate translates to ~225 species going extinct per million years - it's hardly going to be a swift extinction, except in geological terms).

Or not....

I thought Slashdot knew what ad hominem attacks were and how to avoid them by judging content rather than messenger.

"Well, you were wrong"

Seeing tanks driving down the street can bring up some scary memories for some people.

I used to live by an army base when I was a kid. I remember occasionally seeing tanks and halftracks on the road.

Ditto. I also remember "firepower displays" in a couple of places. They invite the families out to watch them blow up shit with pretty much everything on hand from .50 cal to 8" howitzers. The "time on target" was really impressive.

FYI: a "time on target" is where they fire all the artillery attached to a division staggered in such a way that the shells all arrive on the target at the same time. Basically, one big boom! using everything from 4.2" mortars on up at once....

Come to think of it, first time I lived in a civilian town was when I was 12 or so. I was shocked to find out that some kids had never even seen a tank, much less climbed on one....

privitize gains and subsidize losses (sorry. privitise and subsidise for this story

Privatize & privatise.

It's like some dickwad whining about people having guns yet has armed guards on the payroll.

Like Obama and Hillary, for instance? Seems to me Teddy Kennedy was much the same back in the day as well.

You forgot to mention from the article that the shoplifter was armed and took a woman and child as hostage in a standoff with police. Although the property damages was extreme in the particular case, the SWAT team's response to the hostage situation wasn't.

So, you're saying that the SWAT team pretty much destroyed a house that had HOSTAGES INSIDE???? And you think that's okay?

Frankly, automatic weapons are a great way to turn money into noise. Fun, but expensive after awhile.

This!

Alas, that's why I don't get to shoot nearly so much as I would like....