Assad is our enemy. He has always been our enemy. ISIS are our friends.

ISIS are our enemies. They have always been our enemies. Assad is our friend.

Yah. When we started attacking ISIS (ISIL, IS, whatever), my first thought was "we're helping the rebels fight Assad, and we're helping Assad fight the rebels" (for varying values of "rebel"), since anything we do to ISIS helps Assad and allows him to bring more force to bear on the other rebels that we're helping....

With government, you can complain on Constitutional grounds if they infringe your rights.

Interesting...

Just read a news article this AM about the NSA working to develop a "map of the internet", with every device using the internet at any given moment mapped as to both virtual and physical location.

Looks like it'll be tough, but the only real problem I see is going to be making the "map" usable once they acquire the information...

Good luck on getting that sort of thing killed on Constitutional grounds....

If you combine the populations of India and China, isn't it something like seven times the population of the United States?

More like eight times....

Unlike for civilians, there are open statistics for police officers being shot with their own firearms. In fact, the percent is 5% of officers shot are shot with their own weapon. One in twenty.

It might be worth noting that your 5% figure actually translates to THREE officers shot with their own weapon in 2011 (from the FBI report). Out of 780K police officers. So, in any given year, about 0.0004% of police are killed with their own weapon....

Hardly a significant problem.

One? Are you joking? According to CDCâ(TM)s WISQARS, there are about 14,000-19,000 nonfatal injuries stemming from accidental shootings per year in the U.S.

Of course, my comment was about men shooting their penises off, in response to GP's comment about same.

And there are NOT 14K-19K shot-off-penises per annum in the USA.

Or do you think the "liberal media" is covering up the hundreds of thousands of people who use guns to prevent themselves from being stabbed in our (incredibly safe) country every day?

So, I gather that you think that the "liberal media" is covering up the hundreds of thousands of people who shoot themselves accidently in our (incredibly safe) country every day?

Because, face it, that doesn't actually happen all that often either. Note that the average is somewhere around 600 fatalities per year in a nation of 330 million. Which puts accidental shootings way below traffic deaths (33000 per year) as a problem to worry about.

Yet Another Responsible Gun Owner Shoots His Own Penis
At least five American men have shot off their penises since 2010.

Note that this new "smart" gun won't save you from doing this.

Note also that an average of one such accident per year in a land of 300+ million makes it less common than being struck by lightning. So when we get that lightning problem under control, I can turn my attention to the "shooting my own penis off" problem....

This one will insist on checking your fingerprints first.

As soon as the Police and Military adopt these guns,I'll start considering doing so.

Until then, my old-fashioned guns will have to suffice.

5: It's opt-in, the people that would normally text and drive anyways aren't going to buy it.

Ah, but the true purpose of TFA is to convince the several States to make use of this company mandatory for all drivers - guaranteed income stream!!!

With the obvious exception of U-235, mining something doesn't actually make it disappear. It'll still be around in a landfill somewhere, if it whatever it was made into wasn't recycled.

So, no, we're not going to run out of raw materials unless our population keeps growing exponentially. And the best projections have it peaking in the 10-12B range, then declining back to lower than it is now (note that, absent immigration, the USA and western Europe are already experiencing a population decline).

On the other hand, our industrial society has been based on the assumption of an ever-increasing population (as an obvious example, Social Security assumes more children than elderly, an increasingly shaky assumption). We're going to have to make some changes by and by, when population goes into a semi-permanent decline.

That was "flamebait"???

Looked more like an attempt at humour from where I was sitting.

one of the retired Essex-class aircraft carriers was referred to as a "hero ship" at least once.

That would probably have been Lexington (not CV-3, the Essex with the same name), which was built in 14 months. An impressive feat at the best of times, and that wasn't the best of times....

and govt funded a scheme to distribute that energy where it's needed, then we can all live on free energy (ie at home at least).

It's not free if you're paying for the government to fund a scheme to distribute that energy. The cost is moderately well hidden, but it's far from free....

My French came out. English isn't my first language.

In that case, my apologies, since your English is considerably better than my French (I can just about handle "je ne parle Francais" without mistakenly putting a Spanish conjugation in).