Comment Re:Lucky them (Score 1) 159
Actually, when people say googling, they really do mean "look it up using Google."
Actually, no, they don't. They mean "look it up with whatever search engine you usually use". As in, google it with Bing".
Actually, when people say googling, they really do mean "look it up using Google."
Actually, no, they don't. They mean "look it up with whatever search engine you usually use". As in, google it with Bing".
If gun ownership were more tightly controlled, those 14000-19000 nonfatal injuries and the hundreds of fatal injuries from accidental shootings would be reduced by at least an order of magnitude - lives would be saved.
The number of firearms accidents is statistical noise. Anyone making a great hue and cry about them is clearly not actually concerned with gun accidents, but is trying to use them to veil a prohibitionist agenda.
If gun ownership were more tightly controlled, the 60,000 to 2,500,000 annual incidents of firearms self-defense (yes, huge error bars) would be reduced -- more people would be murdered, raped, and robbed from. Lives would be lost.
Also, of course, enforcing a prohibition law ipso facto means locking people in cages for acts that do not credibly threaten the rights of others. Liberty would be lost.
Here in the civilised world...murder rates and prison populations are proportionally tiny compared to the USA.
Folks in Mexico, Philippines, and Brazil might take exception to being called "uncivilized".
Yes, we have more violence than other wealthy nations. We also have more of a problem with an unaddressed legacy of slavery and segregation, ongoing racism, ongoing economic injustice, and lack of access to useful mental health care than those nations do. Those factors have far more to do with our violence problem than access to firearms does.
According to CDC's WISQARS, there are about 14,000-19,000 nonfatal injuries stemming from accidental shootings per year in the U.S.
And according to that same source, for 2012, there were 8,974,762 non-fatal accidental injuries from falls. Floors are dangerous. 2,145,927 from cutting or piercing objects, 972,923 from poisoning, 423,138 from fire, 357,629 from dog bites...
Heck, there were 58,363 from "nature/environment", which includes "exposure to adverse natural and environmental conditions (such as severe heat, severe cold, lightning, sunstroke, large storms, and natural disasters) as well as lack of food or water." Nature will hurt you with more probability than guns will.
But yours is a common mistake people make when talking about guns, because they just don't know (or care) about the actual numbers.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Numbers are meaningless without context for comparison. By any rational comparison with other things that can hurt you, firearms accidents are rare.
Think about it: If a company finds a cure for all cancers (emphasis on the plural form, cancer is not just one disease) they could demand any price at all and people would pay it. "Let's discuss payment plans." The inventors would receive hero status and could retire rich as kings of old. You don't think this would sound appealing to the people allegedly sitting on this cure-all?
I reject the idea that science is logical, purely rational, that it is detached and value-free, and that it is, for all these reasons, morally superior
Sure fight your strawman all you want. But you are rejecting an non existant science. Science is about self correcting process , reasonable, to discover more about our universe and its quirk. Science is not morallly superior, or moral at all. Science USER are the one which bring moral in. As for the spock image, well it is a movie. DUH. We atheist already threw away the old gods, we do not need new gods especially idols from movie and tv serie about an utopia.
the big challenge of atheism....
Repeat slowly after me: atheism is not about sicence, atheism is not about anything whatsoever as value or morality. atheism is solely about the belief of absence of gods.
Some atheist are religious. Some do not care about evidence and are simply atheist out of lazyness. Some do ask themselves question and introspect. Some are terrible evil asshole some are good. Basically atheist are (tada!) human. All that link them is the absence of belief in gods nothing more nothing less.
Now you may be as me an agnostic atheist (null hypothesis is that there is no god, and the clan pretending there are gods have not brought any evidence to stop the null.... Still I am not gnostic atheist I do not know for SURE there is no gods, only no evidence of it). And you might as me try to use the rational process of science for many reason (self correcting, try to remove bias etc...) but that still does not make us less human. We are still bound by morals and emotions.
My final word : spock is not 100% rational ! you misunderstood the character of spock. Spock *ATTEMPT* to be 100% rational. But he is a mere half human and is sometiems driven by emotions. We saw him relieved for example that kirk was safe in movie/tv serie. We saw him getting angry. We saw him having emotions. Your diatribe would have been better put with a true 100% vulcan. So you even fail at common knowledge.
Evolutionary selection pressures never stop.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any long-term evolutionary advantage for a species. Horseshoe crabs have been rocking along on tiny brains for about three orders of magnitude longer than Homo sapiens has been around.
"...it's illegal for these ride-sharing services to charge passengers an individual fare..."
If you're charging for access to X (for any given X), you're not sharing, you're selling (or leasing). And you don't get to be exempt from consumer protection regulations just because you're doing your selling on the web.
...but some European countries (France is another one) have all these stupid little "we're special...and we don't understand the internet" rules...
Sounds like these nations understand the internet quite well. They understand that it's not magic and does not relieve companies of their responsibilities to operate in an accountable manner. "But...we do it the internet!" is not a legal escape clause, as companies like Uber are finally being taught.
When you are about to have an economic crash groups like Occupy and the Tea Party are an inevitability, whatever the names or politcal leaning may be. When you are about to have an economic crash the powers that be prepare to suppress revolt and domestic spying is job one. Militarizing the police is job two.
During the Great Depression Fascism was where economically desperate people turned as they are doing in Greece today.
Note the date, 2008, not 2002. Approximately the time financial markets started crashing and the Occupy and Tea Party movements started building. Ya think the U.S. government was more worried about Islamic terrorists or ordinary Americans who would soon be fed up with massive corruption in D.C. and Wall Street. Were they trying to prevent another 9/11 or building the capacity to suppress the backlash when millions of ordinary people would soon be thrown out of their jobs and homes, while Wall Street would get massively bailed out, and return to business as usual, getting rich.
The U.S. did a spectacularly good job of crushing Occupy. Did they use domestic spying to do it.
War is when your government tells you who the enemy is, revolution is when you figure it out for yourself.
The IP will probably be revealed as being 127.0.0.1.
The judge will accept it as evidence, and the jury will convict because we are still living in a society of imbeciles trying to impose on how everyone should live under the premise that they know better as a collective decider.
We are destroying basic human rights and severely punishing people simply so we can "show them a better path" in life.
It's absurd. Why can't we just close all these ineffective branches of government fighting pseudo crimes already?
I love Stallman, but I was very disappointed in this talk. I had the crazy idea that I'd watch it with my girlfriend to show her some Free software ideals, but I don't think Stallman did a good job here. He clears his throat in a strange way very often and he cut down his speech so much that a lot of the meaning is lost. I found myself mentally tuning out very quickly. I think I could do a better job of explaining his positions quickly to non-techies in an accessible way.
The major difference between bonds and bond traders is that the bonds will eventually mature.