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Comment Re: Bioaccumulation Ahoy (Score 2, Insightful) 180

Okay, here's your first citation.

http://www.elizabethriver.org/

Now, having worked on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, I can assure you that it is common in the newspapers to have articles about projects to restart clam and oyster aquaculture, which crashed, resulting in a spike in pollution in the water.

But more to the point, I worked at Atlantic Metrocast, where the land had been taken over by the military during world war 2, and all kinds of extremely toxic munitions leaked in. That site is a superfund site, paid for by the Federal Government, because they are the ones who polluted it.
To the south is Julian Creek, where munitions were just dumped into the water, and the cancer rates and birth defect rates are sky-high.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the shipyards yet. They also were dumping in the river, aah, welding materials, lead, whatnot. AND, when the company at the old Bells Mill site needed to turn the mashland of their worksite into solid land, they used fill from the shipyards. So as you walk along the land at BayShore Concrete, you'll every so often find all kinds of heavy-metal-laden industrial parts there, embedded in the ground.

Oh, and don't forget right by the Gilmerton Bridge where there's a recycling center that tears down ships.

Now, that's just the Elizabeth. Let's move on up to the James, where you have Tenneco/Newport News Shipbuilding, the Navy's ship graveyard, and of course Smithfield Hams. And all that agricultural land that gets sprayed every year.

Or how about the Shenandoah River, which five years ago practically died due to heavy metal pollution in the Shenandoah Valley, and dumps into the Chesapeake Bay through Maryland?

Citation needed, I gave you one; I mentioned a few other places where you can find more.

One hint is that wherever you find the military, destruction is not far behind.

Open your eyes and look for yourself, and quit with the laziness, because that's what it is.

Comment Re: The utility/need/desire exists (Score 1) 107

No, we just need to rethink our concept of what a 'live' human means. In the future, it can mean a human who makes a geiger counter jump off the table.

Really, though, the constraint ennvelopes for cars and planes is completely opposite, one from the other. What that means is that a flying car will perform neither job well, which means that even when (not if) invented, it won't sell. And it'll burn up those fossil fuels.

Cars have to be narrow. Planes have to be wide, for stability and lift. Cars have to be strong against head-on, rear-end, and (somewhat) t-bone crashes. Forplanes, that's utterly unimportant, but they need to be strong against vertical shocks, which doesn't matter for cars. Cars should be heavy planes should be light. Cars need to do well under low-maintenance conditions; planes that are under low-maintenance should be retired.

Comment Re: Now this is funny. (Score 1) 109

If you're implying that I write insecure code because I write a lot of code then you're mistaken. I produce a lot of code because I'm able to utilize technology to generate clean, bug free code for very common scenarios. I also write a lot of quality unit tests. On top of that, my code contains quality documentation. You just can't write disciplined code like that and not produce many lines of code.

Comment Re:A win for medieval mentality (Score 1) 1330

I haven't flipped the issue on its head. I'm calling it like it is. You're unable to see that people who employ people are people too with the same constitutional rights. Let's flip it for a second and you'll see what I mean (not really, this is the Internet, but it's fun to try.)

You go to work for XYZ-tech. Every year they have a big Christmas party celebrating the birth of Christ. They require you to pay for part of the party expenses. We could both agree that as a devout atheist, you feel this is wrong in every way. So why is it different when you flip around employee and employer? Why is it suddenly okay to tell the employer that they must violate their religious beliefs by being forced to pay for something that they feel is murder? Just as you wouldn't sue your employer if they had an optional off-site private Christmas party; nobody is punishing employees for using contraception that is not one of the sixteen forms that Hobby Lobby covers.

If you think that your rights change because you provide an income to people, then that's your right. You're objectively incorrect, but theirs nothing in the constitution against being wrong.

Comment Re:A win for medieval mentality (Score 1) 1330

Separation between Church and State means that you get to hold whatever "religious" belief you want in private

Nope. It doesn't. If the state required citizens to abondon their religious beliefs in public then that would be a clear violation of the separation of church and state. Have you read the constitution? It says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

you don't get to impose those religious views (or values) on others.

I agree with you. Nobody has the right to impose on the owners of Hobby Lobby their religious views.

Not even people who just happen to be in a position of financial dependence to you.

Like my kids? Yes. I have the right to raise them as I see fit.

What people call "freedom" here is the freedom to impose your arbitrary views (here "religion") onto others (employees) by cavilling over what they consider "appropriate" medical care.
What this ruling does is empower employers to meddle in what medical care their employers can spend their medical benefits, and that's wrong.

It sure doesn't. Nobody is getting fired for buying supplemental insurance, buying their own contraception, etc... Just as you wouldn't want to be forced to buy your employees Bibles, the owners of Hobby Lobby do not want to buy what they consider abortion pills. It's that simple.

The separation between church and state held the provision that e.g. employers couldn't use their power to meddle in the (privileged) docter-patient relationship, and that protection has just been lifted.

No it didn't. Nobody is meddling.

The question of whether Hobby-Lobby employees can make do in other ways is irrelevant.

Translation from Internet Atheist to English: Irrelevant - "You had a really great point and I can't argue with it."

I think they shouldn't have to have to circumnavigate this particular obstacle in the first place.

Then work somewhere else. I don't agree with everything my employer does, but I choose to work there anyway.

I get the distinct impression that people fail to see how dangerous it is to lift this protection because it's touted as "Christian". For better or worse, Hindu, Muslim, Satanist, and Scientologist "religions" just got the same rights.

Good for them. I support religious freedoms.

Your analogy about the "Hindu refusing to buy me [...]" is beside the point I think, because that's a case of an employer refusing you discretionary spending. Medical treatment is not discretionary, and although the employer ultimately foots the bill it's not something he would ordinarily have any say in (apart from this "religious" thing now). It's medical benefits, not some gift!

I don't think plan B is a medical treatment. It's elective. A baby is not a disease. I would argue that liposuction comes closer to a treatment.

What I'm calling for is a state in which nobody can construe their their religious "rights" in ways that allow them to impose their religious views on others.

Me too. Which is why I find it odd that you do want to impose your religious beliefs on business owners.

Comment Re:They'd be stumped more often (Score 1) 115

Or, aleernatively... letting a few crimes go unsolved is part and parcel of an authoritarian police state.

Right now, we have on our 'unsolved docket' Lois Lerner, war crimes by US troops in Iraq, high treason by various top operatives violating their constitutional oaths and undermining the rule of law, thus aiding the enemies of the US, embezzlement by bankers who control the Fed, breach of fiduciary duty by BoA under the blackmail of Paulson that he would break the law... and now most recently high crimes by that French bank in criminal money laundering, in one is the biggest ever (9 billion) fine, but unfortunately, we can't find the criminal.

And that's just the US. I haven't hit one percent of the unsolved crimes yet.

Leaving a 'rule of law' nation sucks.

Comment Re:ItsATrap (Score 1) 115

It's doubly a trap when those same companies, which have multiple backup systems on the emails, suddenly cannot recover anything following a series of six separate 'hard drive crashes' on RAID-7 systems, so that the IRS' evidence can no longer prove criminal intent by leaders of the government.

Leaving a 'rule of law' nation sucks.

Comment Re:"Informants" (read: bribery) (Score 1) 115

Which, if this chain of thought is correct, leads to the conclusion that in those 9 cases, either police were NOT corrupt (and so could be foiled) or were corrupt, and wanted to be foiled.

I'm not sure that the chain of thought is correct. In some areas --Illinois for example, I would expect it to be.

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