Being treated as a subhuman would be deplorable if that was happening to a human. You're actually begging the question (a first on slashdot). You start with the assumption that an Orangutan is human and then suggest that treating it as less than a human is deplorable.
On the subject of being held against her will. How was it ascertained that the Orangutan did not wish to be in the zoo and preferred to be in the wild, or do we just assume that it would rather be in the wild? Assuming an Orangutan would choose the wild, then where DO we draw the line? Does a bird know or care whether it is in captivity or in the wild? How about a lizard? An ant?

There is about the same chance of a gun getting discovered by the TSA at checkpoint as there is of getting your gun discovered in luggage. However, the chances of them confiscating it if discovered at the checkpoint is 100%, while the chance of TSA stealing it out of your luggage is probably only about 1/4 or an 1/8th of that. Statistics say that you should check your gun, because 80% or so of the time, it will not get stolen.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, you really should carry on anything worth more to you than a pair of jeans. Since you can no longer lock your luggage, and the TSA agents have stolen billions of dollars of items out of luggage, you are a fool to check anything valuable.

Humans can tell when bad weather is coming. We can sense low pressure and it makes us uneasy. One difference between humans and birds is that birds can fly away but can't hunker down in a shelter and ride it out. Other than birds that build in cliffsides, bird's nests are generally pretty exposed. Humans can't fly, but can hunker down in a shelter and ride it out.

Low level harmonics are below what birds can hear too, but they can feel them, and so can we. Of course, Tornadoes that are going to form two days in the future don't produce this deep rumble. They may have sensed the pressure dropping, which humans can also sense, and then they flew away from where they were in hopes of finding higher pressure somewhere else.

I'm not sure about T-mobile, but Verizon has various flags which cause this to get turned back on, such as getting a new phone, signing a new contract, changing your rate plan, etc.

I went through this several times with Verizon. I disabled all billing through my account, but apparently every time you get a new phone, change your rate plan, or a mouse farts, the option gets switched back on.
In many cases, such as my stepson's, they are aiming these services at kids, because they know they have trained well this generation of kids to not read the fine print. By texting "funny" to some number they can get a corny joke sent to their phone once a day and they don't even realize that it is costing $10 a week because they didn't read the fine print. Nevermind that kids are not able to enter legal contracts and are under no obligation to pay.
Basically, if the phones are offering these billing services, they need to be regulated under the same rules as a credit card, in addition to the regulations of the phone services. Basically, they are currently acting as a credit card without having to follow the same regulations. Since they are not acting as a mere facilitator, as a credit card company would, they feel no obligation to side with the consumer on a complaint. If a CC company sides with a consumer and reverses the charge, they make MORE money. If the phone company reverses the charge, they lose not just their 20-40% cut of the scam, but the entire amount, unless they have agreements with the scam companies that allow reversing the charges to them.

Right. Playing with your gun teaches the ability to resist road rage. Are you even listening to yourself?

Try it. Then sound off. B-)

As you can see, the moderation converged on a more proper +5 Insightful

  I've read the post carefully and it doesn't qualify as Flamebait IMHO. It states a controversial political opinion and thus invites a discussion, which may lead to flamage, but does not itself lead with a flame.

So this looks like someone who doesn't like the position trying to suppress it, by hitting it with the most plausible -1, in the hope that one more like-minded person will have mod points and get it suppressed before very many people see it. That works for "politically incorrect" subjects (such as criticisms of the "heat death of the Earth, everybody panic and suppress technology" interpretation of climate data), where a crowd of like-minded free speech haters are ready to suppress opposing opinions. But pro-pot doesn't appear to attract that much system-gaming opposition.

Right now it only takes two downmods to hide a non-anonymous itme. It seems to me that we have enough people willing to moderate that it's time to scale up the mod system, so a small astroturf operation can't shut down debate. Say: double it: Mods get 10 points, -2 hides, non-anynomous starts at +2, high-karma at +4, doulble everybody's current karma and readjust the cutpoints for bonuses, caps, and the like. That would mean it would take two moderators to suppress a anonymous post and four for authors willing to risk reputation. (It would also mean more work for those who are willing to moderate - but they might be more willing to spend a point if they had more to spend.)

Have you seen people drive? Road rage? Now think many of these same people with guns.

Target range practice is a very powerful biofeedback mechanism for teaching the suppression of the production of adrenaline and of all symptoms of excitement. Aligning gun sights - a pair of visual targets separated by about the length of the gun barrel (inches, a foot, or several feet), aligning them with a target (at tens of feet), and holding the alignment, gives visibility to even microscopic tremors and movement. Getting the image right and stable means drastically suppressing this movement. Over a number of range sessions, this leads to learning how to be icy calm, as a reflex, in the midst of a very stressful environment (full of intermittent explosions, bright lights, acrid smells, and odd-temperature winds).

(The effect is extreme. It was discovered that good target shooters, thinking they were just controlling their breath, had actually learned to "stop their heartbeat" - compressing the time between the pairs of beats before and after firing a shot and doubling the time between beats during the trigger pull.)

The result is that, after just a few good sessions, this becomes imprinted. Even in a rage, putting your hand on a gun drops you into that icy calm state.

Indeed, though antagonizing your opponents like that probably isn't going to help the cause.

There is no long a point in trying not antagonizing them. Pretty much anyone who is still actively lobbying against private ownership of guns is either ignoring the evidence, incapable of uncerstandng it, or has a hidden agenda (such as creating victim-rich zones for govenment or criminal activity).

These people are not going to be converted. Things are far enough long that we no longer need them as straw men to raise the bogus argumets to be knocked down with logic. (Those who can be convinced with logic are now mostly either convinced or subject to information shortage). But they remain useful as targets of ridicule, so those who are more interested in being with the in crowd than making smart decisions can be converted.

For those still uncertain on the issue: Do you want to reduce murder, rape, assault, robery, criminal victimization, and institutional suppression of minority groups? Or do you want to want to reduce gun possession? There is no longer any question: More guns mean less of all those things.

This is needed at the bar when pouring into a glass or pitcher.

By then it's far too late. This is about spreading out the active ingredient from the hops during the original mixinig, before brewing, so it can keep the ingredient from the fungi from loading up on carbon dioxide during brewing. By the time you pour, the opportunity for the hops to do anything but add flavor is long gone.

I haven't seen any ads on Facebook. Either they are so unobstrusive that I just don't see them (and are therefore useless) or I am just very good at ignoring them (and they are therefore useless).
I wonder what will happen when people find out that advertising is just a big scam and for every dollar you invest, you get far less than a dollar back. Goodbye Google, Facebook, MySpace, Slashdot, etc.

My old laptop had a dead battery. It only worked when plugged in. That doesn't mean I didn't still travel with it. It was still useful to me at my destination. Company policy won't let me check it in luggage.
Also, I work for a company that deals with healthcare and there is Protected Healthcare Information on my laptop. Do I need to carry HIPAA releases with me so that I can have them sign before looking at my laptop? Also, corporate policy forbids me to allow anyone else to operate my laptop, as does probably 90% of other companies in America.

They may have missed more than three. Who knows how many made it through security and then chickened out?

How many attempted hijackings were foiled? Also zero.