The Soviet Union had a certain amount of Democracy, too.

The trouble comes when you try to use "the people's" resources to challenge the current power democratically.

Want to use the people's radio station to argue against the current regime, for example?

Sorry, but duly elected representatives of the people don't believe that's the best use of the people's property.

And by the way, the duly elected representatives of the people think your share of the people's food should be reduced.

That's how you get a one-party democratic state.

I never had a problem seeing the Man in the Moon untll I was told that Asians see the markings on the Moon as a rabbit.

Since then, I only see the Rabbit in the Moon....

Actually, I wasn't referring to you being sane for once. I was referring to slashdotters in general not usually being sane. I had to look back to see what your handle was when I reached that point in composing the comment, because I had no idea who'd posted the sane and rational comment - I was just surprised to see one on a hotbutton issue at all....

There's no dark side of the moon. It's all dark, really...

Confident? I'm just stating the obvious. There can be life on planets. It can be intelligent. It can go to space.

I don't need confidence to make those observations; even a vague awareness of the world around me suffices.

And I fail to see what my intelligence has to do with any of it. These very simple facts wouldn't change any regardless if I was Einstein or a drooling idiot.

Your comment is downright strange.

Chernobyl exclusion zone where life is, if not exactly thriving, at least doing all right.

It should be noted that wildlife in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is doing better than wildlife outside the zone. Apparently the biggest limiter to wildlife prospering is the presence of humanity....

I've been driving for 25 years and never received any ticket for going too fast

Oddly enough, I've been driving even longer without a speeding ticket, even though I speed about as often as not. Slow down a bit toward the end of the month, when the traffic cops are looking to their quotas, and you don't usually have too many problems....

We know just fine how to build nuclear-powered ocean vessels. Maybe Congress can give the corporate welfare to the MIC to build iceberg haulers instead of battleships.

Two things:

1) noone has ever built a nuclear-powered battleship.

2) noone has built a battleship at all since WW2.

Okay, three things: if you want to use nuclear power to tow icebergs, how about using nuclear power to desalinate seawater instead? Saves you the trouble of having to build a ship around your nuclear power plant....

I have to agree with MaiseMan - your comment is entirely too sane and rational to be on /. discussing a hotbutton issue.

So, who are you really, and what have you done with i kan reed?

Pistols, however, are used by criminals, by people committing suicide, and by kids playing around with them. As a direct result, over 30,000 people die every year after being shot with a pistol.

Note that 2/3 of those deaths are suicides. If you really want to commit suicide and can't do it with a handgun, you'll find another way.

Note that the UK, for instance, bans the possession of almost all firearms, and has a suicide rate comparable to that of the USA. Ditto France. Ditto Sweden. Ditto Canada....

strict regulation of primers and maybe gunpowder itself.

I would hate to have to make primers myself, because it's a pain in the ass.

Gunpowder (more properly smokeless powder) isn't all that hard to make though. Take the usual precautions you take when doing chemistry with not-necessarily-stable compounds, and you're golden.

laws intended to keep weapons designed to kill a large number of people out of the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable.

If the laws you speak of were meant to do what you claim, then the AR-15 would be joined by the Mini-14 on the list of "evil assault weapons".

Alas, the Mini-14 is on the Exempt List of each of the Assault Weapon Bans.

Of course, the Mini-14 is exempt because it is a self-loading rifle firing 5.56mm (.223 for you non-metric types) rounds using magazines ranging from 5 to 35 rounds capacity, as opposed to the AR-15, which is a self-loading rifle firing 5.56mm (.223 for you non-metric types) rounds using magazines ranging from 5 to 35 rounds capacity....

If it isn't obvious from the above descriptions, there are two essentially identical rifles - one an evil assault weapon, the other a perfectly fine sporting rifle out there in the wild. If the various bans on things like the AR-15 lower receiver (or the AR-15 itself) were actually about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, there would be no distinction made between the Mini-14 and AR-15.

What the Bans actually are is a ban on Scary Looking Rifles. And that's all they've ever been - a feel-good measure that accomplishes nothing....

"Contrary to what we were sometimes taught in high school physics, the Earth's gravity is not constant."

I began my education in 1961. That's pretty far back, I guess. I learned a little about gravity before I left elementary school. Then, a bit more in junior high school. Junior high didn't teach me that gravity is constant on the earth's surface. I was exposed to the idea that gravity varies from one place to another, and we were taught that our weight might vary by a couple of pounds depending where we stood on the earth. Cool idea, we were moderately impressed. In high school, the idea was given to us again.

Now, I suppose that SOME schools might teach that gravity is a constant, independent of elevation, or anything else. I believe that most parents would want to keep their children far away from any such schools.

My worldview wouldn't change a whit.

We're already aware of life on a planet. That's what we are. Us, and cats, and dogs, and everything else living here. As humans, we're already aware of the great diversity of life even sourced from just the one planet. Likewise, the range of intelligence. Life, intelligence, on some planet? Spacecraft? Interest in exploring? Nothing groundbreaking there. Not a thing. Already known facts. It happens; we've watched it happen.

So, another case? Ok. Interesting? Sure. Absolutely. But already a 100% fit with what we know. The whole shebang is going to be about things to learn in the areas of culture and technology. Just specifics. The rest, we already knew.

How about tin? (can we hear some L. Frank Baum, here, the only example of tin based life in literature I can think of)
Lead?

Both Tin and Lead are represented in Gold Key's "Metal Men"