If they use them in criminal investigations the usage eventually becomes part of the public record when entered into evidence. Using them for search and rescue ought to be non-controversial enough. "National Security" is of course the grey area, though there's a fair amount of overlap between National Security and criminal prosecutions, for offenses like espionage or terrorism, so a lot of that use would eventually make it into the public record as well.

So basically a small minority of the world's population?

All the guns in the world will do you no good if you can't motivate the people using them.

People are motivated, by and large, through the use of words.

I guess the fact that bullying happens everywhere shouldn't be too much of a surprise to me, since we're all human after all. But how about official reaction and policies? Do other places (esp. developed nations) handle it as poorly as the US does, where victims are either ignored or worse punished by the school administrators?

At least, won't everyone who's paid a middle to upper middle class wage, buys a house and saves for retirement eventually be a millionaire?

If you want to retire at 65 and have enough money to live a decent life for 30 years after that, you need pretty close to a million dollars plus a paid-off house. And, frankly, it's not that hard to accumulate a million dollars of net worth over a ~40-year career, assuming reasonable returns on your retirement account and modest appreciation on your home. I'm actually targeting net assets of two million for retirement, given that it's still 20 years away and I expect that inflation will roughly halve the value of the dollar between now and then.

Regardless of the number of exclamation points you use, Mountain View and SF housing do affect one another. I know several people who have lived in both areas and who have opted for one over the other based on questions of price and convenience. Said (insane, IMO) prefer to live in SF, but some choose MTV because SF is too expensive. Lowering the cost of housing in MTV further -- and making it more convenient to the Google campus -- would induce some more to leave SF.

Oh, around 1 they start moving around and can actually do things. Before that they're just spuds. They sleep a lot, or they're fine sitting under one of those musical mobile things. Once they're about 1, though, they can move around, but there's nothing for them to really...do. They're too old to just sit and they're too young to play with (you can play along side of them, but they don't really understand 'play with' yet).

And there's little difference between the TV and the iPad, that was mostly a joke. There is one important difference, though. There are no commercials on Netflix, so my child has never seen an advertisement.

Yep, as with so many things, "the truth is in the middle".

You're a good dad. Thank you.

I'm not saying this is the "right" or "best" solution, but...

I taught my son to punch hard and aim for the nose: "if you miss, you'll get his mouth or cheek or eye and it'll still hurt". I also explained that if the bully hit, slapped, tripped, or otherwise battered him, that my son was to lay him out. "What if I get in trouble?", he asked. "You let me handle that part", I replied. We had to play-act it a few times because my boy kept wanting to say something first, like "if you touch me again I'll hit you in the nose!" No. You've already warned him before and he kept it up. Don't talk: act.

Cut to a week later when the teacher was waiting for me when I went to get my son from school. "He hit another kid today." "Was it so-and-so?" "Yes." "Good. I told him to." The teacher looked around, leaned in and confessed: "someone needed to belt that little asshole."

The bullying ended that day. My boy stopped coming home with torn clothes, scratches, and bruises. My son got an enormous confidence boost and hasn't had a problem with other little thugs since then.

Violence is not the solution to all problems, but damned if it can't fix some.

No, at the time Intel was trying to trim down as they had overextended themselves and too many unprofitable departments. I worked in that department shortly before it was sold off; right before that, the department head "resigned" on the heels of very poor performance. Around that time, they also got rid of their consumer products division which made wireless keyboards and mice and a crappy digital camera. Not long after, they went through a big downsizing called "SET" where they just got rid of people all over the company. They went from around 100k employes down to around 80k in just a couple of years.

Crazed men write books, publish propaganda, give speeches that convince millions to murder others with guns, gas, whatever.

It's bad if you consider that the tax burden is distributed unevenly. New buyers pay a larger fraction of the tax, yet receive the same share of city services as long-time owners of similar properties. The rate has to be set higher to make up for the shortfall from the undervalued properties. Let's say the city needs 5% of the current market value of all the properties to meet its budget. If half those properties are undervalued by 50% for tax purposes, the tax rate has to be set at 6.7% instead of 5%, which means new buyers are paying a third more than they would if all the property taxes were based on current market value.