This might have been reasonable more than 20 years ago, but it surely is not now. Or are you still blocking all traffic on port 80?

Also also point out that the FAA allows plenty of things on planes absent any proof of their safety, such as books, and they allow plenty of proven unsafe things on planes, such as passengers.

Why hold consumer electronics to a different standard?

Thirded. One example of bad regulation does is not an argument against effective regulation.

And do you have any evidence that proves it wasn't gremlins, or aliens, or your own latent psychic (and homicidal) subconscious abilities? That's why the "prove a negative" standard is so ridiculous, and no one outside the FAA uses it.

Also, not even the FAA attempted this bs convoluted argument. Why are you shilling for them?

Yet with everything they check at the gate and won't let me board the plane with, they let me take any normal-looking electronic device on board. I can't take a bottle of water or fingernail clippers, but I can take a jammer disguised as an iPad.

I'm not making myself very clear. The problem is seed contamination. There have been several reports on /. of farmers whose crops were contaminated with GM genes through natural processes like pollination, from their neighbors' crops, even though they never intended to touch GM seed, and Monsanto sued them even though they had no contract with Monsanto. Because this problem stems from licensed genes that cannot be guaranteed to not propagate into the wild, this should already be within the FDA's purview, and they should be investigating it as a problem.

I don't have a problem with GM, it's the corporate licensing restriction and the threat that poses to our food supply and our freedom to manage it ourselves, a la Monsanto lawsuits against farmers whose crops were contaminated with their licensed GM.

So every time someone points out why an idea is bad, it's FUD?

The article states the FDA can't find anything harmful about the fish. We can very easily think of something harmful. Monsanto-like licensing restrictions and lawsuits when the GM fish eventually enters the general population will be very harmful.

Their answers are as farcical as the tax cut fundamentalists whose solution to every economic problem is more tax cuts. Their answer to gun violence is always more guns.

I was going to say something snarky and demand you give us a reason why, then I realized it was easier to simply do it.

Codename Lawful is the codename given to one of the participants in a Harvard behavioural experiment in the 60s that involved at one point humiliating the subjects and breaking them down to impotent rage. Lawful later became the Unabomber, presumably because that humiliating experienced caused him to believe society as evil.

But this situation doesn't really resemble that experiment, only marginally. Parent probably thinks the experience of being arrested and treated like a criminal will be so humiliating for the student that he will come to believe society as evil. I doubt that, it takes a lot more than an arrest to turn someone in to another Unabomber.

Brilliant idea! Let's just wait for the gun violence tragedies to stop. THEN we'll do something about it.

Maybe the real problem is moralizing! God hates moralizers and punishes those lands that harbor them with violence and death.

Yep, reality is the US compares to some of the most war-torn and violent places on the planet. Yay! It's only the 14th worst country for gun homicides.

"and I'm not in the habit of needless pontification."

You mean like that?