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Comment: Re:Pathetic (Score 1) 508

Here's the thing though -- none of the things the government will do can make anyone "safer."

So fire all the cops, firemen, garbage men, and teachers in your community if you think it will just improve your tax return, and still keep you just as safe from criminals, fires, cholera, and idiocy.

Medicine

Protesting Animal Testing, Intruders Vandalize Italian Lab 285

Posted by timothy
from the matter-of-priorities dept.
ananyo writes "Activists occupied an animal facility at the University of Milan, Italy, at the weekend, releasing mice and rabbits and mixing up cage labels to confuse experimental protocols. Researchers at the university say that it will take years to recover their work. Many of the animals at the facility are genetic models for psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. Some of the mice removed by activists were delicate mutants and immunosuppressed 'nude' mice, which die very quickly outside controlled environments. No arrests have been made following the 12-hour drama, which took place on Saturday, although the university says that it will press charges against the protesters. The attack was staged by the animal-rights group that calls itself Fermare Green Hill (or Stop Green Hill), in reference to the Green Hill dog-breeding facility near Brescia, Italy, which it targets for closure."

Comment: Re:Sense of proportion is key. (Score 0) 317

by MillionthMonkey (#43511581) Attached to: I paid attention to news of the Marathon bomb ...

School shootings and similar mass murder/rampages outside schools (the Batman movie theater shooting, the odd mall shooting, etc.) seem to occur on the order of once a year, and kill on the order of 10 people. Gang and/or drug-trade related homicides are on the order of 3000 a year. Motor vehicle deaths are on the order of 30000 a year.

My gun only provides you transportation to heaven and hell.

Comment: Re:we had reasonable guesses though (Score 1) 604

by MillionthMonkey (#43505641) Attached to: Bruce Schneier On the Marathon Bomber Manhunt

there was no particularly strong evidence that there would be dozens of people out there or something. I suspect it comes down to just the word "terrorism" causing people to refuse to apply the kind of logic they normally apply.

Yeah, maybe just indications of one or two more pressure cookers embedded among dozens of people.

Comment: 9/11 vs Columbine again (Score 3, Insightful) 773

Psychopaths like the Tsarnaev brothers, the Columbine killers, the 9/11 terrorists, the Koch brothers, etc. are either total predators like Tamerlan or Eric, with a bizarre interest in family hierarchy, a fascination with determining who is and isn't related to you, a desire for stirring religious hatred, and no altruism, empathy, or moral center to be found; they can also have only one allele like Dzhohar ("Johar", whatever), who was maybe an asshole with a superiority complex, but was also quiet about it. He was easygoing enough to form relationships with individuals in both allelic subpopulations, normal and psycho. They'll hang out with you and your other unsuspecting friends, smoke weed with you once a week just like normal Americans, etc. etc., but they'll also carry pressure cookers full of nails into dense crowds of strangers for you if they feel strongly related to you somehow.

The uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, looks like he's carrying normal alleles at this locus. He announced to a mob of reporters that he thought his older nephew was up to no good. He said that his nephew Jahar was a loser for doing what he did, announced he should turn himself in, and ask for forgiveness from the wider population of Boston. He said the brothers "brought shame on their family and upon the entire Chechen ethnicity." It might run in his family, but I don't think the uncle is as interested in seeing people run into trouble just for not being related to him.

Hopefully we decide not to waste another decade. This is not the time to go off fuming about how everyone in Chechnya is carrying this psychotic gene. Everybody there would be dead. Comfort with inhibiting the reproduction of people unrelated to you runs in families all around the world. It occurs in legislatures everywhere. It preserves itself by making you cause problems for people who don't have it. But it has to self-regulate in any wider human population, Chechnya or Boston or wherever, or it goes extinct along with the rest of the genome in the region.

Hopefully we won't see this as an excuse to waste another decade with more political 9/11-style bullshit against one particular religion or another. This was in the end a story of two bungling religious-minded psychotics, with a "mastermind", a "pushover with no conscience", and a shared comfort with mass-murdering a dense unrelated-looking crowd in a city far from home.

Comment: I WIPE MY ASS WITH A 360-720 DEGREE FLOOR SPIN (Score 1) 335

My cousin is going through boxes in the garage to get all my dead uncle's "I HATE FRANCE" shirts. We're selling them online once the washing machine finally gets the meth sweat.

This has damaged my relationship with my French bulldog as well. She is contacting her lawyer in Paris after having seen a picture of herself holding a demeaning sign online.

Comment: Why not 420 states? (Score 1) 642

by MillionthMonkey (#42931365) Attached to: The US Redrawn As 50 Equally Populated States
Or maybe 420 is too many; we could save a lot of administrative overhead by having fewer states, maybe 42. Then name them carefully to represent people in each state, e.g. Alloy, Sour Diesel, Green Kush, Strawberria, West Strawberria, Dino Sour, Chem, Grape Ape, etc. Of course to make it politically palatable would require redefining states in the order they legalize marijuana- we have to be realistic.

Comment: 6079 Smith W! Stop playing that movie! (Score 1) 151

If they're going to happen then I'd much rather have the FCC determine what "data caps" should be, than have the ISPs doing it. The decision to use data caps or not and how high they can be are two important societal decisions best not exposed to massive conflicts of interest for no reason. The FCC can easily do it, and at least the government is in theory supposed to be acting in our best interests when it makes these decisions, not transparently out for themselves and only having to put on a show for suckers. A Mad-Max-style freedom for corporations to serve their privatized 1984 telescreen services up to individuals is all that this "big government" kvetching amounts to.

Comment: Re:Real bread goes stale after 1 day (Score 1) 440

by MillionthMonkey (#42177135) Attached to: Scientists Develop Sixty Day Bread

Why only a tiny volume %? Everything is chemicals. It's either a chemical or it doesn't exist in physical form.

Oh come on, it may be vague but you know someone isn't referring to "100%" if they're referring to the mass fraction or volume fraction of bread that might be derived from chemicals. That would be an argumentum ad lexicon, a fallacious argument that pivots on some irrelevant dictionary definition.

WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE Oh, dear, where can the matter be When it's converted to energy? There is a slight loss of parity. Johnny's so long at the fair.

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