What a strange position to take, given the widening of the income gap over the previous 40 years. You're probably too young to remember what it was like in the 1970's, before Reagan and Thatcher began the trend of cutting taxes into the bone and dismantling the social safety net. Some things have gotten better since then, but social equality is most definitely not one of them.

Actually, your belief that NAT is a one-way check valve has caused many security problems, because it is widely shared, despite being completely wrong. Punching holes in NATs is dead easy. If you are relying on your NAT to protect you from attack, you are whistling past the graveyard.

Actually, you are almost certainly using IPv6 internally whether your ISP provides IPv6 or not. Any Bonjour connections you are using, for example between your computer and printer, are done on IPv6.

I've never heard of a chlorinated lake. What I meant is that it's chlorinated in the water treatment plant, presumably after being filtered to remove any large chunks of fish poop.

I suspect they're agin' it. Dasani is filtered, not distilled, as far as I know. Of course, maybe they're for it, since it means more petroleum to make plastic bottles from...

You are being uselessly pedantic. I'm sure you know very well what "pure" means in this context: it means that if you drew some water up from the well and drank it, you would enjoy the drink: you would not experience any unpleasant flavor to the water, and your health would not be negatively impacted—you would not get sick from microbial contamination, and you would not develop cancer 20 years later because of the benzene content. It's in essence subjective, but nevertheless meaningful; the lack of a precise definition for lo these many years has not prevented it from being adhered to.

In law, the test would be what a reasonable person would think when asked "is this water pure?" A chemist would say "what do you mean," which is a perfectly valid and reasonable response, but just about anyone else would look at it to see if it was cloudy; if it was, they'd refuse to drink it; otherwise, they'd probably ask you to assure them that it was safe to drink, and then they'd taste it. If it tasted of lemon juice, they'd say "gosh, this isn't pure—it's got lemon juice in it!" But it if tasted pleasant, even if it had some significant mineral content, they'd say it's pure. That's how language works.

It would only be a flaw in their argument if the Reinheitsgebot called for distilled water, which of course it does not. "Pure" in reference to water means "safe to drink." If the well has been poisoned, the water is no longer pure. That is precisely what we are talking about here.

I drink from an aquifer. Most of my neighbors drink either from an aquifer or from ground water. People who are on town water in my town do in fact drink from a lake; the lake water is chlorinated, because it has to be, because animals poop nearby. But if you dumped a thousand gallons of hexane in it, the town would be drinking bottled water for the foreseeable future—there's no way to filter that out at the treatment plant. So don't give me this crap about it not mattering whether the water in streams and lakes is contaminated.

Water table != aquifer. Sites that have been contaminated according to Popular Science is not so interesting. Get back to me when Nature weighs in on the question. Popular Science is a fun magazine, but it's not my go-to source for accurate reporting on environmental contamination in the oil industry. How many times has Popular Science done articles on the flying car you'll be able to buy in 20 years?

I think you misunderstand how fracking works. Fracking works by pumping water into the earth. The water is typically not potable, because potable water is expensive. So there's no amount of "monitoring" that can prevent "leaks" because the whole point of the process is to leak. You leak water into the ground under high pressure, and that releases natural gas which can then be exploited.

The problem with fracking is not so much that it would pollute ground water, although it could well do so, but that it will pollute aquifers.

Also, whenever an industry flack says "however, done right..." I wonder if said flack recalls any time in the history of extractive industries when things were "done right." Extractive industries are at their most profitable when things are not "done right," because doing things right is expensive. As long as the costs of not doing things right can be laid off on someone else, the stockholders would sue the asses off of a company that did things "right," because such a company would not be maximizing shareholder value.

So let us not pretend that things will be done right. Let us assume instead that they will not be done right, and plan for that, because that is what is going to actually happen.

Actually, in the case of fracking we are actually polluting the ground water. This is a base requirement for fracking: there is no way to do fracking without polluting the ground water. Hence, there is no "responsible" way to do it, any more than there's a responsible way to pee in your living room.

German industry doesn't need a supply-side boost: it needs a demand-side boost. Fracking is a supply-side boost. Fracking will not help German industry.

Testify.

Right, it would be interesting to ask people whether they feel the same way about making guns in a machine shop, or making bullets in a machine shop. I bet the answer changes.

The answer to your question about regulation is that if you're making it for your own use, it's probably legal. The law is carefully worded so that a complete kit wouldn't be legal, but otherwise it's kind of what you'd expect the NRA to support.

No offense, man, but if you're under siege by the police or military in the U.S., your best defense is to wait until the news cameras arrive, wave a white flag, and come out with your hands on your head. Does the term "shock and awe" sound familiar? These are good for zombie attacks, sniper simulation, and hunting for food. That's about it.