To the GP's credit, they didn't show the car taking off on the ice, which is the particular situation the GP claimed traction control suffers at. Instead, he had a pretty good running start. Also, the host has to be about the most inept driver ever. Hurr...Dip the clutch, proper driving technique... Durr. Let's over-rev the engine to 2-2.5k, dump the clutch and say a conventional car can't go up the ramp. Hurr de durr...

No need for $8000/month. A natural death can follow quickly, especially if your order says to give you no food or water.

My aunt suffered from ALS for years, and at one point toward the end she basically just said "I've had enough", and refused food, and I'm pretty sure water as well, except maybe an occasional sponge swab to keep her mouth somewhat moist.

She lasted 21 days. I'm not even sure how that's possible, given the rule of threes for human survival; unless someone was watering her behind the rest of the family's back. I wouldn't wish that version of hell on anyone.

Probably not. On the other hand, the bad guys might file civil suits for sullying their reputations by falsely associating them with TSA.

Just make a mechanism tied to an electronic trigger that fires the guns when the output from a random number generator, generating numbers from 1-100 with five second intervals, matches a predetermined number picked out of a hat by a chicken.

The probability is there will be enough time for dramatic tension to build without making everyone hang around so log to put them sleep, and you don't have to burden the executioner's psyche, because ultimately, the chicken is the executioner. Because, as we all know, chickens just want to watch the world burn anyway.

Why not model regional ISPs on Credit Unions and Rural Electric Associations / Utility Cooperatives? Cooperative in nature, each member is also part owner, and they provide better service than the larger purely private equivalent (in my experience), and often at a lower price.

The biggest problem outside of funding would probably be to get right of way access from municipalities. Cable and telephone companies would naturally fight tooth and nail against it.

You lost at equating the slaughter of food animals to the torture of sentient, thinking people, who are pretty much just like yourself, with hopes and aspirations and families of their own. I think part of it is the empathic realization that you might have just as easily been in that person's place.

I've hunted, and had my hands in the blood and guts of my prey, which I later delighted in consuming. I've also witnessed people die terribly bloody and painful deaths. Animals may have a general sense of panic when you look them in the eyes as they die, but for me at least, it's not at all on the same level as when its a person looking back at you. Not even close.

I have an uncle who is going on 70 who will not eat pork, not because he's Jewish, but because his family on the farm made him watch the slaughter of 'his' pig when he was a child. He viewed that pig very much as people view their dogs and cats. Of course it's anecdotal evidence, but I'd say he was scarred by the experience.

Of course it is, and yet even seemingly smart people really just don't get it!

Oh, the oil industry makes too much money, let's tax 'em to fund the new animal orphanage!
Three days later...
Goddamn, the price of gas is killing me!

The thing most people never seem to get is that corporations do not pay taxes. Taxes which are levied against corporations are indirectly levied against their customers. They simply raise the prices of their goods and services to offset the difference, similarly to how they optimize their position in the marketplace through pricing strategies.

This makes corporations in general act as an invisible collection branch of the government, and an easy target for new taxes that the people would never vote to put on themselves. I've long said that there would be a overthrow of the government by next Thursday if people had to come up with just the difference in commercial property tax which most communities expect their local businesses to pay.

Hell, I'm a righty and I use the right hand function keys, but only when my right hand isn't mousing. I'm probably some kind of mutant.

There was two or three people in this world who know approximately what happened in those few moments. One of them is dead, and the other is acquitted. None of them are the two of us, so any conversation about anything other than the material facts is pure speculation and mental masturbation. Did Zim take it in the shorts or did he just get ambushed? Who knows.

Not everyone can be goddamned $Hollywood_Martial_Artist, no fight is ever $Hollywood_Fight_movie, and even your formally trained fighters are capable of being unlucky. A firearm merely is a tool that allows more options for more people, in many circumstances. Like it or not. I for one, do not give a shit.

That's all true, and reasonable, of course. However, the only consensus that we really need is the idea that our two parties are walking hand in hand, and they're taking us all on on a one way trip to hell.

Divisiveness is the best weapon our enemy has, the more the people can be divided up into little chunks of intellectual minutia, the better for them. We all have more in common than we think we do.

Zimmerman had a permit to carry a gun because he's a shitty fighter. If he wasn't such a useless lump of shit, maybe he could have fought back and controlled the situation.

I carry a gun, because 1) even though I'm a fit 6'+ man with boxing experience, I recognize that I truly am about as good as a 'useless lump of shit' when facing down multiple aggressors or those wielding deadly weapons like guns and others, and 2) bullets tend to fly further and do more damage than my fists. Fortunately, I was able to survive and learn from the above experiences which prompted me to get a carry license and buy the training to defend myself and my family in the first place.

He's lucky Trayvon didn't just take his gun and shoot him to death with it.

That's very likely the exactly reason Tray-Tray got shot. If you carry a gun and you're rolling on the ground in a struggle with someone, it becomes a life or death situation, or at least exponentially more quickly than otherwise; getting your head bludgeoned against the concrete notwithstanding.

Well, there is a lot of pussy on the net.

Well, some people, and by some people I mean the people who have been pushing the panic button for the last decade, say the spooks are routinely looking out for up to three degrees of separation. Three sounds like an entirely plausible optimal number.

There was a relevant facebook study about the small world theory a couple years ago, and IIRC, the average distance between any two people (globally) on the network was 4.6 or some such. Of course, you have the people who have to friend anyone and everything even if they don't know them; probably skews the idea somewhat.

The idea that you and I could be as few as 1.6 additional degrees of separation from some suspected individual is...unsettling. How much longer until the lidless eye wanders further?

Thing is, they aren't too interested in the contents of the envelope at all, at least until you're a person of interest. What they really want is use all that juicy metadata (outside of the envelope, i.e. headers) to establish ties between everyone.