People also make meth in the privacy of their own homes... So do laws banning meth only exist to make people feel good?

Actually the answer is still yes, as it is with most casual drug use of ANY kind of drug. Some countries have legalized all drugs, understanding that then they can help the small number of people who get addicted instead of being able to use drugs responsibly.

However meth is a bit of a special case, because the making of it basically renders a home unlivable, and poisons the other people living there or even nearby. But you still shouldn't ban meth or meth ingredients, just require it be made in proper facilities.

You could, just as easily, pulled into the parking lot at the local police station.

Would that be after the teens had beat and robbed them? Why would they not do so long before they reached the police station?

Nothing like advising a losing course of action that will get someone hurt.

vs. someone else using the available gun in your home to cause harm to yourself and your family.

Very high because I know how to get to the guns (or even that hey are there), an intruder does not.

or some sneaky kids in your home causing an accident with a deadly weapon.

Same thing, not going to happen.

or some otherwise harmless burglar/intruder killing you out of fear of the gun in your hand.

Well then he was probably going to shoot me anyway if he was so freaked out, at least I had a chance of scaring him off before I was shot.

In your last scenario without a gun my wife was probably raped while I was forced to watch at gunpoint, whereas if I had a gun and *if* I was shot instead of the burglar (despite knowing my own home better than him) at least the guy probably would have run off after shooting me, and my wife is safe.

That's what I never did understand about gun control nuts, just why they were so adamant in the protection of rapists from harm.

So you readily admit getting rid of guns does nothing to reduce crime.

Therefore getting rid of guns only hurts lawful citizens who simply want to be able to protect themselves as needed.

You don't appear to understand humor or how to post just once. :-)

Which is precisely the point. I see no way of exciting creativity when the level of variation drowns out individual effort by the less creative and requires minimum exercise by the super-talented. However, you are correct that what I outlined is not enough to inspire.

Two people join a class, one from a poor school and is a ways behind, the other spent time in a crammer and is functionally a year ahead. The first person learns a lot more than average, but makes only an average grade. The second person does nothing but play games on their phone, but knows all the material and gets the absolute maximum grade with all the bonuses.

Clearly, the first is making the best use of resources and is highly adaptive. The hallmarks of intelligence and creativity. The second was able to learn fast, but they're a one-trick pony.

Putting these in the same class will dispirit the first, as they will remain invisible, but encourage the second because they're a superstar.

My approach is to say that years are an illusion. You start at a given point on the continuum, you proceed at your natural rate and in your natural style. If you can learn fast, then learn fast. If you can learn deep, learn deep. If instead of learning isolated facts, you can discover underlying patterns never seen before and interpolate the facts correctly, then do that instead.

A test for any one of these, or geared in their direction, will be failed by the others.

What is the purpose of testing? In the real world, mostly school PR and student PR, standardized tests have no functional worth. In my imagined school, it fine-tunes the experience, each student gets a completely customized schooling based on where they are and what they can do.

But this gets back to your point. That, alone, is not enough. It removes friction and inaccurate perceptions of failure, but where is the inspiration? In part, it would come from teachers/lecturers who aren't trying to deal with all types but know exactly what the score is. In part, it would come from the flexibility produced, allowing projects and contests designed with the students in mind and not diluted to cope with other types of mind.

There may need to be more besides. I am not sure yet. These 15 streams would diverge, never to reconverge. Creatives create, thinkers think, creative thinkers creatively think, and nobody gets in anyone's way.
People should have a broad enough base that they have a real, meaningful, functional choice of careers.
People should have enough research skills that they can realistically switch career paths midstream.
People should have the deepest knowledge in each field that the above constraints permit.
People should develop their own methods of learning, memorizing and understanding, so as to maximize all three.
People should never be satisfied with the old for being old, or the new for being new - age is not an interesting property.
People should invent what they lack, if they can, or request it of those that can.

Meeting these constraints is hard, and there are probably many I am missing. But, as you can see, my idea is very different from any existing system.

The objectives are to increase personal freedom to make use of talent, better meshing with less office politics between different people (nobody needs to feel threatened, because cogs don't get replaced by axles - even the perception of a threat is reduced), less friction and more traction in the arts and sciences, more real progress and less smoke-and-mirrors illusions of progress.

Well, those are the primary objectives.

The secondary ones are a superior match to Plato's requirement for functioning democracy, the tackling of issues rather than assuming they are too hard to solve, and the closest approximations yet to Homo Universalis, as determined in the Renaissance to be the ideal due to the interconnectedness of life. (ie: Because all the sciences make reference to all the other sciences, you can only partially understand a science in isolation. To completely, 100%, understand anything in all aspects and at all levels requires that you understand everything. This is impossibl, but how much to learn? Pick the must-haves, then maximize across them. It's about all you can do.)

Very few people are killed by criminals carrying seat belts.

So after reading my original post again, and reading this response, I have to ask; is "minus9" your username or your IQ?

Why the hate for the Volt?

While it may not be the be-all, end-all of hybrid or electric vehicles it's an interesting concept that seems to overcome some of the limitations of pure electric vehicles while being more electric and fuel efficient than traditional hybrids like the Prius.

All-electrics like the Tesla are range-limited and the electric power demands of charging them would seem to be something of a cap on how widely they could be adopted. It's one thing to talk about installing rapid charging stations everywhere, but it's quite another to consider what happens when you have 30 houses on a common alley trying to pull 150kW to charge 15 electric cars at the same time.

From a pure "harm reduction" standpoint, a hybrid like this seems to be a pretty decent compromise -- you can cut emissions and fuel consumption considerably and greatly mitigate some of the challenges with a pure electric vehicle.

Plus, the Volt seems to have a lot of room for improvement -- a smaller diesel engine would seem like a great start, as would an option for an LNG engine which would mean even better emissions.

I don't think it's ever a question of A or B, I think it's a question of trying all of them.

Maybe you do.

Yes, I do. Along with you. The simple truth is any criminal can easily get a gun if he wants one.

If you live in so much fear

I live in zero fear. Do you "live in fear" because you buckle a seatbelt in a car? No, you do so just as a precaution. 99% of the time it does nothing. But that 1% it's a useful tool indeed.

To many people guns are things you see on television

Well the world is indeed a generally ignorant place with people being told to be afraid of something just because, as you demonstrate.

Go ask the guy who runs Ford if there would still be a Ford if GM and Chrysler had gone under.

There would have been a much larger Ford, and probably a lot of new factories making cars in the U.S. for all of the other major manufacturers.

Or if the sudden collapse of the suppliers relied upon by all 3 would have put them out of business as well.

In a bankruptcy the bankrupt companies would be required to still make replacement parts, so no.

You think so? You don't think the smoking carcass would own all of the patents and make it impossible for a bunch of new startups to get into the industry?

Thus innovative new cars that worked around the old patents.

The stupidity of banning 3D guns is that you are trying to ban something someone does in the privacy of their own home.

Laws that are utterly unenforceable and just exist to make people feel good have no place in our world.

Because the Sandy Hook shooter used an arsenal of only plastic guns and plastic bullets while wearing his military invisibility cloak.

Oh wait.

Some of us don't want to live in a Mad Max style dystopia where every criminal, racist, and nut case can get their hands on whatever gun they want.

You already live in that world. The only question left is if every sane and law abiding citizen should also be able to get a gun to protect themselves.