I think the photographer is due something. But by the time the courts have figured out exactly what that is, the lawyers will have used up all the money.

Arbitration seems like a worthy alternative to the courts.

Since it's a famous picture of him, maybe the President could spend a few hours looking over those law books and sorting out some of this Intellectual Property mess we find ourselves in. Look at it another way, if Barack Obama can somehow be personally dragged into this vortex the way John Q. Downloader has been, maybe there finally will finally be some... Change. :)

Boeing planes allow pilots to take over from computers during emergency situations, Airbus planes do not. It's not a design flaw -- it's a philosophical divide.

I feel compelled to point out that American pilots are, when given contradictory instructions by ATC and TCAS II, instructed to do what TCAS says. In Europe, ATC overrides TCAS.

TCAS is an onboard short-range transponder designed to notify the pilot when his/her aircraft is on a collision course with another TCAS-equpped plane, and give crash-avoiding instructions to both pilots.

And...there was a crash over Europe when ATC said one thing and TCAS said something else. The pilots (correctly) did what ATC (incorrectly) told them to do.

It varies from state to state. Where I live, simply being fired "for cause" is not sufficient to deny umemployment. You have to be fired for a pretty serious cause like stealing from the company or divulging trade secrets. I believe the threshold is you have to materially harm the company. Most people fired for cause can still get unemployment benefits.

If there is anything to fear it is that N. Korea is doing science while we are arguing over evolution.

I bet you could persuade some of the anti-evolution petitioners to drop their case by properly casting the threat of the Red Peril (or Yellow Menace or whatever it's called these days).

So what if IBM wants to help India produce more things of value?

You're trying to tell us altruism, not cost-cutting, is the motivation for globalization?

I want some of what you're smoking.

You really think it's a hasn't-happened-in-a-million years climate event and not us?

Going back, there's a clear pattern of oscillation between 180 and 280 ppm. But now it's way higher. What drove it higher? "We did" doesn't seem like an unreasonable explanation, considering all the fossil fuels we've been burning.

Multiple unpopular actions? Carter only tried to rescue the hostages once.

Care to guess at how many humans it would take to change the atmosphere?

In about a century, CO2 levels have risen to roughly twice what they've been for the past 500,000 years. If that wasn't caused by humans, what did it?

Where did I ever say that I'm opposed to private ownership of firearms?

The willful disingenuity of your post is staggering.

And you claim I'm a revisionist...

Now that is a good point.

Good point. I shouldn't go so far as to claim slavery as the sole reason. It was one of the big reasons though. (From my armchair historian perspective.)

I guess it's kind of a double-edged sword. The gun can be a tool for slavery or for freedom, depending on who wields it. We managed to use it for both. Like you said, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Slavery could not have happened without the individual right to bear arms. Southern states demanded that right be codified in the new Constitution, lest the Federal government change their mind (a very real possibility as many Americans at the time were opposed to slavery). The North said "okay."

That holds no water?

As a practical matter, I'm sure you'll agree that the history of the Second Amendment is more notable for the decades of slavery which followed, not for any successful defense against a tyrranical government.

As a matter of fact, can you provide an example of when the Second Amendment provided the sort of protection you claim it does?

What the Second Amendment actually did was this: It ensured slavery could continue under the new Federal government, which was a necessary concession for the South to join in the new government.

I'm not suggesting the Second Amendment solely allows us to bear arms for the singular purpose of forming militias and putting down slave uprisings (or Indian rebellions for that matter). I am saying that the reason the Second Amendment was included in the first place was as an explicit guarantee that the tools by which slavery was maintained in slave states would not be taken away by the Federal government.

Well, you're wrong. America's economy depended on slavery. Guns were necessary for slavery. Connect the dots.

Or continue to believe your fairy tale; it's a free country after all.

Look, I don't disagree that without an armed citizenry some Federal power might have swooped down and brought injustice. But it should be obvious that without armed slaveholders, slavery itself would simply have been unworkable. Thus, the right to bear arms was in fact a concession to the South. Without the Second Amendment, Congress could have de facto ended slavery simply by outlawing personal possession of firearms. It was this concern on the part of the slave states that led the amendment to be drafted in the first place.

Then, to sell it to the whole, they came up with the rhetoric you espouse, that it protects us from tyranny.

Where was that protection from tyranny during the Whiskey Rebellion? Why do you continue to believe it's about protection from tyranny when the armed populous was crushed by the Federal government as early as 1791?

There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today.

The point of my post was to correct the parent, who thought the Second Amendment was intended to serve as some sort of back-stop against Federal tyrrany. While that's true, the practical reason for the Second Amendment is that private ownership of guns was necessary to perpetuate slavery.

How this notion of protection from Federal largesse survived the Whiskey Rebellion is anybody's guess. I suppose even Libertarians need their mythology.