Most of us with CCW permits train our ass off

You're not from Florida, are you?

Here, to get a CCW, we're only required to take a BS class, and to show "proficiency" with a firearm. The class is training on how to fill out the form. The "proficiency" test is to fire one shot. There may be better places doing the training, but that's the majority. From there, a set of fingerprints and a photograph are sent off to FDLE, who gives them to the FBI to verify you have no serious criminal background.

You can get a firearm with a lot less. You pay, and ID information is sent off to FDLE to verify you have no serious criminal background. You can pick up the weapon in 3 days.

There are people, like myself, who *have* gone through a lot of training. We are the exception. I would say the vast majority who own firearms and have CCW permits, have had no formal training beyond the single shot to demonstrate proficiency. Many of them have had and continually renewed their CCW for many years.

    Well, as he was explaining a fictional universe to someone who attempted to troll in reference to said fictional universes, he was right.

Not necessarily. Halo effect fallacy.

Sexy aliens get better ratings? I think it's a little early to make that judgement.

I'm not terribly surprised. I've only seen two in use ever, and that was back around 2000.. I was pretty sure it had just died off around then. I'm surprised anyone was still using one.

I guess whoever is still paying for a subscription on a long since dead box won't have to worry about it for long.

    You're lucky.

    I've seen a lot of people edged out of jobs. With age and seniority comes a larger paycheck. It's easier to bring in someone young, who's less business savvy, and willing to work for much less money. Many places haven't made the relationship that it takes a fresh face twice as long (or longer) to do the job of an experienced person.

    I've seen plenty of people make lateral moves to other companies, trying to learn new skills along the way. That simply makes them chronologically older, but with the same skill set as the young. Since they have to hop between companies to stay employed, they also end up getting paid the same. Unfortunately, everything suffers.

    I like it.

    It doesn't address the language of sarcasm, where even positives are negatives. Really. I wouldn't lie to you. :)

    Unfortunately, it's an art lost on many. I find that to my advantage, where I can insult people to their face, and they believe it was a complement.

Judging by people I've seen and heard unbuckling their belts when the plane gets near the airport, I'd be willing to bet they were getting ready to deplane. All I can ever think is, "Really? Wait til you get to the gate. What are you going to do, grab your carry-on and sprint down to the gate?"

The same goes for everyone else trying to get off the plane before the freakin' door is even open. I don't even get ready to move until 3 rows ahead of me start moving. It's not hard. Carry-on is under the seat. Unbuckle, stand, grab my bag, and walk. If I'm being particularly lazy, I wait for everyone else to get off the damned plane, since we'll all be waiting at baggage claim together anyways.

At baggage claim, I have my secrets to get out quick too.. When I see my bag, trip the slower ones, shove grandma away from the belt, grab my bag, and walk away. None of you people can decide on what your bags are anyways. If you could, you wouldn't be checking the tags on absolutely every bag that passes. Really, do you need to check tags on every different colored bag? Don't you even remember what you checked? It's not like you checked it last year. Maybe mine is too distinctive with "NOT A BOMB" written on all sides, and always ends up wrapped in TSA inspection tape.

I suspect when they called DHS, the response was probably "are you fucking kidding me?"

Because they'll always get someone who doesn't know all the information to say something. If they get the janitor to say "I think they're all alive", that becomes the "official" statement until they can get something better.

At quite a few places I've worked, we were carefully taught, "Don't say anything about anything to the media." It's not to hide any truth. It's simply to make sure the right information is conveyed. Not everyone remembers that training, and they'll convey the wrong message, thinking they're doing something good.

Really, if there's some wild conspiracy behind hidden, someone's going to leak it sooner or later. In this case, I'm sure no one is intentionally giving out false information. The news accounts will have stable numbers soon enough. Part of that will depend on if everyone hospitalized does ok.

    There are a few. They don't generally advertise it, since they don't need 1/2 million desperate nerds constantly bothering them.

The overwhelming majority of crashes involve unintended intersection of the aircraft and the terrain. Once you eliminate eliminate that, you're doing fine.

There was a news story about a metal refinery in North America that predated European travelers by centuries. I can't seem to find it now. Last I heard about it, it was reburied for urban expansion. Historical sites are always outweighed by current commercial interests.

Mars is practice. Kind of like launching a ship from Spain, and landing in England to set up a colony, with a goal of reaching unknown lands to the East.

If the only ship invented is a canoe, that looks like a barely possible mission.

If you were to go back in time, and tell early Spanish villages that they'd be conquering two continents, thousands of miles away across the Atlantic, they'd laugh at you.

The first trips were impossibly long. Lots of people died trying.

Now you can get from Madrid to Buenos Aires in about 12 hours, and you need little more than an bag of clothes, a passport, and plane ticket. I prefer to bring a toothbrush too.

You just have to find the right buyer for them. And keep them away from that Kirk guy, I heard what he does with them at night in his cabin. It ruins the resale value.

Ya... I prefer to pretend the RF noise of the universe doesn't exist, so they may see us. Then again, if a space traveling race does find us, do we really want them seeing all the old scifi first? Our goal, according to all of the older scifi was to kill first, and burn the bodies later.

That's the big problem. The space program was for the advancement of humanity, and showing the Russians we have the bigger phallus shaped rockets. When that died off, it became about money. Unless you can show that Mars has a cache of cocaine covered gold bricks, it won't ever be financially "worth" it.

We won't know what kind of financial incentive exists on the planet until we actually go there and explore more than a few feet around a landing spot.