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Comment Re:'Climate change' (Score 2) 7

I will also point out that you seem to be trying to typecast everyone who believes there to be a manmade component in global warming as being driven primarily driven by an innate desire to see legislation come about that restricts your freedom. That notion makes about as much sense as saying that Ron Paul went into obstetrics because he wanted to perform abortions.

Comment Re:'Climate change' (Score 1) 7

Then if my recollection is correct, he was indeed reaching for that "uber-strawman". He was attempting to deny that any climate change was occurring. This would, it seems, support my argument that indeed he is a fake conservative, who comes here posting extreme arguments that he does not actually believe in, to make the conservative message look bad.

That moves the discussion to the size of the delta.

My JE was dated to July 2009. The Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act wasn't passed until 2010, so it was pretty well impossible to know at that point whether or not the government could roll out a website correctly for a bill that in July 2009 hadn't been written.

Healthcare.gov is a disaster in keeping with every other aspect of ObamaCare, from conception, to legislation, to adjudication, to implementation. Your chronological point, while factual, is but a clean square of toilet paper in the middle of a settling pond: SO, WHAT?

Well, being as the administration itself was barely 6 months old at that time, it is quite difficult to rationally make an argument for them to be epically terrible at that point in time. If, on the other hand, one is interested in just making those who would so quickly try to such an aim look silly, that is more than enough time.

Hey, if you want to isolate every decision to a point call, blowing away the full context of the subject under discussion, you can rationalize anything. This is, ironically, akin to arguing that 8" of snow in my neighborhood yesterday refutes the notion that the planet is warming. Go ahead; argue that way.

The majority of the hysteria is manufactured by people with various agendas, including those whose agendas involve preventing any kind of climate change action from happening.

In the context of a government that cannot budget properly, and regularly passes unread, multi-ream legislation, your seeming surprise and the non-confidence on display is, itself, surprising.

I can't tell if this means you have started to actually read what I write again (which would be a nice step in the right direction) or what you might be trying to indicate here. I have never held confidence in the Health Insurance Industry Bailout Act of 2010. I have consistently argued that it is the wrong way to address the problem.

It would be irresponsible to give even more power to a proven pack of incompetents.

"everyone's backside"? Really? Do you know anyone personally who has had their daily existence altered directly by anything that the EPA has done differently in the past 10 years?

So your definition of standing is that I have to know personally, as opposed to merely being a Virginia resident, for any opinion about EPA over-reach to matter?

No. My point is first that EPA policies have hardly changed at all in the past decade, and the overwhelming vast majority of all EPA policy changes that have occurred in that time have been for less regulation rather than more. Second, while a lot of people point at the EPA as some horrible boogeyman, very few people actually are effected in a negative way personally by anything the EPA does. Hence I say your statement of them being on "everyone's backside" is dubious.

I think you're doing a fine job of ignoring what's afoot. If there wasn't significant reason to think that this has more to do with punishing enemies (e.g. the whole BP imbroglio down in Louisiana) then maybe the EPA wouldn't look a PEA-brained APE. Alas, and you can blame the Bush administration for really getting this going, if you like, we just can't trust our government anymore.

Credibility? How would thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles do for you in terms of credibility?

When I want to remind myself about peer-reviewed articles, I pull out some back issues of MISQ.

I'm not sure exactly what you're after with that statement and link. Care to elaborate?

I'm saying the publish-or-perish mentality has not helped the signal-to-noise ratio.

is to find some better venues for getting the word out.

Which venues should they be? Any time the peer reviewed material is covered in the main stream media the conservatives attack the media itself as being "partisan". Do you want the scientists to leave the bench and go stand on a soapbox somewhere?

I don't think scientists are on any bench.

For example, a series about a business owner who is conservative, and values conservation of both nature and culture. The hero fights nasty bureaucrats who are more interested in regulating her out of existence, and making dependent little clients of the local people with their little velvet entitlement handcuffs than actually preserving nature.

Sounds like a good bit of fiction there. Maybe you could write it into a book and get it published by the same people who published Glenn Beck's magnus opus...

Still working on the re-write of my Afghanistan novel.

But of course that won't happen, because the climate conversation is dominated more by control issues than actual concern for nature.

That is a truly sweeping generalization, there. Just because you fear the idea that maybe some parts of your lifestyle could be bad for the long term health of our planet, you go and try to describe all the people who have contributed to the science of climate change as being personally involved in taking away your favorite pastime. I suspect that if a politician instead took to a podium and asked the car manufacturers to make more fuel efficient cars to make life less expensive for the consumer you would be thanking them.

Why aren't more fuel-efficient cars driven by market demand?

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's some crow I'd eat with relish.

While it is rather hard to prove you wrong, it is even more difficult for you to prove yourself right. There are a lot of people who are concerned with climate change and are involved in studying its causes and effects. Very few of them are ever on the news. I suggest your fear and demonization of all of them is terribly misplaced.

I'm not the one asking others to commit economic suicide over a theory.

Comment Re:Wasn't me (Score 0) 15

If they responded to you in the thread they were modding you in, then their efforts would have gone to waste. Yes?

Correct. If you mod and then reply, the mods all go away. Similarly, if you have already commented, you are not allowed to mod. That is how it works on slashdot.

Comment Re:From the Activists' Flier... (Score 1) 692

The Nautilus Group is composed of designers and builders who have created military installations, malls, and hospitals.

Oh God! Not military hospitals! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

Was military supposed to be distributed to mass and hospitals there? I think it was "miiltary institutions", "malls", and "hospitals".

Otherwise, what is a military mall?

Comment Re:Plus with a shotgun (Score 1) 10

One of my best friends is a Police Officer. She told me this story.

One day, one of her colleagues was involved in a shootout. The bad guy was a horrible shot armed with a 5 shot revolver. All 5 missed the cop. The cop was armed with a .380 ACP, 15 round capacity. The cop hit the perp with all 15 rounds.

After which, the perp got in the cops face and yelled "STOP SHOOTING ME!!". He was hardly "stopped", and despite being in considerable pain, was pissed off enough to still be very, very dangerous.

Rock Salt load is a bad idea. So is bird shot.

Another anecdote she tells me: For probably 95 percent of the time, the sound of a pump action shotgun getting cocked is enough to stop the intruder and get them to surrender. For the other 5 percent, the bad guy needed to be shot because he was going to kill everyone in the house.

Here's how my shotgun is loaded: First 3 are 00 Buckshot. #4 is a 1 oz slug. If that isn't enough, I'm running like hell to get my full size Glock 21 (.45 ACP, 13 round magazine) while my wife open fires with the AR-15.

Don't mess around with non-lethal shit like rock salt, your life isn't worth risking over it.

Comment Re:Stick to what you know (Score 1) 387

If you're not a moron, two years of C is the same as five years of C is the same as ten years of C.

Ok then, off the top of your head, describe what a variable is.
How about a const variable?
What's a volatile variable?
Now you see a const volatile variable. What is it? There's a simple answer that comes in a single word that's bloody obvious to everyone in the game.

Every played with variadic functions?

Shout out to my ternary ops! Aww = Yeah?Bitches:!;

and it exists more as the foundation for everything interesting than being interesting itself.

No, there's actually quite a lot of interesting things you can do in C. I mean, all by itself, sure, C is just kind of a ruleset. Hammers, saws, and nails are only so interesting, but the things you can do with them CAN BE quite interesting and the end products can be beautiful. Or it can be a hideous clusterfuck that barely functions. Which way that goes appears to have a strong correlation with experience.

User Journal

Journal Journal: RG's Self Defense and Caliber opinion. 10

So a question that often comes up in numerous gun forums is: What caliber bullet is the best?

Short Answer: The one you can handle the best -- where you have an accurate grouping -- plus, any gun is better than no gun if you find yourself in a situation where you need it.

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