winsor

Of course I'm referring to E) None of the above when I cite the means available for numbnuts in Las Vegas to up the ante in his death toll. But then again, you're bright enough to know that.

But nowhere near as many as American forces killed in these wars.Perhaps you want to double-check that. Take your time; we'll wait. I'm sure that with the wildly disparate kill ratio in the Pacific, along with Dresden, Yokohama, Tokyo and, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki we covered a lot of ground. The First Gulf War was quite the killing spree, we killed well over 10X the number we lost in Vietnam, and the numbers were similar in Korea IIRC. I would not be at all surprised if American losses were eclipsed by the 'collateral damage' we inflicted in the long run. Of course I'm referring to non-American deaths, but I suppose they don't count.

But nowhere near as many as American forces killed in these wars.

Nothing hypothetical. He had the means at hand (VX & nuke irrelevant).

Mediocre analogy. It's more like trying to explain skydiving to a whuffo. When someone commits a hideous crime with gasoline or other commonly available materials, the means is ignored and the perpetrator is the focus of any discussion. Like the discussions of 'climate change' where only the popular factors are deemed fit for consideration (say carbon, as opposed to population in general), violence similarly results in discussions of the means rather than the root cause analysis of the event. I won't get into the other means immediately available to the dipshit in Las Vegas to cause carnage at the concert, which could easily have resulted in a much higher body count, since popular hysteria would only tend to fuck things up in areas unrelated to firearms, and I don't want to give anyone any ideas. The relationship between the most horrific examples of mass murder and psychotropic medication approaches unity, but this gets little traction in the media. Despite all the soliloquies regarding a journalist's end goal of 'the truth,' the end goal is selling papers or getting ratings, as the case may be. You don't see 'U.S. News and World Report' by the checkout line at the supermarket. The saying in advertising that exceeding the 8th grade level means losing 50% of your audience strikes me as optimistic. The fears upon which mass murderers prey are nothing short of atavistic. If you filter out suicides, incidents involving law enforcement and their counterparts on the other side of the law - where firearms are considered tools of the trade - and justifiable homicide, the statistics look quite different. I know it is inconvenient to focus on the perpetrator, but the Parkland and the Santa Fe shooters both stated on the record that their intent was to kill. In each case, it was known in advance that the individual in question had murderous intent, and planned to go to school to engage in mayhem. The idea of using these people as the lowest common denominator to establish standards that would hopefully keep everyone safe from them, or at least to minimize the number of people who they could destroy in their rampage, is abhorrent. I do not expect to sway anyone's opinion, but to fully express my contempt for those who so blithely pontificate on issues on which they are so singularly ignorant would result in my being banned. BSBD, Winsor

Sigh. Computers were fun while they lasted. The United States do not have the bargaining power over China that you seem to think they have. All we have to do is quit buying stuff from them. That would sure teach them a lesson!

Same here. I'm also far more concerned about being killed by a "good guy with a gun" than a "crazed gunman". Which is precisely why it concerns the hell out of me when the TSA wannabes parade around such venues as 30th Street Station with rapid-firing firearms and enough ammo to dispatch a battalion. Their contention that "you can't have too much ammo in a firefight" did not quell my concerns that they showed a 'spray and pray' mentality regarding an active shooter engagement. I, too, am much more concerned with those assholes than I am with ISIS (or whoever is the boogie man du jour).

Okay, so guns are real bad and scary. Let's make them as illegal and unavailable as cocaine and heroin. While we're at it, let's ban alcohol. I'm a lot more concerned about being killed by a drunk driver than by a 'crazed gunman.' Since we're on a roll, I submit that anyone who supports 'reasonable' restrictions on firearms put their money where their mouth is and have their security limited to nonlethal means.

Basically he's way ahead of you. Applying statistical processes with which I am sure you are familiar, it turns out that your kid is much more likely to O.D. or die of medical mistakes or sundry other causes than by firearm. The whole issue of 'gun violence' is the result of insecure people whose uterus charts their course. I, for one, recoil at having limitations imposed on me that are intended for the Lowest Common Denominator of our society. The Dictatorship of the Mediocre is not a paradigm to which I aspire.

In keeping with my recommendation of legalizing anything that is not measurably worse than alcohol or tobacco, I submit that legalizing Laudanum would provide a means of getting a handle on the opiate crisis. The reality is that the negative aspects of narcotics are only exacerbated by proscription. The high price from prohibition makes injection the preferred way to wring the most efficacy from the least amount of the drug, as well as making the highest potency variants (Fentanyl, Heroin, Carfentanyl) the way to make the most money from the least amount of product. If one takes a tablespoon too much of Laudanum, they'll generally vomit before overdosing. This is not always the case, but it's reportedly hard to retch the excess from any parenteral overdose. I opine that booze, dope and tobacco suck out loud. That being said, their prohibition is just that much worse. BSBD, Winsor

Check out zeolite crystallization. You go straight from soup to elegant complexity, orders of magnitude more so than quartz. Zeolites, aluminosilicate clays, catalyze the formation of nucleic acids. It is ironic that my Bronze Age forebears, stuck in your basic stinking desert, made the connection between clay and the foundations of life. Of course, this level of technology is sophisticated enough to be indistinguishable from magic. As you were.

Purple winged unicorns have some amusement value. Deities do not (with some minor exceptions). By most of the popular definitions, the very concept of a 'GOD' is, to put it in technical terms, fucking retarded.

Kinda like asking what is the true nature of Pokemon, or what kind of Kryptonite is the worst. Religion is a communicable form of mental illness, some variants being more pathological than others. Christianity is hardly the most benign out there. BTW, wrt the Bronze Age nonsense espoused by the Children of Israel, how many references are there to either hell or the devil in the Torah? BSBD, Winsor

I knew and liked Don, but think the DZO got screwed on this one. Regardless of his sexual preferences, Don was not one to be sensitive to boundaries, and was repeatedly admonished in my presence for unprofessional behavior. Some DZs are very relaxed about references to the 'fifth point of attachment' and the like, while others have a zero tolerance policy regarding sexual references with the clientele. Al Gramondo, for example, had a policy whereby dating a student by a tandem master or instructor was grounds for instant dismissal, and I suspect engaging in a dialogue regarding personal sexuality would have been treated similarly. What Don viewed as being reassuring to his tandem student was likely seen as Too Much Information. Don did not seem to get the fact that most of us were wildly indifferent regarding who he did or did not find attractive, and would prefer to be spared the details either way. He was my friend and I miss him, but I fully understand why a DZO would have seen him as being too loose a cannon to keep around. His suit is reminiscent of the person who did not get the job as a radio announcer: 'they d- d- d- d- didn't hire me because I'm j- j- j- j- jewish.' BSBD Don, Winsor

Simple answer: demographics.

Perhaps, but it may also achieve some of the effects of meditation - to reset perspective and mindset. Donald Lopez, a WWII ace with the Flying Tigers and the USAAC, had a take that I find interesting. During flight training, the cadets would look at the sky on the way to the flight line, saying "come on Dave, just a couple of hours more clear weather." Quite who or what 'Dave' was was never specified. Lopez noted that upon occasion, such as being jumped by numerous Japanese aircraft and trying to ruin their afternoon's target practice, he found himself saying "okay, Dave, I could use some help here." There have been a couple of times when flying where panicking seemed appropriate, but I managed to keep flying the plane. Perhaps having a discussion with 'Dave' might have helped get past being scared shitless, but it did not occur to me at the time. There are atheists in foxholes. BSBD, Winsor

He's a registered Democrat on psychiatric meds - for real. Regardless of all the knee jerk responses, this is absolutely appalling.

Maybe complete with a nuclear bomb drop. On Washington? A waste of a perfectly good thermonuclear device.

"You got an emotional support RHINO?!" "Yeah, I'm allergic to dogs."

FIFY

'They told me I was gullible, and I believed them.'

I think anyone from a true shithole should be deported. This would, of course, depopulate Detroit, Camden, Newark...

South Park's "Red Hot Catholic Love" episode had it nailed.

Nice try. Having actual authority and PRESUMING said authority are different things. I, of course, approve of your taking responsibility for getting someone under canopy who was flailing at pull altitude. Admittedly Progressives, like Trump, occasionally fuck up and do something that makes sense. However, both have an abysmal track record on that count.

Agreed - which is one reason it's so important to get them solutions to their problems that do not require deforesting the planet. Unfortunately, due to the polarization we see in politics today, people working towards that are labeled alarmists, idiots, "sanctimonious bugwits" etc. and less gets done. People who presume to have 'solutions,' and consider themselves empowered to provide them to others, rather fit the definition of sanctimonious. Al Gore has the 'bugwit' part of the deal covered coming and going, though some of his sycophants reportedly have three digit IQs. 'Progressives' bitch about greed, but ignore its existence as a force of nature. If you want people to proceed in a manner consistent with your goals, it tends to work if you arrange things so they will turn a buck in the process. If working with you amounts to a lose-lose proposition, it does not tend to work out so well. In any event, it is often difficult to distinguish stupidity from denial, a disease of which liberal ideology is easily characterized. Not to worry, conservative ideology is no better. BSBD, Winsor