champu

I think you're misrepresenting the shock and awe doctrine as it doesn't include "disregard for collateral damage" as one of its elements. A large number of civilian deaths over a five year period is the result of a protracted occupation, not a shock and awe strategy. That's actually the opposite of shock and awe. Perhaps the problem is that people look at "shock and awe" and read it as "The Iraq War."

If I was offered a choice between orange and green pens I would take one of each, scribble a little with both of them and keep the one with darker ink because it's easier to read... ...and then I would explain my decision in an unsolicited fashion to the person conducting the experiment.

I think you're misrepresenting the shock and awe doctrine as it doesn't include "disregard for collateral damage" as one of its elements.

I think the article was a bit of a Rorschach test. A study of human behavior is exactly that, the results tell you how you might expect people to behave given certain circumstances. What that means in terms of the current distribution of wealth, setting of policy, or institution/adjustment of a system of government, well... it's not always productive to confront low-level human behavior head-on (See: abstinence as a form of birth control or disease prevention.) As an aside, I thought it was funny when the article talked about preference for uniqueness and individuation amongst the well to do. That finding predicts the reaction you can expect when you present it to an affluant person. What could be more crushing to someone who wants more than anything to be unique, than telling them that their behavior is completely predictable?

The first draft of that post was, "haha- shutup."

Are you as much of a tough guy in real life as your Keyboard Kommando alter-ego is here on DZ.com? I think the "Internet Tough Guy" meme has been around for longer, but I find the "Internet Smart Guy" meme more annoying to be honest. I knew you'd say that before even you did. Quite possible. Most of my posts are the second draft of what I originally came up with to say and then if, when read back, I don't find them very useful I'll just delete it and move on to another thread. I've drafted and discarded at least as many posts as I've made on this site.

I do think part of the problem is that you presented the article in response to the "ten men in a room" scenario with the statement "that's not how the system works." I think the observation that people are different and that money, distributed equally or otherwise, will find its way into the hands of people in correspondingly different quantities is present in both the scenario and the article.

That was really interesting -- and if anyone is wondering, it covers a whole lot more than a Berkeley study, and is nuanced and not one-sided. Well worth reading. Wendy P. I agree, definitely worth reading.

Are you as much of a tough guy in real life as your Keyboard Kommando alter-ego is here on DZ.com? I think the "Internet Tough Guy" meme has been around for longer, but I find the "Internet Smart Guy" meme more annoying to be honest.

That may be their opinion now, but it certainly wasn't before Blue Sky and the legal wrangling that made it possible. I mean, ultimately, if you really want to know why the "bayonet lug" came into the legal language . . . well . . . ask Wayne. He was there! I know that doesn't get talked about a lot, but it's true. You should consider reading the Gun Control Act of 1968, Trade and Tariff Act of 1984 (or the "Dole Amendment" portion of it), and the ATF memo I posted from 1989 and not just Washington Post articles. The "Curios and Relics" discussion is somewhat distinct from the "evil features" discussion.

Did you, by any chance, read the memo I posted which discusses the ATF's review of import eligibility? There are specific restrictions on military surplus arms that were manufactured in the US, exported, and then re-imported; there's a particular paper trail needed. But that's not the reason for all the classification by feature we've been seeing.

I think it's a bit silly to go above and beyond the NFA or any similar laws that are on the books at the time (such as the 1994 Federal AWB) when evaluating a firearm for import restrictions. If you wouldn't violate local, state, or federal laws by possessing it, why would you not be allowed to import it? (Note: neither the M1 Garand nor No4 Mk1* qualify as "assault weapons" under, for example, California law because the Garand has a fixed magazine and the No4 is bolt-action) For further reading, here is the text of the 1989 memo that forms the basis of this import decision. Also, I don't know the exact history of all the information that went into all the various AWBs out there, but I think we can safely guess this document factored in, as it significantly predates them. As I read it, I'm reading a very dismissive attitude. A few examples... Overall it reads to me as, "let's create as large a class of weapon as possible by including as many marginally objectable features as possible, agree to treat everything with a broad brush even it seems to be a reasonable exception, and then flat-out dismiss any arguments that contradict us." Plus you have issues like this... Which I think most people here recognize as a statistics no-no.

------------------------------------------------------- You must not know squat about new orleans. 19 people were shot and NOBDODY got killed. Wanna know why? Dumbasss thugs that spray bullets randomly. If this were a skilled operator there would be 19 dead people. This story is so stupid its laughable. Well, I don't know that the story is stupid or laughable... it's a story... a bunch of people got injured. But when everyone just reacts by yelling past one another, "more good guys with guns? yerp herp derp...", "oh, you think more laws are gonna help? yerp herp derp...", "oh, so you like seeing people get shot? yerp herp derp..." that's the stupid and I-wish-it-were-more-laughable part. The aim of most people's arguments are worse than the perpetrators in this shooting.

Well, hopefully they catch the person (people?) who did this and hopefully everyone who was injured recovers well.

I never said that the accused is not considered innocent until proven guilty. What I did say, was how pathetic it is to tell a victim of a horrendous rape that she is not a victim unless there is a conviction. Would you tell the person who was shot that he is only the accuser until there is a conviction? And the GOP can't figure out why they do so poorly with women voters. I think you're talking past one another. In a situation where a woman was obviously raped (bruising and other physical evidence) but the person who committed it is in question, there's no conflict in referring to the woman as a rape victim and presuming the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. But in the case where sex did occur between two known people and the trial is to determine if what occurred was rape, then the woman cannot be a rape victim without the defendant being guilty.

One point you seem to be missing is that with your method you do a full controllability check, and then you reconfigure your rig for landing. As evidenced here, the reconfiguring itself can negate that controllability check. I'm just reading through this thread now, but this was my first reaction to popsjumpers's argument. It doesn't do you any good to rush to the step where you release your brakes to make sure you don't have a control system issue if you are going to then do something that can result in a control system issue. All you're doing is confirming that the canopy you fouled up by pulling your slider down over your toggles would have been fine if you weren't a clod. Wendy's Dacron configuration where she can't get the slider down around the stowed brakes notwithstanding. Pulling your slider down or not, you need to make sure you have properly maintained risers/toggles that stow securely, sensibly stowed excess brake line, and risers that will keep your slider where you plan for it to be. If you're not pulling it down, use slink hats or bumpers to keep it from creeping into your controls from above while you're flying. If you are pulling it down, use stops or blocks to keep it from creeping into your controls from below while you're flying.

Here's a text article about it for those like me who see "Video - Breaking News..." and get an uncontrollable urge to just close the window. My opinion... eh... if it had been coordinated better it would have been fine. Making it any kind of surprise was probably the dumb part.

How much do you know about material science? I know a fair amount about material science. How much do you know about performing an FMEA?

Maxwell... Talk about a shoulder-stander...

Bullshit on stilts. His opinion matters to you only insofar as you agree with him and you can use his endorsement of a boycott as an appeal to authority... a logical fallacy btw.

It rains too much up there.

The OP is consistently one of the worst-presented arguments against additional firearms laws, but buried in there is a worthwhile point. Assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, armed robbery, manslaughter, murder, etc... these are all bad things that we all agree we don't want to happen, so we have laws to codify them as bad things and to allow them to be prosecuted should they occur. The first wave of firearms regulations are things like mandating safety courses, background checks/licensing, and storage requirements. Here, already, it's important to note that simply owning a gun without having taken a safety course, selling someone a firearm without a background check, or storing a firearm in an insecure fashion are NOT inherently bad things that we all agree we don't want to happen. These are indirect laws that are made because the person owning the gun might not know how to handle it safely, the person the gun is being sold to might be a felon or mentally ill, and because the firearm might be accessed by a child or stolen to use in another crime. In other words, one of the above agreed-upon bad things might happen as a result of someone breaking the firearm regulation. So it's entirely possible to break a firearm regulation, and yet not actually have done anything that a reasonable person would care about you having done. That does not render this type of law fundamentally useless (see: DUI laws), and should not be used as an argument that such laws cannot be reasonably implemented, but it does mean you can pave a road to hell with good intentions. The second wave are things like the assault weapon bans, bans on magazine sizes, and the NFA. These laws are basically saying, "Well, we've made the actions that we really care about illegal, and we've got some regulations in place on behaviors that might lead to these actions, but lets assume that won't work, and try to limit what might happen if a failure of regulations leads to the actions we don't want." I think this is getting into territory where it's really easy to get off course. It's very easy to find oneself banning items or technologies that are absurdly simple or that have such wide availability that you only affect people who weren't going to do anything a reasonable person would care about anyway AND you don't substantially slow down people on their way to do bad things. I think the DMCA is a good comparative example from another area where people didn't really bother to understand what they were trying to legislate. The third wave is my personal favorite, and that involves people going after the ways in which people try to comply with the second wave. This involves attempting to ban things like bullet buttons / mag locks or magazines that appear to hold more than 10 rounds even if they don't. It's sort of indirectly acknowledging the stupidity of the second wave.

I think the larger problem is thinking there are only two groups of "guys." Assad Regime Local Syrian Rebels AQ Iran Israel Turkey Lebanon Palestinian Authority Hezbollah Russia US Everyone is trying to accomplish something different. If Israel makes an attack to try and prevent Iran and the Assad Regime from transferring weapons to Hezbollah, I would warn against reading that as "Jews preemptively bomb Muslims"

BHO is president. People have lost their will to hang in there. This is why we need guns.

You know who else didn't learn the lessons of history...