birdlike

...Would they still do the "women and children first" thing? Do we live in an age when men, simply by virtue of their gender, would be forced to risk peril loading into lifeboats last? Or would it be done on any other basis? I understand the social convention of guaranteeing the safety of children first, but what's the consensus about women going before men or not, anymore? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

You might hope so, but with companies giving raises this year far lower than the official rate of inflation (nevermind effective rate), most people don't feel like there's growth. If people are voting based on their feeling about the economy, your candidate suffers. Well, I'm voting "gun rights." I don't want to see lefties appointed to the Supreme Court so that sore-loser intellectual frauds can reverse the Heller decision just a year or two after it came down. I already know that the Left doesn't care how bad it makes itself look when it gets petulant and wants what it should not have. They have no self-awareness when it comes to that. So I know that looking like a bunch of sore losing LIARS is not going to stop them from putting in, say two new justices and then immediately seeking, through supreme-judicial activism, to reverse the landmark case that finally established--through exhaustive legal and historical scholarship--that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

OMG, did you just give cristelsabine credit for this "outing"? About three other people have been calling me this "Jeffrey" for a week or two, now. Hey PJ, my sincere appologies for not being your cyber stalker. I'll try to pay you more attention from now on. BTW when are you going to pay the man the money you owe for that bet? Man? I don't see any "man." Besides, "Why the fuck do you care?!" Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

What Drew Eckhardt said is what I have always understood about the law (based on the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, I believe): "Under Federal law, you can only transport unloaded guns in the trun between places where you can legally posess them making only necessary stops (like for gas) along the journey." I'm with you, about carrying as though you're gonna be glad you had it even if you get busted for having had it: the only way anyone's gonna know you had it is if you use it to save your life. Have I gone on long road trips armed, without regard for whether it was legal where I was gonna be? Um... I dunno. But I fully see your point. Here's a case in point: as many times as I have ever been pulled over for speeding, or rolling through stop signs (maybe a dozen times in total over 20 years of driving, and not all got me tickets), I have NEVER been searched on my person, and only one time (in college, when I had not yet become less stupid) did I ever allow a search of the vehicle. I would say that of the times I've been pulled over, I've been armed at least 75% of them. Never even been ASKED if I was armed... Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Exactly! They might as well tell us how beneficial it would be if we just stopped having so much crime get committed. Gee, uh, thanks for the tip. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Why do we have to have such idiocy in our language? How can the word SANCTION mean, at once, to IMPOSE PENALTY and also to GIVE APPROVAL?! Another bad one is "inflammable" and "flammable." They both mean the same thing?! How stupid is that?! What other examples can you come up with? C'mon, get good and angry!

Dude, your thread-started is SO well written and funny! I enjoyed that a LOT (and only partly due to the Sambuca). I just finished reading page 1 and that guy is ALL OVER the sarcastic wit in his comments. Freakin' HiLaRIouS! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I'm a big fan of the coolness of air conditioning, but I'm not opposed to gettin' sweaty. Just as long as there's a nice, comfy way to cool down afterwards, even if it's just a shower with only 1/4 hot water. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I'd say that I suspect that the vast majority of knives people carry are not carried for the purposes for which those who carry guns carry guns. So really, "If I was going to carry something it would be a gun," seems off point. We weren't asked what you would carry if you had to do lethal harm to someone. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I listed an awful lot of knives but I knew at the time that I could not hit everyone's favorites. I didn't want to make the list obnoxiously long. It's a list -- not one of my posts! Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Then you'll be wanting the Glock all-ceramic-and-plastic "Terrorist Special." Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Shouldn't we find out if you actually CARRY a pocket nife first? and - Gerber - but not the pocket ones - I like the throwing knives. Of course I carry a knife. I did say I was partial to Spyderco and Benchmade. Also, I assumed that folks wouldn't answer unless they bothered to have (and probably carry) whatever they said was "their brand". I usually carry a Spyderco Endura (wave) or Delica. Often I have a backup of sorts. As a matter of fact, lately I carry a Gerber utility knife -- the kind that has a replaceable cheap utility blade that is held in with a screw. That's my go-to blade and if i need a real knife I have the Spyderco for it. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

It's a human tragedy of epic proportions that any society has such trouble coming from its members in the form of criminal misbehavior that it opts to prohibit carry of one of mankind's oldest, most useful tools. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I'll tell you, that slideshow's some fucked-up shit, right there. What's up in the 2007 picture, with the Kenny Loggins hair?! How does a supposedly "black" dude get his hair like that? What a tragic story this fuckin' freakshow has ended up being. This is what having loads of talent but a fucked-up psyche will result in. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

That's wise. Self defense is not the reason I carry a knife -- although a knife would be better than nothing in a last-ditch scenario. But for self defense, I carry a gun, not a knife. If the situation calls for lethal force (a knife is easily as lethal, or more so, than a gun), I want to be able to defend myself without being in arms' reach of my assailant. And it's not as though improper use of a knife is going to result in the law saying that it was "only" a knife, and going easy on you. So it might as well be a gun. Specifically because you cannot make a knife useful unless your adversary can also grab you. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

First time was the last time, for me. I was at Middlesex University near East Barnet, Herts. The school's refectory had them on special one night, so for dinner I tried it. NEVER again. Damned thing tasted like urine, I swear to god. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I am finding myself really, really wishing I had not ever chanced to read that from you, JohnRich. To the folks who lost knives to TSA and so stopped carrying them. Um, wha? Wouldn't it be better to not give up the utility of carrying a knife, and train yourself not to keep forgetting to put it into your checked bag?? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Absolutely. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Chuck, were you not paying attention when I said that we need to take the MONEY out of lobbying, but not the lobbying itself? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

If "all" killing could be stopped, that would probably be a good thing. But do you really feel that killing in self defense, when it is kill-or-be-killed, is also an abomination? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Part and parcel of that is the notion that no matter how much money you have, how hard you've worked to become wealthy, there are places (Canada is one) that makes it ILLEGAL to pay for health care out of your own pocket in order to get the best care. I guess that's why wealthy Canadians come here[/] to get top-level treatment. Let's all pretend we don't know that that goes on. Let's all be liberals who just want to repeat a zombie mantra of "Universal caaaare." Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

When will you figure out that SAYING universal care would be good and is what we should have is hugely apart from coming up with a way to provide it to everyone?! Do you honestly think that there is anyone around who is opposed to having as many people as possible have health coverage? The debate is over how to provide it, and how to pay for it. That's it. Don't pretend that taxing people to death is a viable way to do it. If we wanted, in the U.S., health care coverage like they have in European nations, we'd have to have an income tax rate over 50% like they do. Do you want that? I don't. Expensive things tend to be limited to "high income" anythings. These countries you mention, how many of them have zero- or negative-growth economies? Quite a few. How many of them have taxation at a level that Americans would tolerate. Like, none. Oh, and I guess you don't entertain the arguments that the quality of care in countries with socialized medicine SUCKS... Well, the rest of the world is socialist. We don't want to be that. Sorry. Go move there if it's so much better. Mexicans move here because it's better than where they came from, after all. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Well, since would-be rape victims can recognize this truth, I think that the excuse for not willing oneself into a prepared state evaporates. What woman does not know that rapists are out there? That they are violent? That it will take violence to vanquish them? What woman doesn't know someone who has been raped? So what I postulate is that there are few if any women who don't know (even if they allow themselves to know it only subconsciously) that they'd better be prepared to gouge eyes and so forth if they want to survive unraped and unstrangled. Knowing they are out there eradicates any excuse for remaining a soft target. Knowing that rapists will be violent simply calls for anyone who would not be raped to become someone who can fight it off and triumph. The alternative is to resign oneself and say that if a rapist targets me, I'm dead meat. Is that acceptable? Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

I've been saying this for a while, even though I am far from an economics wonk: there's a definition economists use for "recession," and so it doesn't matter worth a fuck if people on the street feel that we're in one. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire

Anyone worried about how his words might come back to haunt him or cause him grief and trouble would do well to simply reconsider whether there's any real need for him to say what he was considering saying in the first place, suppose. I may not do that a lot here, but in real life, I find myself holding short of saying what's on my mind quite a bit. Spirits fly on dangerous missions Imaginations on fire