#272 - Chicago is a great example.
One of the bases in Southern California was fun for visitors- leave the base on the ocean or high rent side and McDonalds/Burger King was a lot more money than the same food on the desert or poor side.
#210 - Carl? that would be the ghost in the machine rather than zombie.
#718 Reviewing the question more specifically -
1. If police are responding to a 911 call, & find the door of the house locked; no one answers the door when they announce themselves but they hear muffled shouting from somewhere inside -- they're going to break down the door at that point, right?
Breaching gun in hand no doubt? Actually they would be responding to a dispatch order if such things matter - the 911 call mostly goes through the fire department because time is more important for fire and ambulance services than for crimes likely over before reported.
I'd expect an entry would be made - I would not be so confident the entry would be funnelled through the front door - again depending on history, neighborhood, architecture, nature of the call which might have been patched to the first responders along with additional information - the first and all of the responders will have lots of additional and confusing information in this information age.
#718 et seq
(with a nod at #738 - there are no Columbine police it's strictly the name of a high school in context - unincorporated Jefferson County using the Littleton (Arapahoe County) mail center and so sometimes referenced as Littleton. The only relevence is that it was a new from scratch community with everybody having come from someplace else quite recently and this may have affected personal actions.)
Try browsing the bookstore at any convenient college esp. community college with a Criminal Justice program.
I'd post more links but we know that goes. See Mas Ayoob on Backwoods Home Magazine for Columbine: Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost 2009 and Among The Cops And Their Instructors currently at http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2009/04/24/among-the-cops-and-their-instructors/
John Farnam at defense-training.com has an extensive list of his own thoughts and observations going back many years - very good indeed for mindset. Hilton Yam at 10-8forums.com maintains a discussion board for current issues where the registration is limited to the truly knowing.
To come a little closer to answering specifically the first reaction on scene might well include an element of history at that addess and nature of the call.
The current general rule is mount up and ride to the sound of the guns - but everybody goes in the same door - marked never mind how and if possible manned - and maintains communication backward by something better than cookie crumbs - if you're not actively shooting you're both moving and talking. Nobody goes around back and comes in that way so the blue forces are never converging each expecting to confront a gun(wo)man head on.
Specific details are little more obscure in these times.
On farmers dealing with the weather I am reminded of a Bankruptcy Court order: Your plan assumes three years of good weather. If you'd ever had three straight years of good weather you wouldn't be in this Court. I can't confirm this plan. Denied.(Bud Hagen, Boise Idaho)
On eye contact an individual who is high will often respond to eye contact with a what are you staring at demand - it's happened to me though once it worked out better for me than the pair of them for other reasons.
I've wondered for years why some folks would choose the feeling of power that they as victim caused the crime rather than the feeling of powerless associated with ..it happens.
There is a strong generational difference - I know a woman in her mid eighties who grew up on the plains and who today blames the female victim because her own early life was virgin with a bag of gold safe. Much the same generational change followed the pill in other ways. Before the assumption of the pill I think consent in a social setting tended to be much more obvious and unambiguous (I have a diaphragm worked every time) - autres temps autre moeurs.
Myself I figure any woman I'm likely to meet who is mid sixties or younger has at best been molested in some fashion and often enough legally raped.
And yet there is still a blame the victim mentality even among some victims - anybody know why?
#105 - Letter from a Higher Critic - with the intent implied by the title - that higher criticism proves too much. Most often seen in Best of (Astounding)Analog 6.
As an intellectual exercise Poul Anderson did an alt history story in which the last copy of the Christian Bible is so much waste paper and how from a point of departure to arrive there.
#102One of the things that bugged me about Gur Png Jub Jnyxrq Guebhtu Jnyyf was the protagonist's big secret. The guy was already dead, why did it matter that they ate him?
Just possibly because by the author's standards - see e.g. Fgnefuvc Gebbcref recovering the body is a sacred duty. Lots of stories from reality omitted.
I am reminded of the fact that it is healthier to be vegeterian in India than to eat the same nominal diet in England. There's enough contamination be it only chiten and insect parts to give a little B12 to the diet in India - in the UK not so much.
I've long tried to distinguish killing and murder in assorted contexts and I have real issues with slaughter as a form of murder - as does e.g. Temple Grandin who considers herself an obligate carnivore - she doesn't feel quite right without meat. I'm not sure how I would feel about dealing with the folks who free their animal slaves by turning them loose into a poorly suited ecosystem - a gerbil into the piney woods on a wet and snowy day for instance or just cats and dogs in the country - but I'd be tempted to express a value choice.
Obs SF Deep Range.
Good excuse to point to Temple Grandin.
http://www.grandin.com/ though likely too well remembered to be needful.
Myself I don't have much to say on the New Republic.
Doubting as I do in both radical truth and saintly anything I suppose the intersection might well be empty and so it goes.
On the Carcano - the shooting has been recreated with actual physics - height of the shooter with scaffolding, range and speed - cable drawn trailer with the target mounted - many many many times with assorted criminal justice style students. An overwhelming majority but not all of the not exactly randomly selected but pretty haphazard group makes the shots or better (circa 75%+ IIRC) first try without any specific practice. Obviously there may be less tension than Oswald felt but the performance is under close observation by the other students, previous and next shooter and faculty.
Many of students suceed shooting from the left shoulder, looking over the scope and reaching over the rifle to work the bolt with the trigger hand - and this regardless of whether the student be left handed by nature.
There is by actual test nothing unusual or remarkable about the shooting that in any way conflicts with a Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone hypothesis.
It is certainly true that there is strong reason to believe the Warren Commission Report really was a rush to judgment. One of the members dined out for years on that story - emphasizing that he saw nothing at all in the whole process to contradict the eventual report but that the report as issued was railroaded by his normal academic standards.
For my money Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone that day. For my money Jack Valenti had no suspicion of a conspiracy which for me limits the possibilities. For my money the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone says nothing about the possibility of unrelated conspiracies. I'd find it very very easy to believe some of the Brigade 2506 folks would have supported such an effort - and maybe some survivors of the Alabama guard types would have supported it. At the time I'd have been seriously tempted myself though I have since regretted that.
#844 & #850:
"In fact, when the statistics were published, the sporting interest in winning a Baluit cat trophy appears to have suffered a sudden and sharp decline. On the other hand, a more scientific interest in these remarkable animals was coincidingly created, and many permits for their acquisition by the agents of museums, universities, public and private collections were issued. Sporting rules, of course, do not apply to that activity."
Telzey nodded absently. "I see! They used aircars, didn't they? A sort of heavy knockout gun—" Emphasis added
Useful to distinguish hunting in the sense of sport hunting and control work. There has been considerable wrong information on tools and techniques for aerial control work published recently as well. Fair chase rules, and to some extent embodied in the statute require not only no shooting from the air for fair chase but also a sort of cooling off period after flying - no land and promptly shoot game spotted from the air.
#189 - Define felons: frex Colorado allows anyone whose sentence has been completed to vote; this includes people on probation but not on parole.
Define firearms: Notice the dominant laws on this are Federal and tend to follow the Federal definition of firearm and so exclude black powder firearms. Lots of oddities in the laws including the mail-order black powder where the mails are open to say blackpowder cap and ball revolvers as not Firearms under the statute and equally the cylinders for a cartridge conversion can be mailed as not being the frame or receiver and so it goes.
Reuter's Friday 29 August
....A scientific panel on Thursday released detailed findings of an April review that classified the bear population as a "special concern," but not endangered or threatened with extinction....."Protecting the polar bears is something we are committed to, but we going to base it on science and with input and collaboration with Inuit and northern people," Environment Minister John Baird told reporters in Inuvik, Northwest Territories......Canada's Arctic Inuit people say the bear population is not in as much trouble as some fear, with the most serious problems more localized in nature, and they complain further restrictions on hunting will hurt their communities.
Silly Inuit -
Palin lacks only red hair to be a Heinlein heroine after all.
....Polar bear meat, other than that of males in the rut, is quite palatable......
http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/notebook/marine/polarbea.php - that is Alaska Department of Fish and Game official website. My own observation without benefit of much science is that the Polar Bear is not that different from the big brown bear (which is the same as the Grizzley save for access to all the fish it can eat) the Polar Bear separated from the brown maybe about the time Homo Sap appeared (no connection). Trichinosis is an issue as it is in parts of Western Europe that had been free of trichinosis and bears for a long time - Bern had to import bears for the tourists but bears are wandering across borders there now.
As for the original topic the OpEd piece in the NYT seems to me well reasoned in that crying wolf - or bear - when the species is under only local pressure is a dubious tactic and with Dr. Pournelle I'll say I'd rather see her [Paliin] President than McCain, but we live with the choices we have. Jerry is of course notoriously easy to get along with and make a good impression on.
#257 - It's vitamin A.
Polar bears are mostly seal eaters and concentrate vitamin A but can also be garbage dump bears - the animals exist the full range of the Arctic around through Northern Europe for a full circle of the arctic - and often are taken on snowmobile/dog hunts under conditions that are hard on the meat - Freuchen and others enjoyed them under primitive conditions.
... The polar bear's liver, much like those of arctic seals and huskies, contains extremely high levels of retinol (the form of vitamin A found ...
HowStuffWorks "Vitamin A in Polar Bear Liver"
Vitamin D, like distilled water, kills in extreme doses but it's not a general problem. Vitamin D shortage is a general problem these days; perhaps sunscreen related or lactose intolerance leading to little Vitamin D fortified milk consumption.
246 -Your typical NRA-hat-wearing lower-48ian hunter will not, for instance, shoot at a duck on the water with a rifle; this is considered "unsporting" and is prohibited by all pertinent hunting laws. A subsistence hunter or anybody who is hungry will do it anyway, because it's cheaper, more efficient at putting meat on the table, and results in many fewer lost and injured birds than sweeping flying flocks with a host of tiny low-velocity pellets.
Emphasis added -
I suggest "[y]our typical NRA-hat-wearing lower-48ian hunter", of which I am one, has better sense than to skip rifle bullets along the water into the unknown nor do I sweep flying flocks.
In my experience bear as most animals depends on what the animal has been eating and especially on care after the kill. Prepared as Chinese food in place of pork, by a skilled Chinese - no idea of actual region - cook, bear has been part of good eating with good friends.
#224 - We agree I'm a gun nut - some prefer the term gun looney.
We do have a fundamental disagreement - I do claim a right to use words as I define them rather than to guess at definitions used by others and bow to others in defining my thoughts - anything else leads to Newspeak and to thoughtcrime. obs SF The Languages of Pao.
FREX what I infer to be your usage of Buzzword as a word for a factually rare phenomenon blown up into a fallacious argument that justifies ridiculous policies that the right-wing nutjobs want because they utterly lack compassion or conscience. is quite unlike my normal usage of Buzzword to mean something more like a meaningless noise than a loaded phrase.
Expanding on that I've seen many a sheet for Buzzword bingo with words that were much more meaningless noises than loaded phrases. Indeed the reason the words were made into Buzzword bingo cards is that even in context the words carried little or no useful information at all.
Your mileage obviously differs but unless I allow you to define the word Buzzword to suit your usage then all communication ceases and eventually all logical thought.
#219 - Dozens to my knowledge anecdotally implying the likelihood of hundreds maybe thousands. Enough so that the issue of mothers coming to the United States legally to endow their children with US citizenship without the intention to themselves live in the United States or to raise the infant in the United States has been discussed in the mainstream - New York and LA Times level of mainstream - press. As I said above rational for the individual perhaps harmful to the home state society - take my suggestion of the Categorical Imperative and imagine every Lebanese child to be born at Cedars of Lebanon in the United States of American and imagine the potential consequences.
On the general subject of loaded terminology:
Ultimately, there may be no neutral language possible in the immigration debate — any more than there is in other emotionally charged human interaction, said Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author of the best-selling "You're Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation." Ms. Tannen claims no special expertise about immigration, but she knows communication. "People cling to words, and use them, as a way of showing whose side they're on, who their people are," she said. NYT
If you've never heard the term anchor baby before then I suggest you have no perspective to see the background against which I seek to define by contrast my specific usage. Quite right that I did not start ab initio and I'm not going to start ab initio now.
It should be obvious from my prior post that I am specifically using anchor baby in that post to mean a child born to a woman living outside the United States of America who visits the United States for the purpose of delivering the child and then leaves with the child.
For that usage then If one of my[your] foreign national coworkers has a child while living in the US, is that child an "anchor baby"? the answer is not by my usage in that post since the child will presumably be raised in the country of US citizenship - at least for some uncertain period.
If your coworker is here working legally then most people would consider a child born in the United States to a legal resident working legally not to be an anchor baby. Many would consider a child born to a woman in the United States criminally or working criminally (loaded word used deliberately) to be an anchor baby. Use the words or not as you see fit and define them or not as you see fit.
#216 - I don't know about other countries, but US ex-pats are required to pay taxes to the US.
Of course they are. My point was that as a small community ex-pats, and dual citizens are almost by definition ex-pats from some place, are more likely than not to be subject to dual taxation and sometimes the dual burden is unreasonable beyond logic. e.g. from The Telegraph ex-pat edition
......
One of the most overlooked aspects concerns inheritance tax. But this oversight can prove costly. Spanish authorities can charge up to 82 per cent tax on foreign-owned property, while those buying in France may find that they cannot stipulate who inherits the property. What's more, overseas property can be taxed twice: in Britain and locally.
.....But individuals acquire a "domicile of origin" at birth - it is normally the country in which they are born - and it is far harder to change this at a later date, even if you live abroad for years. Most expats remain UK-domiciled, particularly those who retire overseas.
If you want to be domiciled in the country where you have retired you must submit a DOM1 form from your local revenue and customs office, and sever all ties with your homeland. This means closing all British bank accounts, selling all assets in Britain and even organising your funeral abroad. If you are granted a new domicile of choice it takes three years for the loss of UK domicile to become effective for IHT purposes.
But there are some financial advantages to cutting these ties: once you are no longer domiciled in Britain you can create a discretionary property trust, and any asset held within this will not be subject to IHT even if you later return to Britain and become domiciled again.
.......
And so on and so forth. My point was that in a world of don't tax you and don't tax me it seldom pays to be the fellow under the tree. In a larger sense what taxation is appropriate and what should be deductible between taxing authorities is to my eye unclear.
As a matter of fact the NHS issue has been settled reasonably. This again from the Telegraph
British expats win French healthcare battle
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/01/2008
The French government has backed down on a policy that had stripped thousands of Britons living in France of their right to benefit from the French state health insurance system.
The news was greeted with jubilation by British expatriates after a six-month fight to have the rules changed.
..........
The government said the changes were the result of an EU directive on residency.
......
This left at least 7,500 Britons living in France facing a crisis because they had moved to France on the understanding they would be able to access the state system when their British government health care cover ran out. Britain covers expatriates' health care costs for up to two and a half......
.......
The sudden "retroactive" legislation was deemed grossly unfair by the British community in France. Many, including cancer and diabetes patients, had given up their homes and private health cover back home.
...................
However, yesterday the British Embassy announced it had received a letter from Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, the French health minister, announcing that any Briton who emigrated to France before Nov 23, 2007 - whether or not in the French health system before that date - could now access it. Only those moving to France after that date would not qualify.
..............
Mostly I was suggesting that the threaded discussion was very much ignoring practical details in a world where practical details make all the difference and reality should drive policy. Perhaps the discussion was oriented toward a purely abstract discussion but I did not have that impression. Assuming that all costs are reasonable and alternative costs are low then being all things to all men is easy. If the discussion is purely abstract then the conclusions are easy but meaningless.
Again FREX I have trouble taking it as a given that Brownsville should tax itself to provide maternity care to Matamoros and equally given that somebody has to do it with the notion that Brownsville shouldn't.
On a related matter although I've had a friend with dual Irish/American citizenship who enjoys using his Irish passport within the European community - he fell in love with the United States as an adult and I have no doubt where his loyalties lie - should he die in a foreign land that spot will be forever American blood stained - and uses his American citizenship and loyalties to access some citizen only benefits professionally still I wouldn't wish any child of mine to be a subject of a country where leaving the country to terminate a pregnancy is as much a crime as terminating a pregnancy within the country.
#208 - I am content to be called and thought a racist sooner than bend my language to suit another's whims.
I do try avoid direct insults unless I intend them as such.
The end of political correctness in my view was reached when the Stratemeyer syndicate dropped gosh and golly from the vocabulary of the Bobbsey twins on the argument these are euphemisms for Ghod. Since then political correctness has been ridiculous.
I like Humpty Dumpty on words and I'll not object to much as others may use language - on the other hand I am prepared but seldom have to object to sticks and stones.
I call it tyranny over the minds of men to bend language in a way that might obstruct clear thinking. Rather I suggest that taking language in the use most favorable to the opposition and running with that usage promotes clear thinking much more than sustained use of euphemisms. Hence as in much of the rest of my life I am an absolutist on free speech. That means others use the language they do not by my privilege but by right and I claim the same right for myself.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2007 | 83 |
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| 2005 | 137 |
| 2004 | 123 |
| 2003 | 65 |
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