John Cuthber

"The Supreme Court is not a mere authority, but a partial determiner, of what the Constitution legally means." And, to a degree, they make that decision on political grounds so they are not independent. They come to the viewpoint they were chosen to come to, just like a poll at a railway station.

Whatever the constitution says, and however you (or some group) interpret it, using it to justify carrying guns is an argument from authority and is a logical fallacy. In any event, if it does not agree with what you want, it can be changed, so what it currently says isn't important.

To be fair, it is a lot like Dutch. My mother, who also spoke Afrikaans, said that old English was very similar to Dutch. If you want to check there are lots of versions of the same text (including old English) here http://www.prayer.su/other/all-languages.html

Not that I speak either of them, Scots and Frisian are probably the most similar to English. Here's the Lord's prayer in a few languages so you can look for similarities + differences. Latin PATER noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen French Notre Père, qui es aux cieux, Que ton nom soit sanctifié, Que ton règne vienne, Que ta volonté soit faite sur la terre comme au ciel. Donne-nous aujourd'hui notre pain de ce jour. Pardonne-nous nos offences Comme nous pardonnons aussi à ceux qui nous ont offensés. Et ne nous soumets pas à la tentation, mais délivre-nous du mal, Amen Frisian Us Heit, dy't yn de himelen is jins namme wurde hillige. Jins keninkryk komme. Jins wollen barre, allyk yn 'e himel sa ek op ierde. Jou ús hjoed ús deistich brea. En ferjou ús ús skulden, allyk ek wy ferjouwe ús skuldners. En lied ús net yn fersiking, mar ferlos ús fan 'e kweade. "Amen" English Our Father, which art in Heaven Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; But deliver us from evil. Amen To me the Frisian looks more like the English than the French version does. (Oh, btw, I speak French: badly.)

Does anyone know the legal status of bomb making information in the other 95% of the world? After all, the OP's question was "Is this info that needs to be available on the internet? Is this knowledge that should be freely available to every dummy on Earth?" Also, under the law cited above, distributing the information is an offence but possession per se is apparently not and receiving it seems to have been left as a grey area too. If someone outside the US posts the information and a US citizen downloads it is anyone breaking the law? Would the ISP be liable? What about a US citizen distributing the information to people whom he believes, in good faith, to intend to use the bombs to further the ends of the US. For example if the bombs had been for use against the Russians in Afghanistan or some similar future conflict? If the US denies it's citizens access to this data but others round the world are permitted it, has the Justice dept set it's own people at a disadvantage

It means the decision is not politically independent. So, if SCOTUS's decision is essentially political it is, at best, no more valid than that of another political group like , for example, the democrats or the NRA. Though, actually the whole issue of SCOTUS is irrelevant since this "SCOTUS disagrees with you." is an argument from authority and is,therefore a logical fallacy.

If I wanted to find out what people think about public transport but I only polled a group at a railway station would you describe the outcome as "independent" of my choice of sample? Each of the people would have their own independent beliefs about public transport based on whatever. However, the group , as a whole, would be biassed in favour (compared to the populous as a whole) because of the way I chose them. The outcome of the SCOTUS is as much a product of it's make-up as it is of the will of the people.

They make an independent ( but largely predictable) decision. But the fact that it is they who make it (rather than me , for example) is because they are politically appointed. So, the individuals may be independent, but their decisions are not.

OK, so the incumbent government chooses the judges who agree with its policies. And you say that's a way to get a judiciary that is independent of the government which chose it. I'm not sure mine is the unusual take. The judgement under discussion was made by these folks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Souter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Breyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito Guess what! most of them were appointed by republicans. Stevens (D) spoke against it and was joined by Bader Ginsburg (D) ;Brayer (D); and (perhaps surprisingly) Souter ®. Do you really think the decision looks politically independent?

The simple answer is yes, a single formula like that can apply to a number of compounds. This will explain it better than I can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomer

"Jurors decide if someone did an illegal thing. They don't decide what should and should not be illegal." No they decide if someone did something that was wrong. "The point is that with jury nullification I will have no idea if I'm doing something right now that will eventually find me guilty in a court of law or not because the jury could do whatever they want." Are you saying that you can't tell right from wrong or that the jury can't? (Incidentally, you would have to go to court in the first place so the police would also have to think that what you did was wrong.) Actually, whatever you are saying it's drifted a long way from the point of the thread. "Yes, the life appointment matters very much. It means they are independent from outside influences. Following your own conscience and belief system does not mean you are not independent." Being appointed to a position of power by a political group who believe that you will, in general, support the views of that group and in a way that means that you can not get sacked, even if you take an extreme (and possible undemocratic) line means that you are not independent. It means that you are expected to act as a puppet and if they thought you would act otherwise, they would have chosen someone more likely to toe the line.

Cooling the air leaves the dew point unchanged until the air gets to (or just below) the dew point. Then the water condenses out as fog.

"Let's take guns out of it and substitute swords and then claim because I have a pocket knife I am more likely to run amok and kill people because people with swords do this." Alternatively, lets not engage in obvious strawmanning. Similarly, we can not bother with things like this "Could we eliminate death by auto by banning autos?" because there is a clear difference between cars (which have a main purpose that does not involve killing)and guns (whose design intent is to kill and which have essentially no other purpose). That difference makes the two sets non comparable and comparing them is a strawman. "Your statistics limp all guns into one category "a gun" I would be more comfortable if the claim was handguns but to say "a gun" is far too broad a term to accurately describe anything." OK, nobody is saying that using a gun in legitimate self defence is a bad thing, but I think we can agree that murder, suicide and accidental deaths are bad. So, a gun is, overall, a good thing if it's more likely to be used in the former way than the latter. So if you think that the type of gun is the problem I'd expect you so provide some evidence that says "Guns of types X and Y are not major contributors to "bad" deaths (compared to the number of "good" deaths), but guns of type Z are bad because they contribute more "bad" deaths than good ones. Accordingly I'd expect to see some sort of breakdown of types of deaths by types of guns. The data should be available- there must be relatively few deaths from gunshots where the type of gun is unknown. Now, according to this http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp nearly half of all guns in the US are handguns And, according to your data they are responsible for about half of the homicides by guns So the ratios of hand gun deaths to all gun deaths is about the same as the ratio of handguns to all guns. (if anything, handguns are more "dangerous", but the effect isn't big. and, once again "I know guns can be used to protect one's self or other" Yes, but they are more likely to be used to kill your family than to save them. Not only that, but the "I want to defend my family" is used to justify the continued sales. That culture ensures that criminals and nutters have no difficulty getting hold of guns which means yet more deaths. "Jury nullification is certainly not the purpose of a jury." What are they there for then? "It is the duty of the Judge, in all cases of general justice, to tell the jury how to do right" That's trial by judge, not trial by jury. "To be free is to live under a government by law [...]. Miserable is the condition of individuals, dangerous is the condition of the State, if there is no certain law, or, which is the same thing, no certain administration of law, to protect individuals, or to guard the State." Well, that makes us all miserable then, since the law can be changed, it isn't certain. Also there's no reason to suppose that 1 judge is any less subject to "all the prejudices of the popular cry of the day, and under all the bias of interest in this town" than that 12 jurors are.

"You missed my point, it says "a" gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a crime.... you cannot use statistics to predict the actions of individuals." Yes I can. I can , for example, predict that my friend who is of Chinese descent, can't hold his beer as well as I can. I might be wrong, but it would be a good bet because of the known statistics for the genetically determined traits in enzyme activity. I'm more likely to be right than wrong. It would even be reasonable to make decisions based on that statistical assumption (I might bet the cost of the night's drinking on the idea that "last one standing doesn't pay" Obviously, I can't be certain, based on the numbers- but then again, I can't be certain based on anything else either. I have to make decisions on some basis or other and statistics are a very good one. I base pensions investments on them and I choose not to buy lottery tickets on the same sort of basis. The idea that I can't predict the behaviour of individuals from statistics is true to the extent that I can't (absolutely certainly) predict it at all. On the other hand, that idea is wrong because it is the best technique I have to make those predictions. "To imply that owning a gun makes any particular individual more likely to do these things is not true" I don't have a gun, I believe that you do. Do you really think that I am just as likely to shoot myself as you are? How, exactly? Am I really just as likely to come home and find that my child has shot himself as you are to suffer the same fate? (I'm ignoring , for the time being, that I don't have kids) And, as I already pointed out, the people who bought guns and tragically found that the result was a dead spouse or child, bought them believing just as you do- that the gun wouldn't kill anyone because it's not guns that kill people, it's people who kill people. All those poor individuals believed that they were safer with a gun. So do you, and for exactly the same reasons. They were all wrong. Why are you still so sure?

If we look at the world's human population, most of them don't have $1000 and most of them are already off-grid. Problem solved.

Typhoid fever is transmitted via food/water. the normal route for infection is oral so oral vaccination should work. According to the web vivotif is a weakened variety of the bacterium that causes the disease so it should provoke an immune reaction.

You would do better with a 2 stage process. A magnesium getter because it removes nitrogen as well as oxygen. Then the aluminium. If you can get a sealed system and fire a Mg getter then only the argon (and a few trace gases) will be left behind. Since only about 1% of the air is argon the pressure drops a hundredfold. As you say, no need to measure it at that point. If you start with a good vacuum, it suddenly gets 100 times better Better yet, flush the system with clean nitrogen first, then drop the pressure then getter the remaining N2 with Mg. You can calculate the mass of Mg needed- it's not a lot if you start with a fair vacuum. In any event, the easy way is, of course, to get someone with the right kit to do it for you.

How do they get chosen in the first place? Are they noted for being moderate and inclusive in their ideas? If they are chosen for following the party line in the first place then it hardly matters that it's a life appointment does it? And (though it's not all that relevant to the topic), re. "I'm sure you're not suggesting jurors shouldn't follow the law." If the law is wrong then of course the Jurors should ignore it. That is exactly what they are there for. And, there's a great deal of similarity between the belief in the right to keep guns and the belief in religion. It reminds me of a comment I saw recently For most people, religion is like the user license agreement with software. They don't read it, they just skip to the end and tick the box marked "I agree". While I'm at it, this from Moontanman "A gun... so my gun will leave the house under it's own free will and commit crimes?" is,a strawman reply to this "Pistol owners' fantasy of blowing away home-invading bad guys or street toughs holding up liquor stores is a myth debunked by the data showing that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense." because it explicitly says the gun was "used" which means there's a user, not that the gun did it by itself. If you need to use a logical fallacy to justify your point it's because your point is wrong.

Wait for a thunderstorm (though even that is cheating: the energy comes from the sun)

I look forward to a couple of things. Evidence for this assertion "Tick bites have been shown to be the cause of red meat allergy." and an explanation of the fairly common allergy to tomatoes. Some reason to think that the whole story is anything apart from a post hoc fallacy would also be good.

Actually, what wiki says is "The Court, which meets in the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate." So, as political appointees, they are not politically independent. Perhaps it is just as well that you have a constitution that you worship since you don't realise that your judiciary is not as independent as you think. (BTW, it doesn't matter a damn what our laws say- the decisions are made by juries)

Excuse my ignorance 'cos I'm from the wrong side of the pond but is the SCOTUS politically independent? If not then their opinion might be as valid as that of the NRA.

lol

At the risk of being shouted at for breach of copyright, here's the text of the Scientific American story According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31,672 people died by guns in 2010 (the most recent year for which U.S. figures are available), a staggering number that is orders of magnitude higher than that of comparable Western democracies. What can we do about it? National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre believes he knows: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” If LaPierre means professionally trained police and military who routinely practice shooting at ranges, this observation would at least be partially true. If he means armed private citizens with little to no training, he could not be more wrong. Consider a 1998 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that found that “every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.” Pistol owners' fantasy of blowing away home-invading bad guys or street toughs holding up liquor stores is a myth debunked by the data showing that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense. I harbored this belief for the 20 years I owned a Ruger .357 Magnum with hollow-point bullets designed to shred the body of anyone who dared to break into my home, but when I learned about these statistics, I got rid of the gun. More insights can be found in a 2013 book from Johns Hopkins University Press entitled Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, edited by Daniel W. Webster and Jon S. Vernick, both professors in health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In addition to the 31,672 people killed by guns in 2010, another 73,505 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for nonfatal bullet wounds, and 337,960 nonfatal violent crimes were committed with guns. Of those 31,672 dead, 61 percent were suicides, and the vast majority of the rest were homicides by people who knew one another. For example, of the 1,082 women and 267 men killed in 2010 by their intimate partners, 54 percent were shot by guns. Over the past quarter of a century, guns were involved in greater number of intimate partner homicides than all other causes combined. When a woman is murdered, it is most likely by her intimate partner with a gun. Regardless of what really caused Olympic track star Oscar Pistorius to shoot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp (whether he mistook her for an intruder or he snapped in a lover's quarrel), her death is only the latest such headline. Recall, too, the fate of Nancy Lanza, killed by her own gun in her own home in Connecticut by her son, Adam Lanza, before he went to Sandy Hook Elementary School to murder some two dozen children and adults. As an alternative to arming women against violent men, legislation can help: data show that in states that prohibit gun ownership by men who have received a domestic violence restraining order, gun-caused homicides of intimate female partners have been reduced by 25 percent. Another myth to fall to the facts is that gun-control laws disarm good people and leave the crooks with weapons. Not so, say the Johns Hopkins authors: “Strong regulation and oversight of licensed gun dealers—defined as having a state law that required state or local licensing of retail firearm sellers, mandatory record keeping by those sellers, law enforcement access to records for inspection, regular inspections of gun dealers, and mandated reporting of theft of loss of firearms—was associated with 64 percent less diversion of guns to criminals by in-state gun dealers.” Finally, before we concede civilization and arm everyone to the teeth pace the NRA, consider the primary cause of the centuries-long decline of violence as documented by Steven Pinker in his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: the rule of law by states that turned over settlement of disputes to judicial courts and curtailed private self-help justice through legitimate use of force by police and military trained in the proper use of weapons.

I think it would only be Pythagorean if Pythagoras knew about it. However, as far as I can tell, yes it does hold those 4 properties.