I'd always struggled with how removing the 2nd mouse button could make a Mac more user friendly, but now everything is perfectly clear!

Although I'm not a fan of the litigation culture that is growing in the UK (and seems to have entirely swallowed the US) you can't disregard the consequences of someone's actions just because they mean well. There just has to be a line drawn between unfortunate accident and negligence.

I know sod all about first aid but I know for sure that you never move people with potential trauma if they are not in immediate danger. Similarly, I cringe when I see videos of bikers who have crashed and "good Samaritans" immediately yank their helmet off as if that will help, rather than potentially paralyzing them.

I hate to be a "FAKE" caller, but I think if the answer to the world fuel crisis was "run it lean" the car manufacturers might have caught on to that by now. Most modern cars actually adjust the fuel air mix on the fly to achieve maximum efficiency. I'd be pretty amazed if a carburated engine could beat that in real world conditions.

The great thing about being an atheist is that you don't have to feel ashamed for your religion when some bigot or terrorist does something horrible in the name of your God.

I do wish fellow atheists wouldn't spoil my contentment by putting up dickish signs. If they wanted to make a point about separation of church and state then they could have written that on the sign, but they had to spit in the face of Christians whilst they were practicing a completely innocuous aspect of their religion.

It just makes us all look like angry teenagers. The Christian guy's clumsy counter sign looked poetic in comparison.

>> ^kulpims:
promote


Thank you, you're too kind.

Thanks for the kind message. I must say I feel like a bit of a fraud now, jumping into the charts with a wings video when my knowledge of planes is pretty much "fast flying things, make lots of noise"!

In reply to this comment by kulpims:
congrats! your first sifted video and it made top 15, nice. + I always like to see new additions to the wings channel. thanks

Don't get me wrong guys, I'm sure he didn't spend the next week crying into his blankie, but I think this may be one of those "finding the limit" moments where you make a mental note not to go that close again. As sillma points out, these French pilots seem to have a bit of a penchant for low passes, so it's pretty obvious that the move in general was no mistake.

Yoghurt - Clearly the roll was to shake his enormous balls back out from where they had sharply retracted moments earlier

>> ^Hive13:
When I lived in Korea, I did this very thing. When in Rome....
Still, I fail to see how this is "ethically questionable". What does eating a form of sushi have to do with ethics? This is perfectly normal and accepted cuisine in Asia. Are you saying that because you don't understand or accept this that you are somehow on moral high ground over many Asians? Pretty egotistical.
Upvote for the memories.


When in Rome...

...feed Christians to the lions in the Colosseum?

Sorry, but I despise this sort of wooly minded "each to their own" thinking. It's the ultimate cop out. Tradition and cultural norms are no excuse for barbarism.

I think all the people making moral points are somewhat missing the point. srd has it about right I think - once you are in a crowd you lose individuality because your choices are so limited. I've been at music festivals when there are crowd surges and nobody is in control. If someone goes down of course you try to help them up, but sometimes you're moving so fast your only choice is to go down with them or stumble over them.

>> ^imstellar28:
^Iraqi kurds is an example of a force differential. Chemicals weapons versus light arms fire. Same thing happens when you have light arms fire versus unarmed fists. Genocide cannot occur when both sides are equally armed.

Well I hope you've got some pretty huge guns then, because right now your force differential is looking pretty bad versus the mightiest army in the world.

if the CIA/secret service decides to round me up, what else are my options? Surrender and walk myself to the gas chamber? At least with a firearm I would have some sort of chance to fire back and flee the state/country, and they would be hesitant to round people up if at every house they were met with a barrage of gunfire

They might hesitate for about ten minutes whilst they wait for the flame tank to burn you out. How many people do you think would resist after the first 100 or so were slaughterd with their families. Causing hesitation isn't enough. The end result is the same.

the government could have killed Japanese-americans, but they were deterred in part by the threat an armed American populace who does not condone genocide. if the government is already okay with rounding people up into prisons based on race, is it really that unthinkable that the next step would be genocide? there are roughly 300,000 active troops, but there are almost 300,000,000 citizens holding 150,000,000 guns. that is a very powerful deterrent that is also rather transparent to most people.

The deterrent is perfectly transparent to me thank you very much. If I was China/Russia thinking of a US land grab I would definitely think twice against a 150,000,000 man war. My whole point is that in a domestic situation the people being oppressed are usually the minority so half of those guns are actually pointing AT you. Your notion that Americans would've risen up against their government if it commited a Japanese genocide is very honorable, but not realistic IMO. My original point was that many Americans didn't much care for "Japs" and would probably have swallowed whatever propaganda the government fed them about "spies" etc. Let's not forget that exactly what we're theorising about did happen in Germany and barely a handful of people did anything about it. It wasn't because they lacked guns, they lacked knowledge and those that had it lacked will. At the end of the day when most people are faced with a choice between their morals and their life they choose the latter.

There are at least two dozen examples of mass genocide in the last century with full, detailed historical accounts available. There are plenty of books on the subject, one of which is the one I sourced above. Please read it into yourself, you know what they say about history and those who do not learn from it.

I can't guarantee I will find time to read it, but if you post the name and author I'll see if I can find it this side of the pond.

when you become defenseless and depend only on the government for protection, you are essentially living your life on faith--and I don't believe in faith, I believe in facts. a gun will protect me, faith will not.

On the contrary; you are the one that has faith in your gun. Guns are offensive weapons, not defenses. You can have your shoot-out, but the best you can hope for is to kill a few bad guys before they get you.

>> ^imstellar28:
^unclejimbo,
It does not mean that in the absence of guns genocide always occurs, but there has never been an instance of genocide where the victims had a means to defend themselves. If you take away the guns, and somewhere down the road something intense happens which causes a philosophical shift, you are ripe for genocide. Just look at WW2, the Japanese were rounded up into internment camps. How many Japanese lives do you think were spared because the US government did not have the physical power to kill them as a result of an armed populace? How about for arabs after 9-11?


Sorry but a minority bearing arms does not protect it from a majority supported tyranny. Iraqi Kurds spring to mind. They were armed and even had a semi-organised guerrilla army but they were obliterated by Hussein’s ruthless deployment of military force including chemical weapons.

I’m just struggling to see the practical application of the right to bear arms. If the secret service come round your house to round you up what are you going to do, shoot them? Once you’ve shot them, more will turn up, then what? Unless you have an awful lot of sympathisers willing to die for you then you’re pretty much screwed. If you have enough people behind you there is no need for guns – rocks and Molotov cocktails (or even just placards) would do just fine.

I’m highly sceptical of your Japanese American internment example. I know of no show of force by the Japanese Americans who were rounded up, nor of any armed support from white Americans. I was under the impression that the whole episode was possible because of widespread racism against Asian Americans and that gun holders were no more likely to save their lives than they were to take them. Since I very much doubt gun ownership was allowed in the interment camps I fail to see how it protected the inhabitants once they were interred. All the government needed to do was “relocate” them out of sight and they could have “disappeared” plenty of Japanese Americans without anyone finding out for quite some time. That they didn’t was more down to the US government’s (misguided) motives differing from more menacing aims of other regimes of the time.

ps. Sorry for the thread hijack everyone

>> ^imstellar28:
^your personal opinion may be to have a revolver or shotgun, but your opinion is not an appropriate argument for a law. if i want to defend myself with spoon, shotgun, cantaloupe, assault rifle, or bazooka, i'd say thats my personal choice as much as yours is to defend yourself with a handgun.

Seriously, a bazooka? This whole "fundamental principle trumps practicalities" approach is what puts most people off full blown libertarianism. Would you seriously expect to be allowed to carry a bazooka for self defense? You might well defend yourself successfully, but I wouldn't want my kids near you!

Funnily enough, one of the examples* you give of gun confiscation (the UK) illustrates this quite well. I have a feeling you have probably read up on the Dunblane massacre and know that the guns used were not legally owned, but that was not really the point. When the subject came up for debate no-one could really come up with a decent reason why anybody would want to own a handgun.

Concealed carrying of pretty much any offensive weapon is illegal in the UK, including knives, knuckle-dusters and of course guns. So handguns were never any good for personal protection. Guns could be kept in the home, but under very strict conditions. I have not researched this (sorry - I'm already spending too much time on this) but my Grandpa used to own target shooting rifles and the conditions for license included that they must be locked away at all times. If someone had broken into his home he would never have gone for the gun - unless they gave him 10 minutes notice to go unlock and load the guns. Basically, guns in the UK were used soley for sport and the need for sport shooters to have access to a type of gun not particularly well suited to sport shooting didn't seem too pressing.

Finally, to cap off my (far too long) post - This idea of gun control causing 56,000,000 deaths is ridiculous and meaningless. This is rather neatly illustrated by the fact that high gun-control countries like the UK have vastly lower murder rates than the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_rates). If gun control causes death, why are we dying so much less frequently than you guys? I find it hard to believe that Americans are twice as murderous as Brits. What seems likely is that gun control "causes" some deaths when undefended people are attacked, but saves many more by reducing (frequently deadly) gun attacks overall.

*For the record, I don't question your point in that post - that gun confiscation could happen and has happened in other countries.