Again, I can't seem to pull up the full text of your article through google scholar. Even your summary though states an additional warming contribution of 0.3C by 2100. Sorry, but I don't class that as catastrophic. What's more, simply doing a google scholar search for articles on "permafrost methane climate" and taking the first four full articles give the following, with absolutely zero effort taken to pluck out ones that support my particular claim:

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/4/045016/fulltext/
According to our results, by mid-21st century the annual net flux of methane from Russian permafrost regions may increase by 6–8 Mt, depending on climatic scenario. If other sinks and sources of methane remain unchanged, this may increase the overall content of methane in the atmosphere by approximately 100 Mt, or 0.04 ppm, and lead to 0.012 °C global temperature rise.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010RG000326/full
It's a more sweeping assessment so it doesn't have a nice short quotable for our particular point. It's most concise point is in Figure 7 which I'm not sure how to link into here as an image. You can check for yourself though that even the highest error margins on methane releases touch natural emissions till long, long after 2100, matching the IPCC millenial timescale statement I cited earlier.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018680/full
A detailed study of one mire show that the permafrost and vegetation changes have been associated with increases in landscape scale CH4 emissions in the range of 22–66% over the period 1970 to 2000.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/36/14769.full
We attempted to incorporate in this study some of the latest mechanistic understanding about the mechanisms controlling soil CO2 respiration and wetland CH4 emissions, but uncertainties remain large, due to incomplete understanding of biogeochemical and physical processes and our ability to encapsulate them in large-scale models. In particular, small-scale hydrological effects (36) and interactions between warming and hydrological processes are only crudely represented in the current generation of terrestrial biosphere models. Fundamental processes such as thermokarst erosion (37) or the effects of drying on peatland CO2 emissions (e.g., ref. 38) are lacking here, causing uncertainty on future high-latitude carbon-climate feedbacks. In addition, large uncertainty arises from our ability to model wetland dynamics or the microbial processes that govern CH4 emissions, and in particular how the complicated dynamics of permafrost thaw would affect these processes.

The control of changes in the carbon balance of terrestrial regions by production vs. decomposition has been explored by a number of authors, with differing estimates of whether vegetation or soil changes have the largest overall effect on carbon storage changes (39–41). These results demonstrate that with the inclusion of two well-observed mechanisms: the relative inhibition of respiration by soil freezing (42) and the vertical motion in Arctic soils that buries old but labile carbon in deeper permafrost horizons, which can be remobilized by warming (3), the high-latitude terrestrial carbon response to warming can tip from near equilibrium to a sustained source of CO2 by the mid-21st century. We repeat that uncertainties on these estimates of CO2 and CH4 balance are large, due to the complexity of high-latitude ecosystems vs. the simplified process treatment used here.

And I was able to find the full PDF for your own original sink on the subject:
here
We conclude that the ice-free area of
northeastGreenland acts as a net sink of atmosphericmethane,
and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under
future warmer climatic conditions.

All of the above seem to fairly well corroborate my earlier citation to the IPCC's own summary of the current knowledge on permafrost and northern methane impact on future warming:
However modelling studies and expert judgment indicate that CH4 and CO2 emissions will increase under Arctic warming, and that they will provide a positive climate feedback. Over centuries, this feedback will be moderate: of a magnitude similar to other climate–terrestrial ecosystem feedbacks
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
From FAQ 6.1

If you want to more simply claim that there exist studies, with noted high uncertainties, that under the worst case emission scenarios that show a possible significant release of methan prior to 2100 and possible catatrophic releases after, then I agree. If you want to claim that the consensus is we are facing catastrophe in our lifetime, as your first post claimed, then I most point to the overwhelming scientific evidence linked above that simply does not agree, once again chosen at random and with no effort to cherry pick only results that match what I want. I must note I lack surprise though as the IPCC had already been claiming the same of the literature and existing evidence.

Many people seem confused about our government's origins.
Wiki- Treaty Of Tripoli-unanimously ratified by congress and President John Adams 1797
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;

as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

"By their actions, the Founding Fathers made clear that their primary concern was religious freedom, not the advancement of a state religion. Individuals, not the government, would define religious faith and practice in the United States. Thus the Founders ensured that in no official sense would America be a Christian Republic. Ten years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United States was a secular state, and that its negotiations would adhere to the rule of law, not the dictates of the Christian faith. The assurances were contained in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 and were intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.[15]

The constitution and bill of rights were based on English Common Law, which existed long before the Romans brought the idea of Christianity to England....so if people insist our laws are based on religion, remind them the religion in power where/when they came from was Pagan religion, and they should be worshiping Odin.

Upvote for Galacduck!

My bet is that there's probably quite a lot of life out there. I'd be willing to put money on the possibility of life even within our solar system (Europa maybe?).

But equally, most of it is probably very simple. Evolution is an energy intensive process, and we are lucky that earth has an abundance of energy.

So let's say there 1,000,000 planets with life. It's quite possible that the chances of complex life arising are low, such that there might only be 10,000 planets with anything above single-celled organisms and maybe < 100 with intelligent life. So let's say that all 100 of these civilisations make it to our level of technology and a few maybe even beyond.
They would all probably be ~1000 light years from their next nearest neighbour.

Then there's the issue of timing. They might have evolved and died out a long time ago. It's possible that we will one day get a message from another civilisation that's already gone extinct and the message was sent millennia ago.

Given all that coupled with the incredibly brief period of time we've actually been listening, I'd be far more surprised if we had made contact.

Unless someone invents FTL, then everything changes.

My post is not hyperbole, but actual personal observation.



You also have to factor in cost+ funding.

On one hand, it's necessary. Because you don't know how much something truly new will cost - you haven't done it before. You'll discover as you go.
It would be unfair to bind a company to a fixed cost, when nobody knows what the cost will be. It's mathematically unreasonable to entertain a fixed cost on new technologies.

(Granted, everyone gives silly lowballed best-case estimates when bidding. Anyone that injects a sense of reality into their bid is too costly and doesn't get the contract).

On the other hand, cost+ means that you make more money by spending more money. So hiring hordes of nobodies for every little task, making 89347589374 different position titles, is only gonna make you more money. There's no incentive to save.



F35 wise, like I said, it's not designed for any war we fight now.
It's designed for a war we could fight in the future.
Because you don't start designing weapons when you're in a war, you give your best effort to have them already deployed, tested, and iterated into a good sustainable state, before the onset of a conflict that could require them.

F35 variations are not complicated. The VTOL variation is the only one with any complexity. The others are no more complex than historical variations from early to late blocks of any given airframe.

The splitting of manufacturing isn't in itself a complication ridden approach. It's rather normal for different companies to work on unrelated systems. Airframe will go somewhere, avionics elsewhere, engine elsewhere, etc. That's basically a given, because different companies specialize in different things.

Keep in mind that the large prime contracts (Lockheed/GD/etc) don't actually "make" many things. They are systems integrators. They farm out the actual development for most pieces (be it in house contractors or external contractors - because they are easy to let go after the main dev is over), and they themselves specialize in stitching the pieces together. Connecting things is not difficult when they are designed with specified ICDs from the get-go. The black boxes just plug up to each other and go.

The issues that arise are often a matter of playing telephone. With one sub needing to coordinate with another sub, but they have to go through the prime, and the prime is filtering everything through a bunch of non-technical managers. Most problems are solved in a day or two when two subs physically get their engineers together and sort out any miscommunications (granted, contracts and process might not allow them the then fix the problem in a timely and affordable manner).

The F22 and F35 issues are not major insurmountable tasks. The hardest flaws are things that can be fixed in a couple months tops on the engineering side. What takes time is the politics. Engineers can't "just fix it". There's no path forward for that kind of work.

Sure, in a magic wonderland you could tell them "here, grab the credit card, buy what you need, make any changes you need, and let us know when you're done" - and a little while later you'd have a collection of non-approved, non-reviewed, non-traceable, non-contractually-covered changes that "just fix the damn thing"... and you'd also have to incur the wrath of entire departments who were denied the opportunity to validate their existence. The 'high paid welfare' system would be all over your ass.

-scheherazade

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

I think there's enough evidence that I am not the only observer on Earth. There are something like 7 billion of us now -- at least, it's my observation that the rest of you all exist.

The argument for design is that the constants arising by accident is implausible and therefore could only have arisen due to a designer. I don't see anything tenuous in that part of the argument.

Some imprecise, false and misleading statements and baseless assertions in the video that are cogent to the argument:

0:20 "Scientists have come to the realization that these numbers have been dialed to an astonishingly precise value, a value that falls within an exceedingly narrow life-permitting range."

Imprecise. The highlighted bit implies that scientists have discovered an agent who did the "dialing", which is not the case. Rather, scientists have come to the realization that these numbers have values that fall within extremely narrow life-permitting ranges."

2:24 "... these and other numbers have been exquisitely balanced ...

Imprecise. Again, you cannot claim that they "have been balanced" without tautologically claiming a designer.

3:55 "The probabilities involved are so ridiculously remote as to put the fine tuning well beyond the reach of chance."

Assertion. For this statement to be true, someone would have to define when a probability becomes "too remote". We're talking about something that we don't understand, so it's not possible to determine that it is "too remote".

4:03 "So, in an effort to keep this option alive, some have gone beyond empirical science..."

Imprecise. Nobody decided the Multiverse was a good way to explain the appearance of fine tuning. The Multiverse arises unbidden out of other theories of mathematics, with the effect of making chance quite a viable possibility.

4:35 "... and this universe generator itself would require an enormous amount of fine tuning"

False. A machine making massive numbers of universes only has to create one with our balance of numbers one time. If I can shoot a billion arrows at a target, I can afford for the sights on my bow to be much less finely tuned than if I only have one arrow, and if I have an infinite number of arrows, I don't need any fine tuning at all. I can shoot in random directions and be assured that I will hit the target by pure chance.

The chart about high and low order universes

False. A small universe with a single observer may be more likely, and may also exist in addition to our own. The fact that our universe is vast (relative to what, exactly?) doesn't mean others don't also exist.

AND Imprecise. You cannot measure the creation of universes on a time line. Time is created within our universe.

4:55: "... a vast, spectacularly complex, highly ordered universe ...

Assertion. Vase, complex and ordered in comparison to what? We don't know if ours is very complex compared to how complex a universe could be.

5:05: "So, even if the Multiverse existed ... it wouldn't do anything to explain the fine tuning."

False. That's exactly what it would do, or at least it would easily explain away the appearance of fine tuning as random chance.

AND Misleading. It should be phrased, "... to explain the appearance of fine tuning," which is what we're trying to explain.

"Arguments for" an idea are worthless. "Evidence" is what is needed, and there simply isn't any provided here.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/argument/

:That's not even addressing the straw man at the very beginning. That's not a binary question being asked.:

I think it is addressing the presuppositions of naturalism mainly:

nat·u·ral·ism
ˈnaCH(ə)rəˌlizəm/
noun
noun: naturalism
1.
(in art and literature) a style and theory of representation based on the accurate depiction of detail.
2.
a philosophical viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.

You could expand the question to include many conceptions of God, or something supernatural, but essentially the argument is dealing with a being which is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient.

@newtboy
i agree with you but consider a few things:
1.for the first time bob is actually engaging and revealing where his perspective originates.(which came as no shock,to anyone).now we can disagree on his position but understanding how he got to that position gives an opportunity to disseminate the particulars.

this is a good thing.

2.while bob's breakdown of the political spectrum is extremely,overly simplified and his understanding of socialism vs corporatism is staggeringly..wrong..it begs the question ..why does bob have it so wrong?

which he answers by where he gets the majority of his information.i dont necessarily blame bob for this but rather the institutions and media outlets he gives authority.

bob is not the exception but rather the rule.people tend to congregate and gravitate towards those who speak in the language they,themselves,can relate to.this is why FOX is so successful and why every other 24 hr news channel has tried to copy their success.

FOX appeals to the emotional rather than the rational.they pound a message for entire news cycles with little or no actual analysis of very complicated issues.there IS actual news hidden in there but it gets drowned out by the screaming apologists who just seek to perpetuate their own agenda and/or popularity.the hyper-partisanship alone is reason enough to never watch FOX.

most americans do not have the time to do a research paper every night,and the majority never made it past 9th grade civics.so they tune in to 5 minute soundbites that appeal to their own emotionally triggered prejudices.presented by vapid pretty people who are the exact opposite of a journalist.

they ALL do it.every 24hr news channel does it,FOX just does it better.

3.the fact that bob frequents a predominantly secular-left site should be an indicator that he is not as partisan as he appears in many of his comments.he comes here to see what the "lefties" find important and their take on current events.

the problem always arises when people assume that if given all the information,everybody will all come to same conclusion.

which is untrue.

but to come to a rational and reasonable conclusion we must have the information ...all of it...we may still disagree in the end but at least the discussion is founded on even ground and not polluted by propaganda and politics.

the hyper partisanship has got to stop.it only serves those who wish to divide and conquer.

4.the tea party in the beginning was pretty amazing and,ironically,had a very similar message that occupy wall street had.remember what was going on when the tea partiers first exploded on the scene?

the wall street bailout.

now they were eventually co-opted by the very power structure that they originally protested against..ironical..but if you look at the history of mass movements the powered elite were using an old playbook in that regard.

ugh..you got me writing a damn lecture newt!

let me just conclude that i am glad bob is engaging on much more personal level and i hope he continues.
will bob and i still disagree? most likely

@SDGundamX and addressing the devil's advocate rather than 'you'...

Spiderman's head is also raised (the same angle of their face is shown) and his back is arched, and i think that's clear when they are side by side. If anything i think spiderman's left leg is poorly drawn and his backside does need to be more in the air, whereas spiderwoman is a more human-like natural position for raising a knee over a ledge with your chest close to the ground. Remember that they are different artists bringing their own styles to a particular genre, they both have their own personalities and methods/methodologies. Furthermore, how much of an arch difference is necessary or acceptable and who makes those rules? Surely we must draw men and women differently so that we know whether the character is male or female (do we have too few fem superheroes is another question), and as a species we have different shapes. Surely amongst all these factors we must accept that the spiderwoman is a reasonable artistic recreation of the spiderman pic? If not, why not, taking all of those factors into account (and i can probably list more)? Basically we're asking the question "what is art?" here.

So that's why i think it's impossible for anyone to say the pose is sexual but the creator. No one questioned whether the spiderman pose was overtly sexual until someone drew spiderwoman doing "the same" (for argument's sake) thing. To a bunch of people who do not automatically see women as sexual objects (and i consider myself among that bunch), her pose is not sexual because the context isn't sexual. The question of sexuality arises when someone looks at the pic and goes "Gee, if i were levitating several hundred meters in the air directly behind her and she wasn't wearing any pants, she'd be 'presenting' to me for a split second."

So the ultimate level of 'equality' (or whatever) would be a world in which anything, in its particular context, is legal and absolutely ok. But of course, we can't depict nude youngsters in cinema even in the context of a bath for good reason, which let's generalise to all potentially difficult subjects (like sexism, racism, etc.) and call the "no one's perfect rule" - we can't trust everyone to keep things in context.

Our supposedly greatest form of organisation and problem solving - national governments, the pillars of our society - can't sort their proverbial arses from their proverbial elbows; if they're not perfect, how can we trust all of society to be?

In conclusion - i suppose we need a certain level of sexism or reverse-sexism that hopefully keeps us balanced between short-changing the future prospects of young girls in favour of young boys because of a biased society, and treating other people unfairly because of an over-zealous pursuit of what seems to be impossible.

One way of helping this is by very carefully checking the facts, the context and the meaning of what someone says before saying things like "sexist" or "mansplaining" or "racist". Always react as slowly as you may, that way you can be more or less enraged in your response depending on new info!

Edit: Want to add that if i had a pic of myself in that spidey pose, i'd be pretty happy putting it up on an eharmony profile or something - it is a 'sexy' pose, it looks good, he looks lean and strong and fit. I don't like this idea that women don't have sexual urges or that lean, fit men aren't sexy to women. It's possibly sexist to assume that! He's kind of presenting too, from a certain position...

Grabbing at a gun is immediate grounds for deadly force in every case, law, home, etc. I only say this because the suspect obviously upped the ante to that zone with no regard for human life. Second, "witnesses" were there to see it all...that's not a good thing and ups the ante far, far more... witnesses are either friends or someone the cop has no idea who they are. That means they are potentially dangerous, especially in a city where blacks (by their own heartfelt admissions) HATE white police officers with a huge passion. I am not saying the racists are not justified, as they clearly have been profiled and such, but this is clearly the case. No confusion should ever arise in dispute of the fact that bystanders are different than potential dangers. If the officer does taze and someone gets involved, he is a dead mother fucker because now he is occupied with a screaming, shitting-self man who is 100% willing to murder him, as already displayed, and someone else. Lastly, the tazer does not always work. And when the tazer does work, immediately afterwards you are 100% capable of using your body to 100% again. Most people think that then tazer magically incapacitates someone for a long time. No--when you release that trigger the tazer's effects are over.
In my opinion deadly force is not the last option. It is the option right before you die.

Now the responses are, for certain, based on stupid choices. The chief trying to minimize was what we all do but pretty dumb. You ever comfort a kid that he might not be hurt so he doesn't feel pain or freak out? Happens, even if the kid is really really hurt and the ambulance is on the way. Stupid choice...and the releasing of the video is iffy at best. What pisses me off most is that it was not meant to calm down the violence, but to appease the nation's view of Ferguson's white people...

The link selected was for its clarity of description, not for its modus operandi, but, if you like, here's additional support for the non-dichotomous (not "black and white") assertion I've made (despite your suggestions to the contrary).

Simply put, suicidality is a side-effect of anti-depressants due, in part, to the increased energy or motivation that could arise as a result of the commencement of a round of SSRIs. Someone suffering from a severe depressive episode may, within a few weeks of commencing an SSRI, avail themselves to the means for suicide (in the absence of therapeutic interventions) which, in the weeks previous, might have seemed too difficult or like too much work to pull off.

As a psychologist and clinician myself, I am trained to work closely with individuals struggling with depressive episodes with an eye on this very issue. Sadly, for whatever reason, Robin's therapist(s) were unable to intervene as quickly as was necessary, speculating as I have, that a recent round with anti-depressants was at play.

you are alright my man.
hope you didnt find my tongue and cheek response too dickish.
i was going for irreverant rather than douche,but as per usual,you arise to the occasion and prove why i have so much respect for you.

stay awesome bud!

@Trancecoach
you could have commented on the video without quoting me.
but you didnt do that,did you?
care to explain why?

/scratch that..i dont really care,so dont bother.
you have already made it abundantly clear how see/feel/perceive me.

i am familiar with the mises institute and most likely BEFORE it became your religion.
i have also read the PDF you posted (multiple times on multiple threads) and what i really got out of it was where the majority of your arguments arise.

i even recall an incident where you were caught plagiarizing one of the mises institutes contributors.

the reason i mention these things is that i have been witness to you consistently telling people to think for themselves and to make their own arguments,when in fact,it is YOU who have copied others peoples arguments and called them your own,using the same source material for almost every argument you posit.

do you know who else does that? fundamentalist christians.

they too speak with an air a fake authority and arrogance given to them by the written word.they too deride and ridicule anyone who would dare disagree with them.

you ridicule me for liking this video?
and then have the arrogance to suggest i read YOUR bible..*cough*..i mean mises.

this assumes two things:
1.i am not familiar with mises.
2.i am willing to devote that kind of time in regards to economics (which i have already explained to you,i am not).

neither of which have been evidenced by my commentary here.

i would go as far to say that many people are not willing to spend that kind of time on economics and short videos like this,while maybe not as in-depth as you would like,do offer us all a small inclination in regards to simple economics.

now maybe that is not a smart decision.maybe we should all take the time to understand something that affects us all,and maybe your suggestions have merit and are worth pursuing.

but the arrogance.........
and the belittling...
the ridiculing...
hard to listen to possible sage words when they are spoken in the language of the fanatic.

i do not say these words to harm,nor lightly.
i am quite confident you are unaware you come across this way.
but somebody has to say it.
so i said it.

realizing how little you think of me and my opinion,you may dismiss this.
but i beseech you not to ignore my words.
i am not the only one who feels this way.

please consider your tone when engaging in something that you are obviously very passionate about.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying. And yes, international law does protect the right of people the resist their occupiers. However, this is a bit more than a "ghetto uprising" because a political group (Hamas) has formed and claimed to have some control over a territory and the people of that territory. Actually let me back up, even if that weren't true, it wouldn't matter for the point I want to make.

Armed combatants in a violent conflict, whether international or non-international, whether they are party to the conventions or not, are bound by international humanitarian law to uphold the Geneva conventions. “The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against the dangers arising from military operations.” This places a requirement on armed actors to take reasonable steps to separate their military activities from the civilian population.

However, if people knowingly and willingly stay in place in order to serve as a human shield to military activities, then they can no longer be considered "hors de combat" (outside of combat) and become legitimate targets. The problem here is that Hamas will always say they are innocent people being killed, that Hamas does not launch attacks from residential areas, and that no one is being forced to stay to act as a human shield. Israel will always say that rockets were launched from there and they had no choice but to attack in order to "degrade" military capabilities.

BUT, humanitarian law aside (sorry, it's one of my things) I think it is disgusting doublespeak that Israelis can actually convince themselves that Hamas is killing Palestinians by making Israel fire weapons into densely populated areas. That is disturbing and distressing rationalization that they explain away by saying that there are thousands of rockets being fired on their cities, never once acknowledging that not a single one of those rockets has landed and hurt someone.