Idk man. I'm out looking in too, but my list of problems guns are a good solution for stops pretty short after "killing something you want dead". I mean, cars and knives can do that pretty good too, but I've not seen many getting to work or chopping vegetables with their automatic. Well, unless its an automatic transmission car, which I gather are quite popular state side. Gun, automatic gun I meant. Also I guess technically the vegetable chopping thing is _possible_ with a firearm. I digress.

When used as self defence I think they might sometimes have uses if you are prepared and have it ready. My problem is that the only person who knows for sure that they are going to be in a gun point robbery/rape/[insert crime] situation on any given day is the guy doing the robbing/raping/[insert crime]ing. I mean, is the aim to get the point where every man woman and child is so strapped to the nines that mutually assured destruction is guaranteed? Excuse me from taking it the logical extreme, but I don't think it's entirely fallacious.

They are fun? I've shot some guns. It was fun. I didn't need to own them mind. Hunting aint for me, but evidently some people enjoy it...but I guess I'm not sure how strident I would be in defence of my hobby if it involved the use of a machine that has been streamlined by war to be the most efficient man-portable tool for taking life that we can conceive.

So yeah, I certainly think your right that is more to gun violence than gun ownership. Clearly there are countries with relatively high levels of gun ownership with comparatively little gun violence. (altho the US still has almost twice as many guns per person than the next nearest...so yah). I just struggle to understand exactly what reason there is for having quite so many of them given that everybody else seems to be doing mostly ok without them. What exactly are these problems the Americans should be using their guns as a solution for? Can knives and cars, which according to gun advocates are at least as lethal, perhaps be leveraged in creative ways to be the solution to the problems for which apparently only guns can currently solve?

Cool -- I vividly remember my High School Chemistry class demonstration on this, with a pea-sized bit zipping around the surface of the water.

I want to see a big brick of it (1kg or so) in a similarly breakable but enclosing container and held 10m or so underwater in a lake (or something) by a wire mesh cage. Would chopping it up into smaller pieces to maximize the surface area increase the effect? Or would the violence of the reaction make cavitation / hydrogen bubbles that push the water out of way and make the reaction happen in multiple phases as the water gets pushed away and returns?

I think she's really over-rated. She's certainly pretty, but I really don't think she's got much in the way of acting chops. And yes, I've seen Monster. That oscar should have gone to the make up team.

Yes, I was wondering when you would trot out Hooker's paper and the 'CDC whistleblower" bit. You see, in the lack of clear scientific fact, conspiracy theorists tend to grab whatever they can to prove that they are right. I'll dissect your attempt right now.

First, Hooker's paper was covering the data involving African-American children with supposed predilection towards autism. The sample size was small, the math was ludicrous, and he incorrectly analyzed a cohort study. Because of the NUMEROUS failures to appropriately conduct a true scientific study, his paper was retracted. So, when exposed to the light, his theory was decidedly lacking in content and was canned.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/08/27/journal-takes-down-autism-vaccine-paper-pending-investigation/

This incompetent study was the result, allegedly, of discussions between Hooker and a senior psychologist at the CDC named William Thompson. Hooker then teamed up with Andrew Wakefield to cherry pick bits to make it sound as though Thompson were confessing to some horrible crime of data manipulation to hide this “bombshell” result reported by Wakefield. Thus was born the “CDC whistleblower".

In February 2010, the General Medical Council in the U.K. recommended that Wakefield be stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K. because of scientific misconduct related to his infamous 1998 case series published in The Lancet, even going so far as to refer to him as irresponsible and dishonest, and in May 2010 he was. He is a now doing everything he can to prove his theories, like possibly illegal recording of conversations, so that he can regain some credibility. The guy is a hack.

Thompson has admitted to being prone to anxiety disorders, being delusional, and has shown that he is more scared of being 'the bad guy' then doing his job. His career is pretty much finished at the CDC, because he has shown that he will waffle if confronted by angry people who can't understand science. I feel sorry for him, but he has issues.

So, now we can address your link. A congressman, not a scientist, has received information from people who have been laughed out of the scientific community for multiple reasons. He sees buzzwords and decides to get ahead of the bandwagon, calling for further investigation and research. I can, of course, show you knee-jerk reactions by multiple members of congress similar to this, like Ted Cruz calling for immediate investigation into Planned Parenthood over the recent videos. You know, the ones that were chopped and spliced together to make it sound like PP was selling aborted babies? Do you see a pattern with the chop and splice for sensationalism? I hope you do.

In other words, you don't have any scientific facts. Like all anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, you rely on a few items that seem to tie together to form a true fact, but they don't. When confronted with this, you will say that it's all big pharma and money trails, etc. Do you not see the fallacy in that logic? It's like saying that the the earth was created 9000 years ago...because RELIGION!

Btw, if you want to place your trust in politicians trying to be scientists, I leave you with this gem from former congressman Paul Broun.

"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."

I am German myself and I am disgusted how the German media and politicians are only blaming Greece. Some conservative papers (like welt.de) are ticking out completely and are turning to phrases that are very close to our Nazi history and are not allowing overly critical comments.

How Germans could chop down wages so quickly and without much opposition from the people and other parties?
The main reason is Hartz IV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartz_concept
Its a reform for the unemployed people, which at first sight doesnt have much to do with wages of the working people. But it does have everything to do with it. Let me explain:
Before Hartz IV unemployed people didnt have much to fear from the state. They got their unemployment (Sozialhilfe) money every month which was enough to live without much fear of anything. It didnt mean much to be unemployed. But people found a job if they wanted to. Of course, like every country, it was exploited by a tiny minority. People were happy with it and many countries were envious of that system because it provided so much social security that people got very peaceful and crime rates were pretty much non-existent.

Hartz IV was planned to cut the massive costs of that social system. The left wing government (which turned out to be massive hypocrites), a coalition of a socialist party and a green party, claimed it would decrease unemployment rates massively and save lots of tax money and they would force those lazy useless unemployed people to get jobs. They emphasized on "the hard earning people whos tax money is stolen by lazy unemployed" and used the tiny minority of exploiters to get Hartz IV under way. Hartz IV was basically a cut for unemployed people where they would barely have enough money to live from or pay the rent from it. It also allowed the government to use many tricks to adjust the unemployment rate. They for example excluded people who were unemployed at a certain age or people who were send on useless trainings (like how you write a job application or how you use a PC), which were forced on them from the government. If they didnt attend, they would get cuts on the already not enough Hartz IV money.

They got it through the parliament (since there was no oppositon of mention thank to their "democratic" coalition) and it went all downhill from there. Unemployed people were suddenly massively discriminated, even by the politicians, because they had created so much hate against unemployed and built many stereotypes in the process, supported by stupid fake shows in the media, just to push Hartz IV through. As I said before, they only used the minority that exploited the system before in their arguments, and didnt care about the majority. That also lead to companies falling for the created stereotype and not employing people who had been using Hartz IV at one time and even going as far as them looking at older employees as inferior. They got rid of them in a massive purge, which also led to the trick of excluding old people near pension-age from the unemployment statistics. Pensions dropped because those old fired people didnt get a job anymore and had to use Hartz IV. That meant that they had to use up their savings before they get Hartz IV money (that rule is part of Hartz IV), which drained old people of their money and also caused them to get caught in an even worse trap:
After a few years of getting Hartz IV money, they dropped to the lowest pension rate, which was barely above Hartz IV. It didnt matter if they worked 40 years of their life in a well paid job. Now they were poor and would never get a pension that was appropriate to their former job. That lead to a massive shift in wealth away from the normal people (middle class and poor), to the rich people. The buying power of Germans was destroyed, and it became even worse after the socialist/conservative government (yes, a stupid coalition like that is possible here) increased the sales tax by 3% to a whopping 19%. As result of this living costs exploded and black labor skyrocketed. Cost of energy of any kind, taxes, food prices, gas, rents, every day stuff you need increased massively. The Euro was to blame too, because prices of many things (especially food) were just exchanged 1-1 to the Euro. So for example if there was cheese before that cost 1 Deutsche Mark, it would now cost 1 Euro, even though 1 Euro was worth 2 Deutsche Mark. Wages collapsed, while everything got much more pricy. Hartz IV made all that worse.
Now for the main reason how Hatz IV pushed wages down:
The fear of dropping into Hartz IV (for the reasons I mentioned) was massive. Nobody ever wanted to drop into Hartz IV because they knew then everything was over. So they accepted extremely low wage jobs, even if that meant they would get less money than they would from Hartz IV, which already was barely enough to live a crappy live from. They took 2, 3, 4 shitty paid jobs instead, and the companies loved it, because they saved a lot of money with that. The problem with that was that even well educated people had fear of Hartz IV and accepted lower wages because of it. Wages didnt rise for 20 years (and they dont rise much now either). Yet living costs, as I said, increased massively. It all came together.
Germanys economy was very low at one point, yet they still tried to tell us that the unemployment rate dropped again (even 2007/08 and every year after that). People started to learn how they manipulated us and now we are here. Companies making revenue records after revenue records, yet nothing is arriving at the people. The media claims everything is well, the statistics still lie to us that the unemployment rate is low, but its not.
And now they are trying to blame the Greeks for our problems. Just like the unemployed Germans before, and the stupid masses fall for it again.
Yet they still wonder why Germans are a dying breed (population has been dropping for years now), and dont get that having children is very expensive in Germany and only few people still have money or time for that (since both women and men have multiple jobs to be able to live) because of these developments.

I've been thinking about growing tree-chairs when I finally get settled in my own house, except I don't want to grow them and then cut them off the stump; I want to plant 4 saplings in the exact location the chair will always exist, form them into a bench or chair using the same techniques seen here, and then unbind them and let them continue to grow there permanently.

They may need a little trimming to keep the surfaces smooth (or maybe not if they're sat-in enough), but I like this idea more than growing a chair and then chopping it off to stick it in the dining room.

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

*wtf
Was this public school graduation? If so, does the superintendent really have the authority to demand silence at a public function, and to issue summonses? That's news to me.

Needs a tube chop at 2:07.
What movie is that after the story?

Cos the video repeats itself three times which kinda annoys me. Is there a disadvantage to tube chop that i'm not aware of? I have no problem changing it if someone would rather it be a yt embed.

-edit-
Changed

Also, American is real goddamn English. The puritans rescued English from the British when it was still in a salvageable state and brought it to America; after they left it just fell to shit in the Queen's country. I don't think any honest man among us can forgive British English for having rudely chopped "I've gotten" into "I've got." Fuck that noise.

Yeah, let's gather up all the people that push cats around and murder them. That is what I call justice. People who push cats around will DIE. And if a cat abuser doesn't die and is on life support -- pull the plug!

And if the cat abuser is a child -- build a time machine, travel back in time and chop off the cat abuser's dad's dick so he can't impregnate the cat abuser's mother. Child killing is NEVER ok, and neither is abortion, but chopping off a man's dick before the pregnancy begins is completely okay.

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

So the FCC won't let me be
They want to stack the deck for the ISPs
but we've got a couple of tricks up our sleeves
It's far too important to leave to police
it could lead to the streets
a breach of the peace
and even decrease our freedom of speech
there's never been a bigger reason to read up
and see what's agreed 'cause of greed for the green and deceit
The greener the leaf, the sweeter the tree
the quicker they'll chop it down and leave nothing but tree stumps; debris
the damage is done, no refund received
see, the thing about net neutrality
is unless you get huge salaries
? the paramedic won't rescue casualties
' til they've seen to the rich next dude's allergies
they'll prioritise cash over content
wanna send one bit? That's one cent
What nonsense, man it's scaring me
a planet of plenty's selling scarcity
Innovation paved the way
Now invaders are paying to take it away
but they ain't gonna make it today
! Letting that happen's a major mistake
If Lessig was rapping he'd tell you the same
LETTING THAT HAPPEN'S A MAJOR MISTAKE
Tim Berners Lee baked us a cake
and they've taken the cherry.. AND THE CAKE
discrimination is happening today
to blacks and to gays and to packets of data
though ethically they're exactly the same
so Oi, we're not gonna stand 4 it m8

U WOT?
THE FOK U SAYIN BRUV?
U WOT M8??????
! THE FOK U SAYIN BRUV
U WOT?
FAK OFF U ARSEHOLE!

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

I'm from the place John Oliver came from
but no matter where you live you should be singing the same song
at long last, I'm putting Comcast on blast
'cause they never learn their lesson like they're in the wrong class
well I'm the professor and I'm setting you with one task
Get them knocked back like a shot glass
Straight in front of me's a cable company
The way they're behaving's unbelievable
Comcast is in league with the devil
and it's pissing me off, I'm not even American
! Take a peek, see from the evidence
Netflix had to pay a fee to get better links
it's a shakedown, communication breakdown
There's a bully in the playground
I had enough of that at school, won't lay down
lay a finger on me, you'll be laid out
You'll be laid out
You'll be laid ou
You'll be laid out
You'll be laid out
lay a finger on me, you'll be laid out

The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back
The world wide web is under attack
They're taking it away but we're pulling it back

Taking it back, we're taking it back
We're taking it, we're taking back

The fact the he was a welder (of metal) and got his fingertips chopped off by a giant metal machine, to help create the sound of metal, is pretty metal.

I didn't date someone because when I leaned in to kiss her I could see all of these unsightly random hairs poking up from under her make up. I almost puked.

Sorry, ladies. But unfortunately those random hairs, if not attended to for like, I don't know, months and months at a time, they can start growing. Even as a guy if I see that shit on my face, it's gone. So I just couldn't deal and actually turned out of the kiss.

It was classic. Classic like the disgusting close up shots from Ren & Stimpy. I could even hear the tugboat fog horn blasting 2 tones of gtfo pork chops sandwiches. God, it did not smell good either.