She must feel crazy sometimes. Almost like a movie--"Am I going crazy here? Am I the only who sees what is going on here?"

For those who don't know, she frantically tried to tell Alan Greenspan that he had to control credit access and interest rates before the collapse in 2008.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/making-credit-safer-html

http://billmoyers.com/segment/flashback-elizabeth-warren-basically-predicts-the-great-recession/

I fear she will go a little crazy at some point; that being right for so long, about something so important---will lead to mind almost cracking. I hope not.

I took ayahuasca with a brazillian religion called Santo Diame... in the US, we would call them a cult. And cult-like it was! I've smoked DMT many times and I fully encourage "explorers" to start small and smoke it instead of ingesting ayahuasca. It's all very difficult to figure out scientifically, but one of the interesting aspects of ayahuasca to me, was that you could close your eyes and be in another dimension, open them up and basically feel drunk and know everything was OK, get up and walk around.

However, the visions that I had were absolutely violent, with archetypes of the day of the dead and greek mythology emerging while people puked and cried while I was attached to their sound and energies, brains exploding, the power of life telling me it was going to get me, I could fight it all I wanted (I just smiled the whole time), but it was going to get me - and then it let me slide, eventually. DMT has a known effect, that is of "ego-death" or "near death experience"... and I definitely fought it off, having experienced it before. It was a deranged, somewhat fun, somewhat enlightening, traumatic experience that I would recommend to no one. And I can see that it's definitely not a lone man/woman mission as in to dose yourself with this stuff because it's definitely more intense than LSD or mushrooms and the mixture, though simple - would require a bit of practicing and knowledge about it.

I just find smoking DMT to be way better, shorter and much safer, but also WAY more intense and awesome. But, it's certainly not for everyone, it's like unlocking the unknown/impossible laws of the Universe, it's impossible to understand but you understand it while you are there as it is communicated to you; might be just in your brain but somehow nature provided this (bizarre/impossible) experience for you to be able to have.... ---- do not understand

Well, since the 'chump' is the one that got furthest of those two candidates, I don't know if a valuable lesson was learned at all. I think it's equally likely that the system will get more polarized along that axis as well - that the Republicans will double down on the crazy populism next time around, continuing the trend of Palin to Cain to Trump, and the Democrats will want to play it even safer* and more establishment because of the gaping maw of insanity on the other side.

It might even be that this is the preferred way for this to shake out in their eyes - the Democrats go on to take the White House this term and the next, and the Republicans lose the presidency but gain more ground on the local level. I'm not saying that the Republicans want to lose the presidency, but since almost every local Republican runs on the premise that they'll stand up to Washington, it doesn't hurt to be in opposition. Supporting Trump might not get you the white house but it might make you mayor. Plus, that's where the Koch money is, for now.

*On the other hand, let's not go nuts. Right now, given how the election's turned out, Clinton seems like an incredibly establishment, incredibly traditional politics, choice - but when they made the decision to run, it must have still seemed like a risky move, since no woman had ever made it all the way before. I can't imagine that anyone predicted what this race would look like (?), so maybe the 'lesson' from 2016 can't be accurately applied by either party.

Having a big gun on display makes yourself a great target if you're ever in a situation that might need it, so you could argue that concealing it is the most sensible option if we agree that someone should carry one in the first place.

There are probably some really skilled and intelligent ex-policemen, ex-army and other exceptional people that would make the world a safer place if we trusted to carry a gun around.

@Mordhaus how trustworthy is the system that decides who gets one? At any point do good connections, family friends or money help decide who gets one? I've met/known of some people who claim to have concealed carry, but I don't know what state they were from or if the law is different between them. They had some pretty prejudiced ideas and rigid attitudes that made me wonder if they were really the most trustworthy people.

Surely having it fall over in a collision would be safer than remaining completely rigid?

If the guy getting shot had a gun then yes maybe he would have been safer.

I thought the same thing, because that's everything I had heard prior - "it's not a vacuum". But both the white paper, and the wikipedia article on it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop ) both mention 1 millibar of pressure, and that was the number that he was debunking with the math in the video (and the 2nd one I linked in the description)

of course, it's possible that the Hyperloop folks changed that pressure target number somewhere between then and now, and it's running in much less of a vacuum, which would be less efficient, but way safer (if so, they should update the public).

I'm sorry for the derail, I just love the absolute certainty of that question - I hope the sincerely religious feel the same way about god's existence.

Additionally, I am starting to worry that the problem is not that people refuse to consider that they might be wrong... it's that they don't care if they're wrong or not. It's literally an irrelevant thing to worry about. If the rest of us want to play that game where we match actual facts to actual words, that's fine - the truth of what they say is in the message, not whether or not the facts happen to match up. Not only are they immune to facts, but they really feel that facts are a second-rate measurement of truth.

I saw a fascinating video* on this once - maybe here - that discussed the ancient (Biblical) understanding of truth, vs the modern understanding of truth. If you have a great story with a strong lesson, the modern measure of truth is whether or not the events described in the story match any actual events, and the Biblical measure of the truth of the story is whether it teaches a strong lesson or not. Maybe it's my ivory tower elitism but that seems to be exactly what goes on in the GOP now - if a 'war on cops,' for example, is a powerful story, it's more true than if the statistics show that officers are safer now.

*It was probably this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL6E4eMX-4k (Reza Aslan on the Young Turks)

Not to take anything away from the pilot, but the EC-135s have some amazing flyby-wire in there that makes this a lot safer than in helicopters without it. Still amazing and dangerous, nevertheless.

OK you made me re-watch this. At first I thought the lady had just made a mistake and missed a bike that came up beside her. The camera angle (FOV) makes it difficult to judge distances and directions very well.

On closer inspection she actually appears to come from behind and overtake in the right lane which is ending, and then merges into the exact spot where the bike is, and then does not react to the horn and keeps coming. That makes it really awkward for the biker to try to avoid her (speed up? slow down?), because its hard to predict what she is going to do next. So I understand the indignation a bit better and am willing to cheer the cop in this case, he looked very alert and professional (fake? just kidding).

I do wish people would use their mirrors, merge more safely (and faster) and use signals, and line-up properly when turning left, and u-turn safer and look before they open doors - any of those can easily kill a biker unintentionally. However I would be very reluctant to call the cops in these cases if I thought it was a mistake someone made and was lucky to get away with without major incident. Most of the time people learn from these close calls. This lady seemed to be talking back and confident in her ways.

That's BS.

With a 5 round maximum capacity you're going to be reloading a lot and there's no reasonable argument why anyone needs more for hunting (and home defence is a red herring).

I think the whole law/culture issue addressed above is actually linked. Take the example of the Autobahn which is very much a parallel. Germans made a law saying you can drive as fast as you want on certain stretches of highway, a culture of high-speed driving developed, people die. The majority in Germany wants to do away with them, but the 10% who want to drive recklessly in their BMWs and Mercedes along with the manufacturers fight new legislation every time.

The law created the culture, and now the culture is preventing the laws from being changed. Just as in the US, the cycle has to break somewhere. Government can't legislate the culture, but they can change the laws and if the US ever gets to a point where guns aren't in the hands of whoever wants one then the argument for needing a 'home security' weapon drops. People feel safer, there are fewer shootings and the whole situation de-escalates.

I'm not saying barring suspected terrorists from owning firearms will accomplish that, but it would be a (very) modest start in the right direction.

As cool of an idea as that is, they would need to be really creative with the gameplay to make it fun for everyone in the long run. In the shows most of what the bridge crew does is:

1. Captain tells you what to do, you punch it into the controls.

2. You relay something on your screen to the captain.

3. Goto 1.

I'll love it if they make that into a fun multiplayer game. But I think a safer bet would be just making a single player game where you are the captain and make all the important decisions while good actors feed you information.

I love that idea.
Every citizen gets tested for psychological problems, and those that pass are trained and issued firearms, for which they agree to serve if needed, like the national guard. I would also support an opt-out of that, but those people shouldn't get guns.
With good screening, and good training, we could still not be as "safe" as the Swiss, but we could be incredibly safer and more sane than we are today with no screening and no training.

But, that plan probably wouldn't eat up 1% of the US defense budget. That budget is outrageously enormous and growing (contrary to what the right wing erroneously claims).

The big problem with that is, what to do about the millions of firearms already owned by the unscreened? Perhaps another program to require gun owners to get screened or turn over/sell their firearms? That wouldn't cover the millions of unregistered guns, but would be a start.

Probably, but there are all kinds of clear coating. They could develop one with minimal reflective properties and minimal absorptive properties, but you're right, even then it would decrease the effectiveness, but maybe not so much that it would lose it's usefulness.

I think in most applications, the nano fibers are encased in resins or other chemicals that cause them to clump together, making them much safer (note that I don't say "making them safe").
In pure powder form, yeah, they're a bit scary to have something that can float in air that can also burst cell walls. I always used a facemask and gloves when I was in his "lab", and even so I'm sure I was contaminated. Now I wish I had worn a full anti-contamination suit.