First thought LSD but his pupils are too small.

@AeroMechanical
george w bush also choked on a pretzel. unfortunately, the pretzel was too small.

>> ^NetRunner:

@jimnms I think the right lesson to take from the example of Brazil is "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime."
Also, you're wrong about gun shows, there's a pretty big loophole. From wikipedia:

U.S. federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or those who are "engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and perform background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI prior to transferring a firearm. Under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, however, individuals "not engaged in the business" of dealing firearms, or who only make "occasional" sales within their state of residence, are under no requirement to conduct background checks on purchasers or maintain records of sale (although even private sellers are forbidden under federal law from selling firearms to persons they have reason to believe are felons or otherwise prohibited from purchasing firearms).

In other words, you can always just say you're a private seller, and sell guns at gunshows without doing background checks or recording the sale.
There are videos, sifted right here on Videosift, of people going and buying guns at gunshows while literally saying to the seller "I don't need a background check, right? 'Cause I probably couldn't pass one" with the seller replying with some form of "no problem, here's your gun".
But more than anecdotal video evidence, there's also a been series of studies about drug cartels moving serious amounts of guns using straw purchases at gun shows.
Yet for some reason you're calling Moyers a liar for saying the same thing.
Also, the Assault Weapons Ban set the maximum legal size of a single clip at 10 rounds. IIRC, this latest shooting featured the shooter using a barrel mag with over 100. That used to be illegal. Also, the Tuscon shooting featured a shooter using 2 guns with 30-round clips -- and he was stopped when he had to reload.
Personally, I don't quite understand the anti-gun control side of the argument. Say banning assault weapons only reduces the number of people killed by gun violence by 1.6%. That's still what, a few thousand people's lives a year? Why is having assault weapons legal for civilians worth the deaths of a thousand people a year? Why would it be worth the death of even one person a year? You can still have a pistol, a hunting rife, a shotgun, etc., you just can't have a high-velocity, large-magazine firearm. What exactly is the harm in making that illegal?


That's not a loophole in gun shows, private sales and transfer of firearms are not regulated in some states. You can't set up a booth and sell guns at a gun show unless you are a licensed gun dealer. And you certainly aren't going to walk in and buy a fully automatic assault rifle without showing ID or getting a background check. If a person legally has a fully automatic weapon, they have to have a class 3 federal firearms license and register the weapon with the ATF. If they sell that weapon, the person they are selling it to must also have a class 3 firearms license and the transfer of the weapon must be reported to the ATF.

I've seen the videos you speak of and I read the report you linked. It's good that the ATF is doing their job and cracking down on those douchbags dealers. What you said about Brazil, "gun control laws need to be properly enforced to reduce homicide", not "gun control laws never reduce gun crime.", can be said about the U.S. also.

The assault weapon ban limited pistols magazines to 10 rounds and rifles to 30 rounds. This also only applied to weapons and magazines manufactured or imported before the 1994 law went into effect. He still could purchase the high capacity magazine if it was manufactured or imported before the law went into effect, or he could have purchased it illegally.

People are still confused about what an assault rifle is. The definition of an assault rifle is a gun that can fire full auto or in bursts, and generally uses a shorter, less powerful cartridge than a battle rifle. The guns the media so ignorantly call assault rifles are NOT assault rifles. They look like their military assault rifle counterpart, fire the same round, but the internals are different. They only fire in semi-automatic and can not be modified to fire full auto.

If "assault weapons" were the least used weapons in violent crimes, why go after them when according to the DOJ the effect on crime is "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The guns most preferred by criminals are small caliber (.25, .38 an 9mm) easily concealed pistols with magazines of 7 or less. So what do they do? They ban "assault rifles" and big magazines. Does that make any sense? It's just politics to appease the mass stupids by banning big scary looking guns.

Lets apply the same logic used by legalize drug crowd (which I'm all for). Pot and other drugs are illegal. There are laws against the sale and possession of these drugs, yet people still get them. Ban all guns, and people will still get them, only it will just criminals with guns. Both England and Australia have banned private ownership of guns, and their crime rates went up because the only people left with guns were criminals [1][2][3][4]. Why don't we give that a try here, because it worked so well for them.

Wow, I have just lost respect for Bill Moyers. He has stooped to flat out lying and playing a fear mongering video that is full of BS. Right at 1 minute he says "one of the guns used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994." This is a flat out lie. The so called "assault weapon ban" did not actually ban any weapons, it only banned cosmetic features on semi automatic replicas, or more accurately it limited a gun to having no more than two military style features found on the real assault weapon. His "AK-47 type assault weapon" would have still been legal, it just might have looked less scary.

The 1994 Assault Weapon Ban was political stunt that banned something that people feared, but didn't do squat to prevent crime. The DOJ conducted a study on the effect of the 1994 Assault Weapon ban and found that its effects on gun violence was "too small for reliable measurement, because assault weapons are rarely used in gun crimes." The Brady Center did a study of the ban and their findings were that "assault weapons" were only used in 1.6% of gun crimes.

I can't believe he played that clip of a scary muslim instructing on how easy it is to go to a gun show and walk out with a fully automatic weapon without a background check or showing any ID, without checking the facts claimed. That is total fear mongering BS. First of all you can't buy a gun at all, even at a gun show without a background check. Second, to legally own a fully automatic weapon requires a class 3 firearms license, which isn't easy to get or cheap, and you must register your weapons with the ATF. Way to go on fact checking that video Bill.

How come you never hear about the crimes that are prevented by people lawfully carrying a gun? A NIJ and another independent study from 1993 and 1994 found that 800,000 to 2.5 million crimes per year are prevented each year most of which the victim never had to fire a shot.

I don't get the cookie one.

"When the cookie's too small for the tiny milk hole, and you don't want to break it in half... [in order to fit it in the cup and dip it in the milk]".

Wouldn't that be the issue if the cookie's too large?

The parachute opened all right, it was just way too small.

So... The First True American:
Argued that the scientific advice of the time was a'myth', refused to accept standard scientific measurement, and brashly set off to foreign destinations to try to prove false information to be correct.

Next you'll tell me Columbus was a fanatical right wing conservative christian, hated any form of taxation, and thought the Spanish military was too small and needed significant over investment.

Can you make the embeds bigger? 500 pixels is way too small. If you move the sidebar a little bit down you can make the videos much bigger and still not break the site for people using low resolution monitors. I was thinking the default size for YouTube videos should be 854x510 since most YT videos are 480p and up, and the default for other video hosts should be 640 pixels wide.

I made some pictures: YouTube, other video hosts

>> ^renatojj:

The usual excuse for space exploration being done by government is because the costs involved are too high.
However, doesn't the private sector tend to increase quality and lower costs with time? Maybe if we let the private sector grow and develop the necessary technologies, space exploration won't be as costly. Sure, it might take a lot more time, but at least it won't waste as much resources.
Right now, we don't have resources in the private or public sectors for this. Newt is a dumbass.


Private sector business can't take risks this big. They are responsible for ensuring profitability and you cannot ensure profitability in a venture like space exploration. Central government doesn't have the profit mandate and so they can invest in things that stimulate paradigm shifts in technology and industry.

An example; I worked for my local utility company several years back (recently privatized at the time). Wind energy was a big thing and they company was very active in promoting their wind energy program. But the truth that I found was they had actually spent more money on trying to push laws to seal government gathered data that would be necessary for the wind industry to grow. You see, they didn't want to develop wind energy just yet because the profit margin was too small but they also didn't want any energy startups who were willing to accept the thinner profit margins to get a leg up on them. Nearly a decade later and that large energy company still hasn't developed their wind power any further. And there haven't been any major challengers in the market....wonder why.

The largest industries are controlled by the largest corporations and these corporations are in the business of protecting their existing revenue streams. Innovation and exploration involve risk and corporations are risk averse by their very design. Private industry is not the machine that will push boundaries and stimulate technological paradigm shifts. That takes a large entity with no profit mandate. That takes a central government.

If you believe that profitability is the best measure of value and efficiency then you haven't thought really hard on the matter. A functioning and successful society requires a balance between capital driven entities and entities who measure their success in terms of the health and advancement of the community. This isn't a matter of capitalism versus socialism. It's contrasting motivations that work in synergy.

>> ^Xaielao:

City tap water tastes like hell, and most bottled water (which more often than not IS tap water) contains salt to make you thirsty so you'll drink more. Don't believe me? Check that fancily named Dasani bottled water's ingredients. Makes me so glad I have a number of local springs that produce very high quality water that I get delivered monthly.


Uh, no. I actually have a mineral tester (Christmas present) for water. Bottled water is better than tap in terms of dissolved solids, and unless you think that bottled water companies are lying about the trace mineral contents in their water, the amounts are too small to matter. There's far more salt in Coke, or worse, V8 (http://www.livestrong.com/article/273911-sodium-levels-in-soft-drinks/).

The person making the video thinks that in "functioning democracies" the tap water is always safe to drink. Well yes, it is. On average. Unless you happen to live in a house that gets mud in the water supply, like a friend of mine, or my in-laws' house (guess who gave me the tester?) in Los Angeles where the tap water is light yellow, and fizzes. I only drink filtered or bottled water there.

With a name like chaosEngine , I would have assumed you knew why people do things like this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire>> ^ChaosEngine:
>> ^spoco2:
Um, yeah, he did explain the motive:
a) You get heaps of traffic to your sites in the first place to get the file sharing software etc.
but mostly
b) You can then go to the law makers and go 'Look how many people are illegally downloading our content, you MUST allow these hugely heavy handed and insanely over the top punishments to go through'... 'Well, before we thought it was just those 'fringe' elements, but you bring forth a compelling case of this becoming mainstream... yes, let's give you these insane powers'.
It does make sense. They didn't like these people pirating their stuff, but it seemed to be too 'small time' and 'limited'. So, let it slide, and even actively encourage it, until it becomes mainstream enough that you can start jumping up and down and get laws passed that give you far greater powers than you otherwise would have had.
He is annoying to listen to though, I'll give you that.
He also has an over-inflated sense of himself if he thinks that his video will single-handedly bring about a stop to SOPA

Fair enough, as I said, I didn't get that far, but thank you for suffering through it and explaining it.
That said, I'm still not sure I buy that explanation. It pre-supposes that being given "insane powers" is the end game for these corporations. It all seems a little too "bond villain" to me (ya know, let's spend billions on a nuclear shark so we can extort the world for a 1% profit).
I could very well be wrong, but it still sets off my bullshit radar.

>> ^spoco2:


Um, yeah, he did explain the motive:
a) You get heaps of traffic to your sites in the first place to get the file sharing software etc.
but mostly
b) You can then go to the law makers and go 'Look how many people are illegally downloading our content, you MUST allow these hugely heavy handed and insanely over the top punishments to go through'... 'Well, before we thought it was just those 'fringe' elements, but you bring forth a compelling case of this becoming mainstream... yes, let's give you these insane powers'.
It does make sense. They didn't like these people pirating their stuff, but it seemed to be too 'small time' and 'limited'. So, let it slide, and even actively encourage it, until it becomes mainstream enough that you can start jumping up and down and get laws passed that give you far greater powers than you otherwise would have had.
He is annoying to listen to though, I'll give you that.
He also has an over-inflated sense of himself if he thinks that his video will single-handedly bring about a stop to SOPA


Fair enough, as I said, I didn't get that far, but thank you for suffering through it and explaining it.

That said, I'm still not sure I buy that explanation. It pre-supposes that being given "insane powers" is the end game for these corporations. It all seems a little too "bond villain" to me (ya know, let's spend billions on a nuclear shark so we can extort the world for a 1% profit).

I could very well be wrong, but it still sets off my bullshit radar.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Ok, I'm sorry, I got about halfway before I had to stop otherwise I would have chainsawed my own ear drums.
Sorry, I don't really buy it. CNet wasn't owned by CBS until 2008. And even then the suggestion that it's some sort of conspiracy by disney or whoever to spread the use of file sharing seems really far-fetched.
Whenever I'm confronted by something like this I always ask "What's the profit motive?" I don't really see the end game for the content producers here.
Exec A: hey let's distribute file-sharing software and then people will pirate our stuff without paying for it!
Exec B: errr, ok. How does this make us money?
Exec A: we'll sue a bunch of poor people for millions. They're bound to pay up and the negative publicity won't impact us at all.
Exec B: riiiiight. /backs away slowly
Frankly, I think it's far more likely that cnet, zdnet and so on were tech web sites run by tech guys whose owner hadn't a clue what they were doing. Meanwhile the tech guys were just doing what every other tech guys did and hosted the popular software. I can't actually credit the studios with that much understanding of the technology. "Never attribute to malice what can more easily be attributed to incompetence." Frankly, if anyone in the content industry were even slightly less retarded, they'd have done what valve did ages ago. When we get the movie/tv version of steam, this problem will largely go away.
a good question to ask climate change deniers.


Um, yeah, he did explain the motive:

a) You get heaps of traffic to your sites in the first place to get the file sharing software etc.
but mostly
b) You can then go to the law makers and go 'Look how many people are illegally downloading our content, you MUST allow these hugely heavy handed and insanely over the top punishments to go through'... 'Well, before we thought it was just those 'fringe' elements, but you bring forth a compelling case of this becoming mainstream... yes, let's give you these insane powers'.

It does make sense. They didn't like these people pirating their stuff, but it seemed to be too 'small time' and 'limited'. So, let it slide, and even actively encourage it, until it becomes mainstream enough that you can start jumping up and down and get laws passed that give you far greater powers than you otherwise would have had.

He is annoying to listen to though, I'll give you that.

He also has an over-inflated sense of himself if he thinks that his video will single-handedly bring about a stop to SOPA