OK Ok. i have to be the guy who turns this in a wrong direction. Sorry.

I have worked with these wonderful individuals who have Down Syndrome and have cherished my time with them. Yet I have to throw out these stats and wonder how people today feel about it:

"A 2002 literature review of elective abortion rates found that 91–93% of pregnancies in the United Kingdom and Europe with a diagnosis of Down syndrome were terminated. Data from the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register in the United Kingdom indicates that from 1989 to 2006 the proportion of women choosing to terminate a pregnancy following prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome has remained constant at around 92%.

In the United States a number of studies have examined the abortion rate of fetuses with Down syndrome. Three studies estimated the termination rates at 95%, 98%, and 87% respectively." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome#Abortion_rates)

My question to you is: Should we terminate any child that has a pre-birth diagnosis of Down Syndrome? And if so, will you miss seeing stories like the above? Since we cannot cure Down Syndrome, is the answer to just terminate it before it happens...or should we encourage parents to try and bring these beautiful children into the world? Videos like these sort of hinge on that choice.

Witty Shakespearean dialog and modern culture go together like oil and water. Unfortunately, I'm a fan of the 1993 adaptation. This trailer hurts. Bad. Go watch the '93 version.

wow 93%, the last 7% sure have been busy

Yes, "WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE." In fact 93% of all the people who have ever been on Earth are now dead. And in less than 120 years all the people on Earth now will be gone. Unless technology figures out how to re-spawn us.

Thats what happens when you put 93 in an engine that says 98+...

Similar issue in Australia, only the single entity that owned every copper cable in the country (was post master general, then renamed to telecom, then sold off privately as Telstra), owns all of the major TV rights for cable shows (discovery, nat geo etc...), still owns all of the copper lines, and the telephone exchanges, and the pits/ducts....

They have a wholesale side of the company where they are forced by law to allow other service providers access to the infrastructure to sell services on via unbundled local loop (ULL) or line sharing services (LSS).

LSS services are basically telstra renting out everything to the service provider at cost, and a small premium. So they take all the profits, and make it neigh impossible for anyone else to compete with other providers.

ULL services are telstra giving access to just the copper pairs, service providers come in with their own equipment in the headend. The other providers still must pay rent, and line rental fees to telstra.

Imagine then, how these other companies can compete at a retail service level, against the company that owns all the lines?

They can set their prices as high as the competition regulator will allow them (which in a vast majority of the access undertaking costs, is FAR above what it actually costs telstra themselves), and then sell those same services to its retail arm for less than they charge their competition....they can price match and reap way more profits, or undercut them and drive the competition out of the market!!

Competition came in the 90's in the form of an HFC rollout by Optus, but every street Optus went down with HFC, Telstra followed them, the very next week, making their rollout far less lucrative (ie. not commercially viable).

The practice was ruled anti-competitve and telstra got fined heavily for it. Doesnt matter, it stopped anyone else from wanting to roll out an HFC network ever since.

Recently it has come to a head, Telstra have been forced to vertically seperate their wholesale and retail arms, the prices they set have been capped lower on the wholesale side, they cant over-quote competitors for access over what they provide their own retail arm....but thats not enough.

Noone can run out fibre, cause telstra own all the pits and pipes.

So...the government has stepped in, in the past 4 years or so, created a government owned company called NBNco (National Broadband Network Company), to buy up all the copper lines, rip them out, and roll out fibre to 93% of homes using GPON FTTH technology.

The opposition (who will likely win the coming election) wants to tear this apart. The very same people who set up the rules and regulations and sold off telstra into private hands, and made this mess in the first place, wants to go back on relying on private industry to upgrade this - a critical service infrastructure - which has already shown to be a COMPLETE failure in the past.

I hope that whoever wins, this NBN stays....wholesale competition has never ever worked for national infrastructure. Never, in any country.

Whoa, whoa, whoa -- 20 seconds in and my mind is already blown... Only 93% of all human beings ever are currently dead? Think about how many generations of homo sapiens there have been, and consider that at any one time an individual is pretty lucky if they themself + generations of offspring currently living + generations of ancestors currently living is greater than or equal to 4.

Considering all that plus the 93% figure from this video, I have come to the conclusion that the only explanation is that we've gotten into the real business end of an exponential population growth curve and are currently massively, desperately overpopulated.

Hackers target Westboro Baptist Church after Newtown threat

After church leaders announce plans to protest at site of school massacre, Anonymous posts the personal information for dozens of members of the extremist group, including names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57559468-93/hackers-target-westboro-baptist-church-after-newtown-threat/

Moms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FApztldrafA from http://www.reddit.com/r/japanese/comments/sdvt6/shit_my_japanese_mom_says_%E5%83%95%E3%81%AE%E3%81%8A%E6%AF%8D%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%8C%E8%A8%80%E3%
81%86%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8/

>> ^L0cky:
I looked at a lot of sources, including CDC. They have a helpful compilation of their stats in the form of their CDC's 2007 chart book. It shows that firearm related deaths and poisoning are always less than motor vehicles; firearms are more likely to cause an early death; while death from poison is more likely to get you in middle age (possbily this includes long term effects of poisoning, ie working with hazardous materials when they were younger?).
It also doesn't show non death injuries; nor can the stats reflect the fact that every household has potential poisons while around half of households have firearms.
I took a look at the pdf, and while the charts are nice, they cover various date ranges and present their results in different formats, and I think you're misinterpreting them. What I did was use the search feature and look at the raw data. You can also search for non death injuries, but gun related non deadly injuries, accidental or intentional, doesn't even make the top 20, and it doesn't show anything below that.

>> ^L0cky:
In absolute terms it's inarguable that there are a lot of gun related deaths and injury in the US (around 31,000 deaths and 70,000 injuries per year give or take). This doesn't change simply because there are other causes of death and injury.
You just said that your source doesn't show non death injuries, yet now you're claiming 30,000 deaths and 70,000 injuries per year. You claim to be getting your sources from the same place, but the data from the CDC shows that between 1999 and 2010 the average homicide by firearm is 12,807 deaths per year. If you add accidental deaths involving firearms the total comes to 21,146 which accounts for 9.6% of all accidental and intentional deaths (this does not include suicide, illness and disease related deaths).

>> ^L0cky:
Let me be clear, my argument is that non sport firearms don't add anything positive to society that justifies the resulting gun related injury, death and crime. The granting of firearm licenses for hunting and sport should require strict licensing that's based on a requirement of training and testing. Gun control laws should be purposefully strict.
We already have plenty of gun control laws. More laws are not going to stop someone that has no intention of obeying them. You obviously did not read the whole article I linked to as it points out that "93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through lawful transactions that are the focus of most gun control legislation.

>> ^L0cky:
I haven't objected to this. My objection is to the suggestion that a societal need to teach children how to use firearms can be used to justify their existence. It's circular logic; and I'd prefer not to live in a society where learning to use firearms is a requirement of safety.
No one said that you need to teach children to use guns to justify their existence. You were a kid once (or still are), and at a certain age didn't you do the opposite of everything your parents said? If there is going to be a gun in a house, even if they are told it's dangerous and not to be played with and you do your best to lock it up and keep it away from them, if they do get their hands on it wouldn't it be better that they knew how to properly handle it so they don't end up adding to the accidental death by firearm statistic? Cars are dangerous too, but we teach our kids how to be safe in and around cars (wear your seat belt, look both ways before crossing street, etc.), why are you so freaked out about teaching a kid gun safety?

Your philosophy that kids shouldn't be taught how to use guns because guns are bad is basically the same as abstinence only sex education, AKA teaching ignorance.

>> ^L0cky:
I'm not stating this, I'm questioning it. You yourself said you own them for self defense.
I said I own guns for many reasons, self defense being one of them. You still seem to be confused about why someone chooses to carry a gun for self defense. It looks to me based on what you've written is that you assume someone carries a gun only to protect themselves from other gun owners. As I already pointed out, only 10% of violent crimes involve the use of a gun. I carry to protect myself from 100% of crimes.

>> ^L0cky:
That has zero effect on the number violent crimes that DO involve the use of a gun.
You can't pick out a small portion of a larger statistic to base your argument on, you need to take into account the whole picture. That's like saying 2001 was a slow year for terrorism, if you don't count the World Trade Center attacks.

>> ^L0cky:
This isn't a useful number unless you can show that those crimes would not have been prevented without guns; and would still have occurred without guns.
I don't know what more you expect, a crime was in progress, a lawfully armed citizen stopped it and it was reported to the police. What your asking isn't possible as the only way to know what would have happened in the other situations is to invent a time machine.

>> ^L0cky:
I guess your point is that gun ownership reduces crime. I'm open to that - if it can be shown more clearly.
What is clear from comparing to other countries, particularly those with comparative gun ownership is that the lack of gun control in the US correlates to an increase in gun related death and injury by an order of magnitude. The problem isn't gun ownership in and of itself; it's gun ownership without lack of appropriate gun control laws.
If guns don't reduce crime, then why do we give them to the police? Once more back to that article you didn't read:

"In 13 states citizens who wish to carry arms may do so, having met certain requirements. Consider Florida, which in 1987 enacted a concealed-carry law guaranteeing a gun permit to any resident who is at least 21, has no record of crime, mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse, and who has completed a firearms safety course. Florida's homicide rate fell following the enactment of this law, as did the rate in Oregon after the enactment of a similar law. Through June 1993, there had been 160,823 permits issued in Florida. Only 530, or 0.33 percent, of the applicants have been denied permits. This indicates that the law is serving the law abiding. Only l6 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been rescinded because of the commission, after issuance, of a crime involving a firearm."

>> ^L0cky:
You're right, if guns suddenly vanished tomorrow there would still be crime and violence. However, it would be crime and violence without guns; and I think, that (of itself) is preferable. How could it not be?
Are you fucking serous? Why is a murder with a gun any worse than a knife, baseball bat or even bare hands? A murder is a murder no matter what tool is used to commit it. Other crimes besides murder would be better off without guns, but what part of 90% of violent crimes do not involve the use of a gun did you not understand? If you take away guns from everyone, you're only removing 10% of the tools used by violent criminals, and that doesn't guarantee that violent crime will drop by 10%? In reality you wouldn't be removing anything from criminals because "93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through lawful transactions that are the focus of most gun control legislation. So you essentially want to take away every law abiding citizen's right to defend themselves with a gun without doing anything to stop criminals from committing crimes with guns.

>> ^L0cky:
Crime in the UK has reduced dramatically according to The Office for National Statistics between before then (1999/2001) and now, including firearm offences. In Australia assault is up, robbery is down and sexual assault is about the same according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. Homicides involving firearms have continued to decline to their lowest on record.
From your source: "Provisional figures for the year ending June 2012 show that 5,507 firearm offences were recorded in England and Wales, an 18 per cent decrease on the previous year (6,694)." In 1997 when the ban was enacted only 2,648 crimes were reported involving guns. It looks like that ban has worked well.


>> ^L0cky:
I pulled it from the same source you are correcting me with
The CDC - Injury in the United States: 2007 Chart Book, page 24.
Statisticslol
This is where you have misinterpreted the graphs. The vertical portion of that graph is in deaths per 100,000 population. If you dig up the raw numbers from the search engine this is what you'll find:

Motor Vehicle Accident = 22%
Homicide by Firearm = 13%
Accident by Firearm = 0.5%

Assuming you're talking about the "Top 15 Sifters of All Time" block, I'd rather see it reduced in size with a [more] link at the bottom.

I'm hoping for more sidebar customization options in VS5.

Listen close, as life turns its pages
Makaveli here, kickin' rhymes for the ages
Seen things in stages, wise words spoken by sages
From SkyTel to BlackBerry pages
Your crew don't phase us
We'll make you bustas pay us
Run up in your spot like C.J. from San Andreas
I wrote this song a long time ago
A real long time ago
Feel me!
I wrote this song a long time ago
It was the dopest song I ever wrote... in '94

What can a nigga do
when half the people voted for George W.
It's a bitch, fuck George W.
-- can't be true --
I wanna choke him, because he's a snitch
I'm talking about George W. Smith
From city council, he ran in '93
Out in Oakland,
you probably didn't hear about him

I wrote this song a long time ago
A real long time ago
Way before Slim Shady was in demand
Way before we dropped baloney on Afghanistan
I wrote this song in '94

How am I doin' this?
Look around the club, see everyone in the place
Showing 'Pac love got a smile on my face
The girl in the miniskirt has bad taste
Because her shirt don't match
And there's a puddin' stain on the back
What the fuck is that? It might be doo-doo

And you in the back, you ain't shit
You bought a gin and tonic
but you didn't even tip
And if you hit this table one more time
then the record might skip Might skip...
I told you, stop hittin' the table

Tupac Shakur
I wrote this rhyme in 1994
I'm not alive!
Thug life!
Dave Chappelle, that ain't your wife
A married man, you've got two kids
Go home!

I wrote this song a long time ago
A real long time ago
Way before Beanie Sigel had to do a bid
Way before Dave Chappelle had two kids
(Don't give him no coochie)


DJ: 2Pac rest in peace!
2Pac: Ok, I will!



Slightly * nsfw lyrics, but what the hey.

Your video, Scientific Weight Loss Tips, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 93 Badge!

*length=93

Thanks for the promote!
In reply to this comment by davidraine:
*promote