We really don't have sufficient driver's ed to be throwing down spike strips for cars going over a hundred while driven by the typical pleb.

Typical pleb should be a much better driver before this is a policy.

Otherwise it's more risk of harm than letting the typical pleb speed with his tyres in one piece.

That is, if public safety is a priority. Not saying that it is. Maybe this is a good use case for civilian uav air strikes. A mini hellfire would work well. (sarcastic/cynical comment, yet would not be surprised if in 20 years it becomes reality. "lol").

-scheherazade

Most airliners have wings designed to be used in low transsonic. They can't effectively go faster. They would literally lose lift if they went faster. Their wing shape is made to only delay the onset of shockwaves on top of the wing (flat-ish top), allowing it to safely creep closer to mach1 than otherwise, but not to operate within/past mach1.

Fan/propeller blades themselves are also mach limited.
(They can be designed to be supersonic, but then you end up with something like this... which in hindsight nobody wants : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H)
A subsonic airfoil in a fan/propeller, operating near/at supersonic speed, loses the ability to move/redirect air, due to shockwave disruption of the airflow.

Fans/propellers with subsonic blades that spin at subsonic speeds are effectively speed limited. They lose efficiency above ~500 mph, where they begin to stop generating thrust as they travel faster. Their pitch has to increase higher and higher, until they are no longer much of an airscrew and more of a 'feathered' configuration.

Supersonic jet engines use intake devices (such as shock cones) to decelerate incoming air to subsonic speeds, so the compressor (itself a fan, i.e. a highly multi bladed propeller) can operate on that air to compress it and feed the engine combustion chambers.
Airliners have no intake devices to decelerate incoming air, and they would lose engine compression when entering near mach1 speeds.

Furthermore, their bypass fans (which are glorified propellers) would stop providing thrust.

You would need to design different planes (like the concorde). You can't just throttle up a modern airliner and go faster [than X limit] - like you can in a modern car.

-scheherazade

Last I checked, illegal entry is a misdemeanor.

Ans it's only the entry itself. If you enter legally on a temporary visa, and don't leave, that's not a crime. But you will likely not get another visa should you leave.

I get that it's a 'crime', but as a matter of legal seriousness, it's on par with jaywalking or disturbing the peace.

Not that legality and morality are in any way connected, so don't take my statement as anything more than its face value.

(As an aside : As a libertarian, as a matter of principle, I have no problem with people coming and going and having whatever relations with whoever consents to have them. It is, after all, none of my business.)

-scheherazade

Actually, matter does appear and disappear from and to nothing. There are energy fields that permeate space, and when their potential gets too high, they collapse and eject a particle. Similarly, particles can be destroyed or decay and upon that event they cause a spike in the background energy fields.

One of the essential functions of a collier is to compress a bunch of crap into a tiny spot, so that when enough decays in that specific spot it will cause such a local spike in energy that new particles must subsequently be ejected (particles that are produced at some calculated energy level - different energy levels producing different ejections).

*This is at the subatomic level. Large collections of matter don't just convert to energy.

I know plenty of people roll eyes at that, but the math upon which those machines are built are using the same math that makes things like modern lithography machines work (they manipulate tiny patterns of molecules). You basically prove the math every time you use a cell phone (thing with modern micro chips).

...

But that's beside the point. If there ever was 'nothing', the question isn't "whether or not god exists to have made things" - it's "why do things exist". God could be an answer. As could infinite other possibilities.

...

Personally, eternity is the answer I assume is most likely to be correct. Because you don't have to prove anything. The universe need not be static - but if something was always there (even just energy fields), then there is an eternity in one form or anther.

Background energy and quantum tunneling are a neat concept (referring to metastability). Because you can have a big-bang like event if the background energy level tunnels to a lower state, expanding a new space starting at that point, re-writing the laws of physics in its area of existence. Meaning that our universe as we know it can simply be one of many bubbles of expanding tunneling events - created at the time of the event, and due to be overwritten by another at some point. Essentially a non-permanent local what-we-percieve-as-a-universe, among many. (I'm avoiding the concept that time and space are relative to each bubble, and there is no concept of an overarching time and place outside of any one event).

(All this comes from taking formulas that model measurements of reality, globing them into larger models, and then exploring the limits of those models at extreme values/limits. ... with a much lagging experimental base slowly proving and disproving elements of the model (and forcing model refinement upon a disproval, so that the model encompasses the new test data))

-scheherazade

I'm an atheist.

No once has merry Christmas offended me.

Other people's mouths are not my property. They're welcome to wish whatever the hell they want. I'm welcome to not give a crap.

Talk is cheap. I'd be embarrassed to be emotionally affected enough to actually whine about it.

In general, I think the 'type of person' that would try to create law to use the police to silence people they disagree with, are the fundamental problem. Whether it's right wing churchies, or left wing SJWs, they share the same character flaw that is the root cause of suffering for much of the world. The only good thing about them is that they often manage to cancel each other out.

Re. atheism in public, crap I care about would be things like: marriage tax benefits, or marriage co-100%-ownership benefits. Because marriage (a historically religious arrangement - and before that an arrangement of human chattel) has no business being in the government sphere, and no business having tangible effects on people's economic and legal lives.

-scheherazade

Video omits something important :

NRA didn't need to be anti-gun-control prior to the 60's.

You used to be able to mail order machine guns shipped straight to your house... without any background anything.

It's the creation of affective (spelled with an 'a' on purpose) gun control laws at the federal level that gave the NRA a cause - hence they took up the cause.

The NRA is, essentially, a reactionary entity (in its current form).

-scheherazade

I believe it's a 'monkey' joke.

Because some primate species (barring exceptional individuals) won't go into the water.

-scheherazade

The rep version wasn't too bad.

Basically the status quo, but would get the person flagged onto LE radar along with a 3 day delay.

Doesn't crap too hard on innocent people, while at least drawing attention... in case attention is needed.

All in all a decent compromise, given that the watch list is packed full of innocent people that were robo-flagged.

-scheherazade

1 in every 300 Americans is on the terror watch list.

Dems cried about how bad the watch list is, how it's unfair that innocent people are flagged and have practically zero ability to get their name off the list (unless they're some big wig).

...

But now it's not a retarded broken list that unjustly punishes innocent people without due process. Now it's good to go.

-scheherazade

"Not so meaningless now, is it? ;-)"

Well, it's now off topic, but still equally detached from the statement that followed.


I could say "because kids sports helps child development, the government shall not infringe on the right of the people to bear sports equipment".

So, would it then be that only sports teams can have sports equipment? Only children? Only young children?
Or how about people (i.e. multiple persons) can bare sports equipment, just so if/when they want to teach their kids to play and put them on a team, they have that ability?

Honestly, it sounds more like a rule that is in place to preserve a specific capacity, and less like a rule in place to assign a restricted use.
Otherwise, it would make more sense to replace 'the people' with 'kids sports teams' and make it particular to a restricted use. There's no need to even mention the people.




Ok, I think we read around each other.

I though that earlier you had said that Hamilton was in opposition to the idea of the lesser "1-2x a year assembly instead of military style education" - which confused me because I thought that Hamilton was in favor of a "1-2x a year assembly instead of military style education".
And now I see you actually meant the same thing I wrote.

-scheherazade

Regulation *can* mean operating under government direction.

If militia is open to regulation, then the government only needs to make such a regulation.

The option is there for the taking.

That's why the idea of an entity needing a protection from the government, when the government can simply require the entity to serve the government's will, is moot.


All good. We can agree to disagree. Cheers.

-scheherazade

That's basically it.

Folks that don't have guns also view guns through a utilitarian lens. No need to have them unless you need to kill something. With that mentality, they're bound to see guns and killing as a combined issue. When they look at a modern rifle that has the same ergonomics as a war rifle, they think of killing people.

For gun owners, harming other folks is real far down the totem pole. They have other uses for guns, uses that aren't killing people.

Many non gun owners look at pistols and think 'oh, well, maybe one day I'd buy one to have just in case, just for protection'. They think of them as defensive arms, and not as the firearm category with the most kills associated.

So, yeah, it boils down to imagery and symbolism.

-scheherazade

Then you end up with people taping mags together and reloading within a second or so.
Even faster if they count shots and stop firing at capacity-1 before reloading.
There are work-arounds...




Realistically, the end game of the political left is a gun ban + confiscation. The end game of the political right is total gun deregulation.
Each side needs something to argue to excuse their existence, so they will argue in their direction so long as there is anything left to argue, and those are the natural consequences.
Gridlock is literally the best thing that can happen for folks in the middle.




Syria isn't the best example. The people were not armed, and they turned to foreign auxiliaries to fight for them. They invited and gave shelter to all sorts of foreign militants to fight against their government, and made a mess of things. They would have been better off with a home-grown insurgency.

Not like a home grown insurgency would have done much good either way. The Syrian Arab spring was a democratic call for ... Islamic law. It originated in Hama, where an earlier Islamic insurgency was put down (the muslim brotherhood) by Assad's father. Half the country didn't support the insurgency against Assad, and anyone who is non-muslim or secular, or even moderate, is sitting on Assad's side of the country hoping he holds out.

But generally speaking, insurgency with small arms is what defeats occupiers over time. Not in pitched battles, but by making occupation so expensive and tedious that the occupier loses interest over time.


-schehearazde

Here's a breakdown that shows my train of thought :



The 2nd amendment limits the authority of 'specifically the government'.

It is not an affirmative right to individuals, it is a denial of rights to the government.
It in theory prevents the government from taking any actions that would infringe on bearing arms.




So, let's look at scope.


If bearing arms is for government regulated militias :

Let's assume that 'well regulated' means 'well government regulated'. (i.e. Merely government regulated in practice.)

- A militia that uses arms as per the government's regulation, would be operating as the government wishes - it would *be* an extension of the government, and the government would not need to seize its arms. The 2nd amendment is moot.

- A militia that doesn't use arms as per the government's regulation, is not government regulated, and has no protection from government arms seizure. The government is free to deny this militia arms at the government's discretion. The 2nd amendment is moot.


In order for the 2nd amendment to not be moot, you would need to protect an entity that the government would *not* wish to be armed.

Since we're still talking militias, that leaves only "non-government-regulated militias" as a protected class of entities.
Hence, this would preclude "government regulated" as a possible definition of "well regulated", in regards to "well regulated militia".

So, we've established that for the 2nd to not be moot, only "non-government-regulated militias" can be in the set of 'well regulated militia'.




So, following on the idea of the 2nd amendment scope being for "well [non-government] regulated militias".

The government can then circumvent 2nd amendment protection by making illegal any 'non-government-regulated militias'. This would eliminate the entire category of arms protected entities. The 2nd amendment is moot.

Hence, for the 2nd amendment to not be moot via this path, that means that "well [non-government] regulated militias" must also be protected under the 2nd amendment.




So, without government regulation, a well regulated militia is subject to the regulation of its members.

As there is no government regulation on militia, there is also no government regulation regarding the quantity of militia members. You are then left with the ability of a single individual to incorporate a militia, and decide on his own regulations.

Which decomposes into de-facto individual rights





This is why the only consequential meaning of the 2nd amendment is one which includes these aspects :
A) Does not define 'well regulated" as "government regulated".
B) Does not restrict the individual.
C) Protects militias.

Any other meaning for the 2nd amendment would result in an emergent status quo that would produce the same circumstances as if there was no 2nd amendment in the first place. This would erase any purpose in having a 2nd amendment.





But sure, maybe the 2nd amendment is moot.
Maybe it was written out of sheer boredom, just to have something inconsequential to do with one's time.
Maybe it was a farce designed to fool people into thinking that it means something, while it is actually pointless and ineffectual - like saying the sky is up.




In any case, I think we can agree that, if the 2nd means anything, it is intended for facilitating the defense of the state against invading armies.

The fallout of that is that if the 2nd particularly protects any given category of arms, it protects specifically those that are meant for use in military combat. Not hunting, not self defense, etc.

A pistol ban would be of little military detriment for open combat, but would be the greatest harm to people's capacity for insurgency (because pistols can be hidden on a person).

A hunting rifle ban would also be of modest military detriment for open combat (can serve DMR role), but probably the least meaningful.

Arms with particular military applicability would be large capacity+select fire (prototypical infantry arms), or accurized of any capacity (dmr/sniper).
Basically, the arms of greatest consequence to the 2nd amendment are precisely the ones most targeted for regulation.

-scheherazade

That, or they simply wanted to be clear about why the rule is of utmost importance - to preserve a public capacity.

In any case, in the end it made it into the constitution - most supreme law we have. "[Because reasons ...] right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

They could have put in the bi-yearly training requirements right there. But they decided not to. They just left it at that. That description given by Hamilton is close to what eventually got to paper. Whether he was for or against it, ok (I searched for a quote that was along those lines, I could be thinking of a different guy). My understanding was that he didn't like any ideas. Military can be abused to impose tyranny, militia can be unmotivated and misbehaved (unless hyperbole).


I thought it was that paper, but I can't find it as I scan through, I thought he (or someone else?) wanted a subset of individuals trained in military arts, that could organize and direct militias should conflict arise, to take the burden of military-level training off of citizens.

-scheherazade