5,460 Forum Posts by "HighlyIllogical"
At 6/22/07 12:03 PM, SevenSeize wrote:
but I found yesterday's to be even more funny.
Yah, that was a good one.
And how witty was the pop-up one (when you click on it or leave your mouse on the comic for a bit): That shirt looks good on you, but it would look better stuffed into the neck of a flaming bottle flung out of the office building window.
Have you been?
Have you talked to storekeepers whose houses have been bombed?
Have you talked to people whose children have died in wars, bombings etc?
Have you talked to someone who lived next door to a house that was demolished by a Katyusha?
Have you ever SEEN one of the demolished houses?
I take it that you haven't.
Did anyone else see the xkcd librarians comic?
Wow, that was a riot.
At 6/22/07 04:07 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: 4) Guess what? Between 13 studies (not even including the Kleck study you don't trust), on average, 800,000 - 2.5 Million Defensive gun uses occur annually in the US.
I read those, and while I really, really dislike "guncite.com," I can't help but to acknowledge that they exist.
Personally, I like this guy Dr. David Hemenway, Harvard '66 and Harvard PhD '74.
Here's one article about him: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/090433 .html
And here's a paper of his: http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Hemenway1.htm It's on the website of the Second Amendment Foundation, a pro-gun site, and yet the paper says:
"The fact that the survey is trying to estimate a low probability event also means that a small percentage bias, when extrapolated, can lead to extreme overestimates. "
"The K-G survey design contains a huge overestimation bias. The authors do little to reduce the bias or to validate their findings by external measures. All checks for external validity of the Kleck-Gertz finding confirm that their estimate is highly exaggerated."
"NCVS results indicate that, nationally, victims use guns against offenders approximately 65,000 times per year. [6] Kleck believes people under- report to the government NCVS interviewers, especially since the surveys are not anonymous. He also finds fault with the NCVS survey for asking about self- defense gun use only for individuals who have been victimized. [7] Interestingly, it is this latter feature of the NCVS which dramatically reduces the overestimation bias found in the private surveys."
And, remember, the NCVS says: "an estimated annual average of 62,000
violent crime victims (approximately 1 percent of all violent
crime victims) used a firearm in an effort to defend
themselves. In addition, an annual average of about 20,000
victims of theft, household burglary or motor vehicle theft
attempted to defend their property with guns."
Worse, says the NCVS, "BJS estimated that more than 340,000 crimes annually
involved firearm thefts. During the period almost two-thirds
of such losses occurred during household burglaries and almost
one- third in larcenies. The survey does not report on thefts
or burglaries from stores or other businesses." (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/hvfsd aft.pr)
Ah, yes, the well known academic source Beast Enterprises.
On the other hand, the National Academy of Sciences has concluded "that with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates." No effect. Ok, I can buy that. Positive effect? Highly improbable, they say.
And a study that I've repeatedly cited that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, stated, "Three victims (1.5%) employed a firearm in self-protection. All three escaped injury, but one lost property." And "A minority of home invasion crimes result in injury. Measures that increase the difficulty of forced entry or enhance the likelihood of detection could be useful to prevent these crimes. Although firearms are often kept in the home for protection, they are rarely used for this purpose. "
Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that, and I quote: " Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."
If you've visited Ron Paul's website, you've noticed that he claims to support H.R. 300. Its purpose statement is "To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes." Its title is the "We The People Act."
Of course, I don't know if Dr. Paul knows anything about Article III Section 2: "The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made."
At 6/21/07 10:22 PM, Proteas wrote:
Yes, let's focus our efforts on curbing the ability of the public at large from getting so called "assault weapons" and focus on getting them the much kinder, gentler, hunting rifle.
Assault weapons are better for killing people in urban environments or close quarters. Also, like other semi-auto weapons, they are faster firing. They can have features like folding stocks etc.
At 6/21/07 07:14 PM, TheMason wrote:
Secondly, there is data that shows that simply banning guns from the non-criminal citizenry does not lead to less murders.
Firstly, where is this magical data? And I'd like to know what banning guns causes if not less violence.
Come on, don't be silly:
According to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/bcft04.p df, there were 1,228,000 rejections for gun permits or transfers from 1994 to 2004. What does that mean? That means that there were good reasons for denying these permits...
I just hope that the law works on your side. It seems like it should. I mean, I'm no labor lawyer, but, still, it doesn't seem like they had just cause to fire her.
At 6/21/07 10:52 AM, SevenSeize wrote:
*hands you a soda*
Yay soda.
More yay for Mountain Dew.
And yay for driver's permit.
Yay from my perspective, it should probably cause everyone else to have a deathly fear of driving.
Theocracy, facism, despotism and the like are probably the worst few systems.
Of course, any system that restricts essential classical liberal liberties has problems.
Murdoch has control of:
United States
New York Post
United Kingdom
The Times
Times Literary Supplement
The Sunday Times
The Sun
News of the World
Times Education (inc Times Education Supplement and Higher Education Supplement) - sold to Exponent Private Equity September 2005
And these are just the US and UK papers. He's got dozens of other outlets, whether TV, radio, print (including BOOK PUBLISHING)...
At 6/21/07 12:54 AM, JakeHero wrote: You do realize how ridiculous this sounds? All of a sudden, criminals are scared of lights in places? I'm pretty sure there are criminals that are willing to maim someone to get what they want in the house.
Actually, 42% of criminals flee without confronting the victim.
"In 42% of cases, the offender fled without confronting the victim. Victims who avoided confrontation were more likely to lose property but much less likely to be injured than those who were confronted by the offender. Resistance was attempted in 62 cases (31%), but the odds of injury were not significantly affected by the method of resistance."
Same source.
At 6/19/07 05:02 PM, Altarus wrote:
Actually American firms who bought up 2/3rds of all the undiscovered oil and the Shiite government control its oil resources and as been doing so for awhile now.
Fixed for factual accuracy.
780.
780?
7...8...0?
780!!!!!!!!
780!!!!!!!!
That was my action when I woke up and checked my SAT II score. Woot.
At 6/20/07 08:49 PM, Memorize wrote:At 6/20/07 08:45 PM, Tancrisism wrote:Rape can make life worse than death though.Not provable.
Not in a quantifiable way, perhaps (even then, if you look at earnings of rape victims prior to and after their rape, you could analyze this), but it's a widely accepted conclusion among mental health professionals that rape is emotionally damaging.
Duh.
At 6/20/07 06:52 PM, TheMason wrote:
Had I not been armed and been a potential threat to the perp...
If you had looked carefully at the sources I provided, they state, in this one, for example:
"In 42% of cases, the offender fled without confronting the victim. Victims who avoided confrontation were more likely to lose property but much less likely to be injured than those who were confronted by the offender. Resistance was attempted in 62 cases (31%), but the odds of injury were not significantly affected by the method of resistance."
So, in a significant percent of cases, the guy would have left. If yyou confronted him, you were more liikley to get injured. How's that sound?
http://jama.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract /273/22/1759 is my source, by the way.
Woah, that's pretty sick, you yelled at a Fox News person oniine and lived to tell!
Watch out for Rupert Murdoch's black helicopters, lawl.
At 6/20/07 01:42 PM, Proteas wrote:
So am I to understand that you HONESTLY BELIEVE that a firearm is a living weapon and actually causes crime on it's own?
Now, now, he's not saying that.
Guns are inanimate objects that ENABLE crimes.
Is that a new sig, Seven?
Or have I just not been paying attention, 'cause it's quite cool.
Proteas is right, though, in a sense. The disgruntled serviceman should have been identified by the VA as in need of help.
However, his idea is fundamentally incorrect -- V Tech was perpetrated because of the guns.
Even more impressive because it's in canada. IIRC, the Canadian tax rates are exponentially higher.
Wow! Did you go to GMU?
$108? For a $40,000+ income?
Woah! USC 26 is working out nicely for you.
At 6/19/07 11:52 PM, SkunkyFluffy wrote: Not only will you go bankrupt even trying to apply to half of these schools, but the chances are you'll get in to so many that it will make your choice nigh on impossible.
Visting will be the bull in the china shop (wow that was a crappily used metaphor). I dunno how I'll have the time to visit them.
Narrow it down to less than ten. Go visit all of those on the short list.
I've visited Tufts (not my fave) and Brandeis (I really REALLY liked it). Next up are UChicago and Northwestern. Problem is, all those are at least 2nd tier schools.
Then apply to no more than six.
I've heard that from a lot of people, and it's seeming more and more true as I look through what the common application plus the suppliments is, lawl.
Take this from someone who has both applied/been to college and worked for three years in a university Admissions office.
Admissions...? Office...?
*lowers head before your wisdom*
Speaking of which, what admissions office?
At 6/20/07 05:01 AM, fli wrote: And my 2nd cousin recorded him taking a shower... dancing nude. We wanna black male him in a HUGE way. 400 pesos, and I won't load it up on youtube.
You want to black male him? Are you sure you want to do that?
It makes me sad that the source of information that kept Nazi dominated Europe with some light of hope is now turning into Fox News, which itself is little better than Der Stürmer.
At 7/4/06 09:42 PM, Nylo wrote: A hype movie on the element that there's no law requiring any American citizen to pay taxes out of his or her income to the Federal government; in fact the surpreme court has ruled it against the law. So why is Tax Evasion such a high-profile crime?
Tax evasion is a crime because you have to pay taxes.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode 26/usc_sup_01_26_10_A_20_1.html
That is Title 26 Chapter 1 of the US Code. It is why you have to pay taxes.
At 6/18/07 11:08 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: Where is it illegal to possess a gun other than schools and government buildings?
That's my point! Your source is clearly ill informed.
End of story.
Our justice system doesn't work on an empirical basis. It's all case by case, just like school policies should be.
I mean, come on...
