Okay, I have seen your videos. You are cute and I have one of those Yamaha Clavinova things in my living room and it is a shame you are so far away or I would say come on by and try it out. :)
That's 15 year old news. That was the whole point of the V chip controversy back in the 90s because it allowed remote monitoring (spying) inside the home of anyone buying such a TV. The folks pushing digital television sided with the V chip folks and now all televisions have a V chip. Really old news there Ed.
America's firearms situation about two decades ago passed the uncertainty level with regards to gun confiscation. Who bells the cat? With literally hundreds of millions of working firearms in private hands any confiscation program would have to involve road blockages, dangerous vehicle searches at road blockade checkpoints, dangerous house by house searches, metal detectors (about three decades ago several groups began advocating the burial of spare firearms and ammo in watertight survivable containers and their followers do do that (often on someone else's land without the owner's knowledge), and 1,000 other things manpower is lacking for. If a standing 10 million man army was raised just to do those hazardous searches ('guns should only be removed from cold dead fingers' is how some owners view it) 500 years from now the searches would still be going on.
Should you have one inside your home in the US? Absolutely. There is nothing like the comfort of your own loaded shotgun in your hands at 3am when a group kicks in your front (or back) door and you hear the death cries of your dog who ran out of the bedroom to repel them. Good luck dealing with that without a gun, and YES, it is a common enough event.
Should you have a carry concealed permit? If you don't have a psychiatrist and qualify to get one, do so if you can. [Not all US areas have jumped on that bandwagon]. Some folks advocate continuous carry if you can. I don't and think common sense needs to enter into it. I have yet to learn of a good way of concealed carry at the beach or while swimming. Etc. Should your gun at home be securely stored in a steel security cabinet when you aren't home? Absolutely.
I am not groking how you don't know the outcome. You knew the man's name, and at the very least his web address. That is more than enough for the police to track him down, and you had a full diner of witnesses. You filed a report, so what happened when you followed up on the case, or the detective made contact?
Box turtle, I pick them up off the roads near my house fairly often. I usually place them and the turpins in the woods a few hundred yards from the roads. Hopefully that was where they were trying to go.
I would not be terribly surprised (perhaps with a FOIA request for the 911 tapes/radio logs) if a little digging didn't disclose someone in the store bypassed your judgment and made a 911 call anyway, maybe a minute or two before she walked out the door into the arriving, waiting arms of men in blue.
Check that your PC still has sound before blaming Youtube. It is possible either a dll file has become corrupted or you accidentally hit the mute button. :)
Once upon a time in America Congressmen & Senators only received a stipend and not a salary. Up to the aftermath of President Polk there was not pension for Presidents either. I would very much like to see a return to those days.
Our best Congressman in the past 30 years? Sonny Bono. RIP
You want to see something? Watch what happens on October 18th if there are no agreements. October 17 is the budget ceiling deadline.
tinyfangs, 'how' we investigate is largely based/determined on our past experiences while learning and doing and what others may have taught us should or should not be considered. Our innate intelligence may or may not play a role depending on how free we are to exit the possibilities box. Were the folks investigating Galileo 'free' to find him innocent of wrong doing? Probably not. Not if they wanted to keep their own positions, so he was found guilty. Not being bound by the Canon law of his era, we allow his reported observations into the evidence and draw independent conclusions.
I wouldn't knock science too much. Scientific Method is still the most reliable thing humanity has found to explain how stuff is supposed to work.
The key word is 'supposed.' Where some 'scientists' (and those who quote them) make their mistake is they forget it is all hypothesis. True followers of scientific method understand that and follow the rules to seek new proofs that explain the exceptions. The ones who give scientists and science a bad name are the ones who mistake this weeks hypothesis for a proven fact. We build our science on the backs of folks like Euclid, Maxwell, Tesla, Planck, etc. They followed scientific method and therefore understood all of the answers will never be known as there will always be tweaking required of this weeks theory of understanding. If I may quote wiki, 'a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.'
That doesn't mean true scientists decide that any event that violates the understanding that currently exists should be discarded. Instead a good scientist takes that 'event' and twists it around and around to see if it can be made to fit somewhere. One problem is sometimes there are several possible answers and which one is correct requires more data. Sometimes if we believe there should already be enough data but it still doesn't quite fit, we realize maybe the basic premise/theory we are trying to fit things into itself is in need of re-exam and a better theory and then the event may fit just fine. Can you say, Higgs Boson?
Another factor that should be considered is an extrapolation of "David Bohm's Theory of the Implicate Order" with the Universe itself being a living, moving, sometimes changing entity. In such scenario a determination of final fact is true only for a while, then something will change and a better hypothesis is then sought. That which is real is therefore transitory and subject to change and refutation.
What we seek are truths and understandings sufficient to get us through our days without needing constant counseling or lots of running around screaming.
It is really big news if you live in the DC Metro area where 80% of the income comes from the Federal Govt. Maybe big in towns like NYC, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, etc. But in places like Las Vegas, Detroit, Albany, Roanoke, etc. where Federal dollars are not the primary source of income of the majority of the populace, it is like, who cares?
I had a lot to do today so I didn't know about it for quite some time. Here in the sticks it appeared to have zero impact on the people not dependent on siphoning Federal dollars for their livelihood. Most general purpose Federal Office buildings are closed. Big deal, the closest one is what 75 miles away? Yeah some special govt. centers where privileged folks work may be busy as such places are often staffed by exempt 'critical' folk. Many of the folkss working in the special centers are transfers out of DC and the govt. paid a contractor to put up housing developments more or less just for them, as only they earn enough money in this locality to afford the too high for normal folk prices those houses sold for. <At a time when older already built houses were going for 120K, the new ones went for 400K. Mean wage outside the Federal centers is usually less than 60K annual with many earning 20K to 40K in the local economy (and driving 10 - 20 year old cars, but inside the Fed centers 80K with lots earning way, way more is not uncommon. They keep to themselves, don't often join older churches or do much socializing at the places where the 'uncleared' non-govt local folk hang out. Their HOAs discourage older cars and at home engine work, so most of the cars in those instant 'neighborhoods' are less than 3 years old, if not this years. So okay, maybe some of them were told to stay home today. How would those of us outside the HOA areas the Feds live in know that if they don't socialize with the locals or even shop in the same stores? So the clerks in the supermarkets still work. The bank was still open. Bill (a friend) still delivers sodas to the supermarket. The bars and restaurants seem to be open as usual. The local barber shop was open, so was the news stand and the luncheonette in town. Gander Mountain had a fair number of customers (many checking out the deer rifles and the reloading equipment). In spite of the govt. shutdown I had no problem hitting Tractor Supply for some mower parts and browsing fishing rods in the K-mart. Ate lunch at the McDonalds without noticing anything. Stopped to chat with a neighbor feeding his ducks, then split some logs from a dead Cyprus tree I chainsawed last week. Only at around 6 when I turned on the TV did I learn Congress had done as threatened. Talking heads all screaming about how the sky fell and calamity must follow. Really? This may be entertaining. I should watch more TV. Perhaps tomorrow after I replace some parts in the wind generator and work on some overgrown fence line I will turn the TV on again and learn why I should care. Seriously, as long as the food stamps continue to be financed I don't think many in the rural areas will notice for quite some time. Even then, Bambi season approaches and just about everyone has canned lots of home grown veggies already. Dunno, maybe in DC it is a big thing. Let it continue. The older pickup trucks don't really mind a little less road repair. Newer cars may care, but my 26 year old F-250 or the CJ copes just fine with gravel roads.
If everything is pre-ordained, or written by the fates, then there can by definition be no free will. If however there is no pre-ordained structure to what will happen, then free will is possible. In short since most religions claim there will be an end to the game which will go in a certain 'pre-ordained' fashion, true free will is by definition an enemy of religion as it would allow for an outcome different than that called for by most religions.
Possible someone knew there was not going to be anyone there and the security features weren't on yet? Maybe that possibility should be considered. Anyone new on the staff or such?
Sigh, I had to take that vaccine over and over when I was a kid. No ill effects. The result was by age 12 I had known only 1 kid with polio and by age 14 I didn't know any. Now 40+ years laterI am very saddened to see that thanks to those who believe sickness is 'God's will' and won't allow their child to be vaccinated that polio is indeed back in the US.
Ken_19 Blog Comments (3,903)
RE: vidoes
Okay, I have seen your videos. You are cute and I have one of those Yamaha Clavinova things in my living room and it is a shame you are so far away or I would say come on by and try it out. :)Sadly I don't sing or play an instrument myself.