The Old Hack

Again speaking only for myself and as a stranger outside looking in, I found your proposed legislation a good starting point for discussion -- including the moratorium. Democracies are made of compromises. They may leave everybody unhappy in the end, but as long as everybody is no more unhappy than they can live with, the compromises will allow society to endure. I would find a reduction in gun deaths down to twenty percent or ideally ten percent of the current level to be a good target to aim for. Perhaps that is unachievable, perhaps not. One thing I think we could both agree on is that any gun control legislation should be carefully examined by a bipartisan think tank that includes profilers, firearms experts and law enforcement specialists. If we get only one go at it every ten years, we had better get it right or as close to right as possible the first time. I am not particularly interested in having the law formulated by people who cannot tell the difference between semi-automatic and automatic, or between a bullet and a cartridge. How is that for a start?

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2410

I am not asking for perfection, merely for improved gun safety. I have heard of the Eddie Eagle program and thought it sounded sensible. I still believe that following up on it with a more detailed grade school class might not be the worst idea. I am not entirely sure how one should define a minimum standard of gun safety but it should be possible to devise one that is easy to remember, implement and train into a habit for gun owners. The standard in the Danish Army and Home Guard for storage when not in use was to remove the bolt from the weapon and lock up weapon and bolt separately. (Methods may differ depending on weapon, I suppose. I was blessed with an M1 Garand. It was on the verge of being phased out and we only still had it because we were paramedics and obviously were at the very end of the line when it came to upgrading. But I loved that thing so much. I am almost willing to swear that you had to work at it to miss when you shot it.)

mlooney shipping. We get you anywhere you can imagine as well as quite a few places you can't.

Mph. A misdiagnosis when I was much younger. I spent seven years of my life on a medication that did not do a thing for my actual problems and drained me of much of my energy and joie de vivre. When I finally rebelled against the stuff I spent four more years refusing to use any medication at all. I was absolutely terrified of returning to my drugged hell. It took years of effort and much patience on behalf of my wife-to-be to convince me to try a medication that might actually help me. I do not recall ever in my life being as afraid as I was that day where I finally tried again. It ended up working, and now years later I am much better off. I can live with the side effects. But I can't forget those years of hell, or the years that followed where I was terrified of using any medication at all.

There is nothing strange about that, old friend. You have been through medical hell and it is hard to believe that it may finally be nearing its end. I can relate to it -- all too well, in fact.

In fact, yes it did and yes they were.

Ah yes, sorry. I missed that. I was only thinking of the energy bit -- my apologies.

I will venture an answer that should very much be taken with a grain of salt as I am not a US citizen. To me the ideal would be a reduction in or complete prevention of the mass shooting events that are becoming so appallingly frequent as well as a mandatory increase in gun safety that would make gun accidents, especially those involving children, much less likely. Your own suggested legislation seems to me not a bad starting point. Adding in mandatory gun safety classes in grade school might not be a bad idea. Possibly legislation that makes it illegal to employ guns as means of intimidation. Showing up in numbers and heavily armed at some political flash point to frighten people should be a no-no. But to me it would end once legislation has successfully put the brakes on the current wave of mass shootings and gun accidents. If I may be permitted to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln I would put it like this, "If I could end this wave of gun violence by banning all guns I would do so, if I could end gun violence without banning a single gun I would do so, if I could end gun violence by banning some of the guns I would do so." Ultimately the objective is to create a safer and better world, I deem. Banning all guns strikes me as impractical and unconstitutional. Intelligent legislation that targets the worst trouble spots seems to me the way to go rather than sweeping and poorly thought out bans. And personally I think the worst trouble spots may be an absence of background checks as well as an appallingly lax idea of gun safety. I have heard stories of gun owners that put their weapon down loaded and without the safety on for 'just a moment' only to have an unnoticed and precocious child eagerly pick it up, point it at someone and go 'bang' while pulling the trigger, and that sort of incident must be preventable.

SWTOR is solidly placed in the space opera category. Grand sweeping plots, huge doomsday devices, heroes and anti-heroes the only barrier between the Galaxy and total destruction. Most if not all of the technology is no more 'scientific' than it is in the movies and the stories are heavy on drama, chase scenes, vengeance tales and/or redemption stories. One of my favourite plotlines involve a deconstruction of the ancient wise race at war with barbaric bloodthirsty primitives. Once closely inspected, the 'ancient wise race' turns out to have some definite holes in its nobility and the 'barbaric bloodthirsty primitives' number some dreamers hoping for a better existence that the 'wise ones' will go to any length to prevent them from achieving...

Since Tedd has now learned to craft actual wands, it may be a moot point as wands can store more energy.

Well, the problem with the above vampire horror stories is that they sometimes follow the same rules as zombie apocalypses. If it is some sort of virus triggering the transformation and said virus develops an airborne vector, it might be all over bar the shouting. Of course this leaves the problem of what to feed on once it is over. Though as Satireknight pointed out, even ordinary badly written vampire stories can screw this up. The vampires of the execrable Twilight series need to feed some four times a month. According to the often self-contradictory rules Meyer made for them, whenever they fed on humans they either kill the victims or turn them into vampires. Take even a small population of vampires like the one in Forks. A dozen or so. This means either fifty corpses that need to be disposed of every month or fifty new vampires. Sure, they claim they can use animals instead and these don't turn into vampires, but presumably they would need large animals at least the size of dogs or better and that would be noticeable too -- not to mention impossible in the long run. Leaving only humans. And the world is full of covens of vampires like the Cullens, not all of them willing to settle for animal blood. Let's say there is one in Spoons, Missourippi. Spoons has ten thousand inhabitants. After just one year there has been more than half a thousand vampire-related deaths. How long do you think that can go on without people starting to wonder? Oh yes, and let's say that they screw up so just one in ten victims become a new vampire. That means the vampire population doubles every two months, if not faster. All of a sudden Spoons seems a lot less desirable place to live in. The Vampire: the Masquerade roleplaying game used a bit more care than that. It still screwed up but the basic mechanics were workable. A vampire did not need to kill its victims and could sustain itself for one night on each pint of stolen blood. What is more, accidental creation of vampires was impossible. Only deliberate complete exsanguination of a victim and then feeding them vampire blood would cause the transformation. And the older vampires brutally enforced population control to keep the whole situation manageable. And yeah, it could have been a sci fi writer, though Star Wars is arguably science fantasy

Depends on the writer. In Star Wars: the Old Republic, a rather deranged ex-Jedi at one point took a look at the Sith Empire and decided that actual Sith blood (from the Sith race, as opposed to those who merely followed Sith teachings) was the problem. He then created a bunch of doomsday robots with the purpose of killing all who had detectable Sith genes in their DNA. After some six to eight centuries of intermingling, this worked out to 98% of the population of the Sith Empire.

That is dealt with during the initial physical examination. If an M.D. -- or anyone, for that matter -- is judged incapable of completing Basic due to health reasons, they are exempted from military service. I believe it is called the 4-F classification in the US. Otherwise they go in. In borderline cases the recruit is usually cut some slack due to the essential nature of medical personnel. I do know that my own father was given a discharge after a training accident that caused a hairline fracture of his spine and almost cost him the use of his legs.

There is. A portion of all healthy males of age 18 must serve in our armed forces. This portion is filled by volunteers if possible but in the case of shortfall draftees are selected by lot. I was a volunteer. In case of conscientious objectors, they may choose to serve either in the Civil Defence (our version of FEMA, basically) or fill positions in civilian organisations deemed to be important to the state. There is an important exception to the above, however. Any male who completes either a medical degree or a degree in dentistry must serve for two years in armed forces clinics with an automatic commission as second lieutenants after having completed Basic. (This used to include veterinarians as well, but they were let off the hook after the Army discontinued the use of horses and pack animals. We have one regiment of mounted Hussars left but they employ either volunteers or civilian veterinarians.)

The Moderator: I cannot speak for others here but personally I have followed politics, voted in every election I could, fulfilled my societal duties and served in the armed forces of my homeland. People fondly imagine freedom of speech as a divinely granted gift. It is not. It was purchased by our ancestors at a high cost in blood, toil, sweat and tears, and maintained by the efforts of their descendants -- now including me. I am well aware of the debt I owe to not only my ancestors but also to those who will follow me and thus I gladly pay that price. There is no right to bear arms in my homeland. I do not wish to argue the merits of something born from a culture considerably different from mine. Nonetheless, I feel comfortable saying that it is necessary to make an effort to sustain any rights, even those enshrined in law, as they may all too easily wither and die if they are not fought for. Thus, one does indeed earn one's rights -- by guarding the freedoms we have inherited and working to better the injustices that still haunt us.

She came from a line of powerful mages and wizards. That would perhaps fit with the descendants of an elf.

Eep! I hope not.

Darn you! And I've held that title all but unchallenged in a streak every year since 2009, except for 2014 of course. But just you wait! I'LL BE BACK!

The Moderator: While it is of course permissible to present a data point to refute an opposing claim, please attempt to do so without either undertones of sarcasm or irritation.

I have read most of the Dresden Files and I hold some liking for Doctor Who. I do not expect my entertainment to be perfect in all regards. I do expect it to pay attention when it goofs and to not make the most egregious kind of mistakes where someone gets violated physically or mentally just for a bit of a laugh. As far as I am concerned that is a deal breaker and will cause me to abandon the 'entertainment' in question.

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2408 And so it begins.

Susan used to be a straw feminist -- that is to say, a contrived example full of bad attitudes to show how 'bad' feminists are to those on the outside looking in. Later on, as Dan's knowledge grew and his writing improved, she gradually outgrew the straw feminist phase and turned into someone with a far more balanced attitude. Dan is an honest enough writer that he had the transformation be gradual and occurring through character development rather than some sort of writer's asspull. I am not saying this to in any way condemn or judge Dan. In fact, I've been through a similar learning experience myself. My initial ideas of feminism were unfortunately very much shaped by mainstream media sources that either had only the most superficial understanding of what it was about, no understanding whatsoever except prejudices or even actively seeking to discredit and misinform. Suffice it to say that when I was in my teens, my idea of what a feminist was closely resembled what Dan initially had Susan be.

http://www.egscomics.com/?id=2407 Poor Susan. That is just not an easy thing to deal with.

I agree. The only thing that saved that particular set of strips for me was that it turned out to be someone's bad-fic. I have some issues with mind control being used as a story device. At a minimum I would expect it to be treated as a serious issue with lasting consequences. This may be due to having seen it used while playing it for laughs, which I feel is horrendous.