cp702

I always have a weird robot eye thing as my cursor. You mean you guys don't?

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Might just be your part of CT; in New Haven, CVPIs are still extremely common.

Agreed on "Powered by ctOS." No question about it; "powered by" is the common phrase in this situation (i.e. marketing-y, "the technology underpinning our cool thing is X" is "powered by X").

That site doesn't strike me as a reliable source; their references to the Illuminati do not encourage me in thinking that they're supplying proper context. Other sources note that Hawking followed up with

But you don't have the option of "don't have depressed pilots flying." If ever seeking help for psychological issues results in the loss of your license and end of your aviation career (like it very often does already), you end up with depressed pilots either secretly seeking help, self-medicating, or not getting any kind of help at all. You don't get people to stop flying; you get people hiding their issues from medical examiners. Your options are "have pilots with possible psychological issues have help and support, let them go on leave when needed, and then integrate them back into the cockpit if/when they get better" (requires a change in culture, currently it's hard to ever return to any cockpit if you've sought psychological help) or "have pilots with issues not mention them to anyone, have them in a cockpit when their condition is at its worst without anyone knowing they have issues or helping them cope."

I'm pretty sure "refusing a paying customer" is *normally* against corporate rules -- someone who does that without explicit policy supporting it is likely to end up disciplined or fired, with the company scrambling to apologize for the person refused service. The *government* can't make an employee serve someone against their religious beliefs (unless it's the least intrusive way to fulfill a compelling government interest; an EMT who refuses to help a gay patient is not likely to find any help under this law); private employers generally do expect employees to accept customers who are willing to pay.

McDonald's actually uses franchising in the US; a typical McDonald's is actually an independent business, which contracts with the national company to use their business model and serve their food at their prices with their branding (but which is owned locally, as a rule). However, McDonald's corporate policy could still forbid discrimination. AFAIK, these laws only prevent government interference on religion; if reasonable job duties conflict with your religious beliefs, you generally have to find a different job. Also, the law *doesn't* mention business owners. It has nothing to do with business owners. The law says that government may not substantially burden a person's religious exercise, unless it is the most narrow way of achieving a compelling government interest. Nothing *at all* to do with whether someone is a business owner or not; it applies to everyone. It also only restricts the government; Section 11 says it doesn't let current, prospective, or former employees sue private employers (so private employers aren't bound by it at all).

I don't think you have the slightest idea how black holes work. Here's the thing about a black hole: It isn't some magical suction device. It has a certain mass; outside its event horizon, it produces no stronger a gravitational force than anything else with that mass. If the Sun collapsed into a black hole, the planets' orbits would be unchanged. Thus, a miniature black hole would have no more gravitational impact than anything else of its mass, like, for instance, a typical virus (a bacteria is *way* more massive). The black holes they could create in the LHC have mass at most 5*10^-20 kg; the associated Schwarzchild radius (to first approximation, the radius of the event horizon) is 7.4*10^-47 m. While the event horizon grows as the mass increases, keep in mind that it has to absorb literally the entire planet to have an event horizon of 9mm, so it wouldn't exactly be exploding. Here: you can read an explanation by an actual astrophysicist of just how little your scenario has to do with reality. Even if Hawking radiation doesn't dissipate the black hole, it will take trillions of years to reach a mass of one kilogram. For context, the universe has existed for ~14 billion years. There is no situation where a black hole of 5*10^-20 kg poses any sort of risk to anybody in the entire world.

At first glance, this seems like another state version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which makes me skeptical of claims that this is somehow unprecedented.

I think you have a faulty definition of "prostitution", if your definition requires someone to be kidnapped, drugged, and forced to work. The whole point of legal prostitution is that people involved think the money is worth it. People work in coal mines, in spite of the fact that it dramatically shortens your life expectancy, because the money is worth it. It may defy all logic to you that someone might decide to go to work in a brothel where they'll be paid to have sex, but it's disingenuous to say that what people would be willingly doing is "forced on the sidewalk by some pimp." In fact, a legal prostitute is much *less* likely to be subject to extremely degrading conditions or forced to work, because they can always go to the police if they're the victim of a crime. Your analogy is seriously flawed. With assault, an argument that paying someone to assault them is illegal would rest on the idea that consent for money isn't enough to justify the assault (i.e. "we don't want rich people able to hire poor people and punch them"). With sex, that means prostitution would be considered a variant of rape. There's a funny thing about rape: Being raped isn't a crime. If you're going with the assault analogy, prostitutes are victims and have done absolutely nothing wrong (unless you really want to argue that they're an accomplice to their own rape).

Do you have any reason why you would possibly think that's true? Keep in mind that legal prostitution has a significant advantage: there is no risk of arrest for it. If prostitutes choose to continue illegal prostitution, that's either because they're being forced to do so, because they *can't* be legal prostitutes, or because there's some competitive advantage for illegal prostitution that offsets the "you can't be arrested for it" of legal prostitution. 1ian20 gave a potential advantage in the illegal market: drugs. In contrast, all you've done is say "no, they won't obey any rules because they just won't; they don't care about the law or about arrests, and just want to have sex for money." I don't think it's reasonable to ignore the powerful incentive that not-risking-arrest provides; if you don't think it provides a powerful incentive, you'll have to provide a better argument than "they just don't care." In addition to the supply side, you also have to look at the demand side; if demand for illegal prostitution falls, there will be less illegal prostitution. Not getting arrested is also a powerful incentive for people hiring prostitutes (if you disagree with that, then we can talk about that), which has to be balanced by an advantage of illegal prostitution if illegal prostitution isn't to lose customers to legal prostitution. 1ian20's potential advantage of the illegal market applies just as well to the demand side. Do you have an advantage for illegal prostitution for a customer? Or are you again just ignoring the idea that this is a market, and people generally respond to economic incentives?

We already *have* underground prostitution rings and illegal human trafficking. One concern with legal prostitution would be if it increases total demand for sex-for-money, and that results in increased total demand for the illegal product. That's a legitimate concern; I don't know which way it'd cut. However, it's also a legitimate argument to claim that the legal market will be a good enough competitor that it will displace the illegal market; in that case, underground prostitution rings will shrink (for human trafficking, you'd probably also have to consider the labor market -- people who are willing to be prostitutes would presumably prefer to be legal ones if all else is equal, so if it increases total prostitution demand and drives willing prostitutes out of the illegal market, that might be filled with unwilling prostitutes [i.e. human trafficking and rape], but again, I'm just laying out possible arguments, and am not sure what actually would end up being the case). No one thinks legalizing it would stop current issues; what many think is it'd reduce current issues. The main concern I'd see is if being a customer of a prostitute lost some of the social taboo, leading to an increase in illegal prostitution demand, or if it drives prices on illegal prostitution down massively (those are the only reasons I can think of where legalizing prostitution would lead to someone who didn't previously buy illegal prostitution deciding to do so). As for what'd actually happen among the options: no clue, this is just a basic economic analysis of some options.

The standard explanation as to how legalized prostitution would help reduce those things is to look at the demand side. If legal prostitution can take a big chunk of the prostitution demand, then that makes illegal prostitution a harder business (people often prefer legal options if they're present). Rape in particular has the potential for a big change -- legal prostitution reduces the incentive for pimps to do that instead of doing other things, which (so the idea goes) reduces the incentive to force women into prostitution (which is rape). No one's talking about the black market of drugs and weapons, but reducing the black market of people has another, massive advantage: you don't want to put people into a situation where they're continually breaking the law if you can avoid it. A prostitute currently has very little recourse if she is the victim of a crime; she can't very well call the police. When that happens, and someone can't call the cops if a crime is committed against them, it opens the door to some very ugly things (for another example, look at the culture of violence among drug dealers; for a third, look at how illegal immigrants are often treated by employers). As for crimes against legal prostitutes: Do you know the difference between an assault on an illegal prostitute and an assault on a grocery clerk? The latter can call the cops, press charges, and file lawsuits against their assailant. A prostitute who calls 911 will end up in jail herself. With drug dealers, the response is to arm and fight back, with the result of classic drug violence. With prostitution, the response seems to often be that criminals go unpunished. If a legal prostitute is assaulted or raped by a customer, she can press charges. She can file lawsuits for damages. She has the full protection of the legal system, as opposed to one who has to try to hide the assault from the cops. No, a card doesn't make a prostitute physically immune to assault. What it does is let them be properly protected by the law. Failure to look at the demand side is one of the biggest issues with arguments about criminal consensual transactions. With drugs, most are now familiar with the argument that people want drugs and that drug dealers are a response to this demand, but that going after dealers won't help (more will just pop up as long as demand exists). This applies just as much to prostitution -- addressing supply seems doomed to failure, but something that drives down demand for street prostitution stands a very good chance of reducing the incidence of it. To the extent that street prostitution and legal, regulated, in-a-brothel prostitution are substitutes, legal prostitution has some serious advantages over illegal prostitution (e.g. you can't go to prison for it). What legalizing it does is introduce a competitor to street prostitution and give it advantages over current forms of prostitution. If this drives down the demand for street prostitution, then you don't *need* to worry about going after illegal prostitutes as much -- they'll exit the market voluntarily, because it's no longer as profitable.

Doubtful. Aircraft at cruise altitude are under autopilot control; crew incapacitation generally leads to the plane following preprogrammed waypoints until it reaches the last one, at which point it maintains heading, altitude, and speed until it runs out of fuel, at which point it maintains altitude at the expense of speed until it stalls, at which point it crashes. See Helios 522 and the Payne Stewart crash. Depressurization-to-crash takes a good while. Lack of oxygen or toxic fumes *might* have caused an issue by compromising crew judgment to the degree that they'd disable the autopilot, but that's unlikely. I suppose they might have been initiating an emergency descent manually and not have put on oxygen masks in time (so couldn't stop the descent, and if the autopilot's disengaged it wouldn't either).

So let me see if I have this straight: * You don't have an issue with people having sex in a car if it's not for money * But you do have an issue with people paying to have sex in a car * But you don't think it should be illegal to pay for sex in private Is the sole problem with people paying to have sex in public? Should prostitution be subject to stricter rules about where you can have sex, while people having sex for other reasons can do it in more places? Or is your issue "people having sex in public?" For "the legality of having sex in a car has nothing to do with the legality of prostitution" -- That's not an opinion, it's a fact. If prostitution is legal in general, it can still be illegal to have sex in public. If prostitution is illegal in general, it can still be legal to have sex in public. You could regulate the intersection of "prosecution" and "sex in public," but that doesn't make them related -- you could do that with any combination of things. (In fact, I'm pretty sure having sex in public is illegal just about everywhere in the US, including where prostitution is legal. Allowing prostitution does not mean people may have sex in public. This is a fact, not an opinion.) So: Which do you object to? People having sex in public, or prostitutes having sex in public?

I'll say it again, then: I don't see what that has to do with prostitution. The legality of having sex in a car in an alley has nothing to do with the legality of prostitution. Do you object to people having sex in a car in an alley who *aren't* prostitutes? If so, what you want are laws against having sex in public (and counting "in a car in an alley" as "in public"), but that has nothing to do with laws against paying for sex.

Is your objection there really to the "for money" bit, though? It seems like you'd be just as opposed to people having sex in a car in an alley if it's not for money, in which case it's more a matter of public decency laws and less an issue of prostitution laws.

Topic will not be locked, there's no reason to do so.

Well, yeah. Israel's neighbors declared war on it several times. You know what those wars all had in common? Israel's neighbors lost. Their military actually isn't particularly defensive (not that that's a bad thing if someone tries to invade you); their doctrine is (or at least has been) very heavy on preemptive strikes to cripple their opponents' military. Israel did not have direct military support from any other country during those wars. Since then, the governments around Israel have largely collapsed recently, and Israel has developed nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are historically a fairly powerful deterrent. Israel is safe from being invaded and conquered -- terrorism is a threat, but it's hard to seriously maintain that Israel would lose a conventional war in the area. On the subject of "why make a thread:" I was unaware that the title of this subforum was "American Politics, Current Events, and Society."

CVPI Impala Charger Taurus (probably) Ford E-series van Their SUV (Explorer and/or Escape) Radio Emergency Patrol At least, that's what I think of. If you ask a normal person, they'll answer "er, the cop cars? Maybe a SWAT truck?"

I got it, one of the few games I've bought right when they came out. It's pretty fun so far; while Sniper's right that it's not SC4, there are actually parts of it that are even better in terms of detail than SC4 (e.g. you can actually set transit lines, which is surprisingly fun to set up). As to performance: I have a laptop with an Nvidia business-series card; once I set the game to use the discrete card, it ran reasonably fast with a bit of lag, but not too bad. I'm hoping for more mods, but the game is young. Definitely agree it's the sort of thing where you look down and find that hours have passed. Some annoyances, but overall well worth it. I have like 9 hours ingame already.

So, those phones built into the back of seats on older planes are just for show? Airfone didn't actually exist? Or do you just not have the slightest idea what you're talking about? There is no reason why phones cannot function perfectly well from an aircraft; there is this thing known as "radio" that planes traditionally use. Cell phones don't really work at cruise altitude, because you're far from cell towers. But cellular technology is not the only way to transmit phone calls. Air-ground telephony over radio started in the 30s; it's an established radio service (it was in decline before 9/11 and since 2005-2006 they've generally been removed from US planes for being unprofitable, but it was pretty commonly installed before then).

Your faulty assumption is assuming those crashes were more violent than AA77. The Pentagon is reinforced concrete. The section AA77 hit had actually just been further reinforced. It hit it pretty much dead-on, at maximum speed. In contrast, neither other flight was at high speed, because in neither other case were the pilots trying to fly at maximum speed into a wall. AF477 crashed at ~120 knots. AA77 crashed at ~470. AF477 hit water; AA77 hit reinforced concrete head-on. I can't find crash speeds for Helios 522, but seeing as it was a properly-trimmed flight with both engines flamed out, I doubt it crashed at speeds much higher than AF477 (it didn't plummet out of the sky, it was in a glide controlled by the autopilot). Seriously, here's what happens when thin aluminum flies at high speed into reinforced concrete (notice how it pretty much totally disintegrates): Black boxes are not infinitely strong. They're rated for accelerations of 3400g for 6.5 milliseconds. Past that point, mechanical stress can break open a box. They are not designed for aircraft flying at high speed into a solid wall, because accidental crashes generally do not happen that way (pilots aren't going that fast at low altitude, as a general rule). Their fire rating is assuming the box is intact; the bottom of the CVR case separated from the rest, allowing the fire to enter and make the tape unrecoverable (the FDR data was recoverable, and was recovered). As for tail sections: Plane tails are not invincible. With a lower-velocity impact, the tail has a better chance at surviving. AA77 was higher-velocity than AA477 by a factor of 4. Kinetic energy goes with velocity squared, so it had 16 times more energy (controlling for mass) than AA477. Don't expect the crashes to be identical.

Can someone explain how the forming-a-government part works?