New Mars Forums

No Catholic school. My Latin is actually rather poor, translating rather than "natively" speaking/writing and with limited vocabulary. I usually have to correct mistakes.

The Caesars would be appalled.   

How fortunate that there's a wealth of stuff already out there that can be used with minimal effort. 

And there's no such thing as a plan that can't be changed, particularly when an enemy is involved. 

Fire-breathing iguanas you say. . . Were they big or just iguana-size?

My sister used to have an iguana. Strange creature. I took care of it for awhile, feeding it a plate of whatever specific lettuce it was supposed to eat and little bits of pepper. It would flick its tounge out and eat all the peppers on that side of the plate, look at it for a moment, then reach out with one claw, rotate the plate about a quarter turn and resume eating the now-visible peppers.

It didn't like me though, refused to defecate while I was taking care of it. He let go as soon as his usual caretaker returned. Welcome home.  :?

He's dead now. No connection.

No disagreement here.

Yes! That is it precisely!

If guns are illegal, people on one side of the law won't have them. They aren't the people we need to worry about.

I don't accept the premise of your question. Criminals are already armed, they always will be, no law can do a damn thing about it. Any laws limiting weapon ownership will not apply to violent criminals who by definition don't obey laws.

So, would you rather live in a world where only criminals have weapons, or would you prefer to have a fighting chance when you wake up in the middle of the night and hear some thug rummaging around the next room?

I really hate bringing this up and I'm really not trying to be inflammatory, but if rapists and burglars had a Union they'd be lobbying for a total gun ban. There are countless cases of crimes being thwarted by the mere brandishing of a firearm and countless more where victims needlessly suffered or died because they couldn't defend themselves and the police never came. The fact that people can advocate de-clawing the average citizen in the face of vicious criminals while claiming some moral superiority is really sickening.

Again, I don't mean to be insulting. It's nothing personal. I simply strongly disagree with your interpretion on practical, legal and moral grounds.

Yes, time for the next act. Exiting stage left. 

Okay, two points.

et al.

Sure, any of those things can happen. But from where I'm sitting it seems that what you're saying is that after the bully (or criminal to follow the metaphor) makes the first offense, that the victim should do nothing to encourage him to greater offenses, which in essence and by default advocates giving in. That's totally the wrong mindset. Sometimes force can only be met with force.

Yet don't those in power always abuse that power if it's granted to them?

EDIT::
Anyway, how 'bout Jung and that atrophy of instinct? 

My apologies to Cindy for following the off-topic tangent.

Over-rated concern already addressed numerous times, perhaps most notably by Bob Zubrin in "the Case for Mars." The popular misconception of a stray bullet causing explosive decompression of a habitat just isn't true.

Under normal circumstances, it has to be investigated. However if clark is right and Mars colonists will be under constant surveillance it becomes much easier to determine.

Some already do. At any rate, the mindset of don't provoke the criminal is entirely the wrong approach to dealing with the problem.

To the first question, if in your determination your life is in danger, yes. You don't have to shoot to kill, but if that's what it takes.

I'm not opposed to non-lethal weapons for personal defense either provided they can be made as reliable as a firearm. But criminals with lethal weapons are not going away.

For the second, sure, someone could take your gun away. Any weapon you have can conceivably be used against you. There is no magical safety talisman for all situations. But if you know how to use the weapon, the odds are much higher that if it's ever used it will be to protet its owner rather than harm them.

Not until they're old enough to shoot straight and know when not to. 

And you're right, it would be an enormously bad call and leadership is required to avert that course.

But it's more than an issue of restraint. If the US suffers a nuclear attack the need for justice, vengeance, whatever you want to call it is going to be boiling over in a very large majority of the population. If not addressed it will be taken out on American Muslims at the very least. Therefore something more than mere restraint is needed.

Whether it be capturing those few responsible, getting full UN support in a massive "Fix the MidEast" campaign or merely turning one of the usual suspects into a smoking hole, the need for some "release" is needed.

So we would need either intelligence services capable of rooting out the culprits and capturing them very quickly, or leaders clever enough to divert attention to the ass-whooping of a scapegoat while those intel services try to find the real bombers.

And there's no shortage of scapegoat candidates.

Or we could really nip it in the bud, secure the borders with troops and start random ID checks of people everywhere in the country. Not supposed to be here, off to an internment camp to be shipped back home. But for a multitude of very good as well as a few silly reasons we know that won't happen.

I can't help but think of the end of Doctor Strangelove. . . We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when. . .

Remember when it was just those communist hordes we had to worry about?

The technology already exists to make components, either solid plastic or metal as well as circuit boards directly from CAD designs. Design, "print," assemble. I've seen it done. All we're looking at now is further development to make the technology viable in environments other than the industrial settings they're currently used in. No uber-tech nano-machine replicators required.

It'll do for manufacturing what the internet did for information.

You don't have to know much science to assemble a nuclear weapon, it ain't that hard. You need to know even less to bribe a Russian guard that hasn't been paid in six months.

That was just unwarranted.

That said, while the article doesn't say anything new the major points are worth repeating. Mainly SECURE THE DAMN BORDER!

On a different note, I suspect that if Muslim extremists succeed in detonating multiple nuclear weapons in the US that they will unleash a fury onto the Arab world that they can barely conceive. I have little doubt that our present squeamishness and restraint would not survive such an event.

Intersting. And while I think that clark is essentially correct in his analysis, he's overlooking something.

Off-world communities will need to have a certain degree of social controls in place to function, but whether they are perceived as stifling or not is highly subjective. If a group of people all choose to live the same way there is no feeling of "control" or loss of freedom since they all do what they choose to do anyway.

So a libertarian colony could very well work if the colonists shared the same values. A fascist colony could work wonderfully if every colonist was a willing participant.

But then they breed as humans are apt to do. What guarantee do we have that the children will carry on that stability? None. However two other factors kick in. First, an increased population leads to increased infrastructure. More livable space, more resources, it could very well be that in a subjective sense perceived freedom will increase as cities develop, despite what we would see as stifling controls.

Then there is the question of technology. We're on the edge of a major shift in manufacturing. It won't be all that long before we get to a point where any individual with a few pieces of equipment will be able to make almost any tool or component they require. If you have a rover, an inflatable greenhouse, a computer and a 3d printer you can live almost anywhere on Mars for extended periods of time. Get several of these people banding together and you have fluid nomadic communities tied together by whatever traits they choose. Someone strays too far, they float off on their own for awhile. As long as no Martian Authority flys cops around the wilderness harassing them those people would in many ways have freedom beyond what is available on Earth today.

In short, any projections based solely on past experience is only partially relevant. The twin conditions of the Martian environment and mid-to-late 21st Century technology will throw much of our current thinking about such things into the trash. Not a utopia to be sure, but not just some replay of past experience either.

Srmeaney, you're essentially describing the world as it is. We may have all sorts of international agreements about not doing distasteful things, but they still get done. Pretending otherwise and feigning outrage when someone says "why not just kill him?" is silly.

America. F**k yeah. 

Indeed. Which is why for my part it's not the suggestion but the indiscretion that annoys me.