Free Republic

Been once. Love Edinburgh. It's awesome in the fall, awesome in summer, but the one time I went in August, the Festival, the Fringe, the Tattoo. It's like carnival, but colder. Love the city, the people, the beer, the American food at the International food festival at three sisters. Colgate. Much fun. The Tattoo is shockingly cool. Papers, drums, and a smattering of performers from the Commonwealth. Steel drums from T&T, zulu dancers, Maori from NZ (love Kiwis). One Service is honored each year and the show is always cool. Saw Royal Marine Commandos put on an impressive display. Show started out a bit hokey with a living museum type display, then blacked out as they staged a mock assault under green lights with sniper teams on the stair two seats from me, rubber boat insertion, took out sentries, and “blew the enemy camp” with a firework. It's cools. Ends with a one two punch of the massed pipes and drums, and the lone piper in the castle walls lit by torches.

Also been to Edinburgh on a Tuesday in October (or some random time) and met great folks. Also, London, Cardiff, Swansea...some towns in Devon. UK has amazing people. If you can go, you should, and meet locals, and do local things.

I'd love to see the US, UK, Australia and Canada form the largest, most prosperous and greatest alliance the world have ever seen...again. In UK, Americans can really feel at home.

I have a young child, a relative with autism and a wife with a Masters in Public Heath. Just before my child was born, we talked to a few pediatricians to decide who we wanted to use. One thing we asked was about spacing out vaccines.

The doctor we ended up with said, “ok, if you said you were opposed to vaccinations, I’d tell you I’m not the right doctor for you. If you just want to space the vaccinations out, I’ve done that before. Here’s the deal. I need to social order the single vaccine shots, so you pay more. As a doctor, I can tell you that immunity comes from you body recognizing specific proteins on viruses, and vaccines are designed to introduce th proteins that confer immunity without triggering reactions, and its a lot less of a shock to you system to get multiple vaccines than it is to get sick with a live virus. As someone whose done this before, I can tell you what happens every time. Instead of having to come every six months, you are here every month, and after your second visit carrying out a screaming child, you’ll tell me to just give all the shots at once”.

He’s our doctor. Recently, our schools started requiring a chickenpox shot before you turn 6, and the school said our five year old couldn’t start the year without the shot. That same doctor called the school to tell them why he wasn’t giving the shot until whatever point, and that they were misinterpreting the rules. School agreed. So he’s a doctor who at least thinks about these things.

My honest belief is that the shots don’t cause autism. I’ve heard of a seizure disorder being triggered by fevers, including a fever caused by a vaccine, bit those kids would have developed the condition the first time they got sick anyway.

The risk of anything serious from modern vaccines is very small (smallpox used to have a solid risk of nasty side effects, and was literally fatal 1 in a million times). However the risk from measles, mumps, polio, even whooping cough and shingles, is enough to warrant that vanishingly small risk of a serious side effect in nearly every case (except where there’s an underlying medical problem, where you just hope enough other people are vaccinated that the disease doesn’t reach them).

That is the way I’d read it. Although you might also be seeing an erosion of retirement (how many private sector pensions are there). And the the 20-25’s have taken a hit.

Overall, it’s not a pretty picture.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the headline unemployment rate. They also report a few flavors of Labor participation data, including the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate. That rate is basically what you are talking about, and the number aren’t pretty. If that rate isn’t exactly what you want, there are a dozen other variants.

The numbers are reported, generally pretty good, and mostly ignored by media and the public. Go to BLS.gov

Mostly agree. The GIN took what seven people in two cars into custody. One was reportedly injured, and they killed the guy who drove off from the stop, tried to run a roadblock, nearly killed a cop while driving around the roadblock.(It’s not a good roadblock, but he looked like he was going to ram it, and the cop was scrambling to get away). At th point he got out out of the truck, from the camera footage, I can’t tell what’s going on, but the rhetoric, the guns, and running would have made the cops very worried about this turning violent, and the guy was not unambiguously surrendering. He was a big part of making this more dangerous than it needed to be. I wish he didn’t get killed, but I’m glad it wasn’t worse.

These guy took over a federal office, and used guns and violent rhetoric to try and scare the police away. That’s a dangerous game. I the Bundy Ranch incident is about the only case of that actually working. Governments have a monopoly on the legitimacy use of force in their boarders. You challenge them at your perill. I agree that people in our government could respect member of the public more, and vice versa, but these guys brought themselves a lot of trouble, and proof that the feds weren’t there to execute those protesters is that all the leaders in the first truck were taken into custody unharmed.

Roadblock wasn’t set up or conducted very well. Watch him go off the road. I think he hit one of the cops.

I know there’s backstory, but it’s still pretty universal...don’t run from the police, don’t wave guns around at the police, don’t charge or drive at the police. Let the lawyers fight about it.

The armed standoff, the guns, the talk, I’m glad it didn’t end worse.

I still think he hit a cop, and since we aren’t hearing about it, I think the guy must be ok. He might have had a different take on how dangerous the driver was.

How much for the extra insurance so you don’t pay for damage?

There's been some fringe science saying that, due to scarcity, we'd have to eat bugs in the future, for protein. Honestly, bugs aren't bad. I've eaten them in survival school, camping with folks cause I was trying to be tough, with some other folks to try to be cool, and because they were available and sort or a local thing.

Here's the deal...grasshopper legs will get caught In your teeth. Cheese flavors makes it worse. Grasshoppers smoked with salt and lime are actually pretty good...like if if could have them over potato chips, I would cause they taste better and if cooked are better for you. I don't want to eat live bugs, grubs, or whatever. Some can have parasites, but anything moving is weird. If they are cooked, they aren't bad tasting at all. Except some ants. Some ants are bad, because they have some acid or something in their body. Other ants go great with chocolate.

I’m pro 2nd Amendment, and when I’m on the jury of someone who’s defense is they were carrying around an oil filter in case they wanted to clean their PPK without getting solvent on their tux, I’m voting to convict, but giving an B+ for effort.

I sort of would like to hear why you want to filter your used solvent, but...it’s just all around bad.

But you are all roughly stationary in relation to me. Just saying.

You might be right that this is legit. My understanding is nonpaper is industry jargon in international diplomacy for a talking points, a draft agreement, or something else that doesn’t include classified data, but isn’t marked to show attribution to the county that produced it. What’s on the page isn’t confidential, but that the US offered what’s on the page might be.

A piece of paper that says “the king of country x is a crook” isn’t confidential (scrawled on a napkin, for example). But, but on some official letterhead, you might want to control the piece of paper. Substitute “a crook” for “accepted a 100,000 dollar bribe one June 4th in a parking garage” might be classified, because it includes details obtained from surveillance or a spy. “ Nonpaper” means it’s non-secret info not tracable to the government who wrote it, to be used in diplomatic meetings.

This email might very well be completely legit. A fax that included the opinion of the US govt might be confidential. A no paper stating the same position, but not traceable or attributable to the US govt, is fine.

To hunt today’s super animals like the flying squirrel or the electric eel.

ISIS = Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “State” implies they have legitimacy as a government. Supposedly, Daesh (Die-esh) would be an acronym of their Arabic name, if acronyms were used in the Arabic speaking world. So it doesn’t make sense in Arabic, but it sounds like the word for “one who imposes their will on others” or “something that trample”. Some published reports say that they hate the name, and threaten to cut our the tongues of people using it. So, it’s not what they want to be called.

Book and show have different endings. Plots were a little different too. Just finished the show. Liked it very much, but found it unsettling. A few “good guys”, but wow...different feel from almost everything else. I read that the author basically used random chance ( the I Ching) to decide what happened to characters.

There has to be a second season. This show was good enough to turn Amazon into a “TV Network”

Once the “genie was out of the bottle”, Russia at least was going to develop nukes. One of the more dangerous scenarios is one where only one country has nukes. Then they can hang the threat of a nuke over your head, and there’s basically nothing you can do, but call their bluff.

Eventually, people figured out that nukes can neutralize conventional threats either militarily (if West Germany got over run by Soviet tanks, we could start nuking the tanks), or politically (invade my country and I nuke your cities).

Right no, we basically have them so that we are even in strength to Russia and China. France and UK have them to buy admission to th UN Security Council and meeting on European Security (for a while you “didn’t have a real 20th Century military” if you didn’t have nukes).

India has them as a check on China (from way back). Pakistan has them because India has them.

If Israel has them, it to keep their neighbors out of Tel Aviv. Iraq wanted to pretend to have them to keep Iran out. Iran probably wanted them to buy admission into the “major powers club”, but many just because Saudi Arabia doesn’t have them. Post-2002, Iran knows that having nukes would keep us out.

“Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to condemn”

It not an uncommon law. A few other State’s only issue liquor licenses to a natural persons (not corporations).

Legally, we still treat a lot of alcohol businesses like hazardous waste recycler. It’s left over from prohibition, and in some States, enabled by the established businesses that don’t want to compete.

I don’t think the Kurds have the size or resources to beat ISIS, and I don’t think Turkey is going to reach very far past their borders. I think we need them both, and I don’t think they are going to work together.

The Kurds have been on our side a couple times, at least since ‘91. Things never seem to work well for them.

Season 1 was awesome. Season 2 was OK until midway, and now it’s getting good. Both started off slow, and I think people are forgetting that. I got high hopes for the end of this season.

Both are dark, filled with messed up people. It’s sort of an optimistic view of what broken people can do. You gotta be able to feel it.

I’m with you, Cal. Business between SEALs or special ops types, I don’t know. I trust the to take care and look out for their own, and I’d have trouble thinking they jeopardize eachothers trust.

But people here,guy’s an American solider, and a SEAL to boot meaning he is isn’t skating through some light duty looking for HI Bill, but instead he volunteered for high risk stuff, and people want bad mouth him over his sexuality.

Just thank the guy for his service. Not too many people volunteer to fight face-to-face against 10 to 1 odds for their country. Those who do are better men than me.

I recently watch a relative with untreatable brain cancer waste away in a hospital (mostly the ICU) for months while they cut organs out, treated infections, saved him from a heart attack, and kept him breathing so everyone could visit to see whether he remembered them or knew where he was each day. The days he knew he what was going on were the worst. I can't guess what his care cost, but it was probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There's something to be said for dying from a massive heart attack while riding your bike.

If my doctor said, I keep in alive and bed ridden for the next few weeks, but it will mean feeding tube, and ventilator, and probably a couple of surgeries, plus it will cost the taxpayers a $100k, I'd probably ask what my other options are.