An Orlando company is attempting to market “intelligent guns” that will tell the wielder if the gun is pointed at a “good guy” or a bad guy. A device mounted on the gun appears to act as a sort of IFF device.
Not only are the guns supposedly able to tell the difference between a school shooter and an armed teacher, the guns will be locked in a safe that can be released by school officials via WiFi. Just wait until some kid hacks the system and gets a gun that identifies him as a good guy.
Read this letter, filled with leftist talking points, to see what your college tuition and tax dollars are paying for. Then you will know why Gainesville was one of the blue areas in Florida’s last election cycle.
Man giving out $20 bills at Waffle House is shot and killed by a man angry that the victim didn’t give the shooter’s girlfriend $20.
On a recent post about taxes, irontomflint left this comment:
Taxes will be fair when everyone pays the same rate- no deductions, no pro-rating systems. You earn a dollar, you pay the rate. The business earns a billion dollars, it pays the same rate. If you or a business loses money, too bad, you learn from your mistakes and move on. You want to advertise or have children, why should the rest of the country subsidize you? That comes from yoour own profits. You want to take a risky chance? Fine, but why should anyone else be forced help you along? THAT’S when taxes will be fair
There are more than a few problems with this statement. Let’s look at the problems one at a time:
1 According to this comment, businesses cannot deduct expenses before calculating profit. In other words, they will be taxed on gross receipts, not on profit. Advertising and other expenses could not be deducted. A car dealer would sell a car, but cannot deduct the cost of acquiring the car, advertising the car, the pay of the staff, or the cost of the car lot and building. They would be responsible for paying income tax on the entire price of the car. If they lose money, “too bad.” The truck transporting the car from the factory to the dealer could not deduct expenses, nor could the factory, the parts supplier, and everyone else in the supply chain. This would be an incentive for companies to move manufacturing jobs overseas to avoid the taxes, and raise prices drastically for the rest of costs.
2 If this were to come to pass, the rich would pay the same tax rate as the poor. Either my taxes would massively fall, or the tax on the poor would greatly increase. This would likely cause shenanigans like a universal 40% income tax rate with a massive welfare program to return money to the poor.
Whoever irontomflint is, he doesn’t know squat about economics.
Roller coasters are a fun way for people to experience the adrenaline rush that so many people crave. They are precisely engineered to thrill riders without causing them injury. In order to accomplish this and remain safe, they are engineered to safely handle the majority of riders. This means that there are height and weight restrictions. People who fall outside of those norms will have issues being properly restrained by the ride’s safety systems. This is why amputees are sometimes told they cannot ride, because the lack of limbs can cause them to fall out of roller coasters.
So we have amputees complaining that they should be able to ride roller coasters, while claiming that their rights under the ADA are being violated, and also complaining that they get injured when the ride isn’t able to protect them. You can’t expect the kids who staff these rides to be able to judge the ability to ride on a case by case basis- they aren’t engineers or doctors.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I keep getting told that my “hobby” of being a gun owner means that I am responsible for every person killed by a gun wielding criminal because I won’t support making guns illegal.
Let me illustrate why that is nonsense: Your support of illegal immigration means that you are now responsible for the 14 year old that the illegal immigrant without a driver’s license ran over in Florida.
Ted Cruz caves on gun control and supports red flag laws. This is becoming a trend, and as I have been saying for years, just because the Democrats are your enemy doesn’t mean that the Republicans are your friend.
We are getting more gun control with the Republicans running the show than we did when the Democrats were in power.
On social media, a post from a firearms page:
students perform better in private, charter and home schools. Government doesn’t know how to educate as is evidenced by 40 years of flat performance on test scores even though we throw more and more money at it. Now the public education system has become a soapbox for liberals to brainwash rather than educate. Critical thinking is not taught and even discouraged. The system still employees the old industrial model from the turn of the last century to teach. Innovation is discouraged in our public education system. The solution proposed by teachers and the union? Less competition and choice as is diverts resources. More money. That’s not self serving at all!
Much like anti gunners who talk about clips and firing in “full semiautomatic,” giving opinions on things while demonstrating your lack of knowledge makes you look dumb. The issues are not nearly as cut and dried as the writer suggests. Let me explain:
1 The reason why private and charter school students do better on standardized tests is simple: the schools get rid of under performing students. To use Florida as an example, students who are enrolled in a charter high school MUST graduate in 4 years. If they fail to do so, they are forever barred from attending high school. Once they begin to fail classes, charter schools convince these students that their future would be better in public school, where they are permitted for more than 4 years. (In some cases until 21 years old.) Public schools are forced by law to admit any and all students who wish to enroll, because the US Supreme Court has ruled that everyone has the right to a “free and appropriate public education.”
2 Home schooled students do better for almost the same reason. Students and their parents who do well in being motivated to teach and learn at home take the tests, students who are not very motivated either drop out entirely, or return to public school.
So basically, all of the troublemakers and unmotivated students are pushed to public schools, while the better (on average) students are found in charter, private, and home schools.
3 More money is not really fixing the problem, because the schools are not really where the problem lies. More than half of my students are chronically absent (meaning that they miss more than 20% of the school year.) About ten percent of my students have missed more than a third of the school days, and more than one of them has missed HALF of the school days. You cannot teach a child who isn’t there.
4 Teachers, in my experience, are not overwhelmingly liberal. It seems to me that we have the same sort of mix as the community in general. I teach in a rural school, and we have a few liberals, a few conservatives, and a bunch that are either moderate or keep their opinions to themselves.
5 We TRY to teach critical thinking. We all do. The kids won’t think. All they want to do is use their smartphones to get the answers, and then do something else. Usually play video games. In fact, standardized tests try to get the students to use the knowledge gained in the course to draw conclusions. (Called DQ4 questions)
6 The claim that education has not changed is patently false. There are plenty of differences in how school is being taught. This is where the complaints about common core have come from. I have already posted about how the common core complaints are mostly wrong. I did a similar post about common core for science.
I have students who barely get a C in high school biology who say they want to be a doctor. Students who have failed algebra claim that they want to be engineers.
I agree that we need to stop throwing good money after bad. We waste a lot of time and effort on trying educate kids who don’t want to learn, and on students with disabilities that prevent them from ever being more than simple manual laborers. There should be an exam at the end of the year when a student turns 15. Those who excel at a high level go to a college prep high school, students who show aptitude for it go to vocational school, students who fail are done and can go get a job.
Just try selling that idea to the public, though.
People seem to think that fistfights are harmless. Probably because of Hollywood. It seems that nearly every television show includes people suffering no ill effects from being knocked out after being punched, but that is false. Even ten year old children can hit hard enough to kill.
A Sheriff’s deputy in Brevard county, Florida was injured when he shot himself in the leg. My money says that he was reholstering with his finger still on the trigger.