A rational person is more concerned around a trained tiger than a house-cat, despite both having the same capricious-but-usually-peaceful temperament. A rational person considers not only the temperament of the animal, but also the damage it could do. Numerous grown adults have been killed by pitbulls. Dachshunds? Not so much.
I think you understand this, but are pretending not to. Let me tell you, feigned ignorance is not persuasive.
Some of the shootings of dogs are justified, others are not. It depends on the dog and the circumstance, but of course every dog owner will claim their dog was a loveable puppy after the fact.
I am expected to uncritically believe the owners, to believe that all these dogs are harmless and well trained and that they're all being shot for no reason. Well I believe that some of them are being shot for no good reason, but I've seen very little to suggest that most are. And from my interactions with the general public, I am inclined to believe most dogs are, if not dangerous, then at least poorly trained.
Better to run and look like a coward than to get bit. Looking like a coward in front of a stranger costs you nothing. Misjudging a dog and getting bit can cost you disfigurement or death. You know your dogs; the appliance installer doesn't.
Also, I think it says something about the temperament and worldview of the owners of these dogs that they so often seem very concerned with appearing brave or cowardly.
Yes, and the dachshund is actually the barker and the biter. The installers didn't seem concerned with him.
"worldview of the owners of these dogs": What kind of dogs? Dachshunds? Pits? Labs? In the my experience, "these dogs" is a bit of a code phrase, similar to when politicians have said "you people". As for my worldview, I am opposed to stereotypes and discrimination and do my best to consistent in that.
Another point: bragging about how bitey your dachshund is, as though that vindicates your poorly behaved pitbull, really makes me think you shouldn't own dogs. Why didn't you train your dachshund well? I have met well behaved dachshunds, so what is your excuse? Do violent and poorly trained police justify your violent and poorly trained dogs? Is that what you're trying to say?
No, I'm checking stereotypes. Dachshunds are one of the most aggressive breeds and are well known for their stubbornness. Kudos for anyone able to train them to be well behaved (and ditto for well-trained police)
My dog is a pit-lab mix, but it's telling what you refer to her as. And I'm not sure where you're getting "poorly behaved"; she was literally trying to play with someone in her house. The fact that she wasn't barking or biting the guy should be a telling signal of how well trained and behaved she is, I would think. In other words: the "violent and poorly trained dog" was the one the installer ignored, but the well behaved dog was the one he was afraid of.
There is "suicide by cop". Police don't kill people outside of their official orders (ideally), which are given by politics/law - ofc. you can debate these... and there are electric tasers for example to avoid that police has to shoot.
The premise of bloodsports appeals to dirtbags, who buy these sort of dogs and neglect to train them at best (or very often, train them to be vicious.)
Probably 664 is what they had available, or what their calculated geometry called for. It seems silly to speculate that they could have or should have gone for 666 but deliberately chose not to. If that were the case, why not 665 or 667? Is there any reason to think 666 would have been a more appropriate number?
Having seen photographs of the “diabolical chandelier” I expected 664 to be a centred cubic number, but it isn’t. That leaves me somewhat perplexed as to how they actually arranged the geometry of the fissile material.
No one talks about it? China inventing paper, printing and gunpowder is something every school child knows. I think I've heard about it about a million times. These facts are common knowledge; certainly paper and gunpowder.
Printing is an odd example; the reason Gutenberg was influential is not the reason most people think. He did not invent movable type. He invented systems for mass producing movable type, particularly technology for casting type blocks out of metal, instead of carving them out of wood. So yes, movable type was invented in China. But no, Gutenberg's contribution was not "stealing from the Chinese" (as has become popular to claim on the internet these days...) The root of this particular misconception is the general public's general ignorance of printing technology.
Nitpick: Paper is different to papyrus and was much more important because you don’t need reeds to make it, which Egypt had a monopoly of. After the Roman Empire collapsed no-one could get papyrus and had to use parchment which was super expensive and resulted in most people becoming illiterate because they could’t afford writing / reading material (the dark ages)
Then paper came along (from China) and made it cheap again.
When I was in elementary school I made paper out of cut up blue jeans and learned that it was invented in China. I also learned that the Egyptians invented papyrus, which was similar to paper but shittier. Recalling it now, I also remember that I grew up in a paper mill town.. so maybe my school placed an unusually strong emphasis on paper. Still, I don't think China inventing paper is esoteric knowledge in America.
I can't remember when I first heard that China invented wooden movable type, but I do recall reading about it a whole lot online in discussions quite like this one.
Why do you need to mass produce moveable type? Don’t you just need one of each letter? Or in the context of Chinese: one for each stroke (so perhaps a simpler problem).
Count the number of letters on any single newspaper page: You need a whole bunch of each letter. Also, AIUI, they wear out with use, so you need a steady supply of fresh new ones.
Forgive me if I'm missing your joke, but most of the American public did think that way. Most of the American public was against war until Japan attacked America. And responding to an attack is not what I would call being "world police". Nor is going to war with Germany after Germany declared war on America.
This is why America entered the war so late. If America were thinking of itself as world police at the time, why did it take America so long to actually go to war?
Wind will never not be a problem for airships. At best, modern weather radars and forecasting might allow airships to avoid storms better than their early 20th century counterparts did.
Incidentally, a lot of casual airship fans pin hopes on helium instead of hydrogen to keep airships safe. But the deadliest airship disaster in history was a helium airship, the USS Akron, which was destroyed by bad weather killing 73 of the 76 aboard.
> "might allow airships to avoid storms better than their early 20th century counterparts did"
Not sure they wanted to; from [1]: "To maintain altitude, Hindenburg would brush against clouds and collect rainwater in gutters that fed the ballast tanks. If we passed through a shower every few hours there was no need to release gas. There were occasions when no rain was available, but we were rarely far from a suitable shower."
>the deadliest airship disaster in history was a helium airship
I think that may be a misleading way to put it.
"Most casualties had been caused by drowning and hypothermia, since the crew had not been issued life jackets, and there had not been time to deploy the single life raft"
When a large airplane enters heavy turbulence, stalls and falls into the sea, I don't think that would be the usual scenario.
I don't think that is misleading; a storm downed the airship, resulting in nearly all the crew dying. That they didn't die on impact doesn't change things. If a torpedo sank a ship and most of the crew died from exposure in the water rather than the explosion (USS Indianapolis), you'd not say that torpedoes aren't a major threat to ships.
Another comment elsewhere in this discussion says that airships stalled for fear of another Hindenberg. 'Fear' suggests some measure of irrationality, as though the Hindenberg were a one-off accident. The reality is these things were crashing all the time. People had ample reason to rationally expect airships would continue to crash.
> "But the deadliest airship disaster in history was a helium airship, the USS Akron, which was destroyed by bad weather killing 73 of the 76 aboard."
Worse than that in fate's sense of irony, after the Hindenburg disaster the US authorities banned Hydrogen as a lifting gas and built the USS Shenandoah as a Helium airship. When a Hydrogen airship of that era flew too high it had valves at the top to vent Hydrogen to the atmosphere and reduce buoyancy, but Helium was 50x-100x more expensive and the Sheandoah had its valves sealed so the crew couldn't waste any of it. It hit a turbulent updraft, rose so high the gas pressure in the balloons was past spec, and this is suspected to have contributed to it breaking up and crashing, killing 14 people.
I think you understand this, but are pretending not to. Let me tell you, feigned ignorance is not persuasive.