tvp45

There were, during the Constitutional Convention, at least two attempts (the stronger, I think, by Pennsylvania) to have the second amendment explicitly refer to individual rights to possess and use guns for self-defense and hunting. Many gun owners, me included, have wished those attempts had succeeded. This reinterpretation of the Constitution by a surprisingly activist Supreme Court achieves much the same result. It will have an enormous impact in those cities where gun laws are particularly strict (e.g., New York) and in those states where gun rights organizations are pushing for open carry (for those who don't know, this amounts to carrying a visible, holstered handgun, much as police do. It will also fuel the debate about allowing firearms into the National Parks. It will be interesting to watch follow-up cases.

In practice, it was seldom armed very well. You may know that, at the onset of the American Civil War, many VA militia units could not be mustered into service for lack of any type of standardized arms, even Brown Besses. There is a diary entry which I will try to find from perhaps the 1820s in which a young man describes how most of the men are armed only with cornstalks at the yearly regimental muster. Apart from the unpleasantness with the British and the Madison housewarming, the militia was not much used save for local alarms. Their principal duties were road repairs.

Oops. I never said I could type. Try again http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/hist/freeatlast/timeline/standard/schools/?source=2 Not so much flexing in a soldier's role as in a citizen's role. That's the point in understanding the wording - the militia and the citizens were one and the same (sorry, but women weren't real citizens yet).

That's not the picture I had in mind. Here's a link to a somewhat bad copy http://www.bbc.co.uk/.../standard/schools/?source=2 The airborne troops in this picture are bearing arms. This collective aggressive posture is what, for example, free Blacks could not do. This is the county right - to use organized armed men to enforce peace and safety - that was possessed and prized by the 1789 citizens on the Virginia frontier. For the individual, this was a duty, similar to jury duty in that it was also a sign of a free man, but nonetheless a duty. It should be noted that, in the pursuit of short answers, I am glossing over about 5% of the truth since the practice of having militia units led to all kinds of exceptions, special cases, and simple ignorance of the law.

If you've ever seen the pictures of the 101st Airborne standing outside Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, that is bearing arms as understood in 1789 Virginia. It requires a long explanation of the form of government, and how militia fit into that, to fully explain. If you're interested, I'll post that later. The differences are quite subtle in today's world and stem in part from the English Civil War (the one with Charles I and Cromwell, etc). It was literally a mark of free citizenship; all white male adults, save magistrates and Episcopalian ministers, were in the militia, though disabled veterans, idiots, etc were "excused". It helps a bit to know that militia rolls, county tax lists, and voting lists were the same.

The second amendment does appear strange when you read it in today's context. If you look at it in light of Virginia militia laws as they existed in 1789, it just about clears up however (that last comma is still weird and doesn't appear in all copies). Madison, Henry, Mason, and Jefferson were informed by the Virginia laws which made bearing arms a collective duty rather than an individual right. I believe Pennsylvania law was similar but I have no expertise in PA and am only supposing. Free Blacks, untaxed Indians (no, I'm not making that class up!), and women were barred from bearing arms, but could own and use guns. Interestingly enough, it was common for the Virginia militia to perform their yearly drill with cornstalks since many of them owned no suitable firearm. That appears to have been a cultural difference,and is in sharp contrast to western Pennsylvania militia where most did own suitable arms. I am a strong advocate of the right to own guns, but find protection (if I need it) in the 9th and 10th Amendments, which bar the government from messin' with my business when it has no reason to do so.

It helps to be a complete idiot like me. Do not wash your hands for several hours. Remove any rings. Do it fast. NASA lost a couple of guys to that in the early 70s. Everybody installed oxygen monitors real quickly.

But do edit the footage of the White ushers frisking him and hiding the collection plates.

Don't take Texas too seriously. They aren't even aware PAC10 football is better. Seriously, that corridor is just a tollroad. We've had 'em for years back east and they're no big deal. Just wait till Texas tries to sell the road to an overseas investor (that's what the PA governor wants to do). If we ever get a North American Union, we get all those Mexican beaches and all that Canadian oil. What's not to like?

What do you know about the relationship between electric field and force due to that field? Your last question is about a difference without a distinction. It's like asking whether someone is broke or just has no money.

When you say "control", what do you mean? Do you want to create, to achieve a certain gradient, to shield, etc??

Inside an ideal Faraday cage, the electric field due to static sources outside the cage is zero. Inside a real Faraday cage, the electric field due to static outside sources will be greatly diminished, but may not be exactly zero everywhere. Building a cube and standing inside is a good idea. Just don't touch the conductor if you can help it. A grid is OK, but bars??? Bars don't sound like a good idea.

Bellbottom, Were you to look at old movies of the big N&W coal locomotives, you would find your answer. Sometimes the crank (I guess that's the right word) would be near the top dead center position at start and the engineer would give an extra shot of steam to move it off. Often the driver wheels would spin like crazy for a second. The trick was to start and stop slowly. By the same token, the maximum grade was generally under 2%; on steeper grades, there was a sandbox in front of the driver wheels to help. But, the coefficient of friction for steel on steel is fairly high. Rent the DVD Emperor of the North to see how hobos used to slow trains on grade.

No, you got it wrong. The Mayans were designing active band-pass filters and they hadn't invented parasitic capacitance yet.

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska asked the Department of Energy to look at that. Stevens is no tree-hugger and generally favors any development that will benefit Alaska. The report was released this month. Bottom line is that (using rosiest estimates) ANWR will provide perhaps 1-2% of our oil within 10 years. If OPEC does not drop production to match that (they've used that model in the past), it will lower the price of crude about $0.40 per barrel. No help for gas prices or shortages there although it does keep that much money in the American economy rather than send it to Saudi Arabia. Addendum: The report may be found at DOE Information Department.

In the short term, i.e, less than five years, there are no solutions other than incremental improvements in conservation and efficiency. The US Department of Energy has a pretty decent information service at http://www.eia.doe.gov which provides forecasts, white papers on options etc. It appears to be slightly industry oriented and, thus, optimistic; nonetheless the picture is gloomy. Additional drilling, refinery expansions, alternative fuels, etc. are all perhaps decades away and may have hidden problems (such as the recently noted cost increase in nuclear power plants due to cement cost increases and the lack of skilled labor). Europe uses about half the per capita energy as the US and enjoys a comparable standard of living. We Americans will do well to emulate some of the European practices and that may, indeed, be our only choice that has any prospect for success.

Before invading any more countries, we should perhaps listen to the "ass in the grass" guys about available force strength. http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/moaa/mo0108/

Charcoal?

Your point is spot on. Several hundred children in Pennsylvania (where I live) age out of the foster care system each year without ever finding a home. Workers in the field estimate that about a third move to homelessness or prison within a year. Most of these children wouldn't give a rat's patootie if their family were made up of trans-gendered Martians - they just want to belong somewhere.

I've spent a fair number of nights sitting in coal fired power plants, measuring flue gases as the operators ramped up for peak power. I cannot say whether the fuel consumption is perfectly linear, but I can say that the ramp-up is done by increasing the coal flow to the burners and that the pollution percentages stay approximately stable before and after. Now, coal-fired plants have a several hour hysteresis and some of that heat may indeed be lost in the process, so there may be an efficiency gain by keeping peak power around the clock. There is almost nothing to be gained from gas or oil fired furnaces. Nuclear plants should give a huge increase.

Let's suppose for the moment Tesla was framed. Why was Shallenberger not framed also? Why was Ferrari not framed? No one thinks the latter two insane; yet their work closely paralleled that of Tesla.

A modest proposal... If marriage is so very special that it requires definition and defense by the state, then I suggest a constitutional amendment that marriage be only permitted between a fertile man and woman, that divorce not be permitted under any circumstances, and that adultery be punished by death.

Is it not generally known outside of Pittsburgh that Tesla, though exceedingly brilliant, was nutty as a fruit cake? He sold most of his good patents to George Westinghouse for a pittance, but Westinghouse never took credit for them, just the profit.

Uhhh...teaching a Texas president to pronounce "nuclear".

I assume you do know that Lehmann and Reigs (Hung. J. Cult. Anthrop., XII, 1901) showed fairly convincingly that the writer of John was probably dyslexic? Under that circumstance, it is quite possible the number of the beast was 666 rather than the commonly accepted 666.