todays outrageous fact: gun silencer sales

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You guessed wrong and I couldn't care less about upset previous gun owners in Canada. They can spend the rest of their lives trying to regain their confiscated manhood, that I don't care. They shouldn't equate their manhood with something that can be confiscated because, you know... it's not manhood to begin with.

My country has an excelent constitution. We may not have guns _ and thank god for that! _ but we don't die on the street because we don't have health insurance. Just one of the many ways my country is way ahead of yours.

No personal acomplishment. That would make me uberfamous in the mathematics community. It's the omnipresent Euler identity relating the most important constants found in the fundamental disciplines of mathematics. It's only plagiarizing if you consider that saying "Carpe Diem" is plagiarizing. It's been around since the 18th century, iirc.

I don't understand how Patrice is relevant here. *shrug* He probably was pro-gun. I really can't figure out what you were trying to say...

Some users on here have beautiful people as their avatars. Some people have beautiful fictional characters, beautiful landscapes, or beautiful cats. I, personally, go for a beautiful walrus. ModusPonens trumps them all when he goes for the most beautiful thing ever.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but it has been poled among the mathematics comunity and is considered the most elegant, profound and beautiful equation in mathematics. If your criticism is that the presentation is not good, I agree.

Ah, the old manhood through guns claim.
I couldn't help but notice that you seem to be acting particularly trollish in this thread.


Wherever you live (and that might very well be in the US but you're too anti-American to claim it and pretend to be a foreigner. Seen it before, pal) it's pretty much a given that there are gun owners.
BTW, no one died on this street today because of health care.

Yeah, you guys are too busy clubbing baby seals. Using a gun would take all the fun out of it, right?



The United States did have health care for the poor before the ACA. It was done at the state level, and for good reason: The federal government already controls the military, diplomatic service, customs, and a host of other agencies. It's hard to find someone who can supervise all of them competently, and it makes it harder when we pile more responsibilities into one elected office.

How can you expect an average voter to hold their elected officials accountable when even those officials' advisors are only savvy about one two areas at best?

Splitting responsibilities into different offices was a courtesy to voters: A lot of states (like mine) hold gubernatorial elections in "off" years (in between presidential elections). That way, a voter could think about foreign policy in 2008, and local issues in 2010.

It's also ridiculous to compare the US to Canada or the UK. The state (province) of California has more people than Canada, and Texas has about 3/4 as many. The US has more than twice the population of the entire European-descended fraction of the British Commonwealth (UK, CA, AU, NZ). We're as populous as the whole EU. Individual US states are bigger than a lot of nations, and even our poorest state - Mississippi - has a higher income per person than Slovakia, which has its own national health care system.

You should really compare your national government to one of our state governments. Yes, we have some screwed-up states. So does the EU. It's easy for you to rag on us for not getting 300,000,000 people to do everything as you think they should, since your country doesn't have to worry about that. Besides, my own state has for years provided health care for the poor that matched or bested most European-style national health care systems. People on MinnesotaCare could schedule a visit whenever they wanted, often on the same day. They could pick any doctor that they wanted to. They could go to the Mayo Clinic and be treated by the same doctors who keep the world's Kings and Sultans alive - all with no deductible and no copay.

The policy that you're pushing is undemocratic and pro-war. It would make it harder for voters to keep track of what their elected officials are doing, and easier for those officials to abuse power, including the military kind. (Another thing that you don't have to worry about...)

I'm glad my english is good enough to make you think that I'm american.

Yes, there are gun owners in my country but they are few. And I like it that way. Even if one day, by some awfull bad luck, I get a gun pointed at me, I prefer it this way.

1- Read again. I'm not Canadian. Or do you think I live in Greenland?

2- What makes you think I support Obama? It's not just the republicans who were bought by corporations. The democrats were too. I'll admit, though, that the level of dishumanity of the GOP is far greater than the democrats'.

3- No, the EU has 500 000 000 people and has 3 times the population density.

4- I thought you guys supported your troops unconditionly. Apparently you are simultaneously paranoid about what they might do...

No, you don't sound nearly rugged enough to be from Greenland. If you'd said where you live, I could probably come up with something similar. I have family scattered over Europe and East Asia, and I've traveled in Central America. For every snide comment I hear about the US, I have one or two fun stories from elsewhere. Just a few examples:

In the '90s, long before "Gitmo," Austria's police used mock executions and suffocation to break civilian suspects. My uncle's apartment in Kiev was raided by off duty police officers who were working illegally as debt collectors for some loan shark. (They knocked on the wrong door. He had no debts.) Gun control wouldn't have done him much good, since the thugs were carrying their state-issued service weapons (full-auto AKs). After the Fukashima accident, Japanese doctors who were well outside of the evacuation area still fled and abandoned their patients. Really, pick a country.



When I last checked, designing a government that won't blow up in your own face wasn't a partisan goal. You still haven't given any reason to think that your state has ever been better than my state on health care. I'm willing to bet that it's worse.



My bad. But we still have 3/5 the population, and more people to insure than any individual member state (by a wide margin). That's the level at which the EU provides coverage.



Is that where you're from? In that case, add to it at least 5 times the desperation for bragging rights, since density doesn't matter for this discussion.



You'd rather that we only have one layer of protection against nuclear genocide? It would certainly be easy to arrange. We have plenty of voters here who would be stupid enough to go along with you. Or we could get rid of the nukes and go back to having frequent conventional wars. We have plenty of people here who would vote for that, too.

Last edited by NobodyKnows on 02 May 2014, 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hey, I have a crazy idea...why don't you stay where you live and like it, and we'll stay where we live and like it - and then everyone will be in a place that they like and the whole "my country is better than your country" will be completely irrelevant!

Just a thought.

Well, keep being nationalistic. Nationalism has done a lot for your country!

What's wrong with criticising each others' countries if their culture is relevant to the subject matter? You, being into "hardcore" science, should know how important criticism is.

I'm portuguese, btw. If you people bothered to go to the foreign language section of WP you would have known that right away.

I'm portuguese. Go ahead. You might come up with something I don't know. I didn't know about Austria's mock executions. Google, apparently, isn't aware of such a thing either. But go ahead.

Bet away! If the health system in your state is better than ours, that's a good thing. Nothing wrong with that. And if the Obama policies lowered the quality standards, you are right in complaining. I doubt that your system is better, though. And the problem is obviously the US as a whole, not your particular state.

Oh, you are against the abolishment of nuclear wheapons! How fun! That's excelent! But please, for the sake of your own sanity, don't ever consider a world war scenario. A scenario where an enemy would only capitulate through kamikaze style nuclear atacks. LOL! It boggles my mind how people can overlook the long term strategy in favour of the short term strategy.

If you don't have any guns, it's probably because you gave them all to Franco.. I was just down in Costa Rica talking with a gentleman from Barcelona who lived under him.



That was in a Profil (German language) magazine that was sitting around my folks house back then.



Why should a loose federation of states have a uniform healthcare system? The EU doesn't. The British Commonwealth doesn't. More than that, why should it be under control of the military branch of the government (as it is in many other countries)? The separation is useful. In any case, housing costs are worse here than health care costs, and that's despite the fact that we have lower housing costs than much of Europe, and some of the highest health care costs in the world.



You don't sound like someone who's thought much about any kind of war. They're all bad. Conventional armies have been less reliable at deterring attacks. They cost more than twice what a nuclear deterrent does. They require training a large number of your own people to kill other people, and you have to re-integrate them into civil society when they finish their service.

The US built "Little Boy" during the middle of a huge conventional war. If there were ever a big war between countries that had given up nuclear weapons, any side that was losing would start building them again. Then the other side would do it, too. (England and Germany both had poison gas stockpiles during WWII for that reason.) You would have both kinds of horror - a conventional slaughter followed by a nuclear one. Very clever.

1- Hahahahahaha! That one really made me laugh! Very, very good. You are either thinking of Salazar or you're thinking that Portugal is a province of Spain. Unfortunately, by the rest of your sentence, I'm 99% sure you're thinking Portugal is a province of Spain. LOL!

Sorry, go on.

2- I don't believe it's real. Sorry. Austria is one of the most civilized countries in the world. I find it really unlikely that what you said is true. Or, what's more likely, you're misinterpreting/exagerating an event to the point where it seems like a big scale and planned event.

3- I thought about it enough to know that any kind of tolerance towards weapons of mass destruction will be our demise as humans. As simple as that. You can rationalize all you want, but this is the bottom line: as long as we tolerate any weapon of mass destruction we are at danger of extinction.

Now in a more serious tone: it's a flawed logic, you know? If you stopped bombing other countries because of oil, or other economic interests; if you took away a huge chunk of your military expenditure and invested it in distributing food and medicine, around the poor countries in all the world, you would not only achieve global dominance in a much faster way, but an "harmonious dominanation". A cooperative and consented domination. It's called good leadership. Instead, the US sells guns to third world countries and watch them self destruct. You (and the EU to some extent) lown them money to the point of unsustainability and then they pay their debts by buying guns because it ends up being cheaper for them. You (and we, to some extent) are playing the game of the third world dictators for your preceived advantage.

That's basically the problem with unregulated capitalism. Governments are bought by the big corporations. These are not interested in long term planning _ only in short and medium term profit. So the nations end up doing what's of short/medium term advantage. But it will end up backfiring. Almost all your manufacturing is outsourced. Your education stinks, so you have to import a lot of scientists. Your media plays the game of the corporations/corrupt government complex. It's the downfall of what was once the core values of western civilization: freedom, equality, democracy and justice. And with that, the downfall of the west itself.

I am a little unclear as to what you are getting at with this particular line of thought.
Are you justifying deplorable action by saying that everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?
That does not seem like something I would expect from your posts, so I am guessing that I have misunderstood. Please clarify for me.

All the U.S. bashing is getting a little annoying so I thought I'd take a peek to see why old modus has his panties all in a bunch.

It seems old modus is only telling us half the truth about the heaven he calls Portugal. He deliberately doesn't mention, in his rant, how terrible things really are. He brags about health care but doesn't think it's important to mention how Portugal needs to beg money from the EU to pay for health care and everything else and are still broke and without proper funding this year. If I could spend money that I don't have like begging portugal does I'd give everyone a million dollars........what does that prove except that your government needs lessons in economics.

modus doesn't think it's important to tell us Portugal has the lowest per capita income in all of Western Europe. And they scream like babies because they are being forced to work an entire day (8 hours). He also doesn't mention Portugal de-criminalizing drugs like heroin, cocaine and LSD and how that may tie in to them having the highest HIV rates in Western Europe; I wonder why?

And he forgets to mention the colonies, especially in Africa, they rule. How are those working out?

"The entire Portuguese public service has been known for its mismanagement, useless redundancies, waste, excess of bureaucracy and a general lack of productivity in certain sectors, particularly in justice." (Isn't it great what you can learn from Wikipedia?) And a report from Ernst & Young observes portugal "is the most corrupt country in Western Europe."

And he doesn't note the 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants from mexico we're hosting for free with our health system, but it's easy enough find out portugal is about to be overwhelmed by immigrants from poorer local countries in the region. Let's see your story after you host a few million guests with your already bankrupt health system.

And I expect you to say: Wikipedia isn't Portugal and I'd say to you: Why don't you take time to find out the truth about others before you go flapping your gums and saying stupid and incorrect things you may regret later.........we ALL live in glass houses, buddy.

denny

You accused my country of being uncivilized, so I pointed out to you that your own country sent guns and viriatos to support a tyrant.

Juan Carlos didn't take over until 1975, so there are lots of people left who lived under Franco. Adolfo Suárez just passed away about a month ago. Your government helped to condemn all of Spain to the suffering that preceeded them.