Thompson, did you miss this?

I never claimed that I didn't make typographic errors.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Cursitor Doom's diagnostic criteria for "hopeless nutcase" would include pretty much everybody who posts here, since we all make minor errors of action when posting text.

There is rather more persuasive evidence for writing off Cursitor Doom as a hopeless nutcase, but I'd be preaching to the choir if I went into it - he has been posting it here for years.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

a real thing, and AFAICT a Damn Good Thing.

it.

And where would you find anyone like that?

Modern socialist states like Sweden and Germany collects a larger proportio n of the GDP in taxes than the US government does, but they do seem to spen d the money more wisely.

Neither Sweden or Germany seems to restrict individual freedom any more tha n the US does. In so far as properly funded universal education allows more social mobility in Sweden and Germany than in the USA, both of them offer most individuals rather more possibilities than the decidedly inadequate sy stem on offer in the US.

In the US, wealth is more heritable than height.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Try this

The graph of interest is Figure 5 on page 30 (out of 74).

I had thought that this was common knowledge, since it formed the basis for the campaign that prompted the regulations that stopped oil companies from raising the octane number of gasoline by dosing it with tetraethyl lead.

Probably happened to late for you. I grew up in Tasmania where the population density is low and so I seem to have evaded the worst of it.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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Jim doesn't seem to have heard about this either. No surprise that Jim is a s ignorant as John Fields, but the fuss about lead in the environment is re cent enough that Jim should have lived through it, and he should have been bright enough to understand what got into the media. Maybe the Arizona medi a were selective about reporting it. The oil companies didn't much like hav ing to stop adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

It's a popular mistake, and kills kids regularly. My uncle started his medical career as a country GP and didn't like telling parents that their kid wasn't going to make it. He had to do it more often than he liked.

Of course not. But your judgement doesn't look all that sound and your parents were worse.

How many of the other Boy Scouts ended up injured by the psychopathic elements?

Hitting something as small a human being with a bow an arrow at 100 years isn't easy. Competitive archery uses the York Round - with targets at 60, 80 and 100 yards.

Scouts tend not to train up to competition standards.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

I played field hockey until I was 69 (when I left the Netherlands and my hockey team). A hockey stick trumps a tineless Spork any day.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

ore 18.

dical career as a country GP and didn't like telling parents that their kid wasn't going to make it. He had to do it more often than he liked.

When I was young all my friends had been taught how to handle guns. And we all grew up with no gun related accidents. I think I was about 5 when my dad bought a pellet gun and taught me how to shoot. When I was about 9 my father bought me a .22 rifle, And when I was 12, I got a 20 gauge shotgun. I just gave my grandson, who is 16, a 12 gauge shotgun.

You can not just give a gun to a kid, but you can teach most kids how to ha ndle a gun safely and then give them a gun. And you can know that there are some kids whom you should not give a gun to. Same applies to cars, but th ere are a lot more deaths from kids having cars.

Dan

efore 18.

medical career as a country GP and didn't like telling parents that their k id wasn't going to make it. He had to do it more often than he liked.

we all grew up with no gun related accidents.

Lucky.

o shoot. When I was about 9 my father bought me a .22 rifle, And when I wa s 12, I got a 20 gauge shotgun. I just gave my grandson, who is 16, a 12 g auge shotgun.

handle a gun safely and then give them a gun. And you can know that there a re some kids whom you should not give a gun to. Same applies to cars, but there are a lot more deaths from kids having cars.

One of our neighbours didn't do as well. He was sixteen when he took his 22

-gauge rifle out shoot a few possums, and managed to shoot himself instead

- entirely accidentally, but he wasn't any less dead because it was an acci dent. I was a bit younger than 16 at the time, but the memory stays with me .

Another neighbour was deliberately shot dead by a couple of kids he surpris ed robbing his fishing shack, but that's another kind of problem (which did n't come up all that often).

About half the kids I knew at boarding school were from farming families, a nd they lost more relatives from gun accidents than from tractors rolling o ver.

Bill Sloman, Sydney

It was not luck. It was taking the time to teach kids about firearms. There is a difference between luck and planning.

Dan

here is a difference between luck and planning.

No amount of planning makes it safe to give kids firearms.

You can train them within an inch of their lives, and make doing the right thing pretty much automatic, but they are still kids, and prone to lapses of attention.

Giving adults firearms if they don't actually need them is another bad idea .

In the US people keep them around the house for "security" but the person m ost likely to be killed by any gun you own is you, and most likely by suici de.

It's really not a cost-effective habit, but pointing this out around here g enerates a lot of nonsense about a well-regulate militia (which you haven't got anywhere) being an essential protection against the tyranny of an over

-powerful central government. The top 1% of your income distribution has co llected pretty much all the growth of the Us economy over that last thirty odd years, and loads of guns around the house doesn't seem to have prevente d that.

Other countries, with a more sensible attitude to gun control (and slightly less antiquated constitutions) haven't ended up as plutocratic oligachies.

Isn't it time you thought it out again?

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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That happens from time to time in Sydney. Generally it isn't the people who start the fights who end up dead. The local term is "king hit", and the fa ll and the consequent impact of the head on the pavement is usually what k ills the victim, rather than the punch itself.

Cutting back drinking hours - 1.30am lockouts and 3am last drinks at bars, pubs and clubs in the Sydney central business district - helped a lot.

The local hospital has a lot less head injuries to cope with.

That's what happened quite a bit in Sydney.

The local legal system doesn't like "king-hitters", and has put quite a few of them away for manslaughter. Pleading a political motivation probably wo uldn't help - nobody seems to have done so, so defense lawyers are probably discouraging their clients from putting that forward as a provocation.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Thursday, March 2, 2017 at 9:46:32 AM UTC-5, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrot

I did think it out again and came to the same conclusion. You have a mental problem.

Dan

Slowman is speaking from personal experience. He constantly stabs himself with kitchen knives and can't fathom anyone actually thinking that it might be dangerous.

Not bad at all. A friend and I once bought a pair of (execrable) Raven .2

5 automatics for plinking. We took them and some gallon jugs of water out t o a (then uninhabited, now covered with condos) patch of desert around Foun tain Hills, and having misread the instructions, set the target distance at 15 *yards* rather than 15 *feet*. We killed them jugs dead.

Those pathetic little pistols (not quite 2" of barrel) are surprisingly a ccurate at that distance if you have a steady hand. I don't think they even sell them any more.

Sadly, no pics. Nobody had camera phones back then.

I once "fired" a found .30 rifle bullet wedged into some rocks at more th an 50 yards by hitting the primer using a yard-sale .22 rifle. I cheated th ough- it came with a cheapo scope.

RD is no fun at all. I woke up Christmas eve morning last year with a big dark red blob covering most of my right eye's field of view. After several rounds of eye exams they decided I'd popped a tiny blood vessel inside my eye and the retina had been pushed away from the back of the eyeball.

The surgery was "interesting". They knocked me out and pumped a bunch of lidocaine behind the eyeball to immobilize and blind it, then woke me up, g ave me some "I don't care" meds and proceeded to poke tiny holes for the to ols. Lying there listening to the surgeon and the team was entertaining, bu t the damn O2 catheter kept falling out of my nose.

The worst part was having to keep my head pointed down for three weeks af terward to keep the retina from detaching again as the laser spot welds hea led. Ten minutes per hour to put eyedrops in, then back to killing my neck muscles.

Vision's mostly clear now except for the ever-shrinking bubble and some m issing peripheral vision, but there's a slight pucker in the center (most i mportant part) of my field of vision now. Docs say it may or may not go awa y.

I'm naturally right-eyed but I can switch if I have to.

Oh, well. Life's not so bad, considering the alternative. At least I'm no t bumping into furniture and the dogs so much now that I have depth percept ion again.

Mark L. Fergerson

yes far too dangerous, keep kids wrapped in bubble wrap and locked up in the basement until they turn 18, then no kids will get hurt

It's called scepticism. Most people who don't have it find it to be a mental problem in people who do - the sceptics keep on disagreeing with observations made by the gullible, which is obviously anti-social.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Guns get through bubble wrap. Broken bones heal, but gun-shot wounds go deeper, and are fatal rather too frequently for comfort.

Cricket and field hockey both kill people - but not that often.

Rugby football breaks kids necks - two of my five nephews have suffered that, though the spinal cord survived in both cases - so I don't think much of that either.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

I've got two scars on my hands. One was produced by a Stanley knife when I was about twelve, and the other by a 25mm wood chisel (which I've still got and use from time to time) when I was in my thirties. Nothing since then.

There are two scars on my face (of comparable length), both produced by the unintended impact of a hockey stick. I was in my late twenties when the second one happened, and kept on playing field hockey until I was 65 without further injury.

Krw's imagination is as lame as the rest of his thinking.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney