jaaska

Huh?

Finland - not in place here, and I'm against the CP... (So I chose option 4... Just trying to make sure people get the idea - looking at the poll now makes me think some might misunderstand the different options... )

The US has been trying to get their help. They've refused numerous times. Are you insinuating that we need to "pay them off" to get their help? That doesn't sound very "peace loving, let's all live together, kumbaya" to me. Hmm... I thought that Germany, France etc. would gladly help as much as needed - IF the whole thing was ran by UN. This is something US does not want to do (...and I wonder why...? ) Do you think that situation would get better/worse if the operation would be under UN mandate with international UN troops? I don't want to sound pessimistic, but I think that the road US chose is a long and rocky one... IMHO of course...

Well you just let me know when you want the US to start making laws for your country. I don't expect to hear from you soon. Just my point - there are almost 200 independent countries. Even though most of them would agree on this, there would still be haves for spammers to keep on doing their nasty "little" "work".

I hear you! Now, IMHO, I don't see how this is going to work though. The law applies to US companies on US soil only (I think) - internet does not work that way...

Hot springs? In Finland?

Amen to that!

Still a gun thread . Oh, and John, if you truly believe that "having more prisoners in America" is a good thing and it proves that "we [USA] have a relatively good police and justice system", and that "they [other countries / UK] treat their criminals with kid gloves" - well, our points of view are just so far away from each other that it's better for me to just jump out of this thread. BUT, before that... The only "countries" the prisoner numbers go as high as over there are some pretty nasty places with very corrupted governments and legal systems... Do you honestly think that all the rest of the democratic and free societies (and many not so free and democratic) are doing a bad job and should practice more stern criminal politics? Do you actually believe that having seven-fold (7!!!) numbers compared to an average western societies is a positive thing? You guys have a good time with you gun thread. I honestly thought - several times - the we could talk about something else. It was nice as long as I could take it .

I know that feeling - I swear, if I don't get my coffee "shot" in the morning, I end up doing bad things...

So, there are these two guys writing an article to a magazine or whatever. Their editor had given them some guide lines when to use this form and when some other form. "had had" -form was to be used in some exact places. For some reason the other guy (Jones) did not use "had had" -form when he was supposed to (since the editor had approved it), but used "had" -form instead... Does it make any sense now?

You owning a gun isn't going to make the prison population go down. -Kramer So, do you take it as a fixed fact, or do you think there is actually something that can be done about it? Ooopss. This was supposed to be a reply to: You're right. This place is crawling with criminals. -part

Punctuate the following so that it makes sense: (It's about the way these two people write) Smith where Jones had had had had had had had had had had had the editor's approval . . . . . . . . . Smith, where Jones had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had the editor's approval. (---> Smith had had "had had", where Jones had had "had". "Had had" had had the editor's approval.)

Yeah, well 270,000 of them are for drug only crimes (13% of the prison population). 40,000 of those are for marijuana only. Still - deducting that 13 per cent, you still end up with number far greater than most other "civilized" countries... (around 610 / 100 000 = about the number of prisoners in Russia)

So... Guncotrol debate is still here That's funny... Sort of... But, what if we just forget about the gun issue. Let's say, guns have nothing to do with the crime/murders/deathrate etc... -------------------END OF GUN DEBATE ----CUT HERE----- If we start to talk about the society etc. Let's talk about criminals: Prison population rate (per 100,000 of national population) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 701 RUSSIAN FEDERATION 606 UNITED KINGDOM: ENGLAND & WALES 141 CHINA 117 NETHERLANDS 100 GERMANY 98 FRANCE 93 TURKEY 90 JAPAN 53 Source HERE . There are awfully lot bad people in America, one could think - or is it something else?

Terro= when the bad guys hit the good guys.. now who is good and who is bad?and who deside it? only one thing is sure.. all the inocent people pays the price Bad = Those that blow up buildings and cars and buses and hijack planes full of people to drive them into major city's and large buildings and try to promote terrorism, as well as those that use chemical weapons on their own people for reasons like, "They disagreed with me" or have people pushed off of buildings for similar reasons. (You get the point.) good = Those that retaliate and wage war on terrorism. Pretty cut and dry there. Are you guys all this bipolar? Gee, I guess it makes life easier, huh? Could you please define following things, too? (with relations to each other, if possible): Terrorist (Freedom) Fighter Combatant Guerilla Partisan Soldier Patriot etc. etc. etc. When the cold war was on it's coldest, Soviets were probably thinking of "liberating" Finland. Most the men in Finland have gone trough military training. The backbone of the defense would have been (in the event Soviets would have actually attacked) guerilla warware (I'm got my training solely based on that). Now, in Soviets eyes, I would have been _____________ (fill in appropriate) Compare this to a little "domestic" "thing" Russians are having right now with "real" terrorists... It's all about perspective. Someones terrorist is anothers freedom fighter or patriot. What do you think England called American patriots in 17 hundreds? Oh, and it's not only the "real" terrorists that blow up residential areas, civilians or their houses, children etc. etc. etc. War is very ugly. Always.

Comparing one of the biggest metropolis (London, that is) with state wide statistics makes no sense to me. I would appreciate though, if you could find statistics about these murder/death rates in any of the major cities in any of the states... Thanks.

I didn't find old posts about this - if there are, please point me to one... I need a general jump suit (more a freefly type, where I can have, if necessary, several layers of cloths underneath). I do not want to buy one, so I'm trying to make one... Any ideas where I can get my hands on patterns, or how to modify a regular overall suit to a jumpsuit?

It's a misconception about the canopy time. A static line student exits at 3500' and probably gets a canopy a little bit above 3000'. An AFF1 exits at 9,500' or above, pulls about 4,500' and gets an open canopy around 4,000'. That's 1000' more for the AFF student to fly their canopy. I agree, BUT Would you not agree that in general S/L-students get to land the canopy more than an AFF-students?

"You must be joking" -> "I can not believe we ended up here on this topic" OK, so compare it for us. You have a study? Scientific journal reports? Some 'C' student's thesis? Come on, when you say let's compare, it helps to have that comparison on hand, unless you're suggesting it as a valuable study. Sarcasm intended. To take bare statistics and turn it to bare facts is... Really? I thought the topic was "Bowling For Columbine." I agree - the topic was (IMHO) not: gun control, or "most of the murders etc. are committed by someone else than white folk etc." Prior to about 1986, crime stats used to separate black, white and hispanic. But for SOME reason, the powers that be decided to stop collecting data on hispanics and just call them "white". ( http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=780259#780259 ) To me, it seemed like the topic was turning towards "America is such a violent place since there is so much diversity etc.", or "If there would be only white people here, crime rate would be lower" . There are countries in Europe and e.g. Canada, which are more or less as diverse, and still less death/murders etc... As someone said: there are a lot of places with higher death/murder rate than US. BUT as I said before, name me one "western" society, where this rate is actually higher than in the US. To me, the point of the BFC was about that... The contradictions in America (as wrote earlier) are somewhat weird to an outsider. People cry out for freedom - people telling other people what is "right" and what is "wrong" (the big debate about samesex marriages and other "moral" and "ethic" topics etc.) - people telling women what they are supposed to do with their bodies (anti-abortion, the sanctity of life) - some of the same people calling out for capital punishment (the only "civilized" - what ever that means - country that still uses capital punishment is the USA. Where is that sanctity now?), just out the top of my head. "Either with us or against us" -type of arguments are scary... Is it common over there? To many Europeans it seems like that way... And it scares the shit out them (us). And I'm not saying these sort of things do not pop up elsewhere. Do you think they pop up more in the USA? I don't know, I've not lived in enough places to make that sort of statement. Have you ever lived abroad? (Not in a military base or similar, but really lived in some other society and get to know the culture and and the language) Also, as I have written before, I have great respect for many things in the USA. I've been there couple of times myself and I'm looking forward to visit again soon. Some of the most friendliest people I know are from the USA. There was a European study about the attitudes Europeans had for the USA. Most of the people were able to distinct the government and the people - although they did not like too much about the current administrators, they were quite positive about Americans in general. (So not not as polar as things really seems over there - maybe I'm wrong). Oh, and if I got it all wrong about the stats presented earlier and jumped to totally wrong conclusions - I'm sorry.

You must be joking! Let's compare (unfortunately there are stats for this) Mercedes-Benz owners and and Greyhound users. Who commits more robberies? Why? Oh, and what's this group was called... Ah, "white thrash". You think that they get a long with the world "better" than a "trash" of some other "color" or "race"? If you truly believe in the land of the free and so forth, you should check out how many people actually climbs up the "social ladder", no matter what's their "race". Why are the "white" then mostly "middle class or above" (so less "white trash"). Well, that's a whole different story (study some sociology, history, psychology etc. and you'll get there). Of course this hole issue is waaay more complicated than that, so let's try to stay in the topic of "why more here than elsewhere" or "no more here than elsewhere" or what ever... There are countries where there are 50-60% "non-white" folks and they are still WAY behind USA in this dying violently -issue.

And the root of the matter is society. Please name one other society which has the diversity in backgrounds, religions, races, creeds, colors, etc.... CUT... Well, believe it or not, there are countries in Europe with a lot more diverse background etc. with a lot less death, murder and gun debate. On top of that, e.g. The Netherlands is considered to be one of the most liberal countries w/ something like half of the population non-Dutch origin (liberal in a sense "as long as your actions do not harm others, you are free to do so" - not in "leftie communist blah blah blah" sense that, according to many, liberal means ) America is a wonderful place. I've been there, I've even lived there, and I'm looking forward to visit you guys again. However, it is hard to find another place with such contradictions (hard conservatism vs. "freedom" etc. ).

The University of Turku in Finland actually was looking for male-students who would like to be on the last-trial-use before the pill would be ready for the market. My friend tried to get in the program but apparently they had already enough candidates... This was around three years ago, so I guess the pill is ready - they just need a license for it...

I voted for: Are you really surprised? It's a common joke here that in USA anyone can suit anyone for anything and anyone can suited At my home university this is something that the international office always talks about when they are sending students to USA for exchange: "Watch out for those lawsuits!"

Nice find goose. It's sad that this movie has enough exagerrated truths, and lies...that we have to sift through all the bullshit to try to figure out what we should believe or not. -Kramer Well, it is very rare (in fact, could you point me to one) to have an objective, solely based on truth documentaries anywhere. This applies to to all kinds of docs; wild-life, nature, history, science, etc. Some are more, some are less, true. IMHO this movie was not about that - it's about making people think and debate about it. I guess in that sense it has been a success!

- There are countries with no legal guns and few gun murders. - There are countries with no legal guns and lots of gun murders. - There are countries with lots of legal guns and few gun murders. - There are countries with lots of legal guns and lots of gun murders. Thus, the number of guns in the society is not a common denominator for high gun crime rates. It's all about culture, demographics, economics, and other factors. Exactly! Now, what are these factors? Like I said earlier, I was not surprised that this thread turned into a gun control debate... If it wasn't so sad, it would be almost funny. For me, the most interesting question (and it was left open in the movie) was: What's the difference?!?!?!?!? I read comments like: "If they broke in ...blah, blah... they should have known what was coming!!" "The guy was INSIDE my house - of course I shot him!" "If he was trying to steel my car (oh, that holy cow!) - I'd shoot the &¤%##& right there!" (Oh, the gun here was unintentional - well of course it would be rather different task to kill a person with a knife than with a gun; BUT let's not get in to that ) Remember - there are guns in other countries, too, BUT: Ask most of the non-American counterparts, what would happen in above cases... In most of the cases no-one would get hurt (let alone get killed). You might lose your brand new TV/DVD, whatever... For that you have insurance. The police could even catch the guy (ok, a smaller chance... ) Still, many people live here (and in many other places, too) without a constant fear. I guess it comes down to the value of life (whoever's life that is). Not surprisingly capital punishment is given up in all western civilized cultures... Wait! Not in all! If a criminal (a robber, repeater - as convicted before for the same crime, gotten out, does it again) gets the same sentence (a life in prison w/o a possibility to parole) no matter whether he just snatches the bag form an old lady or kills the old lady and then takes the bag, it is like telling the criminal to kill the potential witness! I guess the only way to make this idiot to understand is to kill him (back to the value of life, capital punishment etc.) There are sooo many other things...