bwhite's comments

In situations in which it is legal for you to employ deadly force, you won't be convicted of any criminal statute if you apply that force or any lesser force. That is, if you have an adequate reason to shoot to kill, a application of force which results in a wound is treated equally with one which results in death. The reverse, obviously, is not true.

In all cases, you may be sued civilly for a wrongful death, battery, or any number of other things. And lots of parties can bring the suit: the individual himself, various members of his family, your homeowners association, etc. N is fairly big, removing one of the N probably is not meaningful. Do these sort of civil suits tend to pay more for woundings than deaths? I have no data on this but would be surprised if that were the case.

I expect the only thing the OP meant is that slain person cannot testify the killer. This is self-evident but not really helpful. How is it different than "if you're going to rob someone, you should also kill them". I suppose this might be good practical, tactical advice for criminals but it isn't advancing the discussion here.

Is there really a situation in which the punishment for killing is lighter than for wounding, especially with a weapon/vehicle?? Or are you speaking less formally: that you might never get caught for the kill if there's nobody to turn you in?

It might depend on the circumstances. Even if the driver is fully at fault, though, it doesn't have to financially devastate the individual. This situation is tailor-made for insurance.

Appending to #2 above, if you're creating an exchange (or crossing network, dark venue, etc), how do you deal with settlement and counterparty issues?

The SEC proceeding on this [0] is quite readable and goes into some technical detail as to what exactly went wrong.

[0] http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf

Sure enough, it's been MLB-approved! One thing in particular that might be useful for non-pros is that the handle is CNC-cut to orient the grain in the correct way.

The spec for baseball is available. [0]

Regarding the bat itself, the regulations say it must be "round" (1.10), which probably rules out this particular handle. Other than round, the maximum weight, length, and diameter are specified. While bats close to these maximums were once widely used, almost all modern bats are well shy of those figures. Presumably the lighter, smaller bats of today more than make up in control and speed what they lack in mass.

[0] http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloads/y2010/official_rules/2010_O...

You are describing a Direct Public Offering [0], which was widely used in the US in the 19th century but waned in the 20th.

Loyal3 does not appear to be underwriting GoPro's IPO. If they are being traditionally underwritten, some other syndicate is doing that and a select fraction of their clients are getting the IPO price. Loyal3 is apparently merely including it -- immediately, on the IPO day -- in the list of securities it permits its clients to transact in. Many brokers, including discount brokers, will do this. Also, it looks like Loyal3 does dollar-based investing. That is, you specify how many USDs you want to spend and Loyal3 eventually delivers some quantity of the security in exchange for those dollars. If you expect a stock's price and availability to fluctuate significantly on its IPO day, you may find that you get a lot less for your dollar that you thought you would.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_public_offering

Rifled barrels which have been machined to tight tolerances are non-trivial to make. But a smoothbore barrel is just a tube. For plenty of low-power cartridges, it doesn't even need to be metal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm

You need a Federal Firearms License if you are "engaged in the business", which is clarified further as having a "principal objective of livelihood and profit through the sale or distribution of the firearms manufactured". See 18.921.a.21.A. The ATF and FBI have employed a wide range of interpretations for this clause, so an FFL might be warranted.

There are already shows and traveling folks with portable CNC setups who will mill a block of aluminum into various types of frames or AR-15 lowers. The 3d-printed issue seems quite similar to that.

This is so true. I remember how irate I was when I realized that Rambo III insisted that a thinly mocked-up Browning was actually a DShK. That annoyed me but not nearly as much as Neo's Scorpions ejecting what looked like 5.56 casings on the floor during the lobby gun fight. Maybe necked-down brass looks sexier pinging off the floor.

But worse than all of this is what happens in movies when people are shot. People inevitably fly backwards, sometimes tens of feet. There's a nice Quora answer about this [1]. I get the need for a great action shot, but it's a thumb in the eye to everyone who actually has even a ballpark concept of kinetic energy delivery.

[1] http://www.quora.com/Guns-and-Firearms/Does-shooting-someone....

I assume you mean to say that you think this is a lousy idea and indicates that BTC/USD is about to fall. However, if you're serious, the answer is that while there is no mechanism to short BTC/fiat like you can a NYSE-traded equity, there are venues in which you can buy and sell BTC/fiat futures, like ICBIT. You can also participate in "betting" pools, which are derivatives similar to certain types of options, such as BTCLevels and BTCOracle.

Caveat emptor, obviously.

In many places, none of these suggestions would help someone who realizes he is carrying a handgun.

1) There are guidelines for how the firearm must be shipped; simply sliding it into your checked baggage will not work.

2) Handguns are generally prohibited from being mailed via the USPS.

3) The person seeing you off may not be properly licensed to transport the handgun.

4) Storing a valuable object in a vehicle which is in long-term parking sounds like a bad idea. Municipalities which have strict theft-reporting requirements do not have exceptions for "I was out of town and didn't know that my car had been burgled."

Like many office buildings, it is of pretty good size and houses a goodly number of workers. What sets it apart from almost all other buildings its that it is symbolic. The financial reporters are still frequently "on location" there, it is in downtown Manhattan, and there is an enormous American flag covering the Broad St side of the building.

Getting rich and improving the economy is almost certainly the best thing you can do to combat disease, pollution, poverty, etc.

I assume the NCLB standardized tests cover things which are widely considered to be core reading and math skills. PBS has a number of sample questions here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/education/no_ch.... The topics seem pretty core to me. If teachers broadly find themselves having to devote significant additional time to these subjects in order to pass the tests, what does that say about pre-NCLB curricula? Learning to take a test is a skill which would not necessarily be taught in the pre-NCLB world, but how much time does that really take? Are there any real studies of this? It seems to me that a child with a decent grasp of the subjects appearing on that test would not require an inordinate amount of instruction in test taking.

Lithium-ion batteries are supposed to be pretty good as resisting self-discharge, losing only .3-.5% per day (or around 10% per month). The Tesla S has the 60 kWh or 85 kWh battery, so replacing around half a percent of that each day is 300-425 Wh. That's not much at all! If the battery replacement machines are simple and foolproof, perhaps home delivery of batteries and a small trickle charger could be a competitive model to full-blown home chargers?

Storing the batteries at the station will require much more volume than the analogous amount of gas/diesel. And a dumb tank beats a smart battery charger with software and EEPROMs if your concern is resiliency. Some EV problems are pretty clearly chicken/egg adoption problems. But there are some real infrastructure problems, too, and other changes may bear far more fruit towards the goal of more efficient energy exploitation.

Gas stations are incredibly common. Public EV charging stations will never be as common unless a different business model is adopted.

If EVs become common, people will have home charging stations. Demand for non-at-home charging stations will come from (1) folks who drive a lot and need to charge intraday (and who cannot charge at work) and (2) road trippers. The sum of both of these categories is fairly small and less demand means less supply. So if you do fit into one of those two categories, you will need to plan your driving carefully instead of figuring that you'll be able to pick up some gas when you need it. This can be overcome by arranging for the proliferation of public EV charging stations even absent the demand. Perhaps the manufacturer or municipalities will subsidize it.

You're not the first person with this idea: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/

To some extent there is a standards problem: there is not a common battery pack (like there is a gas tank fill point). But even if there were, the batteries would continue to run down after delivery (unless supplied with a non-trivial amount of power). And the space required to physically store these batteries would occupy a lot of volume. After all, gasoline/diesel is far more energy-dense than modern batteries.

You can push the argument further. Postulate that climate change is real, and that you could accurately describe the policy steps necessary to eliminate it, and that you could bring about those policy changes on a global scale. What are the negative impacts? What is the chance of climate change occurring anyway? Anthropogenic change is peanuts compared a huge mess of Siberian volcanoes firing off for a million years.