Monday, March 16, 2015

Obama appointee decides there is no Second Amendment right to own firearms if the state says no...

An Obama appointee to the Federal Bench, Kimberly J. Mueller, said in a decision on Thursday that the Second Amendment does not apply to firearms. According to at least one source, the so called Gun Rights groups have only themselves to blame for the decision.

Back in 2008 the United States Supreme Court published its first in-depth analysis of the Second Amendment in which it held that the Second Amendment is an individual right unconnected with service in a militia. Two years later the High Court would hold that the Second Amendment applies to all states and local governments.

Also in 2008, the Supreme Court also said that the Second Amendment guarantees a right to carry arms openly but that right does not ....

By CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN

The Karner blue butterfly is a tiny thing, with colorful wings that extend just an inch across and a life that rarely wanders more than 600 feet from where it began. Its caterpillars can only eat wild lupines — a flower that’s become less abundant in the wild because of development and habitat fragmentation. As a result, the Karner was named an endangered species in 1992. But Karner blues are getting help from an unlikely source: gun sales.

The Nature Conservancy has a project in the works near Saratoga, New York, that will preserve an area that’s already home to these lupines and butterflies, and much of the program’s funding comes from the sales of guns and ammunition. For that, Karner conservationists can thank the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act.
Passed by Congress in 1937 and commonly referred to as the Pittman-Robertson Act, it sets an excise tax of 10 to 11 percent on the sale of guns and ammunition, paid by manufacturers at the wholesale level. Prior to the law’s passage, guns and ammunition were already subject to taxes, but the Act ensured that the money was set aside to protect game species and their habitats. The law has helped bring deer and elk back from the brink in areas in the East, but it’s also given refuge to many non-game species, like the Karner blue butterfly. At another project in New York, Pittman-Robertson money is helping to protect 5,000 acres of grouse, turkey and deer habitat, and all the snowy owls and other birds of prey that come with it. Troy Weldy, senior conservation manager at the Nature Conservancy’s New York chapter, said the project “could create a premier birding destination.”

Environmentalists who don’t hunt might not think they have much in common with the guy tromping off into the woods with a gun. Yet hunters and anglers have a long history of land stewardship, said John Gale, national sportsmen campaigns manager at the National Wildlife Federation. At the time the Pittman-Robertson Act was passed...

A small group of protesters held signs and handed out t-shirts to protest robots today at South by
Southwest in Austin, Texas.

What did they have against robots you might ask? Well, they are (apparently, seriously) concerned that robots could one day surpass human intelligence and they were genuinely anxious about this.

A spokesperson for the group told TechCrunch they hoped to raise awareness about the possible dangers of uncontrolled growth and development around artificial intelligence and robotics.

He stressed, however the group wasn’t against technology per se or even robots and AI, but they wanted to make sure that these technologies were developed in a controlled way.

The protest spokesperson cited Elon Musk as a prominent person who has expressed concern about robots and the development of artificial intelligence, and in fact TechCrunch reported in January about a $10M donation by Musk to the Future of Life Institute to “keep AI beneficial to humanity.”

As the article stated:

“Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important”, said Elon Musk in the statement, referring to this letter originally put forward by FLI founder and MIT professor Max Tegmark. “I agree with them, so I’m today committing $10M to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity.”

FLI wrote in the blog post:

“There is now a broad consensus that AI research is progressing steadily, and that its impact on society is likely to increase. A long list of leading AI-researchers have signed an open letter calling for research aimed at ensuring that AI systems are robust and beneficial, doing what we want them to do.”

The group is simply organizing around the concerns expressed in this letter by some prominent members of the scientific community including physicist Stephen Hawking.

That said, the protest spokesperson insisted they didn’t intend to stop the progress of technology, but they hoped to encourage...

Girls With Guns

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a person in a condition of servitude, required to render services to alord, commonly attached to the lord's land and transferred with it fromone owner to another.

a slave.