Be careful with that reasoning. Its illegal for the CDC to study gun violence as a public health measure. If that happened it might rank on child mortality rates.
It is not, and never has been, illegal for the CDC to study gun violence. One specific part of their budget that had been earmarked for those studies was reallocated once. That's the extent of the so-called "ban" that the politicians keep harping on about.
That re-allocation did happen, but it also came with wording that effectively barred from doing any research until a recent change to the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment
> I've read far too much casual acceptance of the deaths of older people on HN, as if this ~15% of the population [in the US at least] are freely expendable. I don't think most people on HN implying such things mean to say old people are freely expendable, but rather that they should not be saved at _all cost_. Our non-pharmaceutical interventions have a cost associated with them too, so we have to strike a balance t…
I agree, most people aren’t saying that (my wording was “too much”). I also suspect that the majority of people on all sides are not arguing whether or not to save lives at “all cost” —- this seems to be a partisan distortion of the actual debate that is occurring among serious people (much like the similarly egregious “granny killer” reference elsewhere in these comments). There are real arguments and a real, valid…
Well said. As for a good place to discuss this stuff, my view is that, to misappropriate the Churchill quote, HN is the worst place I've found for debating COVID matters except for all the other places I've found. At least most people here, being predominantly from scientific and engineering backgrounds, are capable of and willing to remove emotion from debate and assess the biases inherent in arguments on both sides.
Definitely! Or if you’re a green card/visa holder.
If you need a U.S. Visa, fingerprints are required. U.S. citizens and people from Visa Waiver countries don't need to be fingerprinted. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
Oh, good to know! I thought so, my wife had hers taken when she got her passport. Maybe because it was at an embassy? Either way, thanks for the clarification.
The government already has my fingerprints, because I had to give them to get a passport (edit: I've been informed this was only because I also did Global Entry) and also when I was in elementary school they fingerprinted everyone and also when I got my driver's license. Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your fingerprints.
> Pretty much if you're a US citizen they already have your fingerprints. False. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app... My spouse and I renewed our passports in the last 10 years, and got our kids passports for the first time. We did not provide fingerprints. I am a U.S. citizen. I went through an SF86 clearance in the early 2000s and don't recall even that requiring my fingerprints (but I co…
You didn't have to give your fingerprints when you got a driver's license?
We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…
Queue the “only so few die because we spend so much” response.
> domestic air travel has traditionally required very weak identification (driver's license). They have been trying to bump that requirement to RealID for years but a lot of states still don't issue it as their default license/ID so less than half of IDs in the US are compliant with the RealID standards. It's been pushed back for years maybe a decade by now? I wonder how long it'll be until it actually gets implement…
Real ID has been implemented in every state and most territories. Not all share their databases with each other, but that isn't a requirement for usage for using the ids for air travel in the US. After a few big delays, the deadline for having a compliant id for domestic air travel is 2023-05-03. I personally had a bad experience attempting to get a compliant id when I lived in Arizona. At the time you could select i…
Yeah they all offer it but at least in my state it's an additional cost which means a lot of people will choose the cheaper easier option. Also that deadline has been changed many many times and I bet it will again in/before 2023 if adoption rates don't increase a lot.
I just recently refreshed my ID and got a RealID pretty easily at least. The trickiest piece was making sure I had all my documents, had to print out a cable bill because all my bills are paperless now and mortgage papers (one of the few I've kept paper bills on for) didn't count on their list.
The US is the only place I think I've had to remove shoes for flight security in years. But in Europe taking off a belt is often required while in the US it is not. In Budapest they stopped having us remove laptops from bags a bit ago. My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way.
"My biggest challenge over the years was remembering what to do in each place as the security people at the airports had a tendency to get upset if you didn't do it their preferred way." It can differ from airport to airport. I traveled from Ottawa to Toronto often enough for it to be mindless but differences between two national airports in same province of same country on same airline still caught me if I went too…
Just ask in French.
Then they'll most likely bring you to the only employee that's not a contractor.
> For example, guns. Very few people die because of mass shootings. Adjusted for how armed Americans are, gun violence in this country is tiny. And seeing what an armed citizenry can do against the full American force (Afghanistan), an armed population is a necessity against tyranny in America.
The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.
It was all guns rights until the black panthers started arming up, and all the sudden it was "perhaps some sensible limits might be wise"
Pretty hard to miss the intent.
Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.