jcg, I think that quote is from Mark Twain.

Could be, he was a smart guy.

OK....who's calling me a '***** spell checker'?...

I strongly resemble that remark....

If yer not careful I'll resort to Strine and confuse the lot a'ya's....

Hey, I wasn't talking about you! But if the cap fits...

I can guarantee my native Yorkshire dialect is more unintelligible than your Strine any day...

Anyway, I'm going to bed now (it's 05:00 am here)

The Elements of Style Stunk & White

The absolute classic.

Whoops
My apologies to the late Prof. Strunk.

America seems to use the Converse Accident argument to excess. "I heard that 2 kids drown in 5 gallon buckets a year. They should be banned!" While that is a great tragedy for those families, should the rest of America be inconvenienced because .0000001% of kids die in a bucket?

Mother Nature is a rough customer. Accidents will happen.

/me wonders what America will be like in the year 2200.






Don't you remember? You tend to forget things.

Why on earth would you want to ban '2 drowned kids'?


/me supports the 'obtuse has its use' club...

The same argument is used in gun control yet no one seems to mind.

jcg....with guns we are not talking 'accidental drowning' now, are we?...

Take away their guns, you take away their freedom...

I want to add one more thing. I have read recently a few things on the message board and time and time again I get the feeling: "Anyone who is not with us is against us"...Oh no! The world is grey I thought. Or maybe black and white after all, that is, in the eye of the beholder...Yellows are not included nor Reds and Greens. Black is wrong, white is good. Give the people bread and skins. Come to think of it, another phrase: "Dictatorship is wrong, UNLESS I am the dictator". Yep, white is good, white is God. (It only differs an""O") And I think: "Oh no! There is no light. and it becomes dark, and you end up with the stench of the sewer". My favourite saying: "You get what you radiate".

If anyone here were 'not with us', then why would they be here, other than to stress that they are 'not with us'.

Of course, IF they are 'not with us' then they are not here, because we are here 'with us'.

Ah...I DO like existentialism....

Jafo - but the logical error is still the same. For example it is fact more people are killed each year by being strangled with pantyhose then are killed by assualt rifles, yet assualt rifles are banned, and women still get to complain about their pantyhose.

BTW, I am not trying to have a gun control argument here, been there done that.

GRRRRRRRRRR JAFO I think you are far more intelligent than that. Don't you see I made a typo? I should have used capitals "with us"!! And please don't say you are americanized please

jcg: Could you back up that assertion with a link? And the fact remains, assault rifles are intended to kill people. Buckets of water and pantyhose aren't. That's the difference.

Sorry, I don't have the link anymore. That was during my Compuserve days and several disk crashes ago.

All nice and good, but I never said I was logical.

By the way, all this reminds me of how Doreen is trying to Jafo me each time I use "ise" where she would say "ize".

/me goes hide behind cultural differences

jcg...more people in the US die in car crashes than in all the wars they have ever fought in....but no matter which is greater....people who live right next to cemeteries are never buried in them....why?...because they aren't dead yet....
There are lies, damn lies, and ststistics.
More people are killed by hippos than by sharks...

"It's true....drink will kill you....my dad was killed by drink...a brewery truck ran over him"....somewhere between statistics and jokes lies the truth....

In another thread someone asked "Why are Americans so suspicious of their government?" We are brought up with American heroes that were revolutionists or at least rebels. Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King were heroes because they found the establishment to be corrupt or unjust.

Our rebellious forefathers tried to set up a government that had its hands tied. They wanted to create a revolution every few years to try and keep it that way. Yet we hardly ever see things change. The politicians in Washington seem to always be further and further from the common man. We see representatives that are in office for decades when the position was supposed to only last for a few years. We see more and more interference from the government in our lives at every turn.

Part of this rebellious nature is manifested in guns. Our forefathers when they were writing the Constitution wanted to allow the people themselves power to have a revolution if needed. They put in an amendment to stop gun control for that very reason. I have heard that the serfs in England were treated much better then those in France because they relied on the peasants to supply archers in times of war. Since the longbow required practice the peasants took them home. A lord that was too harsh was liable to receive an arrow in the back during his ride through town.

An armed society is a polite one.

/me gets off his soapbox now.

/me grabs the soap box, puts it away under lock and key and revokes Griffin's soap priviledges

Hey!
Get your own.

That's ok. I have megaphone hidden in the closet.

.

It's really just a matter of choice.

I prefer to have my freedom limited a little in order to live safer in my own town. Hey, I respect people who rather die and be free.

Funny, in Canada, we actually expect our governement to vote laws in order to protect us, even if that means a little bit of our freedom will be taken away.

To paraphrase Ben Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security do not get either nor do they deserve them."