One of the big issues I hear about from people who want to increase the minimum wage is that the current minimum wage is not enough for people to be able to pay their expenses such as rent, utilities, food, and transportation. But should minimum wage workers have these expenses? If someone is making minimum wage, then - in general - that person should probably live at home with his parents, that would eliminate rent and utilities (or at least reduce the worker's share of the cost of these goods). I know some people need to move away in order to get a job, but I don't think anyone moves away from home to get a minimum wage job, unless they're immigrants moving from their home country to work for minimum wage in the U.S.

Perhaps the culture changes too fast, beyond what human nature can catch up to. People have been talking about "anomie" since the 18th century. Maybe these shootings and events are the result of modern society. Perhaps humans are instinctually and naturally suited for smaller, tribal-based rural societies, and being placed in a modernized, semi-urbanized, nation-state society, puts a strain on a lot of people and leaves a lot of people as emotional "drifters" without much sense of belonging to a larger group, such as a village or a traditional extended family/kinship group.

@GazaAli: Yeah, I was surprised. I wouldn't expect chaos to be doing that for a career, but maybe as a temporary job. But danbo seems to keep on going with this burgerflipper insult. Though I guess Chaos did start it by talking about danbo's grammar.

I've never tried Popeye's.

Wait, does Chaoscougar really work at a fast-food joint? I don't care, I'm not making fun of him, at least he has a job, but now I'm curious.

@Master_Live: AirCommie, that's a good one.

@ReadingRainbow4:What's the joke, the "barrel roll" part? He might very well have said it. He was obviously a bit crazy.

That's some deep poetry right there!

Not going to happen. For better and worse, once a technology is invented it is rarely uninvented, unless of course there is a traumatic event -like a large scale war or natural disaster - that sets humanity society back to a more primitive state where it no longer has the capability of producing such inventions. Other than that the technology would just have to stick around until something new renders it obsolete.

What are you guys trained to do in such a situation? And I'm guessing that although you're college doesn't allow guns, the college doesn't take steps to ensure people aren't bringing them in to college. I'm not really sure how they could do that. Maybe they can have metal detectors, or random frisks, but there are too many people to frisk everyone, so I'm not really sure how a college can enforce a policy against bringing guns on campus. And if a policy is too difficult to enforce, is it worth having it in the first place?

I wasn't really be serious about banning media coverage of this, though I think to some extent mass media coverage of these events does increase the likelihood of copycats.

oh. I'm surprised.

People talk a lot about mental health, but I'm not sure all of it is truly mental illness. Some of it is, of course. But I think with some of these shooters it's more a sense of alienation and isolation and not fitting in than it is an issue with mental illness per se. Then of course there are ideological factors: The news reporter who shot his colleagues did so partly as a retaliation for the Charleston shooting, and the Charleston shooter was partly motivated by white-power ideology, Nidal Hassan and the D.C. Snipers were motivated by Islamic extremism, etc.

The most recent theater shooting occurred right after the Aurora theater shooter was sentenced, so he was probably triggered by the media coverage of that shooting. Of course constant media attention on these shootings may give other unstable people the idea of pulling off something similar, so maybe the feds should ban the national media from covering these types of stories.

@jimkabrhel: But if Repubs went away who would take their place as the Democrats' main rivals? I guess it would be the Libertarians. And You don't want that do you?