PeterAlan

That's exactly what they are: they've lobbied for, encouraged and enabled an almost unchecked proliferation of weapons that are designed to kill people, as opposed to being primarily for hunting game etc, a proliferation that has been the fuel of the gun violence.

With yesterday's and today's Supreme Court decisions, we're seeing just how much the US has been Trumped for decades to come (with a little help from Mitch McConnell).

Yes it is: pp 219-225.

Thank you.

I am aware of this. But my point was that whilst life, liberty and property are protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, there is nothing of the sort for the pursuit of happiness; moreover those rights are are limited by being subject to the "due process of law".

That's as may be. But this started as your justification for leaving assault rifles in circulation, on the basis of "the pursuit of Happiness", and it doesn't really stand up, does it? Is that the best you've got? Even "Life" and "Liberty" are not absolute rights, being subject to the legal / penal code, and they have specific protections in the Constitution, unlike "the pursuit of Happiness". Moreover, even the majority judgment in 'Heller' was clear that the Second Amendment allowed for gun restrictions under that code. So why do you think that the "pursuit of Happiness" with assault rifles should be unfettered?

The photographer has a corresponding recent Opinion piece in the Washington Post here.

I certainly don't think this justifies keeping assault rifles in circulation.

Just what the Framers had in mind when they drafted the Second Amendment.

We can certainly agree on that. But does "Happiness" include blowing anything away with an AR-15? With all its collateral risks to children's lives?

"No problem" in terms of their moral compass, perhaps. But the point of gun control is to limit their future opportunities to break laws either relating to or involving the use of guns.

Are you wilfully stupid, or does it just come naturally? When you ban weapons you need to take as many as possible of them out of circulation; they don't just disappear in a puff of smoke. Quite apart from anything else, doing this makes it harder for future thugs etc to equip themselves with them. I understand there are something like 400 million firearms in the USA; whilst I don't know exactly how this breaks down by type I would guess that at least 300 million could be covered by the sort of ban I was advocating. Don't you think it would be a good thing to get as many as possible of these out of the way? PS: And maybe, just maybe, last week's shooting in Uvalde wouldn't have happened if a kid hadn't been able to buy, within days of his 18th birthday, two AR-15s, a bunch of 30-round magazines for them and all the ammunition he wanted.

There is an answer, and it doesn't "just" have "to be the way it is". Many other countries show the way (I'm from the UK). The issue is that you (the US collectively) just won't countenance it: your favoured 'idiot control' doesn't work, and the answer therefore lies in gun control (by the way, these are not mutually exclusive options; you need both). Repeal the arcane Second Amendment. Replace it with a provision that ensures gun control is a federal matter. Ban assault rifles, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and handguns in private hands. Treat possession as a serious felony. Ban large-capacity magazines. Take banned weapons (and as many others as possible) out of circulation through deposit, amnesty and buy-back. Tighten registration and authorisation processes. A massive culture shift is necessary; regrettably the US seems unable to even contemplate the first steps, and I have no panaceas on how you could get there. I expect that generational changes of attitude would be required. A start might be a wider appreciation of how far off the scale you are: for example, in 2020 there were 19,384 firearm homicides in the US - in the UK, with 1/5 your population, there were 30 in the year to 31 March 2020, per capita less than 1% of the US rate. Edit: These are goals; I'm not naive enough to suggest that they are attainable in the short term. But an assault rifle ban should be doable; you've done it before. And you could make a start on the Second Amendment by reversing Heller, and follow it up by cases that restrict its applicability more and more until it withered away as a basis for anything. But that would necessitate a very different Supreme Court from the one you have now.

As I read it, Cyberyeti is West and his LHO is indeed North; the auction has continued 3♠ by him and 3NT by his partner, East.

That doesn't sound accurate. Taking a simple characterisation of weak NT as all 5332, 4432 & 4333, 12-14, and a simple loser count with all Qxx(x)(x) = 2 losers, then the average (mean) of this loser count is 7.49.

On a detail of this line, if trumps are 2-2 you can pitch the ♠ on ♣A and ruff the fourth ♦.

Robert Reich has an entertainingly vituperative opinion on the two in the Guardian / Observer here.

This may derive from Law 7A (my emphasis): Regarding NBO regulation etc, EBU's guidance note to TDs on slow play is clear:

Does the computer have no agency? She might not have been prepared to marry you!

On the subject of what motivates voters, I thought this opinion piece was interesting. Ken might too:

This reminds me of the old IT joke, that dates back at least to the days of EGA, VGA, etcGA: "Standards are very important - that's why we have so many of them."

New decks typically come stacked ordered-suit-by-suit, so hand-dealing an unshuffled new pack in the normal way produces 4 symmetric flat 4-3-3-3 hands.

This deal was originally found (I believe constructed) by John Beasley, and published in The Games and Puzzles Journal in 1988. Thomas Andrews re-discovered it when investigating rotationally-symmetric deals using a computer. (Details from Peter Winkler's fascinating Bridge at the Enigma Club.)

E's hand is also right on the limit of what EBU permits for opening 1-level agreements, namely 8+ HCP and (in first or second seat, as here) Rule of 18 (Blue Book 7A3). That's assuming the event is played at Level 4 systems: it wouldn't be legal to have that agreement at Level 2. Quite apart from the bridge merits (or otherwise) of opening that hand with 1♥, when advocating such aggressive tactics as this is your partner fully au fait with the regulations?