dawgdoc

Even my son's school has changed from lock down in the class rooms to "run, hide, or fight."  Not that they provide any effective means of fighting back, but they have changed the security plan so that it is no longer just "hide and die."

The SIP plan sounds like fish in a barrel, unless the lock truly keeps out the shooter.  What happens if the shooter has a can of gas?  Could he cause worse mayhem if everyone was confined to one area?  The only problems I see with leaving by your exit is the possibility of a sniper outside.  I think one of the school shootings involved pulling a fire alarm and the killer(s) sniped from a hill as everyone evacuated.  The only other problem is that the goal of a lock down is to lock out an intruder, but I assume that in most cases the intruder has already intruded.

To be fair to Rick (or the writers), the issue was that the one barricade was going to fall apart any minute, which it did while they were planning the dry run.  Also, as Resident Evil has shown us, the only thing worse than a zombie is a zombie on fire.   Interestingly, in World War Z (the book) and the Zombie Survival Guide, the moaning of the zombies attracts more zombies.

I think Rick's face got better as the flashbacks got closer in time to the present, also.   I wonder if the Wolves are doing the horn?  Seems most likely.

I would disagree that there is zero compelling evidence.  Eyewitness sightings and footprints are evidence; they just are not the type of evidence that proves to science something exists.  However, once that thing has been shown to exist, both sightings and footprints are perfectly acceptable as evidence that the thing is in that particular area.  I agree that science will not accept a large black cat in America until there is a body.  Although DNA testing should be adequate on parts of a body, it won't be.   Take ball lightning for example.  For years, it "didn't exist."  Many people saw the phenomena and reported similar manifestations, yet science did not accept that it existed.  That is, until it one day did exist.  Even then, it was not until the 21st century when ball lightning was replicated in a laboratory, and they still don't know exactly what it is.  So something that "didn't exist" left the ranks of the damned and joined the ranks of scientific knowledge.  Would those scientists who created ball lightning had even tried if it had not been reported for all those years?  And now that we know it exists, it may explain a whole host of supernatural things, such as UFOs and ghosts.

Eyewitnesses can be unreliable, but that does not mean every eyewitness is in tact unreliable. Each report shuld be examined on its merits--distance, clarity of the view, experience of the eyewitness. In the case a guy who spends a whole lot of time in the woods was spooked enough to jump in a river in the winter. He could be lying in order to cover a careless fall into the river, but why make up a story involving a panther rather than a bear? Discounting all eyewitness reports as unreliable is disingenous because there is a large spectrum of quality of sightings. If I, person who works with animals everyday, has two college degrees, experience working directly with (as in touching) wildlife such as bears, and is generally level-headed, was told by some game warden that I must have seen a dog or a bear instead of a large cat, I would be highly offended. I would also be disappointed in our public servants refusing to do their jobs because it is easier to discount reports than to investigate. Just because some city slicker who gas never been to a zoo once reported a black chow as a bear doesn't mean every eyewitness is that unreliable. The same thing happens with known animals. Black bears live throughout Georgia, but they are less often seen outside the mountains. When the rare one is spotted somewhere like Macon, the DNR tells people they probably saw a dog, until someone finally gets a good picture. They don't even apologize for basically calling people poor eyewitnesses or liars.

  Not an attack, exactly, but more than just seeing one across a field:  http://www.fieldandstream.com/pages/discussion-topic-was-forester-chased-black-panther   And a more complete version: http://cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/sc-black-panther/

I always get vaccinated.  I caught the flu in the years when the vaccine strains needed were inaccurately predicted.  The first time I felt so bad I went to the hospital thinking I had something else; that was a year with a dismal success rate of the vaccine.  The second time, the overall illness was much less severe; I recovered much faster and was not as miserable.  So I have been vaccinated yearly for the last 13 years and got infected twice, both times due to poor vaccine strain predictions in those years.   On one of those years, my wife also got infected after me, so she got to the doctor early enough to start Tamiflu.  She had an allergic reaction that caused an extensive skin rash, so she had to stop it.     For those who feel sick for a few days after the vaccine, there is a good chance that is your immune response to the vaccine making you feel that way.  I would bet that most people who feel sick after the vaccine are not nearly as miserable as they would be if they had the actual virus.  Basically, all the symptoms of flu are your immune responses to the virus.  Also, by the time you feel sick, you may have already infected other people.

Travis did switch quickly from, "Take some antibiotics for that!" to "Oh well, I'll euthanize you" based on just his ex-wife's understanding of the infection.   Personally, I would try to pass on as much of my knowledge as possible to the survivors, but she was probably afraid that she would turn and become a threat to her son (and that Travis wouldn't be able to do the job).

  But she chose to kill herself.  We all heard that single case fall out of her revolver after the deed.   In the current group's defense, they don't really know how much time someone has to live after they are bitten, and the only one with any experience in the matter was basically trying to kill herself.

Loren Coleman has an extensive chapter about mystery cats in Mysterious America, but the most concise online reference that mentions the rare dark-colored Puma concolor is this: http://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-truth-about-black-pumas-separating.html   Interestingly enough, Shuker reaches the conclusion that the large black cats seen in the USA can't be Puma concolor precisely because the number of dark specimens killed is so rare.  He must be a glass half-empty type of guy.   To be honest Loren Coleman states in his book, "Still, these instances remain in question.  No scientifically verified melanistic Puma concolor of any subspecies is accepted."   This website (http://scotcats.online.fr/abc/catspecies/blackpumas.html) has a picture of a really dark specimen that I could see being called "black" if it was wet or at night.   So, previously I thought that no one had ever killed a black Puma concolor.  Now I think that people may have killed some specimens that have very dark coloration, but are not the jet-black, uniform color most people think of when you say "black panther."    Obviously, until there is a body that can be necropsied and compare the DNA to known species, I cannot say there is definitive proof.  I have put my wife on notice that if we ever see another out of place, dead cougar, then we are strapping to the roof of the car, taking hair and blood specimens, keeping it in our garage covered in ice, and then I will contact one of my professors at UGA.  The government will get contacted last.  There may be a YouTube video involved.  Currently, the only other person who was with me when I saw my road-killed cougar was my mother, and she is slowly losing her mind to dementia.

I am a scientist, so I know that the burden is on the "believers" of eastern cougars to prove that they exist.  However, the idea that they exist has to start somewhere, which is where the numerous eyewitness reports come into play.  It does not help for the wildlife authorities to flat out disregard a report just because it doesn't fit their worldview.  It is a catch-22--you need extensive field research to prove they exist, yet the groups most capable of funding such research won't because they don't exist.   With each cougar sighting, there is essentially only one of three possibilities--it was a true large cat, it was mis-identified, or it was a hoax.  The fact that cougars lived in the areas where they are being seen makes it much more believable than Bigfoot or Mothman.  Interestingly, I thought that there were no documented black pumas, but they have been documented in South American (but not North America), and they were lighter color on their ventral surfaces.  So although exceedingly rare, the capability of dark coloration exists within the genome.

  It wasn't in Tennessee, but I did see a dead one in south Georgia, and my parents saw another dead one many years later.  They were not black.   It is true that no one has killed or captured a large, wild black cat in America, but here is one old report:   Granted, it is from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods, which is based on her memories, but it shows that people have been talking about "black panthers" in America for a long time.   I concede that no one has proven a black gene exists in Puma concolor, but there are more than a few reports of large black cats that cannot easily be explained by mis-identification.  A forester, for example, should know the difference between a large black cat and a dog, bear, or otter: http://www.fieldandstream.com/pages/discussion-topic-was-forester-chased-black-panther

I read a report from a hunter in Georgia who saw one from a tree stand.  He described it as dark chocolate brown, but he could see people calling it black if it were wet.  When it comes to black panthers, the authorities have the most condescending view:  "You didn't see a black panther because the only black cats are leopards and jaguars that don't live in America."  Instead of explaining how someone could have seen a large black cat, they simply ignore the report like it was a ghost or UFO.   They ignore the basic biological concept of genetic drift.  With genetic drift, when a population is reduced in number, the effect of reproduction of individuals with a gene mutation is magnified.  For example, if a species had only three gray individuals and one black individual, and lightning randomly kills two of the gray ones, the chance of black color of the resulting offspring among the remaining population has dramatically improved.  Genetics is more complicated than that, but it illustrates the point.  In a large population, a rare gene can get diluted, but in a critically small population, a rare gene can explode in numbers.  It is a very easy way to explain large black cats in America since panthers were hunted to almost extinction.

SlingTV cut out right as they were leaving the neighborhood, and I thought at that moment, "Are they going to shut the gate?"     Salazar luring the Walkers seemed rather cutthroat to me; I know they considered the soldiers enemies at that point, but what about all the helpless patients in the hospital?  If it wasn't for the euthanasia scene, the resulting massacre would have been directly his fault.  Did the others even know what his plan was?

The Georgia DNR also denies that panthers exist in Georgia, despite one being killed in the state.  They said it was one of those roving males, but they still charged the guy with killing a protected species (even though that species doesn't exist in Georgia).     My mother and I saw a dead panther on I-16 in the late 80's, and my parents saw another dead one (a baby) on a different part of I-16 10 years later.  There was one case of a forester being chased into the Savannah River in the winter by a panther.  But the DNR denies that they live here.   The most recent sighting near me involved a security guard who saw a panther sitting on a couch, outdoors, in a trailer park in Rossville.  Classic Rossville, if you know the area.   Some say it is a conspiracy theory because as soon as the government admits that they exist, then they automatically have to protect the habitat under the Endangered Species Act, which would cost a lot of money and headaches.

Maybe they didn't frag him, but maybe they didn't work too hard to save him either?

Does he realize that had this incident had happened at a Tennessee college, that there would have been a good chance of no one carrying even if they had a HCP?

I thought Maryland was so bad that you couldn't even transport a handgun unloaded and stored if you weren't licensed and the guns registered.  Even if Maryland was not your destination, I have heard that they don't seem to respect FOPA if they catch you traveling through the state.  There have also been reports of their troopers specifically targeting out-of-state travelers looking for guns.   I'm no expert, but I was under the impression that Maryland ranks right below New Jersey and New York in terms of victimizing gun owners.

During the NRA convention, didn't Tootsies have a gunbuster, a "Welcome NRA" sign, and a Gadsden Flag posted all at the same time?

You don't have to be Prime member to buy instant videos.

If you go to the state museum, you might want to park close because it has a large gunbuster on the front door. I found out about it after walking there from the Music City Center. You can't see the the sign using Google Street View.

Watch online, or watch online for free? I watch it live using SlingTV, but I used to pay per episode for TWD on Amazon Instant Video.

I saw this same video posted on a different website, except a bunch of people who were there chimed in.  They said that the blind kid is only partially blind, and he instigated the fight.  I haven't delved into the details, but this is what was posted:   http://i.imgur.com/NXI24c2.jpg

I have imagined a safe in the corner of a garage with a drywall bulkhead built around it to camouflage it.  At first glance it would just look like a way to hide pipes and stuff.  You would have to make some type of hidden door.  Or maybe just a real door if your were just trying to hide it from view.  My garage is occupied on every corner, so I have no way to test the idea.