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Lowell Observatory Pushes To Name an Asteroid "Trayvon"
Flash Modin writes "The observatory where Pluto was discovered is pushing to name an asteroid after a black teenager killed in a controversial confrontation in Florida last year. William Lowell Putnam III says his family has identified with the cause of African American rights, and thus an asteroid named after Trayvon Martin is perfectly appropriate. Putnam is the sole trustee of the observatory, which was founded by Percival Lowell during his search for canals on Mars. Astronomers at the observatory discovered the asteroid in 2000, but it has not been formally named. Putnam has already asked the Minor Planet Center once to designate the asteroid 'Trayvon,' but they told him the designation was 'premature.' Now that there's been a verdict, the observatory is reapplying in hopes the naming body will see things different."
injecting stupid political games into space has got to be a new low in astronomy
It's being followed by a pale asteroid named Zimmerman.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't really think naming celestial bodies after victims is a good idea.
Astronomers usually want to inspire hope, and looking up at things named after victims just doesn't seem right.
Putting aside the fact that Martin was a racist thug who got killed by someone in self defense...and that merely bringing his name and media/court situation up he was involved in that is currently still getting people across the country all pissed off at each other if its even discussed...and that this is probably just an attention-whore publicity act...and that I doubt he had much to do in the field of the sciences...what was I talking about? Oh, yeah let's name an asteroid after him. Whatever.
Regardless of the details of the case itself, it's pretty clear that Martin was a racist (he used racial insults against Caucasians). He does not deserve to have an asteroid named after him, and if the civil rights movement picks him as a symbol, it will only hurt their cause.
Hes referring to the doctored recordings where Zimmerman is made to sounds like he uses a racial epithet. Didnt a news organization have to apologize for airing the doctored recording?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57591520-504083/george-zimmerman-trial-neighbor-testifies-trayvon-martin-was-straddling-zimmerman-moments-before-fatal-gunshot/
He saw. I'll take the victim's word when the back of his head is bloodied alongside a swollen face, and an uninvolved party corroborates the story immediately following the incident. Trayvon did not have a mark on him, so it's pretty clear who was on the bottom given the visible, physical damage to Zimmerman.
If you are willfully blind to the evidence, then that's your own fault, but it's time that you stop spreading ignorant information. You may want Trayvon to be innocent, but absolutely nothing points to it, including his own offline and online antics and the prosecution's lead witness admitting that Trayvon used racial slurs immediately before the fight.
some mouth breathing moron thinks he has a right to walk around with a gun
He does. Someone should re-read the constitution, and the law in florida. Just because YOU have contempt for your rights, doesnt mean the courts do.
play cop
He WAS on the neighborhood watch in an area which had suffered a rash of break ins. Come on, this was widely reported.
innocent civilians
Yes, heres the thing, a jury found that Martin WASNT innocent, and that there was grounds for a plea of self-defense. That, too is a right that citizens have.
laws that somehow support this disgusting behavior
Most societies that you would want to live in have both an adversarial court system, and a defense for killing on the grounds of self-defense. Thank goodness that is the case here. What laws, specifically are you thinking of-- hopefully not the "stand your ground" law which had absolutely no relevance to the case?
stand your ground laws, carry/ conceal laws: they have to go
Ah, yes, you were, which indicates you were successfully distracted by the media in a discussion on irrelevant laws. Look through the court transcripts and see if "stand your ground" had any relevance: You will find it did not. The issue at stake was whether Zimmerman was justified in killing Martin in self-defense.
You seem to have bought into the race-card-Zimmerman-was-a-racist story that was spun up by the media, so I really suggest you go back and look at the facts, not the op-eds and commentary that was spun up around the whole issue. The amount of bias that came out in this whole ordeal was astounding, from the doctored recordings, to the doctored photos, to the claims that Zimmerman was white, to the claims that white-on-black violence is anywhere near common (in reality, 80+% of violence is intra-racial-- white-on-white, black-on-black, etc).
But even if those didn't exist, you cannot reasonably compare a controlled fight on a special stage with doctors and judges standing around to stop the fight if it gets out of hand with a street brawl on concrete and no one there.
I don't think it's a reasonable fear but reasonable people panic all the time.
A stranger is on top of you, bashing your head on the ground with no sign of stopping. You don't think that it's a reasonable fear that you're going to lose your life?
Trying to name an asteroid after Martin is an overt political act that has no place in the naming of such bodies. It's absurd and wrong.
I feel like we're sinking deeper each and every time I find myself saying "We have just reached a new low in stupidity."
The feeling is correct. It's like reading out the altitude in a free falling elevator,
you could never speak fast enough to keep pace with events...
but the direction is certain and the conclusion will be no surprise...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
"Amateur Cop" is a thing in the US. Zimmerman was part of a police-sponsored neighborhood watch program, in which people take it upon themselves to ... well, watch the neighborhood. The opening of this whole thing is that he saw a guy that "looked suspicious" (for whatever reason), got out of his car, and followed at a distance. That's pretty normal.
The "At a distance" thing is important, and something a lot of people missed. Trayvon turned down a street and went south; Zimmerman passed that street heading east, watching to see where Trayvon was going while reporting to the dispatcher. What Zimmerman was not doing was following Trayvon down the road in the shadows, inching closer, trying to get a bead on the little black kid; everyone wants to perpetuate this "stalking an innocent teenager" thing anyway, but that's not what happened.
What happened after that is less understood. Somehow Trayvon got to his house (south), then came back 100 meters (north) and a confrontation occurred. This became a physical altercation, which ended with Zimmerman shooting Trayvon to death. The murder argument comes down to an argument over whether or not Zimmerman was being beaten to death (or reasonably believed he was being beaten to death)--this is why you keep hearing that Trayvon was "armed with concrete" and smashing Zimmerman's head into the sidewalk.
Zimmerman had a permit to carry a gun because he's a shitty fighter. If he wasn't such a useless lump of shit, maybe he could have fought back and controlled the situation. He's lucky Trayvon didn't just take his gun and shoot him to death with it. Non-US people might find the concept of regular citizens carrying guns a little displacing--it's not a thing people do in England, for example--but in the US, people actually carry guns in case they're attacked. Beyond that, shooting Trayvon to death is just the natural result of being in a situation where he thought he was gonna die--that is, the natural action is to try to not die, and the only capable way he could think of to not die was to kill Trayvon.
Everything between the confrontation and the death is unclear. Fortunately for Zimmerman (and the rest of us), because nothing here screams "violent premeditated or negligent homicide", the only rational thing to do is accept "self-defense" and move on. Unfortunately, people are not rational and start screaming for blood, trying to blame Zimmerman while dismissing the very real and strong possibility that he was, in fact, going to die if he didn't shoot Trayvon right there. So we have this mess.
I don't understand the "Civil Rights" involved. They say Trayvon's rights were violated. What rights? He was observed in public; if he wasn't doing anything bad, the police wouldn't have even been able to search him. He could have 20 pounds of cocaine and stolen jewelry on him, and the cops could show up like "we heard reports of a suspicious person," and he's like "Everything's alright here," and they're like "Can we search your bag?" "No." That's it. Nothing actually happening here? The cops don't even get to frisk you. Other people are entitled to observe you, the police are entitled to pass through the neighborhood and ask you if you're alright and whatever, but if you're not obviously committing a crime (even if you really ARE, but it's not visible and they have no probable cause to assume you're a criminal) then they can't do shit. You could have burglary tools and a bomb in your backpack and they can't even check it to make sure you just have school books (unless somebody reported seeing you using burglary tools to try to break into somewhere).
I guess the only civil right here might be the right to, you know, not get shot to death; and you immediately waive that right when you're in the process of murdering someone.
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Smartphone ownership is UP
Violent crime is DOWN.
Cat videos on Youtube are UP
Violent crime is DOWN.
Justin Beiber album sales are UP
Violent crime is DOWN.
Google it yourself.
Pretty simple. Looking for a rough correlation in two variables in one country is almost meaningless.
I stole this Sig