You hear they're in a spaceship, and it's broke, and you expect all sort of crazy crap, and you prepare by turning off all knowledge of science and technology, and you get:
Catalyzer's broke. Gonna need a new one.
No 'charging the emitters', no gibberish about pulling power from life support, no 'phases', no 'modulation'...it's just 'broke'.
The reason you don't know about it is the reason it failed.
Fox delibrately purchases sci-fi series so it can shoot them in the foot. Which it did to Firefly. It was delibrately destroyed, played in the wrong order, preempted by random shit, not promoted at all.
It's not the least bit surprising you hadn't heard of it.
It had the potential to be the next Buffy, minus the weird image problem Buffy has to this day. Get rid of the silly name, get rid of the silly premise, get rid of the much mocked manner of speakage, keep the important concepts. Instead of the 'best show you're not watching', maybe people would watch it. (And there were a lot of Buffy fans to pull in. Except, of course, Fox never purchased any ads during Buffy or Angel to actually locate them. Not that ads would do any good when you move the damn show around.)
Or it could have been the next Star Trek, written by someone who actually understands characters and plot. (The next next Star Trek, I guess, as B5 would be the next one.)
Or, hell, fans would have settled for a cult classic.
Instead the show got cancelled before all the episodes ever aired. It is possibly unique in TV history for being canceled before the pilot aired, because they showed the episodes out of order.
The only reason anyone heard of it is that fans pestered the studio for months. Not to renew the series, which is hopeless, but to release the DVDs....which they then proceeded to purchase like madmen. They didn't manage to break any records I'm aware of, but they did manage to convince the studio the movie would sell.
And people like it for different reasons, so it's nearly impossible to explain.
The use of school real estate, by students, outside of education, has already been decided to be all-or-nothing...the school doesn't get to pick 'good' uses. (You'd be amazed how many schools have tried to shut down gay and lesbian clubs, and they can't without shutting them all down, which they do by removing students from campus after hours, which they obviously can do.)
Anyway the court actually has a two pronged test for this, and the first prong is just 'is it free speech?', which I think we can all agree email generally is, small exceptions of death threats and blackmail aside. Obviously for it to be covered under the first amendment, it has to actually be covered under the first amendment in the first place, regardless of education.
The second prong is the 'two things' I mentioned...although the courts says it would have to produce 'substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities'.
The problem is that, until recently, almost all the case law was about student run school newspapers, which are a completely different beast. If the school is using resources to print it, and those resources are intended for an educational use, controlling that newspaper may be allowable under certain circumstances.
In addition they can consider any offical status the paper holds, thus having its name put on the articles in it. And the school newspaper tends to be read in school, which can produce disruption. It's a very gray area, and people think all free speech issues in school are gray areas.
But that's nothing like the issue here. If someone checks out a laptop, it's theirs until they turn it in. (In fact, I bet they are barred from letting other people, including students, use it while they have it checked out.)
The school could take laptops away from people who didn't have schoolwork to do and give them to those who did, but considering students, at minimum, check the things out for 15 hours or so overnight, and can't possibly have that much homework, barring them from using email while it's checked out does not seem to accomplish anything.
I can't think of any way to justify this rule of theirs, the sole purpose seems to be 'We don't want students talking to people' and schools do have to be able to justify a rule if it infringes on the first amendment. Normally they can get away with 'That speech disrupts school', but that doesn't even vaguely fly here.
The real problem here is that all restrictions on speech for students have been based on one of two things.
1. Disruption of the educational process.
2. Redirection of school resources that could be educating. (Aka, no groups chatting online in the library when people need to use those computers, even if there is not a class at the moment.)
The problem with 'no email' is that while the computers are the school's, they aren't being used during school, so can't disrupt anything, and they wouldn't be used for school related things if the students using them couldn't use them for other stuff. They don't magically appear at some other student's house for that student to use.
It's much the same reason that schools can't pick and choose which student run organizations it allows after school. If it allow anyway, it has to allow them all. And the only way it can disallow them all is just make the students leave, because they have no right to be there at any hour they want.
So you're saying that it would, for example, be okay for the school to allow access to Christian chats but not Jewish ones?
That is clearly insane, and thus we must assume that just because the laptops are the schools, does not mean they can put any restrictions they wish on them, but must instead follow the constitution. The government is only allowed to put as much restriction is needed on public property, like in your crazy courthouse one.
Whereas a private individual would be perfectly free to set up whatever restrictions they wish.
Just students have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association at school, except when that interferes with education, students must have those rights on the school's computers. If the school cannot legally stop discussion it does not not approve of on school grounds between students (Which it can't, in case you're confused.), it cannot legally stop email it does not approve of using school computers.
Now, obviously almost any converstation during class could interfere with education, but no one is using these laptops during class, and just like the school can stop students from building a 'meeting room', I can see how it could stop students from installing IM software.
However, I see nothing that would allow them to infringe students right of association and speech by forbidding students from using email at home, via webmail. It's exactly like any other web page the student is allowed to visit, except the student can...speak! It's a fairly clear constitutional violation, delibrately restricting speech.
You pegged it. The 'comparing to other stuff' is a red herring, it's that out brain treats up and down distance completely wrong.
We are completely incapable of estimating them, at all.
I don't know if it has anything to do with looking down, but that's an interesting theory.
But I have to point out that everything we can see up is either very close, maybe three hundred feet max, with most of it within ten, or was, for the vast majority of human existence, infinitely far away, like clouds and stars. So it's not just because downward is so close. Up is basically the same way, being very close, with a few weird exceptions for mountains. (Of course, down has the same exceptions.)
Whereas we've always been able to see things miles away and verify they are, in fact, that far away.
People think Douglas Adams' idea of a race that can't conceive of 'up' is a bit silly, but we have a fairly serious blind spot there.
For example, we think mirrors flip you around left to right. Well...it's just as correct to think they've flipped you around up to down. If you flipped an image in the mirror up to down, the person would be correct, although standing on their head. (Or flipped them front to back, but that's understandable, as you can only see one side of that in a mirror, so how you'd 'flip' that is a bit abstract.)
Yes, but the article is pretending that they are possible explainations, when, in fact, the flattened dome is the actual correct one.
It's not just the moon. Human being are unable to compare size and distance vertically with horizontally. They completely and utterly blow any test given to them of that sort, even on absurdly small scales as 'Which is closer to your eyes, the wall or the ceiling?'.
Try that test. See if you can get your eyes the same distance from a wall and the ceiling, and then mark that place in midair and get someone to measure it. You will be wrong by a huge margin of error.
If you managed it, you actually looked to the side, at the corner of the room. Try making a point level with your eyes on the wall, and then doing it non-perpendicular with the wall. For more fun, mark the ceiling too and do that diagonally.
Or just do it in a very narrow room that you can't fit a corner within what your brain things of as 'level'.
Then try it again, laying down and looking up.;)
Meanwhile, it's completely trivial for us to do that with points that are within 30 degrees of the horizon. We can do it in like five seconds.
It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's completely absurd. The moon about 60 times farther away than the radius of the earth. Let's pretend that's exact.
So it must vary, from the observer, from, say, 60 radius to 60.5 and past that point you can't see it, because you're at more than a right angle. Which is a max of 0.4% difference in distance from any two points on earth that can see it.
Obviously a 0.4% difference in distance couldn't produce the huge apparent change in size. You can't even notice that change in position. Put something a meter aware and move it half a centimeter and see how much 'bigger' it gets.
Anyway, we know why this happens. It's the second explaination given in the article. Human being thinks the sky is a bowl, and that it is several hundred feet above us. Whereas 'the side' extends quite a few miles, obviously.
I don't know what anyone is gaining by pretending the explaination is unknown.
Yeah, because we all you know can't use government property to exercize your rights. The right to freedom of speech ends at your front door of your private residences, after all.
Oh, I have a whole nother speech for DUI tests. But, yes, you have to consent to a drug test, good point, so don't refuse that.
But in short: Take it. Then demand a blood test if it was even slightly in the illegal range. Always. Breath tests are idiotic.
Don't worry about it testing higher, or providing 'more evidence'. They don't need more evidence, and they have to take the lowest. They'd look pretty idiotic claiming you one BAC when another of their test had said lower. And blood tests almost always give you lower than breathe tests, as does spending the time to get you to the blood test.
If you're underaged, be aware the 'illegal' level may be 'any', so even if you show.01 BAC, get a blood test.
While you're doing it, refuse to say anything about how much you've been drinking. Don't even admit 'some'. If they badger you, tell them you're taking the fifth. Don't tell them the name of the bar, don't tell them how infrequently you drink, don't tell them anything. They're asking these questions for a reason, even if you don't see it.
I've never had any of this come up, because I've never been alcohol tested by a cop, or ever been in a situtation where if I had been tested, it would have shown anything, so I tend to forget about 'implied consent' when talking about what to do when a cop pulls you over.
Know anyone who was friends with a cop that was killed while making a simple traffic stop because a car was speeding and ran a red light? Know anyone who had a cop family member nearly die because someone not wanting to get caught out on a warrant tried to run him down with his car?
Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Have you ever had anyone harrassed by the cops? I have. Have you, personally, been tricked by the legal system into losing your license? I have.
It doesn't matter that most people don't do these things. The point is that some people do. Cops have every right (out of sheer survival interests) to make sure that the person they're talking to isn't one of those that would just as soon see them dead.
Cops do not have rights at all in relationship to me. Rights are things the government is forbidden from infringing on. They choose to put on the badge. If they don't want to be put in the situtation where they might be shot, don't put on the fucking badge.
They don't get to endanger me because I might endanger them. They work for me.
I've seen countless traffic stops where the cop didn't even have a hand on his weapon. Why? Because after doing it for a few years, they get a pretty good sense of when something's not right. It's not "magic," it's called experience. And do you really think that the nervous guy with the beer bottle in the back is really going to opt for running down the cop?
Who the hell said he'd run down the cop? I said he'd be acting suspiciously, because he has a reason to do so.
If someone is that likely flip out and be recklessly deadly like that, they've got no business even driving a car. They certainly have no business wondering why a cop would eye them sideways if they're telegraphing that sort of readiness for Freaking Out.
What the hell are you talking about? You're just making up shit. I never said anything about people 'flipping out', I said people who interact with cops can be nervous for many reasons. Sometimes it's because they think they might be guilty of something they are not, sometimes it's because they are guilty of some completely minor thing, but still don't deserve to be treated as murderers because their dog isn't registered or whatever.
So? Don't they have their own insurance? And if not, what the hell are they doing driving a 2000 pound vehicle around on the road not even sure if it's legal? Again, why are you worried about the professional judgement of the cop when it's someone with judgement that poor that's acting squirrely?
Yes, because everyone is exactly aware, every second, if they're breaking the law. Do you know how many people in my state think the age of consent is 18, when it's always been 16? Do you know how few people are aware that it's illegal to merge into traffic from a center turn lane?
Ever had to call the police about a nearby domestic disturbance, a stolen vehicle, a person threatening someone in your business, or someone actively breaking into your neighbor's car? Cops respond to all sorts of situations, and their lives truly, literally are at risk every time. People who drive around on expired tags, or that run stop signs or don't have working brake lights are very often on the edge enough to also have other issues (like warrants, or like a a bucket o' crack in the trunk). But cars like that go past cops all the time without getting pulled over - it's a gamble. When they do stop someone who is polite and forthcoming, it's usually completely painless. I've been pulled over, and never gave the officers any body-language reason to think that I was doing anything other than driving with my mind on how to fix a bad server or some other distraction. Beligerant, non-communicative people are usually that way for a reason, and can't object to being treated exactly as their behavior demands.
Or even people with long hair and beat up cars. Those bastards.
There's a whole list the ACLU has somewhere of how to talk to a cop, but those suggestions are easy:
To rephrase as an easy to understand list:
1. Don't lie.
2. Don't tell them anything not in response to a question. Give vague and pointless answers. For example, if they ask you where you're going, tell them 'That way' and point. (a) If they ask to how fast you were going, tell them you thought you were going the speed limit. (Say 'I thought' at lot, it keeps them from proving any sort of lie.) Or you can take the fifth, that should be interesting.
3. If they ask for permission to do anything, refuse them. Say 'I do not consent to that'. Do not make any move whatsoever to stop them, just tell them you do not consent. If they can require something, they will just tell you, they will not ask. Tell them you do not consent as you do it. (Well, hand over your license and insurance without making them go through that, because they can demand that, and you just look stupid.)
4. Don't swear, insult, or berate them.
a)They're trying to trap you in a lie, but you don't have to even play their game. Technically, all you have to do is give them your name and license/insurance and you can shut up, but giving vague answers keeps them from saying you weren't cooperative. Feel free to give them completely pointless information, like the history of England in the Middle Ages. Or ask them the same questions back, like where they live and where they're going, and act annoyed they refuse to tell you, but they continue to ask you questions. After a few questions, start asking them how long this is going to take.
Um, if that's not such a problem (running drugs), why hide them under the spare tire? You watch shows like that, and you see exactly why a cop pulling you over for a safety violation (or for trying to hide your identity by not having a lit license plate, etc) can tell pretty much immediately when someone is nervously hiding their contraband. Most casual smugglers/dealers are really, really terrible liars. They act busted before they are busted, just like dogs and kids.
Or they got nervous because they suddenly realize there might be an empty beer bottle in the back from when they were tailgating before the game last week, and aren't sure if that's legal under the open container laws.
Or they might be nervous because the car is borrowed and they aren't on the insurance of the car, and they don't know where the owner put the little card. Then they really panic because they don't know if the car actually has insurance...
Pretending that nervous==reasonable presumption of a crime is exactly the propagranda COPS teaches. Oh, and look, they're always right!
Oh, and not only is nervousness an indication of crime, it's a good cue to for cops to pull their weapon. Because there usually is 50 kilos of heroin in the trunk, and guys will do anything to not get arrested.
Ignoring the fact that most people who actually have something illegal in the car go peacefully when they realize the gig is up, because they quite logically reason that with their license plate and description, the police can find out who they are, so their immediate thought is not 'Maybe I should run away and cause a statewide manhunt', but 'Shit! Can I cut a deal? Who I can roll over on? Wait, can I get off on some technicality? Where's my damn lawyer?'.
But, I forget. All criminals are stupid, immediately resort to violence (Even non-violent ones, like transporters of illegal things.), and very bad actors. So cops can just magically detect them, and at that point should use as much force as they feel like.
PROPAGRANDA BULLSHIT.
And, of course, no one innocent ever panics because the cops are pointing guns at him, runs, and then turns out to never have done anything wrong. (Wait, luckily, he did run from the police, so they can get him on that.) He must have been hiding something, even if the cops couldn't figure it out, so had to let him go.
If people want a shorter name and a better analogy for copyright infringement, I hereby give them: Trespassing.
That's a much better analogy for all this. Well, it's magical trespassing that can't damage any of your property, and doesn't keep you from using the land. Maybe it's ghost trespassing...oooo...scary.
Or, I know. Sneaking into the movie theater! Except that's not any shorter than 'copyright infringement'.
I know! It's like selling alcohol on Sunday! No, wait, that doesn't work at all.
While both 'piracy' and 'stealing' are idiotic, I'd actually much rather have the term piracy.
Everyone knows it's neither morally the same as actual high-seas piracy nor legally the same. No one's actually accusing people of boarding ships, killing people, raping women, looting the ships, and sinking them. No matter what you views on copyright infringment, you have to admit it's not that bad.
While quite a large percentage of the population here at least seems to think it is legally a form of theft, when of course it's not. (Whether it is morally the same I leave up to you.)
Evolution does things that don't make sense all the time. Evolution doesn't magically do the right thing, some people are going to fall off the end of it.
And if you're going to gain a mate and keep possession of her, it makes perfect sense to get her early. Although that obviously has to be weighted against the time spent defending your possession of her until she can have children.
However, in the real world, pedophiles are...flipped backwards, not looking for an early advantage or whatnot, because the exact thing that makes people attractive, the secondary sexual characteristics that are designed to say to others 'Yoo-hoo! I'm mateable!', are what pedophiles don't look for. They stop being attracted right as the women could have children.
Which is not an evolutionary advantage in any way.
Salon doesn't have ads, at least not of kind that's being talked about here.
There are two kinds of access. One via subscription, and one via a 'day pass' where you sit and watch a real ad, and then there are no more ads for the rest of the day.
Which is annoying, but infinitely better than dancing crap on every page. They say, up front, here's the cost: You watch an ad to purchase the current 'issue'. You want tomorrow's 'issue', you watch another ad then.
You could adblock those, but what would be the point? You'd still have to go to that page and get the cookie anyway. It's more like TV ads instead of web ads. Adblocking doesn't hurt Salon in the least.
We've got a generation of people who are growing up with constantly more annoying ads.
Within two decades, to get 20 year-olds to pay attention to ads, they're going to have to show people raping dogs and sawing off other people's arms with chainsaws.
Logically, Congressentities should listen to 17 and even 16 year-olds, because they will be voting in the next election, or, at least, the one after that. Duh. (And even if they aren't voting, their friends are.)
16 and 17 year-olds don't have political power for the same reason 18 year-olds don't...young people don't vote.
Slashdot Mirror
You hear they're in a spaceship, and it's broke, and you expect all sort of crazy crap, and you prepare by turning off all knowledge of science and technology, and you get:
Catalyzer's broke. Gonna need a new one.
No 'charging the emitters', no gibberish about pulling power from life support, no 'phases', no 'modulation'...it's just 'broke'.
Fox delibrately purchases sci-fi series so it can shoot them in the foot. Which it did to Firefly. It was delibrately destroyed, played in the wrong order, preempted by random shit, not promoted at all.
It's not the least bit surprising you hadn't heard of it.
It had the potential to be the next Buffy, minus the weird image problem Buffy has to this day. Get rid of the silly name, get rid of the silly premise, get rid of the much mocked manner of speakage, keep the important concepts. Instead of the 'best show you're not watching', maybe people would watch it. (And there were a lot of Buffy fans to pull in. Except, of course, Fox never purchased any ads during Buffy or Angel to actually locate them. Not that ads would do any good when you move the damn show around.)
Or it could have been the next Star Trek, written by someone who actually understands characters and plot. (The next next Star Trek, I guess, as B5 would be the next one.)
Or, hell, fans would have settled for a cult classic.
Instead the show got cancelled before all the episodes ever aired. It is possibly unique in TV history for being canceled before the pilot aired, because they showed the episodes out of order.
The only reason anyone heard of it is that fans pestered the studio for months. Not to renew the series, which is hopeless, but to release the DVDs....which they then proceeded to purchase like madmen. They didn't manage to break any records I'm aware of, but they did manage to convince the studio the movie would sell.
And people like it for different reasons, so it's nearly impossible to explain.
The use of school real estate, by students, outside of education, has already been decided to be all-or-nothing...the school doesn't get to pick 'good' uses. (You'd be amazed how many schools have tried to shut down gay and lesbian clubs, and they can't without shutting them all down, which they do by removing students from campus after hours, which they obviously can do.)
Anyway the court actually has a two pronged test for this, and the first prong is just 'is it free speech?', which I think we can all agree email generally is, small exceptions of death threats and blackmail aside. Obviously for it to be covered under the first amendment, it has to actually be covered under the first amendment in the first place, regardless of education.
The second prong is the 'two things' I mentioned...although the courts says it would have to produce 'substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities'.
The problem is that, until recently, almost all the case law was about student run school newspapers, which are a completely different beast. If the school is using resources to print it, and those resources are intended for an educational use, controlling that newspaper may be allowable under certain circumstances.
In addition they can consider any offical status the paper holds, thus having its name put on the articles in it. And the school newspaper tends to be read in school, which can produce disruption. It's a very gray area, and people think all free speech issues in school are gray areas.
But that's nothing like the issue here. If someone checks out a laptop, it's theirs until they turn it in. (In fact, I bet they are barred from letting other people, including students, use it while they have it checked out.)
The school could take laptops away from people who didn't have schoolwork to do and give them to those who did, but considering students, at minimum, check the things out for 15 hours or so overnight, and can't possibly have that much homework, barring them from using email while it's checked out does not seem to accomplish anything.
I can't think of any way to justify this rule of theirs, the sole purpose seems to be 'We don't want students talking to people' and schools do have to be able to justify a rule if it infringes on the first amendment. Normally they can get away with 'That speech disrupts school', but that doesn't even vaguely fly here.
1. Disruption of the educational process.
2. Redirection of school resources that could be educating. (Aka, no groups chatting online in the library when people need to use those computers, even if there is not a class at the moment.)
The problem with 'no email' is that while the computers are the school's, they aren't being used during school, so can't disrupt anything, and they wouldn't be used for school related things if the students using them couldn't use them for other stuff. They don't magically appear at some other student's house for that student to use.
It's much the same reason that schools can't pick and choose which student run organizations it allows after school. If it allow anyway, it has to allow them all. And the only way it can disallow them all is just make the students leave, because they have no right to be there at any hour they want.
That is clearly insane, and thus we must assume that just because the laptops are the schools, does not mean they can put any restrictions they wish on them, but must instead follow the constitution. The government is only allowed to put as much restriction is needed on public property, like in your crazy courthouse one.
Whereas a private individual would be perfectly free to set up whatever restrictions they wish.
Just students have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association at school, except when that interferes with education, students must have those rights on the school's computers. If the school cannot legally stop discussion it does not not approve of on school grounds between students (Which it can't, in case you're confused.), it cannot legally stop email it does not approve of using school computers.
Now, obviously almost any converstation during class could interfere with education, but no one is using these laptops during class, and just like the school can stop students from building a 'meeting room', I can see how it could stop students from installing IM software.
However, I see nothing that would allow them to infringe students right of association and speech by forbidding students from using email at home, via webmail. It's exactly like any other web page the student is allowed to visit, except the student can...speak! It's a fairly clear constitutional violation, delibrately restricting speech.
'It's not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!'
'Older? Older than dead?'
Or maybe one for this entire discussion:
It seemed to be moving in and out of focus, which he felt instinctively was a dangerous thing for several million tons of rock to do.
We are completely incapable of estimating them, at all.
I don't know if it has anything to do with looking down, but that's an interesting theory.
But I have to point out that everything we can see up is either very close, maybe three hundred feet max, with most of it within ten, or was, for the vast majority of human existence, infinitely far away, like clouds and stars. So it's not just because downward is so close. Up is basically the same way, being very close, with a few weird exceptions for mountains. (Of course, down has the same exceptions.)
Whereas we've always been able to see things miles away and verify they are, in fact, that far away.
People think Douglas Adams' idea of a race that can't conceive of 'up' is a bit silly, but we have a fairly serious blind spot there.
For example, we think mirrors flip you around left to right. Well...it's just as correct to think they've flipped you around up to down. If you flipped an image in the mirror up to down, the person would be correct, although standing on their head. (Or flipped them front to back, but that's understandable, as you can only see one side of that in a mirror, so how you'd 'flip' that is a bit abstract.)
It's not just the moon. Human being are unable to compare size and distance vertically with horizontally. They completely and utterly blow any test given to them of that sort, even on absurdly small scales as 'Which is closer to your eyes, the wall or the ceiling?'.
Try that test. See if you can get your eyes the same distance from a wall and the ceiling, and then mark that place in midair and get someone to measure it. You will be wrong by a huge margin of error.
If you managed it, you actually looked to the side, at the corner of the room. Try making a point level with your eyes on the wall, and then doing it non-perpendicular with the wall. For more fun, mark the ceiling too and do that diagonally.
Or just do it in a very narrow room that you can't fit a corner within what your brain things of as 'level'.
Then try it again, laying down and looking up. ;)
Meanwhile, it's completely trivial for us to do that with points that are within 30 degrees of the horizon. We can do it in like five seconds.
So it must vary, from the observer, from, say, 60 radius to 60.5 and past that point you can't see it, because you're at more than a right angle. Which is a max of 0.4% difference in distance from any two points on earth that can see it.
Obviously a 0.4% difference in distance couldn't produce the huge apparent change in size. You can't even notice that change in position. Put something a meter aware and move it half a centimeter and see how much 'bigger' it gets.
Anyway, we know why this happens. It's the second explaination given in the article. Human being thinks the sky is a bowl, and that it is several hundred feet above us. Whereas 'the side' extends quite a few miles, obviously.
I don't know what anyone is gaining by pretending the explaination is unknown.
But, yes, the school district was idiots.
Yeah, because we all you know can't use government property to exercize your rights. The right to freedom of speech ends at your front door of your private residences, after all.
But in short: Take it. Then demand a blood test if it was even slightly in the illegal range. Always. Breath tests are idiotic.
Don't worry about it testing higher, or providing 'more evidence'. They don't need more evidence, and they have to take the lowest. They'd look pretty idiotic claiming you one BAC when another of their test had said lower. And blood tests almost always give you lower than breathe tests, as does spending the time to get you to the blood test.
If you're underaged, be aware the 'illegal' level may be 'any', so even if you show .01 BAC, get a blood test.
While you're doing it, refuse to say anything about how much you've been drinking. Don't even admit 'some'. If they badger you, tell them you're taking the fifth. Don't tell them the name of the bar, don't tell them how infrequently you drink, don't tell them anything. They're asking these questions for a reason, even if you don't see it.
I've never had any of this come up, because I've never been alcohol tested by a cop, or ever been in a situtation where if I had been tested, it would have shown anything, so I tend to forget about 'implied consent' when talking about what to do when a cop pulls you over.
Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Have you ever had anyone harrassed by the cops? I have. Have you, personally, been tricked by the legal system into losing your license? I have.
It doesn't matter that most people don't do these things. The point is that some people do. Cops have every right (out of sheer survival interests) to make sure that the person they're talking to isn't one of those that would just as soon see them dead.
Cops do not have rights at all in relationship to me. Rights are things the government is forbidden from infringing on. They choose to put on the badge. If they don't want to be put in the situtation where they might be shot, don't put on the fucking badge.
They don't get to endanger me because I might endanger them. They work for me.
I've seen countless traffic stops where the cop didn't even have a hand on his weapon. Why? Because after doing it for a few years, they get a pretty good sense of when something's not right. It's not "magic," it's called experience. And do you really think that the nervous guy with the beer bottle in the back is really going to opt for running down the cop?
Who the hell said he'd run down the cop? I said he'd be acting suspiciously, because he has a reason to do so.
If someone is that likely flip out and be recklessly deadly like that, they've got no business even driving a car. They certainly have no business wondering why a cop would eye them sideways if they're telegraphing that sort of readiness for Freaking Out.
What the hell are you talking about? You're just making up shit. I never said anything about people 'flipping out', I said people who interact with cops can be nervous for many reasons. Sometimes it's because they think they might be guilty of something they are not, sometimes it's because they are guilty of some completely minor thing, but still don't deserve to be treated as murderers because their dog isn't registered or whatever.
So? Don't they have their own insurance? And if not, what the hell are they doing driving a 2000 pound vehicle around on the road not even sure if it's legal? Again, why are you worried about the professional judgement of the cop when it's someone with judgement that poor that's acting squirrely?
Yes, because everyone is exactly aware, every second, if they're breaking the law. Do you know how many people in my state think the age of consent is 18, when it's always been 16? Do you know how few people are aware that it's illegal to merge into traffic from a center turn lane?
Ever had to call the police about a nearby domestic disturbance, a stolen vehicle, a person threatening someone in your business, or someone actively breaking into your neighbor's car? Cops respond to all sorts of situations, and their lives truly, literally are at risk every time. People who drive around on expired tags, or that run stop signs or don't have working brake lights are very often on the edge enough to also have other issues (like warrants, or like a a bucket o' crack in the trunk). But cars like that go past cops all the time without getting pulled over - it's a gamble. When they do stop someone who is polite and forthcoming, it's usually completely painless. I've been pulled over, and never gave the officers any body-language reason to think that I was doing anything other than driving with my mind on how to fix a bad server or some other distraction. Beligerant, non-communicative people are usually that way for a reason, and can't object to being treated exactly as their behavior demands.
Or even people with long hair and beat up cars. Those bastards.
A little
To rephrase as an easy to understand list:
1. Don't lie.
2. Don't tell them anything not in response to a question. Give vague and pointless answers. For example, if they ask you where you're going, tell them 'That way' and point. (a) If they ask to how fast you were going, tell them you thought you were going the speed limit. (Say 'I thought' at lot, it keeps them from proving any sort of lie.) Or you can take the fifth, that should be interesting.
3. If they ask for permission to do anything, refuse them. Say 'I do not consent to that'. Do not make any move whatsoever to stop them, just tell them you do not consent. If they can require something, they will just tell you, they will not ask. Tell them you do not consent as you do it. (Well, hand over your license and insurance without making them go through that, because they can demand that, and you just look stupid.)
4. Don't swear, insult, or berate them.
a)They're trying to trap you in a lie, but you don't have to even play their game. Technically, all you have to do is give them your name and license/insurance and you can shut up, but giving vague answers keeps them from saying you weren't cooperative. Feel free to give them completely pointless information, like the history of England in the Middle Ages. Or ask them the same questions back, like where they live and where they're going, and act annoyed they refuse to tell you, but they continue to ask you questions. After a few questions, start asking them how long this is going to take.
Or they got nervous because they suddenly realize there might be an empty beer bottle in the back from when they were tailgating before the game last week, and aren't sure if that's legal under the open container laws.
Or they might be nervous because the car is borrowed and they aren't on the insurance of the car, and they don't know where the owner put the little card. Then they really panic because they don't know if the car actually has insurance...
Pretending that nervous==reasonable presumption of a crime is exactly the propagranda COPS teaches. Oh, and look, they're always right!
Oh, and not only is nervousness an indication of crime, it's a good cue to for cops to pull their weapon. Because there usually is 50 kilos of heroin in the trunk, and guys will do anything to not get arrested.
Ignoring the fact that most people who actually have something illegal in the car go peacefully when they realize the gig is up, because they quite logically reason that with their license plate and description, the police can find out who they are, so their immediate thought is not 'Maybe I should run away and cause a statewide manhunt', but 'Shit! Can I cut a deal? Who I can roll over on? Wait, can I get off on some technicality? Where's my damn lawyer?'.
But, I forget. All criminals are stupid, immediately resort to violence (Even non-violent ones, like transporters of illegal things.), and very bad actors. So cops can just magically detect them, and at that point should use as much force as they feel like.
PROPAGRANDA BULLSHIT.
And, of course, no one innocent ever panics because the cops are pointing guns at him, runs, and then turns out to never have done anything wrong. (Wait, luckily, he did run from the police, so they can get him on that.) He must have been hiding something, even if the cops couldn't figure it out, so had to let him go.
That's a much better analogy for all this. Well, it's magical trespassing that can't damage any of your property, and doesn't keep you from using the land. Maybe it's ghost trespassing...oooo...scary.
Or, I know. Sneaking into the movie theater! Except that's not any shorter than 'copyright infringement'.
I know! It's like selling alcohol on Sunday! No, wait, that doesn't work at all.
You're allowed to that in the US with Music CD-Rs and DATs. (Things that have the music tax on them.)
The US is not one of them. ;)
Everyone knows it's neither morally the same as actual high-seas piracy nor legally the same. No one's actually accusing people of boarding ships, killing people, raping women, looting the ships, and sinking them. No matter what you views on copyright infringment, you have to admit it's not that bad.
While quite a large percentage of the population here at least seems to think it is legally a form of theft, when of course it's not. (Whether it is morally the same I leave up to you.)
And if you're going to gain a mate and keep possession of her, it makes perfect sense to get her early. Although that obviously has to be weighted against the time spent defending your possession of her until she can have children.
However, in the real world, pedophiles are...flipped backwards, not looking for an early advantage or whatnot, because the exact thing that makes people attractive, the secondary sexual characteristics that are designed to say to others 'Yoo-hoo! I'm mateable!', are what pedophiles don't look for. They stop being attracted right as the women could have children.
Which is not an evolutionary advantage in any way.
There are two kinds of access. One via subscription, and one via a 'day pass' where you sit and watch a real ad, and then there are no more ads for the rest of the day.
Which is annoying, but infinitely better than dancing crap on every page. They say, up front, here's the cost: You watch an ad to purchase the current 'issue'. You want tomorrow's 'issue', you watch another ad then.
You could adblock those, but what would be the point? You'd still have to go to that page and get the cookie anyway. It's more like TV ads instead of web ads. Adblocking doesn't hurt Salon in the least.
It's a good thing we're not doing that, eh, or the military would have nowhere to recruit.
We've got a generation of people who are growing up with constantly more annoying ads.
Within two decades, to get 20 year-olds to pay attention to ads, they're going to have to show people raping dogs and sawing off other people's arms with chainsaws.
I know people who call it Mickey-Ds to degrade it.
16 and 17 year-olds don't have political power for the same reason 18 year-olds don't...young people don't vote.