Those executives do NOT carry any where near that much cash. Neither do most, if not all lottery winners. Do you have any idea how much of a hassle it is to do business with large amounts of cash? There are only a handful of ways that someone will have $800,000 worth of cash on hand, almost all of them illegal. The few exceptions are people who are highly unlikely to have that cash in a vehicle.
My answer would have been to repair the existing hidden compartment (I could easily argue that I originally installed it with no reason to believe that the customer intended to do anything illegal and that I was in fear for my life if I did not repair it). Then I would tell the guy that by showing up with cash in the hidden compartment he had put me in the position where I could not build him another one without compromising all of my customers. It has been many years since I did business with drug dealers, but I am pretty sure they have not changed since then, the dealer would have understood, left and sent someone else back with the car to get the work done (at which point he could have argued that he did not realize it was the same car...having never taken a close look at the first car in the first place). Taking that course of action would have made him seem less like someone attempting to profit off of the drug trade and rather like someone who was offering a service and trying to stay on the right side of the law. It would have sold to the jury much better.
Did you buy drugs off of him? If the answer is, "No, I don't do drugs," then it is improbable that you know that he is a drug dealer because you almost certainly don't know how to tell that someone is a drug dealer. Back when I did illegal drugs, I knew several drug dealers because I just knew they were dealers, that was how I made contact with the dealers I did business with. I did not however do business with every drug dealer I knew, but enough of the people I otherwise "knew" were drug dealers were otherwise confirmed as drug dealers that I knew that my sense of who was and was not a drug dealer was accurate. There may have been drug dealers that I met who I did not know were drug dealers, but every person I identified as a drug dealer at the time was one. I no longer buy illegal drugs, so I no longer have the ability to identify drug dealers as accurately. This is not something that one concludes on the basis of a first impression, but there are ways to know.
Of course from your two attempts to make that ability to know such things stereotypical it is clear that you do not possess the ability to judge people at all.
Thank you, you have worded this very well. That was not exactly the point I was getting at, but it is closely related.
My point was that there are certain actions that are against the law. If you know that your actions are close to the edge of the law be very careful about staying away from those things which you know put you over the line of the law. If you don't, don't come crying to me when you end up in jail. If you want to complain that what you are doing should not be illegal, don't wait until after they convict you of breaking the law.
Since I never met the woman, I have no idea if she was a hooker or not. To be perfectly honest, I don't really care. My question is, how hard did she slap your face when you offered her money for sex? Were the doctors able to reattach your penis?
Read the article. He says he knew the problem when he found the cash. He knew that he was involved in something that involved a problem with the law. He knew about the problem before this but was very careful to keep a level of plausible deniability. When he chose to do business with the guy after he crossed the line of plausible deniability he opened himself up for the charges.
One can argue about whether the law is a good or bad law, but he knew that he was over the line. His reaction to the guy not telling him that the money was there shows that.
Should we throw all the Wall Street bankers and CEOs in jail?
Probably, as long as we throw the politicians who assist them in their crimes in jail with them.
If you read the article, he knew there was a problem when he opened the "trap" and discovered a large sum of money inside. There are very few ways that someone can accumulate that much cash legitimately and even fewer that would lead the person to keep it inside such a hidden compartment rather than in some kind of vault. He was furious with his customer for exposing him to that cash because he knew where it came from and he knew it put him in a difficult position relative to the legal fiction the law required him to maintain. Once he knew what his customer did for a living and what the customer used the "trap" for, he knew that he was acting in violation of the law. He no longer just suspected that this particular customer was using his "trap" for illegal activities. At that point, the wise thing to do would have been to stop doing business with this particular client. He thought he still had plausible deniability. He was wrong and should have known that.
Now, we can argue whether or not the law is a bad law, but he knew he was in violation of it, but thought he could argue his way around it. I do not know if I like this law, but as I said, if he had stopped right there doing business with this guy, they would have had a terrible time proving that he was intentionally skirting the law
His mistake was in installing the second "trap" in the other vehicle. He could have legitimately claimed that he agreed to fix the first one out of a sense of responsibility for his workmanship AND fear that the guy would come after him for failing to do so. However, agreeing to the second one made it a clear money grab and it violated the California law. He knew the only way that the guy got that much money was through the drug trade. He should have told the guy that he had compromised his business by showing up with all that money in the "trap" and exposed him to legal liability beyond what he had agreed to.
I understand why he thought he was skirting the law, but he knew he was skirting the law. Once it went beyond merely knowing in an academic fashion that some of his customers were using his installations in an illegal fashion to having seen evidence (even though that evidence was not by itself enough to convict the customer) that a particular customer was doing so he had crossed the line. He crossed the line of plausible deniability.
I agree that the practice of "evergreening" drug patents is a bad one that should be stopped. The problem I have with this case is that this article at no point actually tells us what was changed to create the "slightly altered" version. Without knowing that I have no way to judge if I agree with the Indian court or not. The court said this was a minor change which did not significantly alter the efficacy of the drug. However, since the reporter failed to tell me what this change actually was, I conclude that the reporter was intentionally making the drug company look bad and did not want to risk the chance that those reading the article might disagree and see the change as significant. Which makes me wonder if the change might not actually be something fairly significant that markedly improves the ability of the drug to combat cancer. If the change was truly minor, wouldn't the agenda of the reporter (to condemn "evergreening" of drug patents) be even better served by illustrating how minor this change was?
What evidence do you have for that assertion? If China wanted NK nuetralized, they could very easily do so with only slight cooperation (which would have been forthcoming under previous Presidents -- I do not know one way or the other with the current one) from the U.S. The only real cooperation with the U.S. would involve assurances and insurances that China would not continue its operations into SK.
There are several traditional interpretations of U.S. interests, there are several flavours that are interventionist and there are several flavours that are isolationist.
Most of U.S. post-WWII foreign policy was premised on the idea that the U.S. was in conflict with the Soviet Union for control of world resources and influence. Another premise was that a direct war between the two would be disastrous for everybody involved (and everybody would be involved). Therefore most U.S. foreign policy was directed around stopping the expansion of Soviet power and influence without directly engaging the Soviet's militarily. The Soviets appear to have followed a similar approach. This meant that if, Soviet troops were directly involved in a situation, the U.S. would only operate through proxies (and perhaps a small number of trainers). The Soviets appear to have followed the reverse (they operated through proxies when U.S. troops were directly involved).
During the Korean War, an additional theory of foreign policy was developed. This theory was that the U.S. needed to engage the Soviets in proxy wars throughout the world that cost the Soviets more than they could afford for whatever gains they managed to get from the conflict. This theory was actually a very good one and worked very well. However, the people behind it made a grave miscalculation in applying it to Vietnam. In this theory, there was greater benefit in continuing the conflict in Vietnam than there was in winning it, so they made no attempt to win the war. This is where the theory ran into a problem. The population of the U.S. was not willing to support an open ended conflict with no hope of victory. The U.S. failure in Vietnam was a result of those responsible for U.S. strategy designing a strategy to continue the conflict for as long as possible in order to "bleed" the Soviets. Vietnam was a winnable war that U.S. strategists lost because they chose to fight it for the sake of fighting it rather than pursuing victory.
I never intended to imply that he was a pacifist. However, his actions in Libya and Syria are exactly what I am talking about. They do not appear to reflect any compelling U.S. interest as defined by any traditional interpretation . As to being subordinate to Congress as CinC, he does not seem to agree with that interpretation since he launched an attack against Libya without Congressional approval (George W. Bush got Congressional approval before attacking either Afghanistan or Iraq) or even consultation and seemed to not even understand the questions about why that might be a problem.
Well, that is definitely true. I have two caveats on what you write about diminishing U.S. influence in South Korea and reduced Chinese concern. The first is that I am not sure the Chinese recognize that. Chinese leadership has repeatedly shown certain blindspots regarding how Western politics work (in particular U.S. politics) that may lead them to not recognize that U.S. influence in SK has fallen ( I am not saying that they do not, merely that it would not surprise me if they failed to do so). The second is that the Chinese might not want the Korean peninsula reunified as a goal in itself. That is, they may consider the increased power that a Korea unified under SK's current government would wield a threat to their interests in and of itself.
And of course there is still my second point, China finds NK a useful catspaw to see how far they can provoke the U.S. before the responses become not worth the reward.
I watched the video at that link and saw one interesting thing. When one watched similar videos from Soviet era Russia, or the Mao era China, when the people in the videos did something like the "fist pump" salute that is in these videos, it has a lot of emotional energy behind it (even if sometime that emotional energy seemed contrived). As I watched this video, the "fist pump" salute the soldiers gave reminded me of management meetings I have been at where the company tried to get all of the managers excited about some new program by getting them to do something similar. You had to go through the motions of "cheering" and taking part in this new, "exciting" thing the company was doing, but most of the people present had a "wait and see" attitude before they got excited about it. The military people on the parade seemed to have the attitude of "Yeah, that's great. What's in this for me?"
Quite simply, it is twofold. First China does not want Korea unified under an nominal U.S. ally (South Korea). Second, China finds NK a useful catspaw to find out how far they can provoke the U.S. before the results become unpalatable. There is a third element that purely involves NK, but that only works because of the first two. Every so often the situation in NK becomes so bad that they need an infusion of outside aid to keep things from completely collapsing. They have learned that by rattling their cage and threatening violence, they can gain such aid. If the outside world does not respond with sufficient aid soon enough, NK starts various low level acts of violence against those in the vicinity, gradually escalating until the aid is forthcoming (which is why ignoring them is not an option).
If NK ever stops being useful to China, they will cease to exist.
If we had anyone else as President, my expectation is that if NK were to actually launch an attack (wherever), the President would retaliate and ask China to subdue NK (unless they wanted us to do it). With Obama, there are three possible explanations for his foreign policy actions. First possible explanation, he is incompetent. Second possible explanation, his foreign policy goals do not include protecting U.S. interests around the world. Third possible explanation, his understanding of U.S. interests around the world are at odds with every traditional understanding of those interests (several of those traditional understandings conflict with each other). As a result, I do not have any idea what he would do if NK launched an attack on SK or U.S..
No, it doesn't. Per Genesis, we're all matrilineally descended from Noah's wife.
This is incorrect. According to Genesis, Noah's three sons were married before the flood. Which means that Genesis tells us that none of us are matrilineally descended from Noah's wife. It is only one the father's side that Noah's grandsons were descended from him and his wife. Or to put it another way, per the Genesis account, none of the genetic material today that is transmitted exclusively from the mother comes from Noah's wife.
The same SCOTUS which decided that cities and counties can condemn people's homes because a golf course is better use of the land?
I doubt it. I'm going to be genuinely surprised if I don't have to pay licensing fees if I have a baby in the coming years.
Except that it is not the same SCOTUS that reached that decision. Four years ago, I would have bet that the balance of power in the SCOTUS had shifted such that it would have overturned that ruling (if someone could have come up with a case that gave them a fig leaf against "overturning precedent"). However, I am no longer sure how the balance goes on that issue. Several Justices who I thought I understood their judicial philosophy have voted the opposite of what I expected in the last couple of major, controversial decisions. In the same way, Sotomayor and Kagan have taken positions that suggest that they might be less likely to uphold the Kelo decision than their political philosophy before getting on the Court would have suggested.
Thank you, now I understand what Yahoo was doing here. One of the things that I realized about three or four years ago is that the tech community is unfairly down on Yahoo. Yahoo is not a glamorous company, but they have been making a profit and they have been doing it consistently enough that it is not just accounting gimmicks. The new CEO clearly has a strategy, and the bits of it I can see around the edges seems to make good sense. She appears to have realized that Yahoo is not going to be the "cool" place to work any time soon, so she has started working on making it a place where people get to do productive things.
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Those executives do NOT carry any where near that much cash. Neither do most, if not all lottery winners. Do you have any idea how much of a hassle it is to do business with large amounts of cash? There are only a handful of ways that someone will have $800,000 worth of cash on hand, almost all of them illegal. The few exceptions are people who are highly unlikely to have that cash in a vehicle.
My answer would have been to repair the existing hidden compartment (I could easily argue that I originally installed it with no reason to believe that the customer intended to do anything illegal and that I was in fear for my life if I did not repair it). Then I would tell the guy that by showing up with cash in the hidden compartment he had put me in the position where I could not build him another one without compromising all of my customers. It has been many years since I did business with drug dealers, but I am pretty sure they have not changed since then, the dealer would have understood, left and sent someone else back with the car to get the work done (at which point he could have argued that he did not realize it was the same car...having never taken a close look at the first car in the first place). Taking that course of action would have made him seem less like someone attempting to profit off of the drug trade and rather like someone who was offering a service and trying to stay on the right side of the law. It would have sold to the jury much better.
Did you buy drugs off of him? If the answer is, "No, I don't do drugs," then it is improbable that you know that he is a drug dealer because you almost certainly don't know how to tell that someone is a drug dealer. Back when I did illegal drugs, I knew several drug dealers because I just knew they were dealers, that was how I made contact with the dealers I did business with. I did not however do business with every drug dealer I knew, but enough of the people I otherwise "knew" were drug dealers were otherwise confirmed as drug dealers that I knew that my sense of who was and was not a drug dealer was accurate. There may have been drug dealers that I met who I did not know were drug dealers, but every person I identified as a drug dealer at the time was one. I no longer buy illegal drugs, so I no longer have the ability to identify drug dealers as accurately. This is not something that one concludes on the basis of a first impression, but there are ways to know.
Of course from your two attempts to make that ability to know such things stereotypical it is clear that you do not possess the ability to judge people at all.
Thank you, you have worded this very well. That was not exactly the point I was getting at, but it is closely related.
My point was that there are certain actions that are against the law. If you know that your actions are close to the edge of the law be very careful about staying away from those things which you know put you over the line of the law. If you don't, don't come crying to me when you end up in jail. If you want to complain that what you are doing should not be illegal, don't wait until after they convict you of breaking the law.
Since I never met the woman, I have no idea if she was a hooker or not. To be perfectly honest, I don't really care. My question is, how hard did she slap your face when you offered her money for sex? Were the doctors able to reattach your penis?
You make the mistake of believing that you can only know that which you can prove.
Read the article. He says he knew the problem when he found the cash. He knew that he was involved in something that involved a problem with the law. He knew about the problem before this but was very careful to keep a level of plausible deniability. When he chose to do business with the guy after he crossed the line of plausible deniability he opened himself up for the charges.
One can argue about whether the law is a good or bad law, but he knew that he was over the line. His reaction to the guy not telling him that the money was there shows that.
Should we throw all the Wall Street bankers and CEOs in jail?
Probably, as long as we throw the politicians who assist them in their crimes in jail with them.
If you read the article, he knew there was a problem when he opened the "trap" and discovered a large sum of money inside. There are very few ways that someone can accumulate that much cash legitimately and even fewer that would lead the person to keep it inside such a hidden compartment rather than in some kind of vault. He was furious with his customer for exposing him to that cash because he knew where it came from and he knew it put him in a difficult position relative to the legal fiction the law required him to maintain. Once he knew what his customer did for a living and what the customer used the "trap" for, he knew that he was acting in violation of the law. He no longer just suspected that this particular customer was using his "trap" for illegal activities. At that point, the wise thing to do would have been to stop doing business with this particular client. He thought he still had plausible deniability. He was wrong and should have known that.
Now, we can argue whether or not the law is a bad law, but he knew he was in violation of it, but thought he could argue his way around it. I do not know if I like this law, but as I said, if he had stopped right there doing business with this guy, they would have had a terrible time proving that he was intentionally skirting the law
His mistake was in installing the second "trap" in the other vehicle. He could have legitimately claimed that he agreed to fix the first one out of a sense of responsibility for his workmanship AND fear that the guy would come after him for failing to do so. However, agreeing to the second one made it a clear money grab and it violated the California law. He knew the only way that the guy got that much money was through the drug trade. He should have told the guy that he had compromised his business by showing up with all that money in the "trap" and exposed him to legal liability beyond what he had agreed to.
I understand why he thought he was skirting the law, but he knew he was skirting the law. Once it went beyond merely knowing in an academic fashion that some of his customers were using his installations in an illegal fashion to having seen evidence (even though that evidence was not by itself enough to convict the customer) that a particular customer was doing so he had crossed the line. He crossed the line of plausible deniability.
I agree that the practice of "evergreening" drug patents is a bad one that should be stopped. The problem I have with this case is that this article at no point actually tells us what was changed to create the "slightly altered" version. Without knowing that I have no way to judge if I agree with the Indian court or not. The court said this was a minor change which did not significantly alter the efficacy of the drug. However, since the reporter failed to tell me what this change actually was, I conclude that the reporter was intentionally making the drug company look bad and did not want to risk the chance that those reading the article might disagree and see the change as significant. Which makes me wonder if the change might not actually be something fairly significant that markedly improves the ability of the drug to combat cancer. If the change was truly minor, wouldn't the agenda of the reporter (to condemn "evergreening" of drug patents) be even better served by illustrating how minor this change was?
Yes and every April 1 I go to slashdot in the morning and go, "Oh, that's right, it's April Fool's Day, no reason to visit slashdot today."
I am so tired of every news site thinking they have to come up with clever April Fool's Day articles. Today is going to be a long day.
Castro's revolution had its flaws but he never openly tortured or killed his fellow citizens
No, he left that to Che Guevera.
Can you provide a reference to support your assertions?
Sorry, what U.S. entity profited from U.S. intervention in Libya and Syria?
What evidence do you have for that assertion? If China wanted NK nuetralized, they could very easily do so with only slight cooperation (which would have been forthcoming under previous Presidents -- I do not know one way or the other with the current one) from the U.S. The only real cooperation with the U.S. would involve assurances and insurances that China would not continue its operations into SK.
There are several traditional interpretations of U.S. interests, there are several flavours that are interventionist and there are several flavours that are isolationist.
Most of U.S. post-WWII foreign policy was premised on the idea that the U.S. was in conflict with the Soviet Union for control of world resources and influence. Another premise was that a direct war between the two would be disastrous for everybody involved (and everybody would be involved). Therefore most U.S. foreign policy was directed around stopping the expansion of Soviet power and influence without directly engaging the Soviet's militarily. The Soviets appear to have followed a similar approach. This meant that if, Soviet troops were directly involved in a situation, the U.S. would only operate through proxies (and perhaps a small number of trainers). The Soviets appear to have followed the reverse (they operated through proxies when U.S. troops were directly involved).
During the Korean War, an additional theory of foreign policy was developed. This theory was that the U.S. needed to engage the Soviets in proxy wars throughout the world that cost the Soviets more than they could afford for whatever gains they managed to get from the conflict. This theory was actually a very good one and worked very well. However, the people behind it made a grave miscalculation in applying it to Vietnam. In this theory, there was greater benefit in continuing the conflict in Vietnam than there was in winning it, so they made no attempt to win the war. This is where the theory ran into a problem. The population of the U.S. was not willing to support an open ended conflict with no hope of victory. The U.S. failure in Vietnam was a result of those responsible for U.S. strategy designing a strategy to continue the conflict for as long as possible in order to "bleed" the Soviets. Vietnam was a winnable war that U.S. strategists lost because they chose to fight it for the sake of fighting it rather than pursuing victory.
I never intended to imply that he was a pacifist. However, his actions in Libya and Syria are exactly what I am talking about. They do not appear to reflect any compelling U.S. interest as defined by any traditional interpretation . As to being subordinate to Congress as CinC, he does not seem to agree with that interpretation since he launched an attack against Libya without Congressional approval (George W. Bush got Congressional approval before attacking either Afghanistan or Iraq) or even consultation and seemed to not even understand the questions about why that might be a problem.
Well, that is definitely true. I have two caveats on what you write about diminishing U.S. influence in South Korea and reduced Chinese concern. The first is that I am not sure the Chinese recognize that. Chinese leadership has repeatedly shown certain blindspots regarding how Western politics work (in particular U.S. politics) that may lead them to not recognize that U.S. influence in SK has fallen ( I am not saying that they do not, merely that it would not surprise me if they failed to do so). The second is that the Chinese might not want the Korean peninsula reunified as a goal in itself. That is, they may consider the increased power that a Korea unified under SK's current government would wield a threat to their interests in and of itself.
And of course there is still my second point, China finds NK a useful catspaw to see how far they can provoke the U.S. before the responses become not worth the reward.
I watched the video at that link and saw one interesting thing. When one watched similar videos from Soviet era Russia, or the Mao era China, when the people in the videos did something like the "fist pump" salute that is in these videos, it has a lot of emotional energy behind it (even if sometime that emotional energy seemed contrived). As I watched this video, the "fist pump" salute the soldiers gave reminded me of management meetings I have been at where the company tried to get all of the managers excited about some new program by getting them to do something similar. You had to go through the motions of "cheering" and taking part in this new, "exciting" thing the company was doing, but most of the people present had a "wait and see" attitude before they got excited about it. The military people on the parade seemed to have the attitude of "Yeah, that's great. What's in this for me?"
Quite simply, it is twofold. First China does not want Korea unified under an nominal U.S. ally (South Korea). Second, China finds NK a useful catspaw to find out how far they can provoke the U.S. before the results become unpalatable. There is a third element that purely involves NK, but that only works because of the first two. Every so often the situation in NK becomes so bad that they need an infusion of outside aid to keep things from completely collapsing. They have learned that by rattling their cage and threatening violence, they can gain such aid. If the outside world does not respond with sufficient aid soon enough, NK starts various low level acts of violence against those in the vicinity, gradually escalating until the aid is forthcoming (which is why ignoring them is not an option).
If NK ever stops being useful to China, they will cease to exist.
If we had anyone else as President, my expectation is that if NK were to actually launch an attack (wherever), the President would retaliate and ask China to subdue NK (unless they wanted us to do it). With Obama, there are three possible explanations for his foreign policy actions. First possible explanation, he is incompetent. Second possible explanation, his foreign policy goals do not include protecting U.S. interests around the world. Third possible explanation, his understanding of U.S. interests around the world are at odds with every traditional understanding of those interests (several of those traditional understandings conflict with each other). As a result, I do not have any idea what he would do if NK launched an attack on SK or U.S..
No, it doesn't. Per Genesis, we're all matrilineally descended from Noah's wife.
This is incorrect. According to Genesis, Noah's three sons were married before the flood. Which means that Genesis tells us that none of us are matrilineally descended from Noah's wife. It is only one the father's side that Noah's grandsons were descended from him and his wife. Or to put it another way, per the Genesis account, none of the genetic material today that is transmitted exclusively from the mother comes from Noah's wife.
That is an interesting theory, yet I have never had a problem with my yahoo mail address (one of five I maintain for various reasons).
The same SCOTUS which decided that cities and counties can condemn people's homes because a golf course is better use of the land?
I doubt it. I'm going to be genuinely surprised if I don't have to pay licensing fees if I have a baby in the coming years.
Except that it is not the same SCOTUS that reached that decision. Four years ago, I would have bet that the balance of power in the SCOTUS had shifted such that it would have overturned that ruling (if someone could have come up with a case that gave them a fig leaf against "overturning precedent"). However, I am no longer sure how the balance goes on that issue. Several Justices who I thought I understood their judicial philosophy have voted the opposite of what I expected in the last couple of major, controversial decisions. In the same way, Sotomayor and Kagan have taken positions that suggest that they might be less likely to uphold the Kelo decision than their political philosophy before getting on the Court would have suggested.
Thank you, now I understand what Yahoo was doing here. One of the things that I realized about three or four years ago is that the tech community is unfairly down on Yahoo. Yahoo is not a glamorous company, but they have been making a profit and they have been doing it consistently enough that it is not just accounting gimmicks. The new CEO clearly has a strategy, and the bits of it I can see around the edges seems to make good sense. She appears to have realized that Yahoo is not going to be the "cool" place to work any time soon, so she has started working on making it a place where people get to do productive things.