Before I begin, let me first say that I absolutely agree that the WBC's proposed actions are horrible and deplorable. However, I still think we need to be careful about how we limit their speech, if we do.
i can tell the difference between political speech and hate speech
Really? Your other examples include well-defined categories. And what if my opinion of what constitutes "hate" differs from yours? You want to enforce your definition of morality on the world?
"Hate speech" is a problematic term because it draws distinctions based on the content of speech and usually ends up protecting only certain groups. Is it "hate speech" to carry a sign that says "God hates gays," but NOT "hate speech" to carry a sign that says "God hates people with green eyes" or maybe "God hates John Smith"??
If you're John Smith or have green eyes, you might find that sign incredibly hateful. Depending on the circumstances (who John Smith is, why the signs are up), it may inflict as much emotional distress on John Smith as signs attacking homosexuals, people of specific races, genders, whatever.
Okay, so maybe you begin to say, "well, a sign that says that is hateful to John Smith," so that's outlawed too. And then we start going down the line -- is it okay to carry a sign that says "God hates George Bush" or "God hates Obama"? If that's bad, how about a sign saying "I hate George Bush" or "I hate Obama"? If that's bad, how about a sign saying, "I have a mild dislike of our President"?
Where's the line??
You may say, "Well, I don't know where the line is, but I know THIS is it." That's like the famous Potter Stewart line about obscenity: "I know it when I see it." That's great for you, but it isn't very practical in an objective legal system. That's the reason why it's become almost impossible to prosecute people for obscenity over the years... what one person considers to be "obscene," another thinks is "artistic expression" or simply not harmful in any way.
I personally don't like "hate speech" arguments because they end up protecting some people more than others, just on the basis of things like race or sexuality. Everyone should be equal under the law.
That said, there are reasons to place some limits on the content of speech, and the Supreme Court has done so: you can't use speech to incite a riot or immenent lawless behavior. And, though it has been chipped away at over the years, you can't use "fighting words" to incite a breach of the peace.
These unusual exceptions that limit content of speech are meant to prevent extreme social disorder (e.g., rioting). If there is a continuous pattern of a particular person or group using speech to harass or threaten another specific person or group of people, there are also legal remedies (restraining orders, etc.) to stop that speech. Those latter restrictions are about preventing violence and other problems between specific people, not between nebulous groups like "all homosexuals" or "all people of a particular race."
The problem in this specific instance seems to surround a question of decorum. The vast majority of reasonable people find the WBC's actions offensive. But, personal offense is NOT a good legal standard. Some people found it offensive that a person might wear a tee-shirt that said "F*** the draft" to a courthouse. The Supreme Court, however, said we can't limit speech on the basis of content, and I agree with them.
Some people think it's offensive to burn flags in a protest. I don't think it's very nice, but I don't think it rises to the status of a crime. Again, the Supreme Court agreed. I think burning a prominent national symbol is pretty much the definition of "hate speech" toward that nation or at least its policies or government, pa
A funeral is a very private ritual, and participants are expected to be in a compromised mental and emotional state.
I don't think anyone is proposing that protesters should be allowed to attend or to disrupt the actual private ritual of a funeral. The question is whether they can hang out on public property nearby while such an event is going on.
I'm not exactly sure how to codify that in a legal fashion, but I know the difference is there.
I'm not sure we should ban free speech when someone might have a particular emotional reaction or might be in an emotional state -- that strikes me as an overly broad category.
However, you bring up an important point -- most of the debate here has centered on trying to limit the speech of this specific group. That's limiting speech on the basis of content, which is a dangerous precedent. But it might be possible legally to ban any type of public demonstration within a certain distance of a funeral... no matter what the content. I don't know if this sort of law has explicitly been ruled on in the past.
But the problem then becomes -- how far away is far enough? And what happens when everyone gets in cars and drives from a church to a cemetery? Do we have the right to ban any sort of demonstration from that entire route to protect families?
Could you elaborate? If the answer were that obvious, I would not have posted, and it would not have been modded up.
Now that you know, please stop pretending the answer is no, it would really help advance the discussion.
I don't think it helps to advance the discussion by responding to a sincere question -- and yes, it is actually a real legal concern -- by just dismissing it with no explanation.
Do they keep people from communicating with people who want to hear them?
I don't actually think that's a reasonable standard for what constitutes "free speech," but... actually, at times, yes. At times, reporters have been barred from interviewing people within them.
But you asked about the larger problems. Well, for one thing, they restrict speech on the basis of content, even though they pretend not to. Restricting speech on the basis of content has in fact been ruled unconstitutional many times by the Supreme Court (except under strict criteria, such as the "fighting words" doctrine or incitement to riot or imminent lawless actions...).
When you select people out of a crowd just because they are carrying a sign that you don't agree with on public property (and aren't otherwise disruptive in any way), that's content restriction... and that's exactly the same sort of thing you're talking about in relation to this funeral. That's why the free speech zones are relevant.
Well you can either take the literal meaning of my post, which you seem to object to for some reason, or you can take the spirit of the meaning of my post, which you agree with because you mention situations where speech is unreasonable.
Look, I didn't object to anything about your post initially. As I tried to explain, I posted an additional bit of information that I think is relevant to someone evaluating the quality of your information. You stated that the Supreme Court allows restrictions, and then proceeded to give an example that is potentially in conflict with a recent ruling. I offered a clarification.
You then claimed that what I said didn't contradict what you said, without any further details... and the "spirit of the meaning" of such a reply usually means either "what you said is irrelevant" or "piss off!"
In either case, I do think my initial reply was relevant and actually important to know to understand your post in context. Furthermore, as to my objections "for some reason" to the literal meaning... well, please re-read. You might learn something.
I was actually pointing out that in the specific situation you brought up with the specific wording you mention, restrictions to speech on the basis of content probably wouldn't even come up. And that's what this whole discussion is about. We want to exclude this group from the area around a funeral not because they are actively disrupting the event from happening, but because the content of their speech is disturbing to those attending the event.
In any case, I'm done with this debate. Come back when you actually have something substantive to say with pertinent examples instead of ones that are not legally relevant.
You should know this, but the answer is the courts. And they have decided.
Umm, duh. Yes, I am aware that the courts decide what is "reasonable," but my post was clearly challenging the reasonableness of the current (court-endorsed) standard, since I explicitly indicated my preference against some types of "free speech zones" that are currently accepted as legitimate by the courts.
Your post actually emphasizes my point -- the current "free speech zone" system is abusive and clearly corrals (pun intended) free speech in an inappropriate manner.
The primary requirement for free speech is that people who have something to say are able to get their message to people who want to hear it.
I'm not sure whether you're just informing me of the way things are (duh... we all have seen the free speech zones) or whether you're actually in favor of this idea.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not just stating the obvious, so I'll take this to mean that you're actually in favor of "free speech zones" as I described in my previous post (e.g., as used by the Bush administration). (If you're not, I apologize in advance for misreading you.) In that case, we're done having a reasonable discussion, because that "reasonable" standard is crap. I'd gladly allow some wacko protesters to stand outside of a church on public property with signs near a funeral if it means we're not subjected to the arbitrary and capricious restrictions on free speech created by the Bush administration (and started earlier).
As long as you have that, then you don't necessarily need the ability to disrupt political conventions, etc.
Once again, your examples are off. No one is trying to "disrupt political conventions," in the sense that they want to storm the gates of the PRIVATE convention hall and stop business from transpiring.
However, if we insist that protesters be corralled away from political conventions so people can't see them and realize that there are significant dissenting viewpoints in this country, there is a REAL problem. And there's no way that I would defend such a policy as "reasonable."
Yes, yes they did. That doesn't contradict what I said.
You're right -- the Court's ruling does not contradict the literal words that you wrote in your previous post.
However, by citing the Supreme Court's idea that there are "reasonable" times and places where speech can be restricted, and then summarily declaring that speech at a funeral is "unreasonable," your post implied a connection. A reasonable reader would conclude, not having any other facts, that the Supreme Court agreed with your declaration of specific "unreasonable" actions. And that's why it was reasonable for me to post my reply, since a naive reader of your post would potentially be misled by your declarations.
(note also that in that case, the protestors were far away from the actual funeral).
Yes, yes they were. Thus we don't know whether the Supreme Court might rule differently in different circumstances. That I agree with.
However, that has nothing to do with what you said. You wrote that "telling the victims' families that god hates them and their children are in hell during the funeral counts as unreasonable." If a family is being told something during a funeral, either the protesters are actually attending the funeral or they are generating enough noise to be disruptive. In the former case, they would be on private property and thus could be removed without any argument about free speech. In the latter case, they would probably be in violation of some noise ordinance and could be silenced at least temporarily on those grounds.
In both cases, the protest would be prohibited from disrupting the funeral on other grounds, not because of the content of their speech. Your argument, reading the literal words of your post, is irrelevant. Which is the reason I took you to be making a general implicit argument about the situation -- and that general argument is in fact contradicted by the ruling I cited.
And yet if someone is harassing you, you can get a restraining order against them, can you not?
Indeed, you can. And if there is a remedy in this case, that should be it -- rather than arguing about "restricting free speech," we should be arguing about whether threats to disrupt a funeral constitute "harassment."
However, given Supreme Court rulings about peaceful public property protests, however, I don't think courts are likely to grant restraining orders in such a scenario.
This is how the supreme court interprets it, speech can be limited in this way. [snip]... certainly there are times when most people agree it is unreasonable ([snip]...telling the victims' families that god hates them and their children are in hell during the funeral counts as unreasonable).
Westboro Baptist Church is an object lesson in why it's good to have some restrictions on speech, such as limiting it to a reasonable time and place.
I absolutely agree that Westboro Baptist Church's proposed action here is beyond poor taste in this situation -- it is deplorable and disgusting.
However, I also think that limiting speech "to a reasonable time and place" is a really problematic standard as well. Who decides what is "reasonable"?
I think the Bush administration that created "free speech zones" would have argued that they were limiting free speech to places that were "reasonable." The Bush administration did in fact make a similar argument that protestors with a different message and agenda would be disruptive to the purpose of the events that the administration was organizing.
Is the argument about funerals any different? Believe me, I wish the Westboro people wouldn't do this crap. But is there any way we can prohibit peaceful assemblies of people on public property who just happen to have a different message than some other neighboring event, without also condoning crap like "free speech zones"? Or, if we allow families or churches to dictate free speech in surrounding areas on particular occasions, who decides what occasions and what areas? Can corporations take advantage of such protections as well?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'm really wondering if people have good answers about how we can draw a line without also making it a lot easier to trample on free speech rights in a lot of situations that might matter.
It's even worse than that -- although glutamate has been found in only trace amounts, dihydroden monoxide seems to have completely taken over the bodies of suicide victims, almost as if their bodies were made of the stuff....
It's obviously a College application. And a good one too! Somebody has a sense of aesthetics. Probably someone wanting to go into Art Preservation or Museum Curratorship. Maybe Egyptology or Paleontology.
Or maybe creative Forgery??
That's it! We've found it -- it's obviously a business school application!
You know what? I agree. I was one of those weird didn't-know-what-he-should-do students, and I probably would have benefited much more if anyone at my gigantic University had given a damn.
I think this is a different issue from what this thread was originally about. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone here has argued that we should adopt a model where no one in the faculty or administration "gives a damn" about the students.
Rather, the question is whether attendance is a reasonable metric to address that issue. I have heard many, many stories from people who lined up in their pajamas to sign an attendance sheet and then went back to their dorm room bed. I know many more who actually did the required work, delivered the required assignments, and left immediately after (before lecture) because they found class worthless. Are attendance records helping those students?
If we want to avoid "lost" students, I'd say there are a few dozen recommendations I'd put in place before making some sort of mandatory attendance recording policy. For starters, encourage better advisors and advising. Get better supervisors in dorms. Require more frequent check-ins for these people with each student. Have more staff (both teaching and resident) available in a variety of venues and situations that different types of students might feel comfortable with. Etc.
These sorts of things generally would cost time and money. Most of them would cost more than some sort of attendance policy. But they would also have a chance of actually being effective.
I absolutely agree with you that universities shouldn't just let students get lost without providing reasonable opportunities for good advice and guidance from some faculty or staff people. But looking for an attendance policy to solve this problem is not actually giving you the thing you requested. They may have meticulous records of your attendance (or non-attendance), but that's not necessarily the first step toward caring about students.
From my point of view (as a non-academic who works on improving university administration), it matters for a few key reasons:
1. Students who don't turn up to lectures are more likely to drop out of university. This particularly goes for students whose attendance was good and tails off, so we want to spot them early on and ask if they need any help (academic or personal).
As someone who actually has taught at the university level, I think work completion and grades are a much better indicator than lecture attendance. If a student disappears from my class for a couple weeks, but the work keeps being turned in, I'm generally not concerned.
If the student begins to miss assignments or tests, there's much more likely to be an actual issue, and I will immediately try to contact the student.
I think you're measuring the wrong thing here. You'll only catch a lot problem students with "attendance nets" in courses where professors don't assign regular work or give regular assessments... and in that case, the problem often likes more with the professor's issues than the students'.
2. If a student turns up mid-way through semester with problems, we're inclined to be a lot more sympathetic (and devote more staff time to helping) if you've attended class. If you didn't attend class and then don't know the material, it could be argued that's rather your own fault.
Umm, it IS?!? Seriously, that's part of what being an adult is about. If you are failing a class because you didn't attend and didn't do any work, it IS your fault -- there is no "it could be argued..." about it.
This kind of nonsense is a huge problem in higher education today. Sure, a university should ensure that you have a decent advisor to guide you toward good choices in courses and perhaps a resident advisor if you're in a dorm to check in here and there.
But if you don't do the work, YOU FAIL. End of story. Students need to be allowed to make choices, and if they can't be bothered to take a minimum amount of responsibility for barely trying, why the heck are you trying to protect them?
If the concern is that parents or students will sue you or some sort of nonsense, I'd advocate that a university make students and parents sign a release form saying that academic grades are entirely up to the discretion of the faculty and failure to do required work will result in failure. If a student doesn't get that, perhaps he/she isn't ready to go to college... or perhaps college just isn't for him/her.
To try to pretend otherwise is just going to lead to a society of people who have to be nannied around the clock in their jobs and every other aspect of their lives. Those aren't the kind of people who deserve a university degree.
University administrators these days seem to fall over backwards to recruit high-caliber students. What they unfortunately don't seem as interested in is whether they are graduating high-caliber students. This business model will ultimately come back to haunt schools when the reputation of their graduates declines.
The entire point of taking someone like RMS's opinion is based on the assumption that he's more informed than the average person, has dedicated more thought to it, and has come to rational conclusions.
I have a real problem delegating any thought at all to someone so unaware or uncaring of social norms.
Most social norms are not founded in rationality, and in fact, many of them are incredibly irrational. Personally, I think social norms are important too, but in my experience those who care most about social norms don't tend to be objectively rational.
On the other hand, "rationality" is in part a construct of society. While some aspects of logic may seem to have to do with how the universe "just works," a lot of "rationality" is fundamentally based on human ways of thinking about the world. So, a person who becomes increasingly divorced from humanity will eventually develop ideas that by our society definitions MUST be irrational.
Precious metals may have been simply magically valuable in the olden days, but their modern prices are based upon their uses in industry.
Are you joking? Yes, gold and silver and such are useful in industry, but do you seriously claim that the massive spike in precious metal prices in the past few years is the result of increasing industrial demand???
Obviously only fools advocate precious metals to the exclusion of food, firearms, etc. but they are an essential component of both a societal collapse scenario,
It really depends on how far the collapse goes. In the true survivalist scenario that most precious metals fanatics champion, "shiny rocks" aren't likely to be any more valuable than "green pieces of paper." A collapse big enough to destabilize all the global currency markets will likely drive technological production into the toilet, meaning any of your inherent industrial value for precious metals will go down down to nil too.
On a small scale, barter will rule. In larger communities, the only reason why gold (or some other metal) would emerge as a de facto currency in that scenario is if the people who had the guns or food or whatever happen to like it. If those people were rational, they wouldn't be taken into the mystical "shiny rock" theories of the ancients...
But... who are we kidding? The people who will have the guns and food and stuff will be the same wackos who are stockpiling gold, so you guys are trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You want to corner the new fiat currency, which just happens to have a long history... if I were in charge of one of your survivalist camps, I'd advocate choosing some other useless and less expensive random "commodity" to stockpile along with your guns and food. Why the heck would you spend the money to buy precious metals at today's prices if you plan to force everyone to accept your new fiat currency in the event of a collapse? Choose something random that's rare but cheap... and just buy up all of it. WHEEE... instant currency!!
as well as the more mundane currency erosion that we have seen in the US dollar over the last few decades.
Bah... where the heck were you in the early 1980s, when all those gold prices plummeted? Sure, right now the "shiny rock" strategy seems to be edging out the "green pieces of paper" strategy, but I would bet a substantial amount of my life savings that people will stop liking those "shiny rocks" AGAIN at some point in the next couple decades, and all that "inherent value" of a non-fiat currency will go down the drain.
Even if your survivalist scenario were true, I think the chances are far greater that we'll see more cycles of precious metal prices to come before we get that collapse... making investment in those shiny rocks not very great as a long-term strategy.
Critics have faulted the plan as celebrating a weapon of mass destruction, and have argued that the government should avoid that kind of advocacy.
I've been to plenty of Holocaust museums and memorials and I don't recall any of them focusing on a celebration but rather the educational aspect.
Exactly. I remember going to the Hiroshima memorial and museum during a visit to Japan when I was only 10 or 11 years old. It has stuck with me probably more than any other museum experience before I became an adult.
I remember a few years later debating issues of the use of nuclear weapons in WWII in my American history class in high school, and I had a completely different perspective on it compared to many of my classmates.*
Whatever side of the nuclear debate you fall on, it's better to remember and be educated rather than make future mistakes out of ignorance of the past. Kucinich is absolutely wrong here.
(*Please don't make assumptions concerning what my actual views on these events are -- they're irrelevant to the present discussion, and they've evolved significantly over the years, but my visit to Hiroshima definitely added some perspective.)
The question is, why should it be retained. Why should the phone company be REQUIRED to store data, from everyone, all the time, based on their assertion that they might need to request it later?
They shouldn't.
If the cops really want a 3rd party to store records for them in perpetuity, let's let them have it. Just charge a fee for storage. Each text message will be archived forever, for the nominal fee of 1 cent per message. Oh, and you can't pay for it out of public funds -- take it out of the pool of state pension funds for the cops (would would be depleted in a matter of weeks or even days).
It's only fair that a legal requirement for a private corporation to offer a service to the cops should be paid for by the cops' private funds. Then we'd find out how much they really "need" this service.
I didn't disagree with that. In most cases, adding fat of some sort will have a much more significant effect on retarding staling than most other things.
But I was responding to the claims about lean breads made only with flour, salt, water, and yeast (which I'll take to include sourdough cultures, since they are a naturally occurring yeast, along with naturally occurring bacteria). I've found using sourdough instead of rapid-rising industrial yeast will have a significant impact on staling, partly due to what happens during (usually long) fermentation.
I haven't found fermentation approach to affect the life of my bread much
I don't think it makes much of a difference if you lengthen the fermentation only slightly. Going from 2 hours to 3 hours probably won't do much. Going from 2 hours to 6 hours will probably make a noticeable difference. Going from 2 hours to 24 hours makes a big difference, in my experience. I haven't studied a lot about the chemical details of staling, but part of it has to do with amylose realigning and other changes in the starch. Yeast can naturally use amylase enzymes to break down some of the starch and digest it (and thus change the availability and characteristics of the remaining starches during staling), but it's a slow process which can't happen in a fast fermentation. This is the reason why lots of people add malt powder or syrup to breads -- it makes amylase enzymes available to allow for better fermentation, generally at a faster rate. If you want to get these effects without malt, however, the best thing you can do is slow fermentation.
When I've used a multi-stage preferment to build up to final dough, requiring perhaps a day or two of fermentation before baking the final loaf, I've found the bread stales significantly slower. It's very noticeable with sourdough, but it can also happen even with normal bakers yeast.
Alright, I admit it when I'm wrong -- the EU standards do seem to require something more like 20%, as I've discovered in searching. So much for my "foodie" friend who told me the 1% bit. Nevertheless, I think the required percentage labeling is still the more important think for chocolate quality in the EU.
There are two possible interpretations here: the previous post was wrong, or the US has a definition of "chocolate" that specifies a much lower level of cocoa solids than the rest of the civilized world and thus should not be considered chocolate by anyone with working taste buds.
Actually, you're wrong on both counts. I believe the word "chocolate" in the U.S. implies a minimum of 10% cacao solids, while in the EU, you can label anything with at least 1% to be "chocolate."
The difference isn't the definition, where the US is actually more strict. The difference is the EU requires the percentage to appear on the label, so those "civilized" nations just have more information to make choices among snooty chocolate. (For the record, I personally love gourmet chocolate, but milk chocolate has uses, and I'm not going to judge someone if they like that style better.)
And yes, bread composed of only those ingredients will only last about a day.
That is a big overgeneralization. It depends on type of flour, storage conditions, fermentation strategy, moisture content of bread, etc. A crusty white baguette created with fast fermentation and left on the counter may be stale within a matter of hours. A whole-grain lean bread made with slow fermentation, use of preferments or sourdough rather than direct mix and instant yeast, stored properly could easily last a week.
Since when is gluten required to call something "flour"? It's just a different type of flour, quite prevalent in some parts of the world.
But, normal homemade bread with just water, salt, wholewheat flour and sourdough starter...
I think for the vast majority of people, "normal" bread means white wheat flour, not whole wheat. But so what? Rye flour, by the way, is much better for creating and maintaining sourdough cultures than wheat... again, everyone's definition of "normal" is different.
Record lows against what? Currencies failing even worse? Sure.
The people who invest in the U.S. do have a choice, beyond buying bonds in any currency. There are a lot of investment choices. T-bill rates go lower when demand is higher. It's as simple as that.
But have you seen the price of gold? It's not like there's some sudden new industrial demand for the stuff - gold's rise is mostly the dollar's fall.
So?? Both T-bills AND gold are in high demand, and have been even as people have predicted economic disaster in the U.S. The people buying these T-bills are not idiots. If they thought the U.S. would actually collapse and end up in insolvency, there's no way they'd be buying T-bills with ridiculously low interest rates... why do that if there's high risk?
The value of gold is just as much an illusion as any fiat currency. I just don't get why you "gold standard" guys don't understand that. You're absolutely right -- there's no significant increased industrial demand. Gold prices just went up because some people decided that "shiny rocks" are valuable. Next year they might decide that "green pieces of paper" are more valuable than shiny rocks. Neither gold nor dollars have a lot of inherent value in terms of usefulness. (Admittedly, gold is useful as a conductor and in other applications, but that, as you admit, has little impact on its perceived value.) If we ever had a global economic collapse where fiat currencies become worthless, people are going to care a lot more about things like food or clothing than shiny rocks... the people who will be able to buy stuff in such a dire situation will be people who can trade things of actual useful value, not shiny rocks. Good luck with your shiny rock strategy... it's no more inherently stable than the green piece of paper strategy.
Which is why I said in my original post: it's all a confidence game. Right now people have confidence in the U.S. AND confidence in gold. A few years back, fewer people had confidence in gold (remember what happened to gold prices a couple decades ago?). Maybe it'll be different in a few years... and one will go up or down. But it's all just made-up conceptions of value allocated to arbitrary things like useless shiny rocks or useless pieces of paper.
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Before I begin, let me first say that I absolutely agree that the WBC's proposed actions are horrible and deplorable. However, I still think we need to be careful about how we limit their speech, if we do.
i can tell the difference between political speech and hate speech
Really? Your other examples include well-defined categories. And what if my opinion of what constitutes "hate" differs from yours? You want to enforce your definition of morality on the world?
"Hate speech" is a problematic term because it draws distinctions based on the content of speech and usually ends up protecting only certain groups. Is it "hate speech" to carry a sign that says "God hates gays," but NOT "hate speech" to carry a sign that says "God hates people with green eyes" or maybe "God hates John Smith"??
If you're John Smith or have green eyes, you might find that sign incredibly hateful. Depending on the circumstances (who John Smith is, why the signs are up), it may inflict as much emotional distress on John Smith as signs attacking homosexuals, people of specific races, genders, whatever.
Okay, so maybe you begin to say, "well, a sign that says that is hateful to John Smith," so that's outlawed too. And then we start going down the line -- is it okay to carry a sign that says "God hates George Bush" or "God hates Obama"? If that's bad, how about a sign saying "I hate George Bush" or "I hate Obama"? If that's bad, how about a sign saying, "I have a mild dislike of our President"?
Where's the line??
You may say, "Well, I don't know where the line is, but I know THIS is it." That's like the famous Potter Stewart line about obscenity: "I know it when I see it." That's great for you, but it isn't very practical in an objective legal system. That's the reason why it's become almost impossible to prosecute people for obscenity over the years... what one person considers to be "obscene," another thinks is "artistic expression" or simply not harmful in any way.
I personally don't like "hate speech" arguments because they end up protecting some people more than others, just on the basis of things like race or sexuality. Everyone should be equal under the law.
That said, there are reasons to place some limits on the content of speech, and the Supreme Court has done so: you can't use speech to incite a riot or immenent lawless behavior. And, though it has been chipped away at over the years, you can't use "fighting words" to incite a breach of the peace.
These unusual exceptions that limit content of speech are meant to prevent extreme social disorder (e.g., rioting). If there is a continuous pattern of a particular person or group using speech to harass or threaten another specific person or group of people, there are also legal remedies (restraining orders, etc.) to stop that speech. Those latter restrictions are about preventing violence and other problems between specific people, not between nebulous groups like "all homosexuals" or "all people of a particular race."
The problem in this specific instance seems to surround a question of decorum. The vast majority of reasonable people find the WBC's actions offensive. But, personal offense is NOT a good legal standard. Some people found it offensive that a person might wear a tee-shirt that said "F*** the draft" to a courthouse. The Supreme Court, however, said we can't limit speech on the basis of content, and I agree with them.
Some people think it's offensive to burn flags in a protest. I don't think it's very nice, but I don't think it rises to the status of a crime. Again, the Supreme Court agreed. I think burning a prominent national symbol is pretty much the definition of "hate speech" toward that nation or at least its policies or government, pa
A funeral is a very private ritual, and participants are expected to be in a compromised mental and emotional state.
I don't think anyone is proposing that protesters should be allowed to attend or to disrupt the actual private ritual of a funeral. The question is whether they can hang out on public property nearby while such an event is going on.
I'm not exactly sure how to codify that in a legal fashion, but I know the difference is there.
I'm not sure we should ban free speech when someone might have a particular emotional reaction or might be in an emotional state -- that strikes me as an overly broad category.
However, you bring up an important point -- most of the debate here has centered on trying to limit the speech of this specific group. That's limiting speech on the basis of content, which is a dangerous precedent. But it might be possible legally to ban any type of public demonstration within a certain distance of a funeral... no matter what the content. I don't know if this sort of law has explicitly been ruled on in the past.
But the problem then becomes -- how far away is far enough? And what happens when everyone gets in cars and drives from a church to a cemetery? Do we have the right to ban any sort of demonstration from that entire route to protect families?
Oh, thank you for asking, the answer is YES.
Could you elaborate? If the answer were that obvious, I would not have posted, and it would not have been modded up.
Now that you know, please stop pretending the answer is no, it would really help advance the discussion.
I don't think it helps to advance the discussion by responding to a sincere question -- and yes, it is actually a real legal concern -- by just dismissing it with no explanation.
Have a nice day...
What is wrong with the Bush free speech zones? I am unfamiliar with the details of those things.
Please read and learn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
Do they keep people from communicating with people who want to hear them?
I don't actually think that's a reasonable standard for what constitutes "free speech," but... actually, at times, yes. At times, reporters have been barred from interviewing people within them.
But you asked about the larger problems. Well, for one thing, they restrict speech on the basis of content, even though they pretend not to. Restricting speech on the basis of content has in fact been ruled unconstitutional many times by the Supreme Court (except under strict criteria, such as the "fighting words" doctrine or incitement to riot or imminent lawless actions...).
When you select people out of a crowd just because they are carrying a sign that you don't agree with on public property (and aren't otherwise disruptive in any way), that's content restriction... and that's exactly the same sort of thing you're talking about in relation to this funeral. That's why the free speech zones are relevant.
Well you can either take the literal meaning of my post, which you seem to object to for some reason, or you can take the spirit of the meaning of my post, which you agree with because you mention situations where speech is unreasonable.
Look, I didn't object to anything about your post initially. As I tried to explain, I posted an additional bit of information that I think is relevant to someone evaluating the quality of your information. You stated that the Supreme Court allows restrictions, and then proceeded to give an example that is potentially in conflict with a recent ruling. I offered a clarification.
You then claimed that what I said didn't contradict what you said, without any further details... and the "spirit of the meaning" of such a reply usually means either "what you said is irrelevant" or "piss off!"
In either case, I do think my initial reply was relevant and actually important to know to understand your post in context. Furthermore, as to my objections "for some reason" to the literal meaning... well, please re-read. You might learn something.
I was actually pointing out that in the specific situation you brought up with the specific wording you mention, restrictions to speech on the basis of content probably wouldn't even come up. And that's what this whole discussion is about. We want to exclude this group from the area around a funeral not because they are actively disrupting the event from happening, but because the content of their speech is disturbing to those attending the event.
In any case, I'm done with this debate. Come back when you actually have something substantive to say with pertinent examples instead of ones that are not legally relevant.
You should know this, but the answer is the courts. And they have decided.
Umm, duh. Yes, I am aware that the courts decide what is "reasonable," but my post was clearly challenging the reasonableness of the current (court-endorsed) standard, since I explicitly indicated my preference against some types of "free speech zones" that are currently accepted as legitimate by the courts.
Your post actually emphasizes my point -- the current "free speech zone" system is abusive and clearly corrals (pun intended) free speech in an inappropriate manner.
The primary requirement for free speech is that people who have something to say are able to get their message to people who want to hear it.
I'm not sure whether you're just informing me of the way things are (duh... we all have seen the free speech zones) or whether you're actually in favor of this idea. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not just stating the obvious, so I'll take this to mean that you're actually in favor of "free speech zones" as I described in my previous post (e.g., as used by the Bush administration). (If you're not, I apologize in advance for misreading you.) In that case, we're done having a reasonable discussion, because that "reasonable" standard is crap. I'd gladly allow some wacko protesters to stand outside of a church on public property with signs near a funeral if it means we're not subjected to the arbitrary and capricious restrictions on free speech created by the Bush administration (and started earlier).
As long as you have that, then you don't necessarily need the ability to disrupt political conventions, etc.
Once again, your examples are off. No one is trying to "disrupt political conventions," in the sense that they want to storm the gates of the PRIVATE convention hall and stop business from transpiring.
However, if we insist that protesters be corralled away from political conventions so people can't see them and realize that there are significant dissenting viewpoints in this country, there is a REAL problem. And there's no way that I would defend such a policy as "reasonable."
Yes, yes they did. That doesn't contradict what I said.
You're right -- the Court's ruling does not contradict the literal words that you wrote in your previous post.
However, by citing the Supreme Court's idea that there are "reasonable" times and places where speech can be restricted, and then summarily declaring that speech at a funeral is "unreasonable," your post implied a connection. A reasonable reader would conclude, not having any other facts, that the Supreme Court agreed with your declaration of specific "unreasonable" actions. And that's why it was reasonable for me to post my reply, since a naive reader of your post would potentially be misled by your declarations.
(note also that in that case, the protestors were far away from the actual funeral).
Yes, yes they were. Thus we don't know whether the Supreme Court might rule differently in different circumstances. That I agree with.
However, that has nothing to do with what you said. You wrote that "telling the victims' families that god hates them and their children are in hell during the funeral counts as unreasonable." If a family is being told something during a funeral, either the protesters are actually attending the funeral or they are generating enough noise to be disruptive. In the former case, they would be on private property and thus could be removed without any argument about free speech. In the latter case, they would probably be in violation of some noise ordinance and could be silenced at least temporarily on those grounds.
In both cases, the protest would be prohibited from disrupting the funeral on other grounds, not because of the content of their speech. Your argument, reading the literal words of your post, is irrelevant. Which is the reason I took you to be making a general implicit argument about the situation -- and that general argument is in fact contradicted by the ruling I cited.
And yet if someone is harassing you, you can get a restraining order against them, can you not?
Indeed, you can. And if there is a remedy in this case, that should be it -- rather than arguing about "restricting free speech," we should be arguing about whether threats to disrupt a funeral constitute "harassment."
However, given Supreme Court rulings about peaceful public property protests, however, I don't think courts are likely to grant restraining orders in such a scenario.
This is how the supreme court interprets it, speech can be limited in this way. [snip] ... certainly there are times when most people agree it is unreasonable ([snip]...telling the victims' families that god hates them and their children are in hell during the funeral counts as unreasonable).
Umm, the Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that such things are "reasonable," at least regarding civil actions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps
Westboro Baptist Church is an object lesson in why it's good to have some restrictions on speech, such as limiting it to a reasonable time and place.
I absolutely agree that Westboro Baptist Church's proposed action here is beyond poor taste in this situation -- it is deplorable and disgusting.
However, I also think that limiting speech "to a reasonable time and place" is a really problematic standard as well. Who decides what is "reasonable"?
I think the Bush administration that created "free speech zones" would have argued that they were limiting free speech to places that were "reasonable." The Bush administration did in fact make a similar argument that protestors with a different message and agenda would be disruptive to the purpose of the events that the administration was organizing.
Is the argument about funerals any different? Believe me, I wish the Westboro people wouldn't do this crap. But is there any way we can prohibit peaceful assemblies of people on public property who just happen to have a different message than some other neighboring event, without also condoning crap like "free speech zones"? Or, if we allow families or churches to dictate free speech in surrounding areas on particular occasions, who decides what occasions and what areas? Can corporations take advantage of such protections as well?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'm really wondering if people have good answers about how we can draw a line without also making it a lot easier to trample on free speech rights in a lot of situations that might matter.
It's even worse than that -- although glutamate has been found in only trace amounts, dihydroden monoxide seems to have completely taken over the bodies of suicide victims, almost as if their bodies were made of the stuff....
It's obviously a College application. And a good one too! Somebody has a sense of aesthetics. Probably someone wanting to go into Art Preservation or Museum Curratorship. Maybe Egyptology or Paleontology.
Or maybe creative Forgery??
That's it! We've found it -- it's obviously a business school application!
You know what? I agree. I was one of those weird didn't-know-what-he-should-do students, and I probably would have benefited much more if anyone at my gigantic University had given a damn.
I think this is a different issue from what this thread was originally about. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone here has argued that we should adopt a model where no one in the faculty or administration "gives a damn" about the students.
Rather, the question is whether attendance is a reasonable metric to address that issue. I have heard many, many stories from people who lined up in their pajamas to sign an attendance sheet and then went back to their dorm room bed. I know many more who actually did the required work, delivered the required assignments, and left immediately after (before lecture) because they found class worthless. Are attendance records helping those students?
If we want to avoid "lost" students, I'd say there are a few dozen recommendations I'd put in place before making some sort of mandatory attendance recording policy. For starters, encourage better advisors and advising. Get better supervisors in dorms. Require more frequent check-ins for these people with each student. Have more staff (both teaching and resident) available in a variety of venues and situations that different types of students might feel comfortable with. Etc.
These sorts of things generally would cost time and money. Most of them would cost more than some sort of attendance policy. But they would also have a chance of actually being effective.
I absolutely agree with you that universities shouldn't just let students get lost without providing reasonable opportunities for good advice and guidance from some faculty or staff people. But looking for an attendance policy to solve this problem is not actually giving you the thing you requested. They may have meticulous records of your attendance (or non-attendance), but that's not necessarily the first step toward caring about students.
From my point of view (as a non-academic who works on improving university administration), it matters for a few key reasons:
1. Students who don't turn up to lectures are more likely to drop out of university. This particularly goes for students whose attendance was good and tails off, so we want to spot them early on and ask if they need any help (academic or personal).
As someone who actually has taught at the university level, I think work completion and grades are a much better indicator than lecture attendance. If a student disappears from my class for a couple weeks, but the work keeps being turned in, I'm generally not concerned.
If the student begins to miss assignments or tests, there's much more likely to be an actual issue, and I will immediately try to contact the student.
I think you're measuring the wrong thing here. You'll only catch a lot problem students with "attendance nets" in courses where professors don't assign regular work or give regular assessments... and in that case, the problem often likes more with the professor's issues than the students'.
2. If a student turns up mid-way through semester with problems, we're inclined to be a lot more sympathetic (and devote more staff time to helping) if you've attended class. If you didn't attend class and then don't know the material, it could be argued that's rather your own fault.
Umm, it IS?!? Seriously, that's part of what being an adult is about. If you are failing a class because you didn't attend and didn't do any work, it IS your fault -- there is no "it could be argued..." about it.
This kind of nonsense is a huge problem in higher education today. Sure, a university should ensure that you have a decent advisor to guide you toward good choices in courses and perhaps a resident advisor if you're in a dorm to check in here and there.
But if you don't do the work, YOU FAIL. End of story. Students need to be allowed to make choices, and if they can't be bothered to take a minimum amount of responsibility for barely trying, why the heck are you trying to protect them?
If the concern is that parents or students will sue you or some sort of nonsense, I'd advocate that a university make students and parents sign a release form saying that academic grades are entirely up to the discretion of the faculty and failure to do required work will result in failure. If a student doesn't get that, perhaps he/she isn't ready to go to college... or perhaps college just isn't for him/her.
To try to pretend otherwise is just going to lead to a society of people who have to be nannied around the clock in their jobs and every other aspect of their lives. Those aren't the kind of people who deserve a university degree.
University administrators these days seem to fall over backwards to recruit high-caliber students. What they unfortunately don't seem as interested in is whether they are graduating high-caliber students. This business model will ultimately come back to haunt schools when the reputation of their graduates declines.
The entire point of taking someone like RMS's opinion is based on the assumption that he's more informed than the average person, has dedicated more thought to it, and has come to rational conclusions.
I have a real problem delegating any thought at all to someone so unaware or uncaring of social norms.
Most social norms are not founded in rationality, and in fact, many of them are incredibly irrational. Personally, I think social norms are important too, but in my experience those who care most about social norms don't tend to be objectively rational.
On the other hand, "rationality" is in part a construct of society. While some aspects of logic may seem to have to do with how the universe "just works," a lot of "rationality" is fundamentally based on human ways of thinking about the world. So, a person who becomes increasingly divorced from humanity will eventually develop ideas that by our society definitions MUST be irrational.
I make no claims about how this applies to RMS.
'Varbie'.
Got it.
No, numbnuts... it's 'barbie' with a 'v'.
I.e., 'bvrbie.'
Precious metals may have been simply magically valuable in the olden days, but their modern prices are based upon their uses in industry.
Are you joking? Yes, gold and silver and such are useful in industry, but do you seriously claim that the massive spike in precious metal prices in the past few years is the result of increasing industrial demand???
Obviously only fools advocate precious metals to the exclusion of food, firearms, etc. but they are an essential component of both a societal collapse scenario,
It really depends on how far the collapse goes. In the true survivalist scenario that most precious metals fanatics champion, "shiny rocks" aren't likely to be any more valuable than "green pieces of paper." A collapse big enough to destabilize all the global currency markets will likely drive technological production into the toilet, meaning any of your inherent industrial value for precious metals will go down down to nil too.
On a small scale, barter will rule. In larger communities, the only reason why gold (or some other metal) would emerge as a de facto currency in that scenario is if the people who had the guns or food or whatever happen to like it. If those people were rational, they wouldn't be taken into the mystical "shiny rock" theories of the ancients...
But... who are we kidding? The people who will have the guns and food and stuff will be the same wackos who are stockpiling gold, so you guys are trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You want to corner the new fiat currency, which just happens to have a long history... if I were in charge of one of your survivalist camps, I'd advocate choosing some other useless and less expensive random "commodity" to stockpile along with your guns and food. Why the heck would you spend the money to buy precious metals at today's prices if you plan to force everyone to accept your new fiat currency in the event of a collapse? Choose something random that's rare but cheap... and just buy up all of it. WHEEE... instant currency!!
as well as the more mundane currency erosion that we have seen in the US dollar over the last few decades.
Bah... where the heck were you in the early 1980s, when all those gold prices plummeted? Sure, right now the "shiny rock" strategy seems to be edging out the "green pieces of paper" strategy, but I would bet a substantial amount of my life savings that people will stop liking those "shiny rocks" AGAIN at some point in the next couple decades, and all that "inherent value" of a non-fiat currency will go down the drain.
Even if your survivalist scenario were true, I think the chances are far greater that we'll see more cycles of precious metal prices to come before we get that collapse... making investment in those shiny rocks not very great as a long-term strategy.
Critics have faulted the plan as celebrating a weapon of mass destruction, and have argued that the government should avoid that kind of advocacy.
I've been to plenty of Holocaust museums and memorials and I don't recall any of them focusing on a celebration but rather the educational aspect.
Exactly. I remember going to the Hiroshima memorial and museum during a visit to Japan when I was only 10 or 11 years old. It has stuck with me probably more than any other museum experience before I became an adult.
I remember a few years later debating issues of the use of nuclear weapons in WWII in my American history class in high school, and I had a completely different perspective on it compared to many of my classmates.*
Whatever side of the nuclear debate you fall on, it's better to remember and be educated rather than make future mistakes out of ignorance of the past. Kucinich is absolutely wrong here.
(*Please don't make assumptions concerning what my actual views on these events are -- they're irrelevant to the present discussion, and they've evolved significantly over the years, but my visit to Hiroshima definitely added some perspective.)
The question is, why should it be retained. Why should the phone company be REQUIRED to store data, from everyone, all the time, based on their assertion that they might need to request it later?
They shouldn't.
If the cops really want a 3rd party to store records for them in perpetuity, let's let them have it. Just charge a fee for storage. Each text message will be archived forever, for the nominal fee of 1 cent per message. Oh, and you can't pay for it out of public funds -- take it out of the pool of state pension funds for the cops (would would be depleted in a matter of weeks or even days).
It's only fair that a legal requirement for a private corporation to offer a service to the cops should be paid for by the cops' private funds. Then we'd find out how much they really "need" this service.
I think a bigger factor is fat content.
I didn't disagree with that. In most cases, adding fat of some sort will have a much more significant effect on retarding staling than most other things.
But I was responding to the claims about lean breads made only with flour, salt, water, and yeast (which I'll take to include sourdough cultures, since they are a naturally occurring yeast, along with naturally occurring bacteria). I've found using sourdough instead of rapid-rising industrial yeast will have a significant impact on staling, partly due to what happens during (usually long) fermentation.
I haven't found fermentation approach to affect the life of my bread much
I don't think it makes much of a difference if you lengthen the fermentation only slightly. Going from 2 hours to 3 hours probably won't do much. Going from 2 hours to 6 hours will probably make a noticeable difference. Going from 2 hours to 24 hours makes a big difference, in my experience. I haven't studied a lot about the chemical details of staling, but part of it has to do with amylose realigning and other changes in the starch. Yeast can naturally use amylase enzymes to break down some of the starch and digest it (and thus change the availability and characteristics of the remaining starches during staling), but it's a slow process which can't happen in a fast fermentation. This is the reason why lots of people add malt powder or syrup to breads -- it makes amylase enzymes available to allow for better fermentation, generally at a faster rate. If you want to get these effects without malt, however, the best thing you can do is slow fermentation.
When I've used a multi-stage preferment to build up to final dough, requiring perhaps a day or two of fermentation before baking the final loaf, I've found the bread stales significantly slower. It's very noticeable with sourdough, but it can also happen even with normal bakers yeast.
Alright, I admit it when I'm wrong -- the EU standards do seem to require something more like 20%, as I've discovered in searching. So much for my "foodie" friend who told me the 1% bit. Nevertheless, I think the required percentage labeling is still the more important think for chocolate quality in the EU.
There are two possible interpretations here: the previous post was wrong, or the US has a definition of "chocolate" that specifies a much lower level of cocoa solids than the rest of the civilized world and thus should not be considered chocolate by anyone with working taste buds.
Actually, you're wrong on both counts. I believe the word "chocolate" in the U.S. implies a minimum of 10% cacao solids, while in the EU, you can label anything with at least 1% to be "chocolate."
The difference isn't the definition, where the US is actually more strict. The difference is the EU requires the percentage to appear on the label, so those "civilized" nations just have more information to make choices among snooty chocolate. (For the record, I personally love gourmet chocolate, but milk chocolate has uses, and I'm not going to judge someone if they like that style better.)
And yes, bread composed of only those ingredients will only last about a day.
That is a big overgeneralization. It depends on type of flour, storage conditions, fermentation strategy, moisture content of bread, etc. A crusty white baguette created with fast fermentation and left on the counter may be stale within a matter of hours. A whole-grain lean bread made with slow fermentation, use of preferments or sourdough rather than direct mix and instant yeast, stored properly could easily last a week.
Rye flour isn't normal. It barely has any gluten!
Since when is gluten required to call something "flour"? It's just a different type of flour, quite prevalent in some parts of the world.
But, normal homemade bread with just water, salt, wholewheat flour and sourdough starter...
I think for the vast majority of people, "normal" bread means white wheat flour, not whole wheat. But so what? Rye flour, by the way, is much better for creating and maintaining sourdough cultures than wheat... again, everyone's definition of "normal" is different.
Record lows against what? Currencies failing even worse? Sure.
The people who invest in the U.S. do have a choice, beyond buying bonds in any currency. There are a lot of investment choices. T-bill rates go lower when demand is higher. It's as simple as that.
But have you seen the price of gold? It's not like there's some sudden new industrial demand for the stuff - gold's rise is mostly the dollar's fall.
So?? Both T-bills AND gold are in high demand, and have been even as people have predicted economic disaster in the U.S. The people buying these T-bills are not idiots. If they thought the U.S. would actually collapse and end up in insolvency, there's no way they'd be buying T-bills with ridiculously low interest rates... why do that if there's high risk?
The value of gold is just as much an illusion as any fiat currency. I just don't get why you "gold standard" guys don't understand that. You're absolutely right -- there's no significant increased industrial demand. Gold prices just went up because some people decided that "shiny rocks" are valuable. Next year they might decide that "green pieces of paper" are more valuable than shiny rocks. Neither gold nor dollars have a lot of inherent value in terms of usefulness. (Admittedly, gold is useful as a conductor and in other applications, but that, as you admit, has little impact on its perceived value.) If we ever had a global economic collapse where fiat currencies become worthless, people are going to care a lot more about things like food or clothing than shiny rocks... the people who will be able to buy stuff in such a dire situation will be people who can trade things of actual useful value, not shiny rocks. Good luck with your shiny rock strategy... it's no more inherently stable than the green piece of paper strategy.
Which is why I said in my original post: it's all a confidence game. Right now people have confidence in the U.S. AND confidence in gold. A few years back, fewer people had confidence in gold (remember what happened to gold prices a couple decades ago?). Maybe it'll be different in a few years... and one will go up or down. But it's all just made-up conceptions of value allocated to arbitrary things like useless shiny rocks or useless pieces of paper.