An agitprop guy tells the campus police that "If you let [the prisoners] go, we will let you leave". This false imprisonment bit is the crucial part of the story that got edited out of the YouTube video that went viral and became the face for the OWS movement. Yes, I think that using military grade pepper spray at close range was excessive. But this confrontation was deliberately provoked by the agitprop controlling the OWS crowd at Davis, and he got what he wanted. (And controlling the encounter he was.)
But nobody talks about this, even though there's full video coverage of the entire thing. People don't like having facts contrary to the narrative they've constructed for themselves.
Who was this guy? What are his goals? Who does he work for? To me, those are just as important questions as what to do about Lt. Pike and Chancellor Katehi.
Call them what they are - contributions to your future retirement - and suddenly the "tax cut" loses a lot of its support. It's all about how you frame a debate in politics...
>>Which representative isn't in someone's pocket? Good fucking luck finding one...
All the representatives I clicked on during a random walk through opensecrets.org got numerous chunks of money from corporations at the maximum donation limit.
All the backers of SOPA that I looked at, in addition, got large chunks from the film and music industries.
Which just sort of reinforces my belief that only persons that can vote in the US should be able to donate money to campaigns in the US.
This means no donations from corporations, in other words. At all. Period. End of story. They are still free to hire lobbyists - just not the cash bribes that make idiots like Rep Watt sit up and beg for them.
>>But the thing is.. what do they do when they catch them?
If a pharm tech or something is diverting a C2 drug to sell on the street, they'll probably go to jail. If drugs went missing, there's a reconciliation process, IIRC.
Diversion the main concern of the DEA, which is why they maintain extensive records on the supply chain of every C2 drug.
Once it's in the hands of the legitimate patients, they don't seem to care very much. After my grandmother died, we had about a gallon of liquid morphine left over. They just told me to pour it down the drain, which seemed kind of odd to me (don't they want to verify it?) but I did, and that was that.
Continued. (Sorry, didn't realize I'd skipped one of your ignorant claims.)
>>Personally, I don't see why we need every single prescription to be filled by a pharmacist. Most of the time all they're doing is putting pills into a bottle - why can't this be automated?
You might also want to look at the difference in salaries between those that simply count pills into bottles, and those that counsel patients on correct drug usage and keep an eye out for medical errors and bad drug-drug interactions.
>>Many of them want the right to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or the morning-after pill if their "conscience" forbids it.
It's called a conscience clause, and it's a fucking good thing to have. You're only being righteously indignant about it because their code of ethics disagrees with yours. Switch roles for a second, and you'll see why a conscience clause is a good thing.
We should NEVER force medical professionals to act in a manner they find unethical. If they can't do the job, they're required (by law) to provide the patient with a place where they can.
>>Can a PETA member work at a butcher shop and refuse to serve anyone since they are opposed to eating meat?
Can you sue a vegan restaurant for not selling meat? (See how stupid your argument is?)
>>I had to go to about 5 different pharmacies before I found one who could do compounding.
Most pharmacies don't do compounding these days, so you're either being disingenuous, or ignorant.
>>Why do we need expensive, degreed workers to do what amounts to standard retail work?
Ok, ignorant it is.
(This is one of the most idiotic statements I've heard in a long time, BTW, and I listen to political talk radio.)
>>From the other perspective, my brother is an ER doctor. He sees many drug-seekers every week
I'm friends with a number of pharmacists, and am married to one. Every week they'll get a guy come in with some sort of fake drug script, try it on them, and then move on down the street until they find a place that'll fill it. Another friend of mine is a doctor, and they have to haul all their drugs around in a very heavy iron suitcase to stop patients from running off with the drugs on the inside.
Drug-seeking behavior is a real thing, and the safeguards are there to stop people like them from abusing drugs.
The GP was complaining about the amount of scrutiny that the DEA gives, interfering with "real medicine", but basically they just care about tracking where every pill produced ends up, and catching drug seekers.
You might want to spell out primary care physician in an article about drugs. =)
>>The pharmacist was way way way beyond rude and pretty much called me a junky
As someone who has spent a lot of his life around pharmacists, I find this... unfortunate. If he did indeed run a website for banning oxy, that would explain that.
Most pharmacists are very professional and nonjudgmental. That said, if you are exhibiting drug-seeking behavior, then, yeah, you might run into conflict with them. A friend of mine got yelled at for half an hour by a guy with a hand-written script for oxy, which he naturally refused to fill. Had to call security and get the guy tossed out, then he just moved on to the next pharmacy down the street.
These things happen all the time to pharmacists... just telling you what the other side of the story is.
>>I've been profoundly disappointed by all charities I gave to or came in contact with professionally.
My experience is that local charities are basically run by a bunch of well meaning people that squabble over how little money they have, and it sometimes gets nasty.
Charities that I'd consider donating to right now (Red Cross and Salvation Army are currently on my shit list for a couple different reasons): Heifer Project International The EFF
>>Because as soon as one of the labels takes down some innocent user's video without warning, Google will find themselves on the other side of a lawsuit
Under SOPA, a counter lawsuit will not be possible. Google will have immunity for taking down an innocent user's video without warning.
That's just one of the many fucked up aspects to the law that the RIAA/MPAA are forcing through.
Correction: It was Chaffetz (who was on fire yesterday for someone not making a single lick of difference), but he's a Republican from Utah, not California.
>>I have to wonder if Google would agree with this.
Why wouldn't they? If they're rational, they'll takedown every video as soon as they get a complaint from a major rightsholder, regardless of the merits. From a purely business and legal perspective.
I watched pretty much the entirety of the SOPA hearings live yesterday, and the people opposed to it (Lofgren D-San Jose and Issa R-Vista, mainly) pointed out the weakness in the takedown regime. Basically, if an entity responds to a takedown notice by taking it down, that ends any threat of legal action from people with real legal budgets. Regardless of the merits of the notice.
This creates a scenario where big rights holders can basically put a bullet into an website they don't like - Lofgren referenced a website taken down for a year (with no compensation or even charges filed) for copyright infringement for showing a video that they had permission for. The RIAA asserted copyright - when they did not, in fact - but nothing happened to them.
When they made a proposal to the SOPA amendment to adopt a loser-pays system if the claim is found without merit, it was shot down by that fucking idiot with the fucking idiotic name Goodlatte because he didn't want to disincentivize people from filing takedown notices. When Issa (and some other gentleman from California whose name I can't remember - Chaffetz, maybe) pointed out that there would be a veritable flood of copyright notices, Goodlatte and Lamar Smith said, yes, that's what we want to see have happen.
The real kicker was the debate over SOPA granting immunity to intermediate agencies for taking down websites. In other words, if Visa and your ISP cut off your website due to the unproven allegation of infringement, they are immune to any damages resulting from it. But if they don't comply, they will have to risk legal action. Issa and others rightly pointed out that there needs to be some sort of counterweight to this, otherwise unproven allegations by the RIAA will give them the power to turn of every web site in the world (from the American standpoint).
Here's the fucked up bit: Mel Watt (D-North Carolina) rose in opposition to this amendment, saying that the current bill only granted immunity to ISPs if they were issued a court order, and that was the correct way to do it. Issa countered by saying that, no, that's actually what my amendment does, but thanks for agreeing with me that that's the right way to do it. Mel Watt: Uh, I'm still opposed to the amendment, as it's not necessary. It was the most outrageous example of bullshit I've ever seen, and I spend a fair bit of my life following these sorts of things. Fuck Mel Watt - he needs an honesty implant.
Everybody needs to get on board with this and write to their representatives to kill SOPA once it passes committee (as it looks like it will).
>>The problems the risk analysis team faced even in the 2000 era was such a tough nut to crack that they had to limit the complexity of the algorithms they used just because there wasn't hardware powerful enough.
There was also a very fundamental problem with the assumptions made, such as mortgage defaults are independent.
Because, after all, if one person defaults on their mortgage it has no effect on another person defaulting, right?:p
Many of the toys on this list aren't very dangerous. I'd go as far as saying that a pencil is more dangerous than every single one of them. I can't fathom why this article appeared on this website.
From TFA: Obviously you haven't seen the type of damage two large plastic blocks can cause when kids fall off it because they're trying to play NBA on stilts.
>>may help once your laptop has been stolen, but it doesn't do anything to prevent the theft in the first place. It may not be a bad idea, but it isn't really what the submitter is asking about.
Yeah, and, worse, his strategy is to put his laptop into a backpack.
As someone who had his car's side passenger window smashed in to steal my ordinary-looking backpack, I can assure you the police say people do so exactly with the expectation to walk away with it with some high tech gear.
All they got were my Mandarin homework, my D&D character sheets, and some irreplaceable artwork my wife commissioned an artist for me at Comicon.
>>And that part of the reason Canada is pulling out is that the world's biggest CO2 outputting nations (US and China) weren't reducing their output?
Are you aware that the only countries that significantly reduced their output... didn't? That it was only a statistical artifact from the badly-chosen start date of 1990? And that 1990 was deliberately chosen because it would give these fake savings to the UK, Germany, and Eastern Europe?
The UK "reduced" its emissions by choosing 1990 as a start date, which was right before they switched from coal to NG as a way of fighting the coal miners' unions. Germany "reduced" its emissions by absorbing Eastern Germany. Eastern Germany reduced its emissions via the mechanism below. Eastern Europe "reduced" its emissions by having the USSR implode, which subsequently killed its industry and thus CO2 emissions. Australia also liked a 1990 start date, due to unusually high emissions during that year.
She makes a very good point that the date was set so that business could continue as usual, with certain countries winning "free" carbon reductions via a shady political process. Well worth the read.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Nurturing accuracy will require a cultural change, from our schools up.
As long as by "accuracy" you mean "people agreeing with us", sure.
Here's a link to what actually happened at the infamous UC Davis pepper spraying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhPdH3wE0_Y#t=8m
An agitprop guy tells the campus police that "If you let [the prisoners] go, we will let you leave". This false imprisonment bit is the crucial part of the story that got edited out of the YouTube video that went viral and became the face for the OWS movement. Yes, I think that using military grade pepper spray at close range was excessive. But this confrontation was deliberately provoked by the agitprop controlling the OWS crowd at Davis, and he got what he wanted. (And controlling the encounter he was.)
But nobody talks about this, even though there's full video coverage of the entire thing. People don't like having facts contrary to the narrative they've constructed for themselves.
Who was this guy? What are his goals? Who does he work for? To me, those are just as important questions as what to do about Lt. Pike and Chancellor Katehi.
>>Children are to be cherished and encouraged to reach for their full potential. Any society that fails to do this is failing, period - USA included.
And yet the USA took down a regime that blew up historical statues and encouraged this kind of degenerate behavior.
Say what you want about the war, but we at least did that much.
>>Why would I not just use quake3? /cough
Custom Team Fortress.
>>That's called a bait and switch, and is illegal.
Well, you'd think.
Except a judge threw it out.
>>This is for Social Security and Medicare taxes
Even calling them "taxes" is a bit of a stretch.
Call them what they are - contributions to your future retirement - and suddenly the "tax cut" loses a lot of its support. It's all about how you frame a debate in politics...
I'm not ignoring any felonies.
>>Which representative isn't in someone's pocket? Good fucking luck finding one...
All the representatives I clicked on during a random walk through opensecrets.org got numerous chunks of money from corporations at the maximum donation limit.
All the backers of SOPA that I looked at, in addition, got large chunks from the film and music industries.
Which just sort of reinforces my belief that only persons that can vote in the US should be able to donate money to campaigns in the US.
This means no donations from corporations, in other words. At all. Period. End of story. They are still free to hire lobbyists - just not the cash bribes that make idiots like Rep Watt sit up and beg for them.
>>But the thing is.. what do they do when they catch them?
If a pharm tech or something is diverting a C2 drug to sell on the street, they'll probably go to jail. If drugs went missing, there's a reconciliation process, IIRC.
Diversion the main concern of the DEA, which is why they maintain extensive records on the supply chain of every C2 drug.
Once it's in the hands of the legitimate patients, they don't seem to care very much. After my grandmother died, we had about a gallon of liquid morphine left over. They just told me to pour it down the drain, which seemed kind of odd to me (don't they want to verify it?) but I did, and that was that.
Continued. (Sorry, didn't realize I'd skipped one of your ignorant claims.)
>>Personally, I don't see why we need every single prescription to be filled by a pharmacist. Most of the time all they're doing is putting pills into a bottle - why can't this be automated?
Time for you to learn the difference between:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacy_technician
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacist
You might also want to look at the difference in salaries between those that simply count pills into bottles, and those that counsel patients on correct drug usage and keep an eye out for medical errors and bad drug-drug interactions.
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
>>Many of them want the right to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or the morning-after pill if their "conscience" forbids it.
It's called a conscience clause, and it's a fucking good thing to have. You're only being righteously indignant about it because their code of ethics disagrees with yours. Switch roles for a second, and you'll see why a conscience clause is a good thing.
We should NEVER force medical professionals to act in a manner they find unethical. If they can't do the job, they're required (by law) to provide the patient with a place where they can.
>>Can a PETA member work at a butcher shop and refuse to serve anyone since they are opposed to eating meat?
Can you sue a vegan restaurant for not selling meat? (See how stupid your argument is?)
>>I had to go to about 5 different pharmacies before I found one who could do compounding.
Most pharmacies don't do compounding these days, so you're either being disingenuous, or ignorant.
>>Why do we need expensive, degreed workers to do what amounts to standard retail work?
Ok, ignorant it is.
(This is one of the most idiotic statements I've heard in a long time, BTW, and I listen to political talk radio.)
>>If your "friend" actually exists you need to report him to the authorities. :P
Yes, my friend exists. I'm friends with a dozen or so pharmacists. And no, I'm not going to report him.
>>That almost never happens to pharmacists.
Uh, no. It happens all the fucking time.
>>From the other perspective, my brother is an ER doctor. He sees many drug-seekers every week
I'm friends with a number of pharmacists, and am married to one. Every week they'll get a guy come in with some sort of fake drug script, try it on them, and then move on down the street until they find a place that'll fill it. Another friend of mine is a doctor, and they have to haul all their drugs around in a very heavy iron suitcase to stop patients from running off with the drugs on the inside.
Drug-seeking behavior is a real thing, and the safeguards are there to stop people like them from abusing drugs.
The GP was complaining about the amount of scrutiny that the DEA gives, interfering with "real medicine", but basically they just care about tracking where every pill produced ends up, and catching drug seekers.
>>My PCP eventually sent me to a pain clinic
You might want to spell out primary care physician in an article about drugs. =)
>>The pharmacist was way way way beyond rude and pretty much called me a junky
As someone who has spent a lot of his life around pharmacists, I find this... unfortunate. If he did indeed run a website for banning oxy, that would explain that.
Most pharmacists are very professional and nonjudgmental. That said, if you are exhibiting drug-seeking behavior, then, yeah, you might run into conflict with them. A friend of mine got yelled at for half an hour by a guy with a hand-written script for oxy, which he naturally refused to fill. Had to call security and get the guy tossed out, then he just moved on to the next pharmacy down the street.
These things happen all the time to pharmacists... just telling you what the other side of the story is.
>>only Samsung managed to make their phone look painfully like the iPhone.
Apple doctored the comparison photographs to make the Galaxy look more like their products than it actually was. Google it.
>>I've been profoundly disappointed by all charities I gave to or came in contact with professionally.
My experience is that local charities are basically run by a bunch of well meaning people that squabble over how little money they have, and it sometimes gets nasty.
Charities that I'd consider donating to right now (Red Cross and Salvation Army are currently on my shit list for a couple different reasons):
Heifer Project International
The EFF
>>Because as soon as one of the labels takes down some innocent user's video without warning, Google will find themselves on the other side of a lawsuit
Under SOPA, a counter lawsuit will not be possible. Google will have immunity for taking down an innocent user's video without warning.
That's just one of the many fucked up aspects to the law that the RIAA/MPAA are forcing through.
>>You were a rare man. Thank you.
Yep. He's in heaven now.
Correction: It was Chaffetz (who was on fire yesterday for someone not making a single lick of difference), but he's a Republican from Utah, not California.
>>I have to wonder if Google would agree with this.
Why wouldn't they? If they're rational, they'll takedown every video as soon as they get a complaint from a major rightsholder, regardless of the merits. From a purely business and legal perspective.
I watched pretty much the entirety of the SOPA hearings live yesterday, and the people opposed to it (Lofgren D-San Jose and Issa R-Vista, mainly) pointed out the weakness in the takedown regime. Basically, if an entity responds to a takedown notice by taking it down, that ends any threat of legal action from people with real legal budgets. Regardless of the merits of the notice.
This creates a scenario where big rights holders can basically put a bullet into an website they don't like - Lofgren referenced a website taken down for a year (with no compensation or even charges filed) for copyright infringement for showing a video that they had permission for. The RIAA asserted copyright - when they did not, in fact - but nothing happened to them.
When they made a proposal to the SOPA amendment to adopt a loser-pays system if the claim is found without merit, it was shot down by that fucking idiot with the fucking idiotic name Goodlatte because he didn't want to disincentivize people from filing takedown notices. When Issa (and some other gentleman from California whose name I can't remember - Chaffetz, maybe) pointed out that there would be a veritable flood of copyright notices, Goodlatte and Lamar Smith said, yes, that's what we want to see have happen.
The real kicker was the debate over SOPA granting immunity to intermediate agencies for taking down websites. In other words, if Visa and your ISP cut off your website due to the unproven allegation of infringement, they are immune to any damages resulting from it. But if they don't comply, they will have to risk legal action. Issa and others rightly pointed out that there needs to be some sort of counterweight to this, otherwise unproven allegations by the RIAA will give them the power to turn of every web site in the world (from the American standpoint).
Here's the fucked up bit: Mel Watt (D-North Carolina) rose in opposition to this amendment, saying that the current bill only granted immunity to ISPs if they were issued a court order, and that was the correct way to do it. Issa countered by saying that, no, that's actually what my amendment does, but thanks for agreeing with me that that's the right way to do it. Mel Watt: Uh, I'm still opposed to the amendment, as it's not necessary. It was the most outrageous example of bullshit I've ever seen, and I spend a fair bit of my life following these sorts of things. Fuck Mel Watt - he needs an honesty implant.
Everybody needs to get on board with this and write to their representatives to kill SOPA once it passes committee (as it looks like it will).
>>The problems the risk analysis team faced even in the 2000 era was such a tough nut to crack that they had to limit the complexity of the algorithms they used just because there wasn't hardware powerful enough.
There was also a very fundamental problem with the assumptions made, such as mortgage defaults are independent.
Because, after all, if one person defaults on their mortgage it has no effect on another person defaulting, right? :p
From TFA: Obviously you haven't seen the type of damage two large plastic blocks can cause when kids fall off it because they're trying to play NBA on stilts.
>>may help once your laptop has been stolen, but it doesn't do anything to prevent the theft in the first place. It may not be a bad idea, but it isn't really what the submitter is asking about.
Yeah, and, worse, his strategy is to put his laptop into a backpack.
As someone who had his car's side passenger window smashed in to steal my ordinary-looking backpack, I can assure you the police say people do so exactly with the expectation to walk away with it with some high tech gear.
All they got were my Mandarin homework, my D&D character sheets, and some irreplaceable artwork my wife commissioned an artist for me at Comicon.
Is it good? It seems creepy to me.
You don't want to get flagged because you typed "/wrist" in some game thread.
Even worse if they log that shit, and it turns up the next time you apply for a job...
You might want to read about the "Dash For Gas", then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas
It ties in with Thatcher and the coal mine issues during the 80s, too.
>>And that part of the reason Canada is pulling out is that the world's biggest CO2 outputting nations (US and China) weren't reducing their output?
Are you aware that the only countries that significantly reduced their output... didn't? That it was only a statistical artifact from the badly-chosen start date of 1990? And that 1990 was deliberately chosen because it would give these fake savings to the UK, Germany, and Eastern Europe?
The UK "reduced" its emissions by choosing 1990 as a start date, which was right before they switched from coal to NG as a way of fighting the coal miners' unions.
Germany "reduced" its emissions by absorbing Eastern Germany. Eastern Germany reduced its emissions via the mechanism below.
Eastern Europe "reduced" its emissions by having the USSR implode, which subsequently killed its industry and thus CO2 emissions.
Australia also liked a 1990 start date, due to unusually high emissions during that year.
Read Liverman's discussion of the process here: http://www.environment.arizona.edu/files/env/profiles/liverman/liverman-2009-jhg.pdf
She makes a very good point that the date was set so that business could continue as usual, with certain countries winning "free" carbon reductions via a shady political process. Well worth the read.