Drunk people stumbling around at 2AM in a hotel hallway is something that rarely happens? People leave the door cracked because someone ran down to the ice machine, or is expecting a visitor? I can think of many reasons and scenarios where I've seen and left doors purposely cracked regardless of they automatically shut and lock. Hell, I've used the lock to prevent the door from shutting. Yes, it can and does happen.
And my entire point here was centered around an overreaction to the "crime" of walking in the wrong door. You can't really idiot-proof a gun; that requires a capable and rational mind behind the trigger. Shit happens. Respond logically, especially when someone's life is on the line.
First of all, your objection pertains to a FAR different scenario than the one I described. "Drunk people stumbling around" is not at all the same as "an armed man UNLOCKS YOUR DOOR and enters it without either announcing himself or knocking."
Nor does it take into account that the occupant of the room is both female and en dishabillement.
In my experience, it's impossible usefully to discuss a topic when there's no agreement about the definition of terms and conditions that will frame the discussion.
It's still less possible the other person insists on substituting whataboutism for substantive discussion.
Nonetheless, my point regarding Nevada law on justifiable homicide stands. If the actual woman who was intruded upon by a non-theoretical hotel dick had been armed and had chosen to fire on him, there is every reasons to believe that she would not have been guilty of any crime in the state of Nevada.
I cited Nevada statutes on the subject, and limited my discussion to the cover they would have lent her, had she chosen to respond with deadly force. By contrast, you proposed a scenario that bears no resemblance to the real-world incident outlined in TFS, above, then tried to change the topic to the morality of firing on an unarmed drunk who pushes through a UNLOCKED door.
Sorry. Ducking the topic and substituting one you prefer to discuss may be SOP for yammerhead "pundits" on the Sunday morning talk shows, but it's profoundly unimpressive to me. And it disinclines me to bother to try to engage in dialogue with those who resort to it...
FWIW - I'm somewhat amused to discover that mods have so far twice chosen to mod the above -1 Offtopic.
I was expecting +1 Funny - but then I realized I should not have placed that much faith in the perspicacity and sense of the absurd in moderators here. After all, this is Slashdot, where humor apparently has no place in discussions of politics...
You know, I hate to point out the obvious here, but someone who happens to enter a room unannounced may have also made a simple mistake. Not everyone who opens a door to find someone naked inside is automatically a "creeper" wanting to do harm, and plenty of people have been shot and killed by mistake, unfortunately including parents mistaking their own children for an intruder.
Mmm - no.
I don't know how many hotel rooms you've stayed in recently, but, in every single one I've occupied, the door LOCKS automatically when you shut it. If a stranger with a gun on his hip enters your room, it is only because he first UNLOCKED your door to do so.
You'd have to explain to me how that happens accidentally. Because it doesn't...
Shooting the guy who entered while she was dressing would have helped educate him and others for the future...
Prompting 110010001000 to demand:
Shooting him for what? It is hotel property. You gun nuts are bizarre people.
I'm guessing you are either a European or someone who's completely unfamiliar with the so-called Castle Doctrine as it applies to Nevada's self-defense law (NRS 200.120):
1.Justifiable homicide is the killing of a human being in necessary self-defense, or in defense of an occupied habitation, an occupied motor vehicle or a person, against one who manifestly intends or endeavors to commit a crime of violence, or against any person or persons who manifestly intend and endeavor, in a violent, riotous, tumultuous or surreptitious manner, to enter the occupied habitation or occupied motor vehicle, of another for the purpose of assaulting or offering personal violence to any person dwelling or being therein.
2.A person is not required to retreat before using deadly force as provided in subsection 1 if the person:
(a)Is not the original aggressor;
(b)Has a right to be present at the location where deadly force is used; and
(c)Is not actively engaged in conduct in furtherance of criminal activity at the time deadly force is used.
I direct your attention to the use of the phrase about legitimate targets including those who enter a dwelling "in a surreptitious manner" with "manifest intent" to do harm to the occupant(s).
If the person who let himself into the woman in question's room without knocking was visibly armed and not wearing a police uniform or prominently displaying the badge of a sworn law enforcement officer, it would have been absolutely reasonable for her to respond to that intrusion with deadly force. She could have (and her lawyer undoubtedly would have) claimed that she took the sudden, unannounced and uninvited intrusion of an armed man into her private room as in immediate threat to her life, and responded to it with deadly force. Since there was only one exit from the room - and the intruder stood between her and it - she would have been entirely justified to do so, under Nevada state law.
The cops might arrest her, and the DA might even be stupid enough to charge her for the shooting, but no Nevada jury would convict her of a crime for it - not even manslaughter.
Mind you, I speak here as a person who does not own a gun, who considers the Second Amendment poorly-written and badly in need of an update, and who thinks the NRA's executive suite is a treasonous hive of dangerous lunatics that desperately needs to be the focus of a criminal conspiracy investigation with regard to its egregious practice of funneling website visitors to its black money PAC site, in flagrant contravention of prohibitions on such shenanigans by federally-certified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, public benefit organizations.
But as for responding to armed intrusion with deadly force, it's not insane. It's the way the law works in many states in this country. And, as a former resident of Vegas, I can tell you that the casual disregard of laws protecting personal privacy is a fixture among hotel/casino security personnel there. The mobster mentality pervades its entire "hospitality industry" - and, believe me, the Clark County Sheriff's Department (the Strip is not actually within the city boundaries of Las Vegas proper) is happy to enable and support that attitude.
Just search for 'SJWs owned' or 'Leftists owned' and you'll find hundreds of examples of videos of numerous Left wing idiots who can't even explain their position.
Prompting fafalone to respond:
Yeah, owning SJWs is fun. Just as much fun as owning alt-right nazis on *their* stupid positions. Stop acting like either side has a monopoly on unfounded positions and civil rights abuses. Authoritarian left, authortarian right, left shits on due process, right shits on 4th amendment, left shits on free speech, right shits on free press, both sides unite to pass FOSTA and shit on internet speech.
Both you and your arch-nemesis the 'radical left' have a lot more in common then you'll ever admit and the few sane people left in this world are sick of both of you wiping your ass with the constitution whenever it advances your own interests or hurts the other team.
For the past two decades or so, I've self-identified as a radical centrist. As you might expect, it's not uncommon for people to ask me to define the concept for them.
That's pretty simple, actually. Keeping in mind that a regular, or garden-variety centrist is one who believes that solutions to problems that provide the greatest good for the greatest number, and that entail legislation, tend, in general, to come from the center of the discussion, rather than from its margins:
A radical centrist is one who believes that the quality of public discourse would be signficantly improved if we were to take the most strident voices from both fringes, put 'em against a wall, and shoot their asses...
He can do a hell of a lot more than "ASK". He can push. He might even be able to find a law on the books they're breaking if they don't move off flash, or he might get a new law put on the books they will be violating if they miss the deadline.
He's a Senator, and apparently a very IT tech-savvy one, which is a refreshing thing to see... since he knows about the Flash deprecation. If they don't provide a satisfactory answer, then he can potentially sponsor legislation or an amendment to legislation that will get passed requiring that they meet the deadline Or prohibit any further IT spending on equipment including maintenance, power, and network connectivity, until all Adobe flash-related software and flash-based executable objects (SWF, FLV) are removed from that equipment.
Well... no.
As a senator of the minority party - which he currently is - he can propose legislation for which he can find a majority party co-sponsor. If he can find co-sponsors in the House, all the better - but even with both conditions being true, there's still no guarantee that any legislation he proposes will be adopted by both houses, and signed by the current president.
He can't even hold hearings on the subject, because that's not how our system works for the out-of-power party, these days.
Wyden can make a pain in the ass of himself, however, should he so choose. Press releases from siting senators at least get read, and their press conferences draw reporters, as well. He can, optionally, send demand letters - which I suspect would have no legal force, although it can't hurt to try - or even physically enter (or attempt to enter) their premises, and demand to speak with the boss honcho. Live, on camera, surrounded by media persons, of course.
But, as you note, he's probably the most tech-savvy senator, with Patrick Leahy of Vermont as a respectable second. Conrad Burns of Montana (a Republican) used to be third, but he was defeated by Jon Tester in 2006.
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common.
Prompting LynnwoodRooster to respond:
For some things - such as utilities and public parks, I agree it makes sense. HOWEVER, too often people want communal ownership AND communal control over those resources - and that breaks down quickly. Direct democratic operation really doesn't scale well at all; could you imagine having hundreds of thousands of people voting monthly on decisions made by your local utility? Best to think of it as a corporate model - the corporation (utility/park) is owned by the people (the shareholders) who empower control over the corporation to a small group. And review the performance of the group every few years. In other words - a republic model of control, rather than a democratic (mob rule) method.
I can actually see a system of direct democracy that could work pretty well, assuming proper authentication technology is developed:
Every adult has a vote witch he/she is required to cast on every legislative decision, be it local, regional, or national. Every voter has the option of appointing a surrogate to cast that vote in his/her place. Voters are free to employ a professional, non-partisan surrogate, who is contractually bound to follow the guidelines the voter sets out, or they may entrust their votes to a volunteer whose decisions and positions appeal to them. Surrogacy may be revoked at any time, for any reason, by either party to the agreement.
So, effectively, you actually have a representative democracy (because only a small percentage of voters will choose to wield their votes personally, even if almost everyone is unemployed, and theoretically has the leisure to fully participate in the legislative process). It has the advantage of essentially the equivalent of snap elections, where, when a volunteer surrogate casts a vote that most of the voters who have awarded him surrogacy disagree with, he/she woould abruptly find him/herself reduced to a single vote - or a mere handful.
It'd sure make professional politicians a helluva lot more directly responsive to their constituents, don't you think... ?
The moment you conscript (yes) a doctor or teacher, and Require society to pay them a set wage, you'll find that they become in short supply, especially when considering the rest of the market is more or less open and free. Nobody goes through ten years of prescribed education to be told they can only charge so much for their services, and are otherwise required to give said services away.
You're as out of touch with 21st-Century reality as a person can be.
The vast majority of doctors in the USA work for HMO/HMA/group practice organizations. They are paid a salary - and possibly a bonus, depending on the organization and the amount of income they generate for it - while the individual organization sets the actual price of their services. Which is to say they work for wages, and don't get to set the terms of their own employment. Likewise, primary and secondary-school teachers in the USA are almost entirely union members, and therefore are paid whatever the (typically quite small) salary the union's contract with the local and/or state school board stipulates, as determined by their seniority. There's seldom even any incentive pay. College profs, likewise, work for wages.
You're doing exactly what I cautioned against: insisting on trying to shoehorn messy, complicated reality into your tidy, simple economic model that willfully ignores practical, quotidian, everyday facts of life in favor of supposedly-stirring rhetoric and pronouncements ex cathedra from your boyhood fascination with Ayn Rand's comic book Atlas Shrugged.
But, by all means, tell me more about these so-called "failed socialist economies" - because I don't see any of those here in 2018...
I'd really need to hear what your definition of socialism actually is to square it with the notion being compatible with (or as you later suggest required for) a market (I'm assuming you mean a free one, or one that is reasonably so) economy. Otherwise I suspect you're guilty of choosing your definition of socialism post priori so that you can find one that doesn't look like a miserable failure.
Private exchange doesn't make sense if you have communal ownership.
Social democracy isn't socialism. Hell, even socialism isn't socialism.
Theory be damned, socialism in practice is a philosophy that holds societies ought to provide the essentials for life (food, clean water, shelter, education, health care) for all their members, regardless of their income level, as fundamental rights. The definition of "pure" socialism-as-economics isn't really even worth discussing, because there is no such functioning economic system in existence. And there won't be, ever, as long as human beings are fallible creatures.
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common. Worker-owned companies can and do thrive in hyper-capitalist America, as long as their underlying business models are realistic and responsive to their markets.
Yes, you can build a wall of rhetorical purity around the term - or you can simply acknowledge that social democracy is the modern face of socialism, and it is not failing (at least, in the Scandanavian and Benelux countries) by any objective measure.
Life is complicated. Much too complicated, in fact, to be adequately modeled by rigid, ideological absolutes...
How do we arrivee at Ceres "may more fresh water than Earth," if the calcium carbonate deposits that spark that speculation are considered to be from geysers of brine from deep in the minor planet's interior?"
Where I live, brine is not considered "fresh water"...
I'm assuming the "non-sexual" part of "certified non-sexual massage therapist" is descriptive, just letting us know that they're not a "happy endings" kind of massage therapist, not that they're certified in something called "non-sexual massage".
But given that this is just an ordinary massage therapist, what is their connection to FOSTA and why are they part of this case?
At a guess, it's because the effects of FOSTA on classified advertising has made it difficult to impossible for them to economically advertise their services. Most solo massage therapists don't make enough money to afford TV or display advertising, and classifieds sections in local indie papers (the traditional - and least expensive - advertising venue for massage therapists) have already pretty much completely eliminated ads for massage of any kind in response to FOSTA.
Yes, it's an overreaction - but Americans in general are really good at panicking, and American businesses are even better at it...
Harlan was such an incandescent talent. It's difficult to adequately communicate the impact he had on science fiction in the late 1960's and early 1970's. As a writer, he was a true enfante terrible, who made his mark with groundbreaking stories like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, but it was as an editor that he truly changed the genre.
His breakthrough anthology Dangerous Visions was stuffed with original stories commissioned by him specifically for the volume from a phalanx of top-drawer authors. His charge to them was a simple one: don't just push the boundaries, go as far beyond them as you can. And they responded with alacrity, from Theodore Sturgeon's exploration of the social effects of mandatory incest If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? to Philip Jose Farmer's hallucinatory conjuration of a future without jobs in Riders of the Purple Wage.
It was a seismic event in SF. Today's fans have no idea what an impact it made on the field.
The public Harlan was kind of a jerk. I witnessed him tear a teenage girl to tatters at a party at St. Louiscon for the unforgivable sin of asking him - very politely - for his autograph. She ran away in tears from the little man in the natty sports coat she so obviously idolized, while he seemed completely unaffected by the damage he'd inflicted on her.
I despised him for years afterward - until I learned that he had given a destitute and mortally ill Ted Sturgeon a place to live out his final days, and paid for his medical care, as well.
A great writer, a complex and often infuriating human being, and a man who left the world of science fiction a better and richer place for his having been a part of it. He will be missed...
It's pretty simple, really. I mistook you for a Russian troll - you know: the ones who've been successfully trying to disrupt elections in every western democracy since 2016 or earlier.
Now that I've looked at your homepage, I realize that you're just politically naive, instead.
So, if you would, allow me to explain my reasoning.
When you make comments like the above, all you accomplish is to encourage people who might or might not vote in the next election cycle to decide against doing so. I don't know what the prevailing psychology is in the Netherlands, but here in the USA, those occasional voters mostly consist of the young and the economically disadvantaged. In November of this year, the USA will hold what are known as "midterm elections," so called because they occur between our 4-year presidential elections. Occasional voters are much more likely to vote in general presidential elections. (Which is to say "the ones in which we actually vote to elect a president, rather than the official presidential candidates." The second of those is called a "primary election," and, even in presidential election years, that kind sees consistenly low voter turnout.) Midterm primaries attract pitifully small numbers of voters - and almost no occasional ones - and even those general elections tend to see relatively sparse voting.
So, the voters who do consistently turn out for midterm elections tend to be committed ideologues, and by far the majority of those are strongly right-wing-oriented (at least they are here in the USA). Those right-wing voters also overwhelmingly tend to be evangelical Christians, who are more often motivated to vote for social-conservative motives (anti-abortionism being the primary one), or xenophobic ones. Thus, they vote for populist demagoges and politicians who exploit their fears and resentments, rather than those who are committed to, for instance, protecting constitutional guarantees, or addressing issues of general importance, such as infrastructure, financial regulation, or energy policy reform (to name only a few). It's the occasional voters who really determine which type of candidate wins, so, when they are discouraged or obstructed from voting, the right-wing candidates tend to prevail.
What makes our system particularly susceptible to ideological, rather than practical election outcomes is that the membership of the entire House of Representatives, an overwhelming percentage of legislators in the individual states, and many state governors are determined by the outcome of midterm elections. Those officeholders excercise control over public policy and lawmaking for at least the next two years.
My final point is that occasional voters tend, by a very large majority, to consider themselves as having discharged their civic duty by voting only in the presidential general election, when, in reality, every election is almost equally important to the way our country is governed. So, the question you posed - which is not at all a new one - is harmful to our political process, because it is so easy to discourage occasional voters from participating in it.
The Democrats Gerrymandered the sh*t out of this state many years ago.
Brzzt. Wrong.
After California's voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 20 in 2010 (which added Congressional redistricting to the responsibilities of the existing California Citizens Redistricting Commission - which was itself created by the citizens initiative process in 2008), the state's Congressional district lines were re-drawn by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, in conformance with the U.S. Constitution's census and redistricting clause.
The Commission was originally created to redraw California's state Senate and Assembly districts - which had been gerrymandered in favor of Republicans under the previous processd, in which the legislature was responsible for redistricting, which naturally resulted in a winner-take-all map, depending on which party held the majority at the time. Prop 11 (which passed by 51% to 49%) handed those duties to the Commission, instead, and wrote that provision into the state constitution.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission consists of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four members who are either declared non-partisans, or members of minority parties), all of whom are appointed by the sitting governor. The Commission is charged, by constitutional law, with drawing districts according to the following criteria:
1- Population Equality (districts must comply with the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of “one person, one vote”),
2 - Federal Voting Rights Act (districts must ensure an equal opportunity for minorities to elect a candidate of their choice),
3 - Geographic Contiguity (all areas within a district must be connected to each other, except for the special case of islands),
4 - Geographic Integrity (districts must minimize the division of cities, counties, local neighborhoods and communities of interests to the extent possible, without violating previous criteria - "a community of interest" being defined as "a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation"),
5 - Geographic Compactness (to the extent practicable, and where it does not conflict with previous criteria, districts must not bypass nearby communities for more distant communities),
6 - Nesting (to the extent practicable, and where it does not conflict with previous criteria, each Senate district will be composed of two whole Assembly districts, and Board of Equalization districts will be composed of 10 Senate districts).
Prop 20 (another voter intiative, which passed by 61% to 39%) gave the Commission responsibility for congressional redistricting, as well, and imposed the same set of considerations on the districts it would create.
Opponents of Prop 20 - which is to say "the Republican Party" - sued in Federal court to remove congressional redistricting from the Commission, claiming that it was an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislature's powers. However, SCOTUS ruled in a similar case filed in Arizona that a non-partisan state commission created by a citizen initiative was a constitutionally-valid alternative to legislative redistricting, which mooted the challenge. As a result, the Commission redrew California's congressional district maps in accordance with the considerations I listed above, and congressional elections since 2010 (there have been 3 of them thus far, with another coming up in November) have been conducted based on those districts.
So, far from your bullshit claim, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission efforts have resulted in district maps that are FAR less gerrymandered, FAR more geographically compact, and, frankly, FAR more representative of
One assemblyman can not just "edit" the bill without the rest of the committee approving the changes. The committee is majority Democrats. So he is not alone in trying to undermine NN. Perhaps he is the only one willing to do so openly, since "in committee" votes are often secret in California. There is more to this story that what is in TFA.
Yep.
The committee's chairman CAN unilaterally add amendments to the bill, but the committee as a whole must vote to approve the amendments before the bill is sent to the floor for a vote by the whole membership of the Assembly. If it passes there, it must then go to the state Senate, where it will also be subject to amendment - including amendments to delete the language the Assembly committee chair added. If the Senate then passes it as amended, it would go to a conference committee, which could further amend it, before it's returned to both houses for a final, up-or-down vote, with no further amendments.
At any point in the process, it could simply be spiked. The Assembly committee, for instance, could vote not to recommend it to the full Assembly. The Assembly as a whole could vote it down. The Senate could vote it down, when and if it gets there. And, finally, the conference committee's compromise could be rejected by one or both houses.
And, of course, the governor could veto it, which would require a supermajority of both houses of the Lege to overcome.
Knowing California politics as I do, I'm confident that Santiago's amendments are meant as poison pills. He's fully aware that neither the Assembly as a whole, nor the Senate will pass the bill if it still contains his telecom industry-fellating provisions. I'm sure he's counting on that fact to ensure the bill either never makes it out of his committee, or that it dies on the floor of one or the other house, thereby killing off a California-wide legal mandate for net neutrality.
It's as transparently cynical a ploy as I've seen in legislative politics. And it may just work.
The thing is, California has this thing called the initiative process that would allow a voter-initiated measure to be placed on the ballot to enshrine net neutrality in the state constitution, instead of the State Code (where it would be subject to amendment by a future Legislature). And that could easily happen in reaction to this maneuver.
It's make for an interesting (and entertaining) public fistfight between Silicon Valley and the telecom industry. They both have more money than God, and you can be sure they'd spend hundreds of millions each on political advertising for and against.
The main thing, though, is that ShanghaiBill is absolutely correct, and the headline (which is straight from the SFGate website and the San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner) is profoundly misleading.
While I appreciate and thank you for the compliment, the fact is that scoring points doesn't interest me. I'd much rather participate in and encourage thoughtful, fact-based discussions of this and other subjects. For me, that means awarding mod points on that basis, rather than because the poster agrees or disagrees with me.
I also very much appreciate it when people who respond to my posts point out salient facts that I've overlooked or failed to give sufficient weight.
I try very hard not to view discussions of important issues as zero-sum games...
Using "suddenly" and "over 12 years" together does not compute.
I beg to disagree.
When several 1500-2000 year old trees die in the same area over a period of 12 years, for no apparent reason, I'd call that "sudden."
In fact, that's exactly what I did call it. In terms of your analogy, if a half-dozen 150-year-olds die in the same area over a period of 12 months, for no apparent reason, I'd also call that "sudden," because it's the cluster of deaths that would make them stand out. One 150-year-old dying for no apparent reason is just a datum. 3 or more dying in the same area over a short time (relative to the length of their lives) is unusual enough to warrant a search for a common cause, rather than simply saying, "Oh, well. They were old. What can you do?"
Were I living in that area, and approaching my 150th birthday, I'd certainly want answers - and a ticket to somewhere else... !
Pathogens are finding new territories worldwide as the climate change makes that possible, in fact. Sudden Oak Death is a perfect example.
Yes, pathogens are spreading globally. Whether that's related to climate change depends on the particular pathogen and the circumstances of its appearance in new locations.
I doubt SOD is an example of climate change-mediated pathogen migration. I think it's far more likely that it was imported on the shoes of hikers who had previously visited South Asia. There are lots of Northern Californians who have traveled to Nepal, for instance, or to popular locations in the Himalayan foothills in India, such as Jammu and Kashmir, where SOD is suspected to have originated, who also enjoy hiking in California state and national parks.
It's a fact that researchers themselves were important vectors for SOD in California. (It was, as you might expect, kind of a big deal there - and those researchers were very publicly apologetic once they realized what they'd accidentally done.)
I'm just glad the oaks on our property weren't infected...
Baobob trees were fine for thousands of years......until 2005 when researches started examining them, then nearly 70% of the oldest ones die.
HMM.
I highly doubt climate change did them in. It just doesn't work that way.
I suspect a newly-introduced pathogen is responsible, as turned out to be the case with sudden oak death syndrome a few years ago.
Don't get me wrong. I do, indeed, expect climate change to negatively impact baobob trees, and many, many other species (coastal and montane redwoods, anyone?) - eventually. Just not yet, and not this suddenly...
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geekmux insisted:
Drunk people stumbling around at 2AM in a hotel hallway is something that rarely happens? People leave the door cracked because someone ran down to the ice machine, or is expecting a visitor? I can think of many reasons and scenarios where I've seen and left doors purposely cracked regardless of they automatically shut and lock. Hell, I've used the lock to prevent the door from shutting. Yes, it can and does happen.
And my entire point here was centered around an overreaction to the "crime" of walking in the wrong door. You can't really idiot-proof a gun; that requires a capable and rational mind behind the trigger. Shit happens. Respond logically, especially when someone's life is on the line.
First of all, your objection pertains to a FAR different scenario than the one I described. "Drunk people stumbling around" is not at all the same as "an armed man UNLOCKS YOUR DOOR and enters it without either announcing himself or knocking."
Nor does it take into account that the occupant of the room is both female and en dishabillement.
In my experience, it's impossible usefully to discuss a topic when there's no agreement about the definition of terms and conditions that will frame the discussion.
It's still less possible the other person insists on substituting whataboutism for substantive discussion.
Nonetheless, my point regarding Nevada law on justifiable homicide stands. If the actual woman who was intruded upon by a non-theoretical hotel dick had been armed and had chosen to fire on him, there is every reasons to believe that she would not have been guilty of any crime in the state of Nevada.
I cited Nevada statutes on the subject, and limited my discussion to the cover they would have lent her, had she chosen to respond with deadly force. By contrast, you proposed a scenario that bears no resemblance to the real-world incident outlined in TFS, above, then tried to change the topic to the morality of firing on an unarmed drunk who pushes through a UNLOCKED door.
Sorry. Ducking the topic and substituting one you prefer to discuss may be SOP for yammerhead "pundits" on the Sunday morning talk shows, but it's profoundly unimpressive to me. And it disinclines me to bother to try to engage in dialogue with those who resort to it ...
FWIW - I'm somewhat amused to discover that mods have so far twice chosen to mod the above -1 Offtopic.
I was expecting +1 Funny - but then I realized I should not have placed that much faith in the perspicacity and sense of the absurd in moderators here. After all, this is Slashdot, where humor apparently has no place in discussions of politics ...
geekmux pointed out:
You know, I hate to point out the obvious here, but someone who happens to enter a room unannounced may have also made a simple mistake. Not everyone who opens a door to find someone naked inside is automatically a "creeper" wanting to do harm, and plenty of people have been shot and killed by mistake, unfortunately including parents mistaking their own children for an intruder.
Mmm - no.
I don't know how many hotel rooms you've stayed in recently, but, in every single one I've occupied, the door LOCKS automatically when you shut it. If a stranger with a gun on his hip enters your room, it is only because he first UNLOCKED your door to do so.
You'd have to explain to me how that happens accidentally. Because it doesn't ...
Bruce66423 opined:
Shooting the guy who entered while she was dressing would have helped educate him and others for the future...
Prompting 110010001000 to demand:
Shooting him for what? It is hotel property. You gun nuts are bizarre people.
I'm guessing you are either a European or someone who's completely unfamiliar with the so-called Castle Doctrine as it applies to Nevada's self-defense law (NRS 200.120):
I direct your attention to the use of the phrase about legitimate targets including those who enter a dwelling "in a surreptitious manner" with "manifest intent" to do harm to the occupant(s).
If the person who let himself into the woman in question's room without knocking was visibly armed and not wearing a police uniform or prominently displaying the badge of a sworn law enforcement officer, it would have been absolutely reasonable for her to respond to that intrusion with deadly force. She could have (and her lawyer undoubtedly would have) claimed that she took the sudden, unannounced and uninvited intrusion of an armed man into her private room as in immediate threat to her life, and responded to it with deadly force. Since there was only one exit from the room - and the intruder stood between her and it - she would have been entirely justified to do so, under Nevada state law.
The cops might arrest her, and the DA might even be stupid enough to charge her for the shooting, but no Nevada jury would convict her of a crime for it - not even manslaughter.
Mind you, I speak here as a person who does not own a gun, who considers the Second Amendment poorly-written and badly in need of an update, and who thinks the NRA's executive suite is a treasonous hive of dangerous lunatics that desperately needs to be the focus of a criminal conspiracy investigation with regard to its egregious practice of funneling website visitors to its black money PAC site, in flagrant contravention of prohibitions on such shenanigans by federally-certified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, public benefit organizations.
But as for responding to armed intrusion with deadly force, it's not insane. It's the way the law works in many states in this country. And, as a former resident of Vegas, I can tell you that the casual disregard of laws protecting personal privacy is a fixture among hotel/casino security personnel there. The mobster mentality pervades its entire "hospitality industry" - and, believe me, the Clark County Sheriff's Department (the Strip is not actually within the city boundaries of Las Vegas proper) is happy to enable and support that attitude.
I'm just sayin' ...
An Anonymous Coward (of course) chortled:
Just search for 'SJWs owned' or 'Leftists owned' and you'll find hundreds of examples of videos of numerous Left wing idiots who can't even explain their position.
Prompting fafalone to respond:
Yeah, owning SJWs is fun. Just as much fun as owning alt-right nazis on *their* stupid positions. Stop acting like either side has a monopoly on unfounded positions and civil rights abuses. Authoritarian left, authortarian right, left shits on due process, right shits on 4th amendment, left shits on free speech, right shits on free press, both sides unite to pass FOSTA and shit on internet speech.
Both you and your arch-nemesis the 'radical left' have a lot more in common then you'll ever admit and the few sane people left in this world are sick of both of you wiping your ass with the constitution whenever it advances your own interests or hurts the other team.
For the past two decades or so, I've self-identified as a radical centrist. As you might expect, it's not uncommon for people to ask me to define the concept for them.
That's pretty simple, actually. Keeping in mind that a regular, or garden-variety centrist is one who believes that solutions to problems that provide the greatest good for the greatest number, and that entail legislation, tend, in general, to come from the center of the discussion, rather than from its margins:
A radical centrist is one who believes that the quality of public discourse would be signficantly improved if we were to take the most strident voices from both fringes, put 'em against a wall, and shoot their asses ...
Speaking of Ron Wyden, of Oregon, mysidia noted:
He can do a hell of a lot more than "ASK". He can push. He might even be able to find a law on the books they're breaking if they don't move off flash, or he might get a new law put on the books they will be violating if they miss the deadline.
He's a Senator, and apparently a very IT tech-savvy one, which is a refreshing thing to see... since he knows about the Flash deprecation. If they don't provide a satisfactory answer, then he can potentially sponsor legislation or an amendment to legislation that will get passed requiring that they meet the deadline Or prohibit any further IT spending on equipment including maintenance, power, and network connectivity, until all Adobe flash-related software and flash-based executable objects (SWF, FLV) are removed from that equipment.
Well ... no.
As a senator of the minority party - which he currently is - he can propose legislation for which he can find a majority party co-sponsor. If he can find co-sponsors in the House, all the better - but even with both conditions being true, there's still no guarantee that any legislation he proposes will be adopted by both houses, and signed by the current president.
He can't even hold hearings on the subject, because that's not how our system works for the out-of-power party, these days.
Wyden can make a pain in the ass of himself, however, should he so choose. Press releases from siting senators at least get read, and their press conferences draw reporters, as well. He can, optionally, send demand letters - which I suspect would have no legal force, although it can't hurt to try - or even physically enter (or attempt to enter) their premises, and demand to speak with the boss honcho. Live, on camera, surrounded by media persons, of course.
But, as you note, he's probably the most tech-savvy senator, with Patrick Leahy of Vermont as a respectable second. Conrad Burns of Montana (a Republican) used to be third, but he was defeated by Jon Tester in 2006.
He's also dead, so there's that ...
I stated:
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common.
Prompting LynnwoodRooster to respond:
For some things - such as utilities and public parks, I agree it makes sense. HOWEVER, too often people want communal ownership AND communal control over those resources - and that breaks down quickly. Direct democratic operation really doesn't scale well at all; could you imagine having hundreds of thousands of people voting monthly on decisions made by your local utility? Best to think of it as a corporate model - the corporation (utility/park) is owned by the people (the shareholders) who empower control over the corporation to a small group. And review the performance of the group every few years. In other words - a republic model of control, rather than a democratic (mob rule) method.
I can actually see a system of direct democracy that could work pretty well, assuming proper authentication technology is developed:
Every adult has a vote witch he/she is required to cast on every legislative decision, be it local, regional, or national. Every voter has the option of appointing a surrogate to cast that vote in his/her place. Voters are free to employ a professional, non-partisan surrogate, who is contractually bound to follow the guidelines the voter sets out, or they may entrust their votes to a volunteer whose decisions and positions appeal to them. Surrogacy may be revoked at any time, for any reason, by either party to the agreement.
So, effectively, you actually have a representative democracy (because only a small percentage of voters will choose to wield their votes personally, even if almost everyone is unemployed, and theoretically has the leisure to fully participate in the legislative process). It has the advantage of essentially the equivalent of snap elections, where, when a volunteer surrogate casts a vote that most of the voters who have awarded him surrogacy disagree with, he/she woould abruptly find him/herself reduced to a single vote - or a mere handful.
It'd sure make professional politicians a helluva lot more directly responsive to their constituents, don't you think ... ?
Archangel Michael protested:
The moment you conscript (yes) a doctor or teacher, and Require society to pay them a set wage, you'll find that they become in short supply, especially when considering the rest of the market is more or less open and free. Nobody goes through ten years of prescribed education to be told they can only charge so much for their services, and are otherwise required to give said services away.
You're as out of touch with 21st-Century reality as a person can be.
The vast majority of doctors in the USA work for HMO/HMA/group practice organizations. They are paid a salary - and possibly a bonus, depending on the organization and the amount of income they generate for it - while the individual organization sets the actual price of their services. Which is to say they work for wages, and don't get to set the terms of their own employment. Likewise, primary and secondary-school teachers in the USA are almost entirely union members, and therefore are paid whatever the (typically quite small) salary the union's contract with the local and/or state school board stipulates, as determined by their seniority. There's seldom even any incentive pay. College profs, likewise, work for wages.
You're doing exactly what I cautioned against: insisting on trying to shoehorn messy, complicated reality into your tidy, simple economic model that willfully ignores practical, quotidian, everyday facts of life in favor of supposedly-stirring rhetoric and pronouncements ex cathedra from your boyhood fascination with Ayn Rand's comic book Atlas Shrugged.
But, by all means, tell me more about these so-called "failed socialist economies" - because I don't see any of those here in 2018 ...
alvinrod challenged:
I'd really need to hear what your definition of socialism actually is to square it with the notion being compatible with (or as you later suggest required for) a market (I'm assuming you mean a free one, or one that is reasonably so) economy. Otherwise I suspect you're guilty of choosing your definition of socialism post priori so that you can find one that doesn't look like a miserable failure.
Private exchange doesn't make sense if you have communal ownership.
Social democracy isn't socialism. Hell, even socialism isn't socialism.
Theory be damned, socialism in practice is a philosophy that holds societies ought to provide the essentials for life (food, clean water, shelter, education, health care) for all their members, regardless of their income level, as fundamental rights. The definition of "pure" socialism-as-economics isn't really even worth discussing, because there is no such functioning economic system in existence. And there won't be, ever, as long as human beings are fallible creatures.
Communal ownership of some basic resources (infrastructure, for instance) is baked into western democratic practice. That's the case because it makes sense that those resources be held in common. Worker-owned companies can and do thrive in hyper-capitalist America, as long as their underlying business models are realistic and responsive to their markets.
Yes, you can build a wall of rhetorical purity around the term - or you can simply acknowledge that social democracy is the modern face of socialism, and it is not failing (at least, in the Scandanavian and Benelux countries) by any objective measure.
Life is complicated. Much too complicated, in fact, to be adequately modeled by rigid, ideological absolutes ...
How do we arrivee at Ceres "may more fresh water than Earth," if the calcium carbonate deposits that spark that speculation are considered to be from geysers of brine from deep in the minor planet's interior?"
Where I live, brine is not considered "fresh water" ...
... the Colbert Report?
<ducks ... >
An Anonymous Coward, apparently quoting himself, sneered:
Statistics are nothing more than math tainted with politics, with predictable results.
Obligatory classic quote on the subject from an actual politician:
"There are three types of lie: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
- Benjamin Disreali
Forrest Cameranesi inquired:
I'm assuming the "non-sexual" part of "certified non-sexual massage therapist" is descriptive, just letting us know that they're not a "happy endings" kind of massage therapist, not that they're certified in something called "non-sexual massage".
But given that this is just an ordinary massage therapist, what is their connection to FOSTA and why are they part of this case?
At a guess, it's because the effects of FOSTA on classified advertising has made it difficult to impossible for them to economically advertise their services. Most solo massage therapists don't make enough money to afford TV or display advertising, and classifieds sections in local indie papers (the traditional - and least expensive - advertising venue for massage therapists) have already pretty much completely eliminated ads for massage of any kind in response to FOSTA.
Yes, it's an overreaction - but Americans in general are really good at panicking, and American businesses are even better at it ...
Harlan was such an incandescent talent. It's difficult to adequately communicate the impact he had on science fiction in the late 1960's and early 1970's. As a writer, he was a true enfante terrible, who made his mark with groundbreaking stories like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, but it was as an editor that he truly changed the genre.
His breakthrough anthology Dangerous Visions was stuffed with original stories commissioned by him specifically for the volume from a phalanx of top-drawer authors. His charge to them was a simple one: don't just push the boundaries, go as far beyond them as you can. And they responded with alacrity, from Theodore Sturgeon's exploration of the social effects of mandatory incest If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? to Philip Jose Farmer's hallucinatory conjuration of a future without jobs in Riders of the Purple Wage.
It was a seismic event in SF. Today's fans have no idea what an impact it made on the field.
The public Harlan was kind of a jerk. I witnessed him tear a teenage girl to tatters at a party at St. Louiscon for the unforgivable sin of asking him - very politely - for his autograph. She ran away in tears from the little man in the natty sports coat she so obviously idolized, while he seemed completely unaffected by the damage he'd inflicted on her.
I despised him for years afterward - until I learned that he had given a destitute and mortally ill Ted Sturgeon a place to live out his final days, and paid for his medical care, as well.
A great writer, a complex and often infuriating human being, and a man who left the world of science fiction a better and richer place for his having been a part of it. He will be missed ...
... rocket boosts YOU.
Wait a minute - that's ...
Never mind.
tsa admitted:
Sorry, I don't get your comment.
It's pretty simple, really. I mistook you for a Russian troll - you know: the ones who've been successfully trying to disrupt elections in every western democracy since 2016 or earlier.
Now that I've looked at your homepage, I realize that you're just politically naive, instead.
So, if you would, allow me to explain my reasoning.
When you make comments like the above, all you accomplish is to encourage people who might or might not vote in the next election cycle to decide against doing so. I don't know what the prevailing psychology is in the Netherlands, but here in the USA, those occasional voters mostly consist of the young and the economically disadvantaged. In November of this year, the USA will hold what are known as "midterm elections," so called because they occur between our 4-year presidential elections. Occasional voters are much more likely to vote in general presidential elections. (Which is to say "the ones in which we actually vote to elect a president, rather than the official presidential candidates." The second of those is called a "primary election," and, even in presidential election years, that kind sees consistenly low voter turnout.) Midterm primaries attract pitifully small numbers of voters - and almost no occasional ones - and even those general elections tend to see relatively sparse voting.
So, the voters who do consistently turn out for midterm elections tend to be committed ideologues, and by far the majority of those are strongly right-wing-oriented (at least they are here in the USA). Those right-wing voters also overwhelmingly tend to be evangelical Christians, who are more often motivated to vote for social-conservative motives (anti-abortionism being the primary one), or xenophobic ones. Thus, they vote for populist demagoges and politicians who exploit their fears and resentments, rather than those who are committed to, for instance, protecting constitutional guarantees, or addressing issues of general importance, such as infrastructure, financial regulation, or energy policy reform (to name only a few). It's the occasional voters who really determine which type of candidate wins, so, when they are discouraged or obstructed from voting, the right-wing candidates tend to prevail.
What makes our system particularly susceptible to ideological, rather than practical election outcomes is that the membership of the entire House of Representatives, an overwhelming percentage of legislators in the individual states, and many state governors are determined by the outcome of midterm elections. Those officeholders excercise control over public policy and lawmaking for at least the next two years.
My final point is that occasional voters tend, by a very large majority, to consider themselves as having discharged their civic duty by voting only in the presidential general election, when, in reality, every election is almost equally important to the way our country is governed. So, the question you posed - which is not at all a new one - is harmful to our political process, because it is so easy to discourage occasional voters from participating in it.
And that fact is not lost on Russian trolls ...
An Anonymous Coward lied:
The Democrats Gerrymandered the sh*t out of this state many years ago.
Brzzt. Wrong.
After California's voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 20 in 2010 (which added Congressional redistricting to the responsibilities of the existing California Citizens Redistricting Commission - which was itself created by the citizens initiative process in 2008), the state's Congressional district lines were re-drawn by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, in conformance with the U.S. Constitution's census and redistricting clause.
The Commission was originally created to redraw California's state Senate and Assembly districts - which had been gerrymandered in favor of Republicans under the previous processd, in which the legislature was responsible for redistricting, which naturally resulted in a winner-take-all map, depending on which party held the majority at the time. Prop 11 (which passed by 51% to 49%) handed those duties to the Commission, instead, and wrote that provision into the state constitution.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission consists of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four members who are either declared non-partisans, or members of minority parties), all of whom are appointed by the sitting governor. The Commission is charged, by constitutional law, with drawing districts according to the following criteria:
1- Population Equality (districts must comply with the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of “one person, one vote”),
2 - Federal Voting Rights Act (districts must ensure an equal opportunity for minorities to elect a candidate of their choice),
3 - Geographic Contiguity (all areas within a district must be connected to each other, except for the special case of islands),
4 - Geographic Integrity (districts must minimize the division of cities, counties, local neighborhoods and communities of interests to the extent possible, without violating previous criteria - "a community of interest" being defined as "a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation"),
5 - Geographic Compactness (to the extent practicable, and where it does not conflict with previous criteria, districts must not bypass nearby communities for more distant communities),
6 - Nesting (to the extent practicable, and where it does not conflict with previous criteria, each Senate district will be composed of two whole Assembly districts, and Board of Equalization districts will be composed of 10 Senate districts).
Prop 20 (another voter intiative, which passed by 61% to 39%) gave the Commission responsibility for congressional redistricting, as well, and imposed the same set of considerations on the districts it would create.
Opponents of Prop 20 - which is to say "the Republican Party" - sued in Federal court to remove congressional redistricting from the Commission, claiming that it was an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislature's powers. However, SCOTUS ruled in a similar case filed in Arizona that a non-partisan state commission created by a citizen initiative was a constitutionally-valid alternative to legislative redistricting, which mooted the challenge. As a result, the Commission redrew California's congressional district maps in accordance with the considerations I listed above, and congressional elections since 2010 (there have been 3 of them thus far, with another coming up in November) have been conducted based on those districts.
So, far from your bullshit claim, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission efforts have resulted in district maps that are FAR less gerrymandered, FAR more geographically compact, and, frankly, FAR more representative of
tsai suggested:
I wonder what would happen if there are (presidential) elections and no one turns up to vote.
Hello, Ivan. Please go masturbate somewhere else ...
ShanghaiBill pointed out:
One assemblyman can not just "edit" the bill without the rest of the committee approving the changes. The committee is majority Democrats. So he is not alone in trying to undermine NN. Perhaps he is the only one willing to do so openly, since "in committee" votes are often secret in California. There is more to this story that what is in TFA.
Yep.
The committee's chairman CAN unilaterally add amendments to the bill, but the committee as a whole must vote to approve the amendments before the bill is sent to the floor for a vote by the whole membership of the Assembly. If it passes there, it must then go to the state Senate, where it will also be subject to amendment - including amendments to delete the language the Assembly committee chair added. If the Senate then passes it as amended, it would go to a conference committee, which could further amend it, before it's returned to both houses for a final, up-or-down vote, with no further amendments.
At any point in the process, it could simply be spiked. The Assembly committee, for instance, could vote not to recommend it to the full Assembly. The Assembly as a whole could vote it down. The Senate could vote it down, when and if it gets there. And, finally, the conference committee's compromise could be rejected by one or both houses.
And, of course, the governor could veto it, which would require a supermajority of both houses of the Lege to overcome.
Knowing California politics as I do, I'm confident that Santiago's amendments are meant as poison pills. He's fully aware that neither the Assembly as a whole, nor the Senate will pass the bill if it still contains his telecom industry-fellating provisions. I'm sure he's counting on that fact to ensure the bill either never makes it out of his committee, or that it dies on the floor of one or the other house, thereby killing off a California-wide legal mandate for net neutrality.
It's as transparently cynical a ploy as I've seen in legislative politics. And it may just work.
The thing is, California has this thing called the initiative process that would allow a voter-initiated measure to be placed on the ballot to enshrine net neutrality in the state constitution, instead of the State Code (where it would be subject to amendment by a future Legislature). And that could easily happen in reaction to this maneuver.
It's make for an interesting (and entertaining) public fistfight between Silicon Valley and the telecom industry. They both have more money than God, and you can be sure they'd spend hundreds of millions each on political advertising for and against.
The main thing, though, is that ShanghaiBill is absolutely correct, and the headline (which is straight from the SFGate website and the San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner) is profoundly misleading.
You know: clickbait meets yellow journalism ...
Maxo-Texas confessed:
Well I would mark you +1, Nice and Agreeable. :-)
While I appreciate and thank you for the compliment, the fact is that scoring points doesn't interest me. I'd much rather participate in and encourage thoughtful, fact-based discussions of this and other subjects. For me, that means awarding mod points on that basis, rather than because the poster agrees or disagrees with me.
I also very much appreciate it when people who respond to my posts point out salient facts that I've overlooked or failed to give sufficient weight.
I try very hard not to view discussions of important issues as zero-sum games ...
Jane Q. Public noted:
If some of them were even close to 2,000 years old, they have survived both much warmer and much colder conditions than today.
The Medieval Warm Period was 300 years long.
Good point.
I'd mod you +1 Informative, if I could ...
Maxo-Texas pointed out:
It's a bit more than that.
It's like a half dozen people between 40 and 85 all suddenly died in the same area over a period of less than a 6 months.
The trees were between "1,100 and 2,500".
The young 1,100 year old trees contradict the age argument.
Good point.
I'd mod you +1 Insightful, if I could ...
blindseer commented:
Using "suddenly" and "over 12 years" together does not compute.
I beg to disagree.
When several 1500-2000 year old trees die in the same area over a period of 12 years, for no apparent reason, I'd call that "sudden."
In fact, that's exactly what I did call it. In terms of your analogy, if a half-dozen 150-year-olds die in the same area over a period of 12 months, for no apparent reason, I'd also call that "sudden," because it's the cluster of deaths that would make them stand out. One 150-year-old dying for no apparent reason is just a datum. 3 or more dying in the same area over a short time (relative to the length of their lives) is unusual enough to warrant a search for a common cause, rather than simply saying, "Oh, well. They were old. What can you do?"
Were I living in that area, and approaching my 150th birthday, I'd certainly want answers - and a ticket to somewhere else ... !
An Anonymous Coward opined:
Pathogens are finding new territories worldwide as the climate change makes that possible, in fact. Sudden Oak Death is a perfect example.
Yes, pathogens are spreading globally. Whether that's related to climate change depends on the particular pathogen and the circumstances of its appearance in new locations.
I doubt SOD is an example of climate change-mediated pathogen migration. I think it's far more likely that it was imported on the shoes of hikers who had previously visited South Asia. There are lots of Northern Californians who have traveled to Nepal, for instance, or to popular locations in the Himalayan foothills in India, such as Jammu and Kashmir, where SOD is suspected to have originated, who also enjoy hiking in California state and national parks.
It's a fact that researchers themselves were important vectors for SOD in California. (It was, as you might expect, kind of a big deal there - and those researchers were very publicly apologetic once they realized what they'd accidentally done.)
I'm just glad the oaks on our property weren't infected ...
SuperKendall mused:
Baobob trees were fine for thousands of years... ...until 2005 when researches started examining them, then nearly 70% of the oldest ones die.
HMM.
I highly doubt climate change did them in. It just doesn't work that way.
I suspect a newly-introduced pathogen is responsible, as turned out to be the case with sudden oak death syndrome a few years ago.
Don't get me wrong. I do, indeed, expect climate change to negatively impact baobob trees, and many, many other species (coastal and montane redwoods, anyone?) - eventually. Just not yet, and not this suddenly ...