Never mind that. Imagine someone wheeling a wheelie-suitcase consisting of explosives, nails, and warfarin powder into the TSA checkpoint -- you know, the ones consisting of a thousand people milling around waiting in line to take off their shoes and get groped -- and blowing it up.
You'd have a giant bloody mess, gobs of dead Americans, and a lot of very expensive theatrical equipment damaged, plus temporary paralysis of air travel, plus even more rules that impede travel.
The fact that nobody has done this yet points to al-Qaeda not trying very hard -- if they really did want to kill a bunch of Americans and terrorize us, they could do a lot better than the motley assortment of underpants bombers, shoe bombers, butt bombers (wasn't there one of those in Saudi Arabia?), and the like that have shown up lately.
That's not their only purpose. The NSA is supposed to:
1) Make sure the bad guys don't snoop on Americans; 2) Snoop on the bad guys.
I use "bad guys" here with intentional irony, since nobody quite knows how to resolve the dichotomy that happens when the NSA's suspected of being bad guys.
I would much rather pay Facebook a monthly fee for accounts than have ads. That way the customers would be the users, and the service would be responsive to us, rather than the advertisers...
Perhaps it is economic nonsense, but does it harm anyone who isn't a voluntary participant? We don't live in a society where everything is forbidden except that which is permitted, but the reverse. Let people buy and sell as they see fit; there's no reason to make anything illegal (or tax it out of existence) unless there is clear fraud. These HFT people aren't making any money except by other people voluntarily handing it to them.
If you find out that the locksmith who installed your locks is working for the mob, changing your locks is probably a pretty good idea. Do you know that he's given them a copy of the master key? No, but a locksmith getting paid by the mob usually means only one thing...
I'm actually quite opposed to Rand's ideas, so whatever.
As an example: Washington DC roughly has three sections: Northwest (white collar), Northeast (blue collar), Southeast (ghetto).* A one-bedroom apartment in Northwest will run you $1400 or so. A one-bedroom apartment in Southeast will run you $1000 to $1200 or so. Based on simple geography, this makes sense -- there is a lot less room in Northwest, so land in NW is more at a premium. So the rent really isn't cheaper in the ghetto. But DC has housing vouchers: if you qualify, you can get $2000+ from other people's taxes to pay for rent.
So what I said is literally true: in the ghetto, housing is
1) not significantly cheaper 2) paid for by someone else.
This has the effect of pushing up rent for everyone, and is an absolute windfall for the slum lords (since you can't just charge your tenants what they're able to pay, you can charge them whatever you can convince the government to pay).
*Yes, it's a bit more nuanced than that, but this is, to first order, the urban geography.
I don't know about Kansas City, but in the Baltimore/Washington area, there are very definitely places where crime is a constant threat -- not just in a "boogeyman" sort of way, but in a "both my housemate and my officemate have been robbed at gunpoint and I had a crackhead constantly breaking my car windows to smoke crack in there" sort of way.
Martin used deadly force against someone. That has nothing to do with "being safer around black people"; that's related to "being safer around people whose heads you're not bashing into the pavement".
... California has a referendum procedure. Can't the Californians vote this sort of shit so far down that they'll be looking for it in the Marianas Trench?
All other phone customers. The government's going to mandate that cell companies provide connectivity "as a public service!", and they'll pass on the cost to everyone else.
The relevant thing here is that being followed does not give you the legal right to harm the person following you, either -- even if it amounts to stalking, which it doesn't seem that Zimmerman's behavior did.
How was Zimmerman in the wrong? Did he do anything which would justify Martin's use of force in self-defense? (What would Martin be defending himself against?)
The laws I've seen don't care about the *mechanism* used to inflict injury, only the amount of injury inflicted. If and only if you are at risk of serious physical injury, you can respond with force that might cause serious physical injury. It has nothing to do with weapons, directly, on either side.
Let me confirm this to make sure I've got it right:
If you are being subject to an assault that could leave you with permanent brain damage or dead (getting your head pounded into the sidewalk), you're not allowed to defend yourself if such defense requires a weapon, just because your assailant doesn't have one?
That's what affirmative action means sometimes. At other times, it can mean that you can skip work constantly to play golf and destroy other people's data, or steal office supplies and play solitaire most of the time, and keep a job at a NASA research facility despite management knowing you're useless. [This is per my experience as an employee at this facility.]
The ideal that you describe of how affirmative action should work is not always how it works.
I suggest you come visit the US. We have some real problems with our government (we're working on that...), but outside of a few inner city areas (most of which have fewer guns than average, incidentally) with serious crime problems, it is a very peaceful place.
I don't know about the law in your state (I don't know what your state is), but per the one I know the best (Arizona), you can't claim self-defense in a fight you started unless you express a desire to withdraw and the other party doesn't let you. However, following someone to see if they're up to no good doesn't count as "provocation", I would imagine.
As far as 2), the law allows you to use deadly force to defend yourself against "serious physical injury". There's no requirement of weapons. A barfight between equally-matched participants doesn't count, but (say) a very strong attacker against a much weaker defender does. Getting your head pounded into the pavement certainly does, as Zimmerman claims.
It's unique in that it's a milestone political speech. Having it in the public domain greatly enhances our ability, years later, to have a political conversation referencing it.
We did reap the benefits, though -- people now have 40 (USA) or 35-ish (Europe) hour work weeks, in general, with time off. This is a whole lot better than a century ago.
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That's the point. They're inconsistent now -- perhaps in 1980 they weren't.
Never mind that. Imagine someone wheeling a wheelie-suitcase consisting of explosives, nails, and warfarin powder into the TSA checkpoint -- you know, the ones consisting of a thousand people milling around waiting in line to take off their shoes and get groped -- and blowing it up.
You'd have a giant bloody mess, gobs of dead Americans, and a lot of very expensive theatrical equipment damaged, plus temporary paralysis of air travel, plus even more rules that impede travel.
The fact that nobody has done this yet points to al-Qaeda not trying very hard -- if they really did want to kill a bunch of Americans and terrorize us, they could do a lot better than the motley assortment of underpants bombers, shoe bombers, butt bombers (wasn't there one of those in Saudi Arabia?), and the like that have shown up lately.
That's not their only purpose. The NSA is supposed to:
1) Make sure the bad guys don't snoop on Americans;
2) Snoop on the bad guys.
I use "bad guys" here with intentional irony, since nobody quite knows how to resolve the dichotomy that happens when the NSA's suspected of being bad guys.
I would much rather pay Facebook a monthly fee for accounts than have ads. That way the customers would be the users, and the service would be responsive to us, rather than the advertisers...
This really tells it in a nutshell.
This extension doesn't "interfere with or impair" the USER at all -- in fact, it does what the user wants.
Now we know for whose benefit that nonsense is written (like we didn't before, but meh...)
Perhaps it is economic nonsense, but does it harm anyone who isn't a voluntary participant? We don't live in a society where everything is forbidden except that which is permitted, but the reverse. Let people buy and sell as they see fit; there's no reason to make anything illegal (or tax it out of existence) unless there is clear fraud. These HFT people aren't making any money except by other people voluntarily handing it to them.
If you find out that the locksmith who installed your locks is working for the mob, changing your locks is probably a pretty good idea. Do you know that he's given them a copy of the master key? No, but a locksmith getting paid by the mob usually means only one thing...
I'm actually quite opposed to Rand's ideas, so whatever.
As an example: Washington DC roughly has three sections: Northwest (white collar), Northeast (blue collar), Southeast (ghetto).* A one-bedroom apartment in Northwest will run you $1400 or so. A one-bedroom apartment in Southeast will run you $1000 to $1200 or so. Based on simple geography, this makes sense -- there is a lot less room in Northwest, so land in NW is more at a premium. So the rent really isn't cheaper in the ghetto. But DC has housing vouchers: if you qualify, you can get $2000+ from other people's taxes to pay for rent.
So what I said is literally true: in the ghetto, housing is
1) not significantly cheaper
2) paid for by someone else.
This has the effect of pushing up rent for everyone, and is an absolute windfall for the slum lords (since you can't just charge your tenants what they're able to pay, you can charge them whatever you can convince the government to pay).
*Yes, it's a bit more nuanced than that, but this is, to first order, the urban geography.
I don't know about Kansas City, but in the Baltimore/Washington area, there are very definitely places where crime is a constant threat -- not just in a "boogeyman" sort of way, but in a "both my housemate and my officemate have been robbed at gunpoint and I had a crackhead constantly breaking my car windows to smoke crack in there" sort of way.
Martin used deadly force against someone. That has nothing to do with "being safer around black people"; that's related to "being safer around people whose heads you're not bashing into the pavement".
In many places, ghettos are where housing is no less expensive -- it's just paid for by someone else.
... California has a referendum procedure. Can't the Californians vote this sort of shit so far down that they'll be looking for it in the Marianas Trench?
All other phone customers. The government's going to mandate that cell companies provide connectivity "as a public service!", and they'll pass on the cost to everyone else.
The relevant thing here is that being followed does not give you the legal right to harm the person following you, either -- even if it amounts to stalking, which it doesn't seem that Zimmerman's behavior did.
How was Zimmerman in the wrong? Did he do anything which would justify Martin's use of force in self-defense? (What would Martin be defending himself against?)
Following someone isn't a violent act.
This.
The laws I've seen don't care about the *mechanism* used to inflict injury, only the amount of injury inflicted. If and only if you are at risk of serious physical injury, you can respond with force that might cause serious physical injury. It has nothing to do with weapons, directly, on either side.
Let me confirm this to make sure I've got it right:
If you are being subject to an assault that could leave you with permanent brain damage or dead (getting your head pounded into the sidewalk), you're not allowed to defend yourself if such defense requires a weapon, just because your assailant doesn't have one?
Grep is a special case because regexes are complicated. But a tool like ls? Read the manpage.
That's what affirmative action means sometimes. At other times, it can mean that you can skip work constantly to play golf and destroy other people's data, or steal office supplies and play solitaire most of the time, and keep a job at a NASA research facility despite management knowing you're useless. [This is per my experience as an employee at this facility.]
The ideal that you describe of how affirmative action should work is not always how it works.
I suggest you come visit the US. We have some real problems with our government (we're working on that...), but outside of a few inner city areas (most of which have fewer guns than average, incidentally) with serious crime problems, it is a very peaceful place.
If "fuck you" constitutes fighting words then the internet is doomed. (What about "ur a fag lol"?)
I don't know about the law in your state (I don't know what your state is), but per the one I know the best (Arizona), you can't claim self-defense in a fight you started unless you express a desire to withdraw and the other party doesn't let you. However, following someone to see if they're up to no good doesn't count as "provocation", I would imagine.
As far as 2), the law allows you to use deadly force to defend yourself against "serious physical injury". There's no requirement of weapons. A barfight between equally-matched participants doesn't count, but (say) a very strong attacker against a much weaker defender does. Getting your head pounded into the pavement certainly does, as Zimmerman claims.
My grandfather is 97. Listen to the stories of someone as old as him and you'll realize just how far we've come.
It's unique in that it's a milestone political speech. Having it in the public domain greatly enhances our ability, years later, to have a political conversation referencing it.
We did reap the benefits, though -- people now have 40 (USA) or 35-ish (Europe) hour work weeks, in general, with time off. This is a whole lot better than a century ago.