1. Are you saying that the Koran does not command the killing of "infidels"? That it is merely passages taken out of context?
Well, duh. I'm not a Muslim, and I know that much. The Koran has a lot of passages about fighting wars with enemies of Islam, who were a combination of pagans, Christians and Jews. However, it also has passages about treating Christians and Jews fairly and allowing them practice their religions, and passages stating that they can achieve salvation (or whatever the Islamic equivalent, not sure here). And more generally, it has passages about not picking fights with people who don't pick fights with you.
So, well, the straightforward conclusion here is that the Koran says a lot of different things about the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and that the context in which each of those things is said needs to be weighed to see which of them best match any given situation. As, well, every single damn book ever written to guide human behavior.
PS: Muslims do not generally consider Christians and Jews to be "infidels." Rather, they consider them to be people who believe in the same god as Muslims, received the same teachings that Mohammed did, but then lost or distorted them. You will of course find plenty of counterexamples to this rule—"Christian = infidel" is an Islamist terrorist theme—but it's by no means a majority opinion. So I'm not interested in responses that document Muslims who have labeled Christians as "infidels"—I know they exist, and I know it's a minority opinion.
PPS: The fact the the Koran periodically has nice things to say about non-Muslims doesn't mean that all Muslims in general will have a good opinion of Christians and Jews; I'm not interested in responses that document cases of Muslims saying bad things about non-Muslims, mistreating them or showing prejudices toward them. In fact, the Koran's nicer statements about non-Muslims often seem like attempts to correct early Muslims' pre-existing prejudices and ill will against them. Take, for example, the Koran's statement that the food of the Peoples of the Book (Christians and Jews) is OK for Muslims to eat. Why would such a rule need to be stated? Well, some early Muslims must have seen some forms of physical contact with Christians as taboo. Similar comments apply where it says that you should not fight or kill non-Muslims who haven't tried to do the same to you: "Don't kill Christians and Jews" must have been a teaching that needed to be taught in Mohammed's time as much as in ours. Religion exists in a harsh, often brutal world of people who adopt it more as a tribal identity than as a moral guide.
The real problem is that that there is little to nothing that the Federal government can do about the lack of competition in wired markets.
No, there are well-documented things that governments can do about this. For example, the government can enforce separation of the companies that provide the last-mile connection, the ones that connect that to the internet, and content providers. Because while the first one is a natural monopoly, the other two are not, yet right now the companies that own the last mile use it to stifle competition for ISP and content.
Apple have since day one insisted that everything in their computers be usable with single-button mice. Why? Because of user friendliness towards people who aren't comfortable with computers.
As a result Apple brought the world the double-click.. which is far more confusing to users than a second button.
I, for one hate Apple's mouse, I don't know why they feel they needed to be different and not have separate right and left click buttons.
Apple have since day one insisted that everything in their computers be usable with single-button mice. Why? Because of user friendliness towards people who aren't comfortable with computers. This may seem quaint to you and me, but "Which of the two buttons do I click?" is a significant stumbling point for a lot of people. (And it wouldn't seem so quaint if you spent some time with disabled people with limited finger dexterity; some of them can operate a one button mouse, but not a two button mouse!)
So Apple's UI guidelines insist that every application must expose all of its functionality to users with one-button mice, and Apple's shipped one-button mice on their computers for nearly forever. In fact, you could say they've never switched to multi-button mice; they came up with what's effectively a "no button" mouse with software-configured behavior on a per-user basis, so that you and grandma can share the same mouse, but she doesn't have to be confused by multiple buttons just because you want it that way.
Where else did you think all the crap loans that the CRA forced the banks to make would wind up,
So I keep hearing, but where did you think all the crap loans that the CRA didn't force the unregulated non-banks to make would wind up? You know, the 50% of the subprime loans made by mortgage brokers and non-bank companies like GM (ditech.com)? What about all the CDOs that were bought up by investment firms like Lehman Brothers?
You're missing an additional 30% of subprime loans that were made by uncovered affiliates of CRA-covered institutions. So yes, about 80% of subprime loans had nothing to do with CRA. And it's also been documented that the subprime loans made by CRA-covered institutions were more affordable, had more conservative credit standards, and have performed better than the average subprime loans from this period.
I'm surprised a large chunk of the obfuscation attempts didn't involve replacing letters with numbers. termin8, passw0rd, etc.
Well, the article isn't completely clear in this regard, but I think the author just didn't actually look for examples like those. So their absence in the article doesn't tell you anything about their frequency.
Were you better afterwards that you were before? He's exactly the same.
Well, I'm no longer at a serious risk of dying from a kidney infection. What do you think? And you know, it would've been nice if somebody figured this shit out and treated it when I was a child. It'd have been nice to grow up to have two fully functional kidneys.
You don't describe precisely what's the boy's condition, but hey, you're missing the point, which is that medical conditions that are minor at birth, if left unchecked, may compound over decades and threaten your life (or just outright kill you!) in adulthood. We are now increasingly able to detect, monitor and treat such issues early in life. This does lead to a lot of children receiving minor treatment for issues that wouldn't even be in the radar 30 years ago, but hey, better safe than sorry.
UPJ obstruction is the most common cause of neonatal and antenatal hydronephrosis, occurring in 1 per 1500 live births. Prior to the use of prenatal ultrasonography, most patients with UPJ obstruction presented with pain, hematuria, urosepsis, failure to thrive, or a palpable mass. With the enhanced ability and availability of prenatal ultrasonography, urologic abnormalities are being diagnosed earlier and more frequently. Fifty percent of patients diagnosed with antenatal hydronephrosis are eventually diagnosed with UPJ obstruction upon further workup.
Initially, most children are treated conservatively and monitored closely. Intervention is indicated in the event of significantly impaired renal drainage or poor renal growth.
So, 0.06% of children born (presumably in the USA) show some evidence of antenatal kidney problems similar to what I had. In the end only about half of those in the end are diagnosed with the condition. Most of these are monitored periodically to make sure that complications aren't developing, and given conservative treatment, with an eye on whether the issue corrects itself—and it often does as the child grows.
All this shows is that today we can detect a lot more than we could 30 years ago, we can detect it earlier, and we can better keep an eye on it. Where's the bad?
I sometimes wonder if when they cure one disease they invent another. And I mean invent, not discover.
Some of our neighbors have a three year old boy. He's been diagnosed with some kidney problem I can't even remember, let alone pronounce. And yet he's perfectly healthy.
Thirty years ago, you'd have just said he needs to pee a lot.
Well, when I was 29, I had a major health incident. The first warning was a serious kidney infection. The doctors had sent me to get my kidney scanned in a few different ways (ultrasound, nuclear, CAT) and discovered that I had a "stricture in the ureteropelvic juncture": i.e., the junction between my left kidney and the tube that connects it to the bladder was deformed and narrowed, making it hard for liquid to drain from it. This stricture most likely was there before I was even born, and 29 years of living with that had caused my left kidney to become an infection-prone rock garden that was only about 25% as functional as the healthy right kidney. Thankfully with today's tech they didn't have to open me up to fix me; they stuck a tube into my kidney (without anesthesia!) and then shot it with lasers (with anesthesia during the lasers bit).
But guess what? Today they discover this sort of stuff prenatally, with routine ultrasound scans during pregnancy, and thus can treat it during childhood before it becomes as complicated as that.
Then the second problem is your assumption that physical laws "govern" how objects interact. We don't have to accept that assumption; we can assume instead that physics is a collection of predictive theories about the world, which we accept because they meet some statistical criteria.
The experiments that support your typical physical theory don't produce the exact numbers that the theories' equations predict. We don't reject the theories because of this; rather, we use statistical tests to see how well the numbers fit the theory if we assume that they are the result of random deviations from the prediction.
In this case, then, we can support a deterministic physical theory without having to conclude that the world must be nonrandom, because we cannot prove that the deviations that we observe from the theory are deterministic. Such a proof would require yet another theory to predict the deviations, and the experiments to support that second theory would in turn have the same random deviation from our predictions.
I agree veiled threats can be used to force "consent". However, I think it's also possible for a good prosecutor to sell the ideas of veiled threats having forced consent even when there were none.
But of course, it's also possible for a predator to get a good defender to sell the idea that the prosecution is just inventing fantastical veiled threats for what was just an innocent situation. I just don't think that argument has any weight.
We haven't touched the larger problem in these cases, which is that society at large just blames the victim when it comes to rape. I can build the best circumstantial argument ever that the defendant clearly and repeatedly showed a systematic disinterest on whether the accuser consented, and too many juries are going to come back and say that the accuser is a slut and it's her own damn fault, or worse: case in point. (Though the prosecution did retry that case and win.)
You didn't answer about the 30 seconds delay. What do you think about the five seconds delay being too short ?
I'm skeptical of the value of having some seemingly precise number here. It's not like people are going to wear stopwatches during sex so they can time whether the man pulled out quickly enough. Or, more perversely, how many rapists who hear of a "5 second rule" or "30 second rule" would simply exploit this to not stop in a timely fashion? ("Ok, she said 'stop,' so I'll just keep going for 30 seconds, and maybe by then she'll stop saying 'no.'")
If your partner asks you to stop you should stop as soon as you can. If you're not doing anything particularly kinky, in the practical sense that really just means "immediately." Contrary to what whiny rape apologists would like you to believe, if you treat your partner with respect, are attentive to what she's experiencing and you stop when she asks you, she will be satisfied that you stopped "immediately" even if the stopwatch says 5.7 seconds.
In the real world, when a woman accuses a guy of not stopping immediately, there's a much better than even chance that the guy just didn't care about her continued consent. And that makes him a rapist.
And from what I see, there's no actual evidence that he did rape anyone.
There is evidence accompanying the allegations. For example, one of the accusers' exes has testified that he never had condomless sex with her over the course of a two-year relationship. The implication here is that it's very unlikely that this lady would now consent to this with a guy she barely knew. One of the accusers also claims that Assange wouldn't leave her house, that she stayed over at a friend's house one night to avoid him, and eventually had to call the cops to get the guy to leave—the cops' testimony about what happened then is third party evidence. There's also expert judgement that a condom that Assange used was torn on purpose.
Before you protest, note that I'm not claiming that the allegations are true. My point is that's up to a court to decide whether the whole body of evidence and argumentation presented by the prosecution and the defense merits a conviction. But your claim that there is no evidence is false.
I'm sick of having to remember so many complicated passwords. Now that Hotmail is going to force me to change my password to something I can't remember, I'm just going to have to migrate to another email company. Hopefully I can get the same user name part as I have now (ron_damon).
The vast hordes of apple fanboys are starting to seem more like a myth than reality, or rather like a boogyman used by MS fanboys when criticizing apple, go to any apple vs MS argument and you'll see ten posts about "apple fanbois" for every post by an actual apple fanboy
Nah, there's actually a few, and they're very loud. They don't post to Slashdot, though.
By providing a logical fallacy (Judge: OJ, what do you have to see for yourself. OJ: But there are other, worse killers! Stop talking about me.), you have exposed yourself as an Apple fanboy, and as a stupid cunt as a bonus.
So let's assume you an argument of this form:
If P, then Q.
Not P.
Conclusion: not Q.
I answer with an argument like this one:
If R, then S.
S.
Conclusion: R.
Both of these arguments are, of course, invalid; the second one is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Yet by what I quoted, you are fallaciously claiming that by making this argument I would lend validity to yours, when it does not such thing.
There's some good news for you, though by providing the logical fallacy that the GP has proven your point by providing a logical fallacy, you have not proven the GP's point, which is you what you would've if he'd had.
I doubt those roads just go up to the home and stop. And I don't think many people build a home that isn't next to a road thinking "someday, someone will build a road right here." More likely, the road was already there and those cost are for maintaining a road that already existed.
So, if the original cost of building the road was $n, and there were zero homes next to it, what was the average cost per home? (Oh, crap, I just divided by zero!!!!!)
If there were value in being more efficient, bulbs would be more efficient.
Econ 101: this does not hold if there are externalities. Excessive energy use leads to pollution (among other things), which is usually a textbook example of a negative externality.
As for your question
--No history of me giving expensive gifts to random strangers.
--Absence of the notarial act necessary for the transfer of such an expensive property: inexistant.
--No tax papers filed concerning the sum owed to the tax collecting agency for such the gift.
Yup. We can add to that list, and here's one: it would be really strange and self-servingly convenient for me if it was really true that I walked into the home of a stranger like you with a gun (which we both agree that you saw!) and you just happened to be such a swell guy that not only was it OK with you that I did so, but you also gave me a really valuable object as a gift. I.e., no reasonable person would think any of this is likely.
And hell, even if I was telling 100% the truth as I experienced it I should still be convicted of something, because a reasonable person should have known that strangers who give you extremely valuable gifts when you enter their houses while armed actually believe I'm robbing them.
Rape allegations should be judged similarly to how we're judging this imaginary scenario; a combination of facts about the situation and "reasonable person" standards that either rule out fanciful explanations, or still blame people when they act out of recklessness or criminal negligence. The fact is that most of the rape apology bullshit you read in this thread is more akin to the unreasonable story that my imaginary defense is concocting, where I take your Picasso without showing any reasonable regard for the possibility that, gee, you might not actually want to give it to me.
Likewise, if a woman tries to reach for a condom right before you are going to penetrate her and you use force to hold her down and prevent her from doing so, gee, perhaps maybe she doesn't want to have sex with you like that, and, shikes, you should ponder whether at that point she's still consenting to what you're about to do.
PS, those two links above are important. A lot of rape apology scenarios, when you read them carefully, basically boil down to excuses for recklessness or criminal negligence about consent. The apologies repeatedly argue that in some scenario the man is justified in "going ahead" with a woman that might not actually want to. I.e., they're trying to construct a justification for sex that does not rely on whether the victim actually consents, or trying to find "tricks" to avoid the responsibility of figuring out whether she wants it or not.
If you watch The Implication video, that's also what's going on; boat guy is saying that that in certain situations a woman "will" or "has to" have sex with him, and systematically avoiding the crucial issue of whether she really wants to.
When you buy a donut, the donut is then yours to dispose of as you want
IS it ? so, you are saying that, a mutually agreed interaction/transaction can be broken at will in the case of sex, but, not in the case of other transactions ?
We'll set aside the fact that you insist on talking about sex like a commercial transaction.
The answer is yes. Some transactions are over the second that both parties make them, like the donut purchase. Some transactions are ongoing and can be broken at will at any moment. Like, for example, at-will employment. Then there's all sorts of cases in between.
of course, i would like to also remind you that the woman in NO case had said ANYthing about wanting him to stop, to assange, and this is her testimony. it appears you have missed that bit of information about the case, and instead talking out of your ass.
Let's leave aside the fact that you are wrong about what the accusers' testimony is. Explicit verbal refusal is not necessary for rape. The thing that's relevant is whether the accused party had sex with the alleged victim in spite of a lack of consent. There are many ways this can happen; one of them is disregarding explicit refusals, but another is showing a clear disregard for whether the victim consents.
so in this case we not only have the physiologically unlikely proposition of male being ordered to stop sex at any point the other participant desires, but also in assange's case, male is supposed to be understand that the woman is wanting him to stop, WITHOUT being told to stop.
It's physically impossible to pull out during sex? Damn, I must be doing it wrong.
And in Assange's case, there is one allegation that he used force to overcome resistance before starting—and another that he started while the alleged victim was asleep.
Even then, it would need to be justified fear. It isn't enough that she considers the guy creepy and scary but never says a word to him. He actually needs to have threatened her in some way. Otherwise he might be completely oblivious to the drama unfolding in her mind and that is no crime.
This case is groundless unless the alleged victim had a serious reason for "not articulating" herself properly, that is, fear for her safety if she did so. That would make the case a sexual assault, and that is a common feature of assaults. Being "badgered" into sex is not grounds enough.
Yes, because the critical question in these cases isn't whether she wanted it, but rather which other aspects of the situation make it OK for a guy to have sex with a woman despite the fact that she might not actually want to.
You kept your answers (purposefully ?) vague. What do you think is a reasonnable amount as a reasonnable person ? Not giving an amount before makes it too easy for "a reasonnable person" to just claim the accused should have stopped "x seconds sooner", ie to adjust the amount on a case by case basis to ensure that no matter what the accused took too long to stop.
I invoked the Reasonable Person Standard that's used all over the place in the law. This is purposeful. The reasonable course of action is to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
I'm sad to hear your local police and DA aren't interested in prosecuting muggers. So, let's suppose instead that you forgot to lock the front door of your house when you got home for the evening, and I got in with a gun in my hand and stole something of great value; say, a Picasso sketch. I say that I'm licensed for concealed carry, and that you invited me to your house and gave me the Picasso as a gift. How do you propose this sort of thing should be adjudicated?
Or, alternatively, you might want to read the actual allegations against Assange instead of just parroting his defense lawyers' stories as if they were the undisputed facts. Here's some choice bits:
Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.
According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.
[...]
The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom".
Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. "According to her statement, she said: 'You better not have HIV' and he answered: 'Of course not,' " but "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before."
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1. Are you saying that the Koran does not command the killing of "infidels"? That it is merely passages taken out of context?
Well, duh. I'm not a Muslim, and I know that much. The Koran has a lot of passages about fighting wars with enemies of Islam, who were a combination of pagans, Christians and Jews. However, it also has passages about treating Christians and Jews fairly and allowing them practice their religions, and passages stating that they can achieve salvation (or whatever the Islamic equivalent, not sure here). And more generally, it has passages about not picking fights with people who don't pick fights with you.
So, well, the straightforward conclusion here is that the Koran says a lot of different things about the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and that the context in which each of those things is said needs to be weighed to see which of them best match any given situation. As, well, every single damn book ever written to guide human behavior.
PS: Muslims do not generally consider Christians and Jews to be "infidels." Rather, they consider them to be people who believe in the same god as Muslims, received the same teachings that Mohammed did, but then lost or distorted them. You will of course find plenty of counterexamples to this rule—"Christian = infidel" is an Islamist terrorist theme—but it's by no means a majority opinion. So I'm not interested in responses that document Muslims who have labeled Christians as "infidels"—I know they exist, and I know it's a minority opinion.
PPS: The fact the the Koran periodically has nice things to say about non-Muslims doesn't mean that all Muslims in general will have a good opinion of Christians and Jews; I'm not interested in responses that document cases of Muslims saying bad things about non-Muslims, mistreating them or showing prejudices toward them. In fact, the Koran's nicer statements about non-Muslims often seem like attempts to correct early Muslims' pre-existing prejudices and ill will against them. Take, for example, the Koran's statement that the food of the Peoples of the Book (Christians and Jews) is OK for Muslims to eat. Why would such a rule need to be stated? Well, some early Muslims must have seen some forms of physical contact with Christians as taboo. Similar comments apply where it says that you should not fight or kill non-Muslims who haven't tried to do the same to you: "Don't kill Christians and Jews" must have been a teaching that needed to be taught in Mohammed's time as much as in ours. Religion exists in a harsh, often brutal world of people who adopt it more as a tribal identity than as a moral guide.
The real problem is that that there is little to nothing that the Federal government can do about the lack of competition in wired markets.
No, there are well-documented things that governments can do about this. For example, the government can enforce separation of the companies that provide the last-mile connection, the ones that connect that to the internet, and content providers. Because while the first one is a natural monopoly, the other two are not, yet right now the companies that own the last mile use it to stifle competition for ISP and content.
As a result Apple brought the world the double-click.. which is far more confusing to users than a second button.
Quick googling finds what the Apple guidelines say about double-clicking: "Because not everyone is physically able to perform a double click, it should never be the only way to perform an action."
I, for one hate Apple's mouse, I don't know why they feel they needed to be different and not have separate right and left click buttons.
Apple have since day one insisted that everything in their computers be usable with single-button mice. Why? Because of user friendliness towards people who aren't comfortable with computers. This may seem quaint to you and me, but "Which of the two buttons do I click?" is a significant stumbling point for a lot of people. (And it wouldn't seem so quaint if you spent some time with disabled people with limited finger dexterity; some of them can operate a one button mouse, but not a two button mouse!)
So Apple's UI guidelines insist that every application must expose all of its functionality to users with one-button mice, and Apple's shipped one-button mice on their computers for nearly forever. In fact, you could say they've never switched to multi-button mice; they came up with what's effectively a "no button" mouse with software-configured behavior on a per-user basis, so that you and grandma can share the same mouse, but she doesn't have to be confused by multiple buttons just because you want it that way.
And you need a Thunderbolt adapter to connect Ethernet and monitor.
No, actually, just for the monitor; you get Ethernet through a USB adapter.
Where else did you think all the crap loans that the CRA forced the banks to make would wind up,
So I keep hearing, but where did you think all the crap loans that the CRA didn't force the unregulated non-banks to make would wind up? You know, the 50% of the subprime loans made by mortgage brokers and non-bank companies like GM (ditech.com)? What about all the CDOs that were bought up by investment firms like Lehman Brothers?
You're missing an additional 30% of subprime loans that were made by uncovered affiliates of CRA-covered institutions. So yes, about 80% of subprime loans had nothing to do with CRA. And it's also been documented that the subprime loans made by CRA-covered institutions were more affordable, had more conservative credit standards, and have performed better than the average subprime loans from this period.
No, a lie is knowingly telling something that is not true. People thought that homes were a good investment. They were wrong, not deceitful.
Oh, there was plenty of deception going on. For example, clients being hooked up with subprime loans even when they were qualified for prime loans. And there are lies still going on—the Robo-signing scandal, with banks foreclosing on homes without proper documentation (which, BTW, they're still doing).
I'm surprised a large chunk of the obfuscation attempts didn't involve replacing letters with numbers. termin8, passw0rd, etc.
Well, the article isn't completely clear in this regard, but I think the author just didn't actually look for examples like those. So their absence in the article doesn't tell you anything about their frequency.
Were you better afterwards that you were before? He's exactly the same.
Well, I'm no longer at a serious risk of dying from a kidney infection. What do you think? And you know, it would've been nice if somebody figured this shit out and treated it when I was a child. It'd have been nice to grow up to have two fully functional kidneys.
You don't describe precisely what's the boy's condition, but hey, you're missing the point, which is that medical conditions that are minor at birth, if left unchecked, may compound over decades and threaten your life (or just outright kill you!) in adulthood. We are now increasingly able to detect, monitor and treat such issues early in life. This does lead to a lot of children receiving minor treatment for issues that wouldn't even be in the radar 30 years ago, but hey, better safe than sorry.
I'm going to quote from a reference page on what I had:
UPJ obstruction is the most common cause of neonatal and antenatal hydronephrosis, occurring in 1 per 1500 live births. Prior to the use of prenatal ultrasonography, most patients with UPJ obstruction presented with pain, hematuria, urosepsis, failure to thrive, or a palpable mass. With the enhanced ability and availability of prenatal ultrasonography, urologic abnormalities are being diagnosed earlier and more frequently. Fifty percent of patients diagnosed with antenatal hydronephrosis are eventually diagnosed with UPJ obstruction upon further workup.
Initially, most children are treated conservatively and monitored closely. Intervention is indicated in the event of significantly impaired renal drainage or poor renal growth.
So, 0.06% of children born (presumably in the USA) show some evidence of antenatal kidney problems similar to what I had. In the end only about half of those in the end are diagnosed with the condition. Most of these are monitored periodically to make sure that complications aren't developing, and given conservative treatment, with an eye on whether the issue corrects itself—and it often does as the child grows.
All this shows is that today we can detect a lot more than we could 30 years ago, we can detect it earlier, and we can better keep an eye on it. Where's the bad?
I sometimes wonder if when they cure one disease they invent another. And I mean invent, not discover.
Some of our neighbors have a three year old boy. He's been diagnosed with some kidney problem I can't even remember, let alone pronounce. And yet he's perfectly healthy.
Thirty years ago, you'd have just said he needs to pee a lot.
Well, when I was 29, I had a major health incident. The first warning was a serious kidney infection. The doctors had sent me to get my kidney scanned in a few different ways (ultrasound, nuclear, CAT) and discovered that I had a "stricture in the ureteropelvic juncture": i.e., the junction between my left kidney and the tube that connects it to the bladder was deformed and narrowed, making it hard for liquid to drain from it. This stricture most likely was there before I was even born, and 29 years of living with that had caused my left kidney to become an infection-prone rock garden that was only about 25% as functional as the healthy right kidney. Thankfully with today's tech they didn't have to open me up to fix me; they stuck a tube into my kidney (without anesthesia!) and then shot it with lasers (with anesthesia during the lasers bit).
But guess what? Today they discover this sort of stuff prenatally, with routine ultrasound scans during pregnancy, and thus can treat it during childhood before it becomes as complicated as that.
If there are deterministic physical laws governing how objects interact, then it is possible to predict anything.
Well, for starters, there are objections to your premise.
Then the second problem is your assumption that physical laws "govern" how objects interact. We don't have to accept that assumption; we can assume instead that physics is a collection of predictive theories about the world, which we accept because they meet some statistical criteria.
The experiments that support your typical physical theory don't produce the exact numbers that the theories' equations predict. We don't reject the theories because of this; rather, we use statistical tests to see how well the numbers fit the theory if we assume that they are the result of random deviations from the prediction.
In this case, then, we can support a deterministic physical theory without having to conclude that the world must be nonrandom, because we cannot prove that the deviations that we observe from the theory are deterministic. Such a proof would require yet another theory to predict the deviations, and the experiments to support that second theory would in turn have the same random deviation from our predictions.
I agree veiled threats can be used to force "consent". However, I think it's also possible for a good prosecutor to sell the ideas of veiled threats having forced consent even when there were none.
But of course, it's also possible for a predator to get a good defender to sell the idea that the prosecution is just inventing fantastical veiled threats for what was just an innocent situation. I just don't think that argument has any weight.
We haven't touched the larger problem in these cases, which is that society at large just blames the victim when it comes to rape. I can build the best circumstantial argument ever that the defendant clearly and repeatedly showed a systematic disinterest on whether the accuser consented, and too many juries are going to come back and say that the accuser is a slut and it's her own damn fault, or worse: case in point. (Though the prosecution did retry that case and win.)
You didn't answer about the 30 seconds delay. What do you think about the five seconds delay being too short ?
I'm skeptical of the value of having some seemingly precise number here. It's not like people are going to wear stopwatches during sex so they can time whether the man pulled out quickly enough. Or, more perversely, how many rapists who hear of a "5 second rule" or "30 second rule" would simply exploit this to not stop in a timely fashion? ("Ok, she said 'stop,' so I'll just keep going for 30 seconds, and maybe by then she'll stop saying 'no.'")
If your partner asks you to stop you should stop as soon as you can. If you're not doing anything particularly kinky, in the practical sense that really just means "immediately." Contrary to what whiny rape apologists would like you to believe, if you treat your partner with respect, are attentive to what she's experiencing and you stop when she asks you, she will be satisfied that you stopped "immediately" even if the stopwatch says 5.7 seconds.
In the real world, when a woman accuses a guy of not stopping immediately, there's a much better than even chance that the guy just didn't care about her continued consent. And that makes him a rapist.
In this case, "reasonable" just means "most." "Reasonable" is subjective to begin with.
The Reasonable Person Standard doesn't mean "most," and if by "subjective" you mean "anybody
And from what I see, there's no actual evidence that he did rape anyone.
There is evidence accompanying the allegations. For example, one of the accusers' exes has testified that he never had condomless sex with her over the course of a two-year relationship. The implication here is that it's very unlikely that this lady would now consent to this with a guy she barely knew. One of the accusers also claims that Assange wouldn't leave her house, that she stayed over at a friend's house one night to avoid him, and eventually had to call the cops to get the guy to leave—the cops' testimony about what happened then is third party evidence. There's also expert judgement that a condom that Assange used was torn on purpose.
Before you protest, note that I'm not claiming that the allegations are true. My point is that's up to a court to decide whether the whole body of evidence and argumentation presented by the prosecution and the defense merits a conviction. But your claim that there is no evidence is false.
I'm sick of having to remember so many complicated passwords. Now that Hotmail is going to force me to change my password to something I can't remember, I'm just going to have to migrate to another email company. Hopefully I can get the same user name part as I have now (ron_damon).
The vast hordes of apple fanboys are starting to seem more like a myth than reality, or rather like a boogyman used by MS fanboys when criticizing apple, go to any apple vs MS argument and you'll see ten posts about "apple fanbois" for every post by an actual apple fanboy
Nah, there's actually a few, and they're very loud. They don't post to Slashdot, though.
By providing a logical fallacy (Judge: OJ, what do you have to see for yourself. OJ: But there are other, worse killers! Stop talking about me.), you have exposed yourself as an Apple fanboy, and as a stupid cunt as a bonus.
So let's assume you an argument of this form:
I answer with an argument like this one:
Both of these arguments are, of course, invalid; the second one is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Yet by what I quoted, you are fallaciously claiming that by making this argument I would lend validity to yours, when it does not such thing.
There's some good news for you, though by providing the logical fallacy that the GP has proven your point by providing a logical fallacy, you have not proven the GP's point, which is you what you would've if he'd had.
Glad I can help clear this up.
Or, in other words, yes.
I doubt those roads just go up to the home and stop. And I don't think many people build a home that isn't next to a road thinking "someday, someone will build a road right here." More likely, the road was already there and those cost are for maintaining a road that already existed.
So, if the original cost of building the road was $n, and there were zero homes next to it, what was the average cost per home? (Oh, crap, I just divided by zero!!!!!)
If there were value in being more efficient, bulbs would be more efficient.
Econ 101: this does not hold if there are externalities. Excessive energy use leads to pollution (among other things), which is usually a textbook example of a negative externality.
As for your question --No history of me giving expensive gifts to random strangers. --Absence of the notarial act necessary for the transfer of such an expensive property: inexistant. --No tax papers filed concerning the sum owed to the tax collecting agency for such the gift.
Yup. We can add to that list, and here's one: it would be really strange and self-servingly convenient for me if it was really true that I walked into the home of a stranger like you with a gun (which we both agree that you saw!) and you just happened to be such a swell guy that not only was it OK with you that I did so, but you also gave me a really valuable object as a gift. I.e., no reasonable person would think any of this is likely.
And hell, even if I was telling 100% the truth as I experienced it I should still be convicted of something, because a reasonable person should have known that strangers who give you extremely valuable gifts when you enter their houses while armed actually believe I'm robbing them.
Rape allegations should be judged similarly to how we're judging this imaginary scenario; a combination of facts about the situation and "reasonable person" standards that either rule out fanciful explanations, or still blame people when they act out of recklessness or criminal negligence. The fact is that most of the rape apology bullshit you read in this thread is more akin to the unreasonable story that my imaginary defense is concocting, where I take your Picasso without showing any reasonable regard for the possibility that, gee, you might not actually want to give it to me.
Likewise, if a woman tries to reach for a condom right before you are going to penetrate her and you use force to hold her down and prevent her from doing so, gee, perhaps maybe she doesn't want to have sex with you like that, and, shikes, you should ponder whether at that point she's still consenting to what you're about to do.
PS, those two links above are important. A lot of rape apology scenarios, when you read them carefully, basically boil down to excuses for recklessness or criminal negligence about consent. The apologies repeatedly argue that in some scenario the man is justified in "going ahead" with a woman that might not actually want to. I.e., they're trying to construct a justification for sex that does not rely on whether the victim actually consents, or trying to find "tricks" to avoid the responsibility of figuring out whether she wants it or not.
If you watch The Implication video, that's also what's going on; boat guy is saying that that in certain situations a woman "will" or "has to" have sex with him, and systematically avoiding the crucial issue of whether she really wants to.
When you buy a donut, the donut is then yours to dispose of as you want
IS it ? so, you are saying that, a mutually agreed interaction/transaction can be broken at will in the case of sex, but, not in the case of other transactions ?
We'll set aside the fact that you insist on talking about sex like a commercial transaction.
The answer is yes. Some transactions are over the second that both parties make them, like the donut purchase. Some transactions are ongoing and can be broken at will at any moment. Like, for example, at-will employment. Then there's all sorts of cases in between.
of course, i would like to also remind you that the woman in NO case had said ANYthing about wanting him to stop, to assange, and this is her testimony. it appears you have missed that bit of information about the case, and instead talking out of your ass.
Let's leave aside the fact that you are wrong about what the accusers' testimony is. Explicit verbal refusal is not necessary for rape. The thing that's relevant is whether the accused party had sex with the alleged victim in spite of a lack of consent. There are many ways this can happen; one of them is disregarding explicit refusals, but another is showing a clear disregard for whether the victim consents.
I.e., the criminal law standards of recklessness and criminal negligence apply to rape.
so in this case we not only have the physiologically unlikely proposition of male being ordered to stop sex at any point the other participant desires, but also in assange's case, male is supposed to be understand that the woman is wanting him to stop, WITHOUT being told to stop.
It's physically impossible to pull out during sex? Damn, I must be doing it wrong.
And in Assange's case, there is one allegation that he used force to overcome resistance before starting—and another that he started while the alleged victim was asleep.
"that is, fear for her safety if she did so"
Even then, it would need to be justified fear. It isn't enough that she considers the guy creepy and scary but never says a word to him. He actually needs to have threatened her in some way. Otherwise he might be completely oblivious to the drama unfolding in her mind and that is no crime.
Right! Just like in this video.
This case is groundless unless the alleged victim had a serious reason for "not articulating" herself properly, that is, fear for her safety if she did so. That would make the case a sexual assault, and that is a common feature of assaults. Being "badgered" into sex is not grounds enough.
Yes, because the critical question in these cases isn't whether she wanted it, but rather which other aspects of the situation make it OK for a guy to have sex with a woman despite the fact that she might not actually want to.
You kept your answers (purposefully ?) vague. What do you think is a reasonnable amount as a reasonnable person ? Not giving an amount before makes it too easy for "a reasonnable person" to just claim the accused should have stopped "x seconds sooner", ie to adjust the amount on a case by case basis to ensure that no matter what the accused took too long to stop.
I invoked the Reasonable Person Standard that's used all over the place in the law. This is purposeful. The reasonable course of action is to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
I'm sad to hear your local police and DA aren't interested in prosecuting muggers. So, let's suppose instead that you forgot to lock the front door of your house when you got home for the evening, and I got in with a gun in my hand and stole something of great value; say, a Picasso sketch. I say that I'm licensed for concealed carry, and that you invited me to your house and gave me the Picasso as a gift. How do you propose this sort of thing should be adjudicated?
You might want to re-read my post.
Or, alternatively, you might want to read the actual allegations against Assange instead of just parroting his defense lawyers' stories as if they were the undisputed facts. Here's some choice bits:
Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.
According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.
[...]
The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom".
Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. "According to her statement, she said: 'You better not have HIV' and he answered: 'Of course not,' " but "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before."