When has there ever been a culture, in the history of the earth, that dispensed fair trials to the masses. Ever.
What made the United States experiment unique was not that it gave the average person justice. It's that it gave the average person a CHANCE at justice.
Go ahead, yuk it up, get all sarcastic and bitter, spell it "Amerika" and all. That chance at justice is something that 99.99999 percent of the people who have walked the face of planet never had.
Dangerous to your trim, maybe. Dangerous to your life? Not so much.
It is not speed, but difference in speed, which is dangerous to your life. I fear the one coming up behind me at a difference of 50+ MPH MUCH more than the one next to me doing a couple MPH different. Yeah, the guy next to me may take out my mirror or scuff my door, but the guy behind me may kill me.
> The first sentence of TFA and TFS says "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous 911 tip."
Adorable.
> I haven't read the decision myself
Perhaps you should.
> so I could be wrong,
You are.
> but that's what it says here.
Adorable.
Allow me. From the decision
Syllabus
A California Highway Patrol officer stopped the pickup truck occupied by petitioners because it matched the description of a vehicle that a 911 caller had recently reported as having run her off the road. As he and a second officer approached the truck, they smelled marijuana. They searched the truck's bed, found 30 pounds of marijuana, and arrested petitioners. Petitioners moved to suppress the evidence, arguing that the traffic stop violated the Fourth Amendment. Their motion was denied, and they pleaded guilty to transporting marijuana. The California Court of Appeal affirmed, concluding that the officer had reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop.
Held: The traffic stop complied with the Fourth Amendment because, under the totality of the circumstances, the officer had reasonable suspicion that the truck's driver was intoxicated. Pp. 3-11
> Does this seem like yet another easily fabricated excuse the police can use to search your property?
Uh... no. No search is involved or permitted solely based on an anonymous tip... just pulling someone over. This falls under the "reasonable suspicion" standard for pulling someone over. They pulled me over for "accelerating too fast out of an intersection" at about the time the bars were closing... that was reasonable suspicion that I was drinking and driving and all they needed to pull me over even though there IS no crime for "accelerating too fast".
The "reasonable suspicion" standard is MUCH lower than "probable cause" which is required for a search. They still can't search you based on an anonymous tip... just pull you over and ask you questions, which you can of course refuse to answer.
People discussing this issue would do well to bone up on the difference between "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause". People misuse the terms all the time... they are very different, and anyone who interacts with, or may interact with the police, should know what the terms mean.
The United States was founded on a conspiracy. Literally.
That the people are being conditioned to automatically consider anything labeled a "conspiracy" automatically laughable says a lot about the degeneration of the U.S.
It is only through hindsight that we can say that a desire to ferret out communist subversives was "irrational". At this time during the cold war, considering that there actually WERE subversives and attempts to subvert the USA's government, a desire and hunting for such subversives was a very understandable and reasonable concern. Protecting itself and it's integrity is a proper role for government and there were valid concerns.
What made McCarthyism bad not the hunt for subversives per se, it was tossing out the constitution in the hunt for subversives.
"Even though it's really no different to people talking to the person next to them,"
Yes, it is different. On a phone conversation, you can only hear one side of the conversation. Our minds tend to try to fill in the blanks and attempt to make sense of the conversation, which does not occur when you can hear both sides of a conversation.
So yes, phone conversations ARE more annoying than "in person" conversations.
> If your employer doesn't like you, they figure out how to fire you.
They can fire you simply because they don't like you. That's all the reason required.
If they don't like you because you are a woman, or are black, that's a different matter. But simple, non-prejudiced dislike is enough reason to fire someone.
Our government explicitly says, privacy is a threat to our safety, and it is the duty of our government to prevent privacy from being possible at all costs.
Go ahead, people. Keep voting for the republicans, because at least they are not democrats. Oh, I mean, keep voting for democrats, because at least they are not republicans. NOTHING is going to change that way. They'll keep boning us up the ass with this "oh noooo... can't have privacy.... TARE! Fnord! War on TARE!!!!"
Actually y'know what? Fuck y'all. YOU are responsible for this. Not me. I have not voted for either major party in DECADES. YOU... YOU are responsible for allowing this to happen. YOU have gotten the government you deserve, you half-wits. Sadly, I am the one who has to suffer for you turds voting for the jackasses (Bush, Obama, whatever) who allow and enable shit like this.
First sentence says "Saudi Cleric" claims something is so. Why would anyone with any sense read any further? What are you guys, masochists? Do you intentionally look for things to irritate you? Surely you were aware than nothing beneficial or insightful can follow in anything beginning with "Saudi Cleric claims..."
Stop intentionally finding things to piss yourself off. You'll live a healthier, and probably longer, life.
Yes. For significant amounts of time. In Nevada, the courts take cheating very seriously and issue sentences involving years of jail time for cheating at a casino.
Laws specifically addressing cheating are absolutely required. By your example, simple breaches of the rules would lead to jail.
For example, the rules of craps say that you pick up and throw the dice with one hand. Touching the dice with both hands at the same time is forbidden. Doing so is against the rules.
So this simple breach of the rules... according to you, would lead to jail.
" if you are winning in a game of chance with the odds firmly tilted"
If you play basic strategy Blackjack (which is easy, because almost all casinos allow you to use a basic strategy card at the table... printed matter the size of a credit card to use as reference to how to play the hands) the house advantage is about 0.44%. Shooting craps and betting the pass line with odds yields about a 0.8% house advantage. I hardly call that "firmly tilted"
In such games it is possible to win for quite some time... often, up to days of elapsed play... before the house advantage eventually causes you to become a net loser.
Compare this to the typical 50% advantage states typically have in lottery games.
It is not the job of police to enforce EVERY law. The concept is called "selective enforcement" and result in things like cops issuing warnings, issuing a verbal scolding, or choosing not to cite at all for some things.
One question is often asked at interviews for police work is, "You catch your mother speeding. Do you give her a ticket?"
The proper answer is, "no". Departments don't want people who would give their own mother a speeding ticket. Contrary to popular belief, departments want thinking human beings, not robocops.
do people really still think of religions in 2013 as about sky-fairies rather than philosophies or systems of ethics?
Obama does. Here he is... direct quote... talking about his faith in the Zombie Jesus:
"I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life." - Barack Hussein Obama
I'm sorry but it clearly is excess calories. If you burn more than you eat, you will lose weight. It's basic thermodynamics.
No need to be sorry.
Anyway, it is more complicated than "basic thermodynamics". You can't just take the calorie counts, as derived from a laboratory process, and say that is what your body is using.
Not 100% of the caloric value of foods is burned. For example, feces has a caloric content. The caloric counts posted on packaging accounts for this, but it is only an approximation. And it is often wildly incorrect.
So stop with the condescending "I'm sorry it's basic thermodynamics." It's more complicated than that for a number of reasons... I have only touched on one.
Zackly. It's fine for the prosecution to portray Zimmerman as a "wanna be cop" but when the defense wants to portray sweet, angelic Trayvon as a wanna be (if not actual) gangsta, all of a sudden, the judge has a case of the vapours.
"In the mean time if you wish to live in this society, obey its laws.(this is more of a general statement against a ton of people lately that seem to think that breaking the law is ok if you don't think its just, not necessarily you entroplus)"
Suck my big, veiny, throbbing dick. And don't tell me what to do, asshole.
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War 1942-49
“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.”
Tariq Ali
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“When EVIL men make bad laws, righteous men disobey them." Pastor Butch Paugh
“Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it...
In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.”
Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Harriet Beecher Stowe “But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Why would the average person give a fuck about their privacy? Most people have nothing to hide, and unless they are a fanatic or a hobbyist, they could not care less who reads their stuff.
This security stuff is NOT about the average guy, though. It's about movers and shakers... politicians, lawyers, businessmen, members of the media... people who have power in some ways to affect change, and who communicate in ways which REQUIRE privacy.
Likewise, the NSA monitoring the average person does not matter in the least. It is about them monitoring movers and shakers. It's about people who could potentially upset the powers that be.
So cut me a break with the ruminations about whether Joe Six Pack or Susy Soccer Mom is going to encrypt their email. The real question will be, will the next candidate for high office, who aims to shake things up, and who thinks the current Republicratic overlords need to GTFO... the question is... will he us it, and will he continue to be monitored.
Slashdot Mirror
> So at the least, the game rachets up a notch.
At the worst, adblock's days are numbered.
Next up: adblockers which don't actually block the ad... they'll play it in a sandbox or some such... the user just won't see it.
When has there ever been a culture, in the history of the earth, that dispensed fair trials to the masses. Ever.
What made the United States experiment unique was not that it gave the average person justice. It's that it gave the average person a CHANCE at justice.
Go ahead, yuk it up, get all sarcastic and bitter, spell it "Amerika" and all. That chance at justice is something that 99.99999 percent of the people who have walked the face of planet never had.
Dangerous to your trim, maybe. Dangerous to your life? Not so much.
It is not speed, but difference in speed, which is dangerous to your life. I fear the one coming up behind me at a difference of 50+ MPH MUCH more than the one next to me doing a couple MPH different. Yeah, the guy next to me may take out my mirror or scuff my door, but the guy behind me may kill me.
> The first sentence of TFA and TFS says "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous 911 tip."
Adorable.
> I haven't read the decision myself
Perhaps you should.
> so I could be wrong,
You are.
> but that's what it says here.
Adorable.
Allow me. From the decision
http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/p...
> Does this seem like yet another easily fabricated excuse the police can use to search your property?
Uh... no. No search is involved or permitted solely based on an anonymous tip... just pulling someone over. This falls under the "reasonable suspicion" standard for pulling someone over. They pulled me over for "accelerating too fast out of an intersection" at about the time the bars were closing... that was reasonable suspicion that I was drinking and driving and all they needed to pull me over even though there IS no crime for "accelerating too fast".
The "reasonable suspicion" standard is MUCH lower than "probable cause" which is required for a search. They still can't search you based on an anonymous tip... just pull you over and ask you questions, which you can of course refuse to answer.
People discussing this issue would do well to bone up on the difference between "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause". People misuse the terms all the time... they are very different, and anyone who interacts with, or may interact with the police, should know what the terms mean.
The United States was founded on a conspiracy. Literally.
That the people are being conditioned to automatically consider anything labeled a "conspiracy" automatically laughable says a lot about the degeneration of the U.S.
It is only through hindsight that we can say that a desire to ferret out communist subversives was "irrational". At this time during the cold war, considering that there actually WERE subversives and attempts to subvert the USA's government, a desire and hunting for such subversives was a very understandable and reasonable concern. Protecting itself and it's integrity is a proper role for government and there were valid concerns.
What made McCarthyism bad not the hunt for subversives per se, it was tossing out the constitution in the hunt for subversives.
"Even though it's really no different to people talking to the person next to them,"
Yes, it is different. On a phone conversation, you can only hear one side of the conversation. Our minds tend to try to fill in the blanks and attempt to make sense of the conversation, which does not occur when you can hear both sides of a conversation.
So yes, phone conversations ARE more annoying than "in person" conversations.
> If your employer doesn't like you, they figure out how to fire you.
They can fire you simply because they don't like you. That's all the reason required.
If they don't like you because you are a woman, or are black, that's a different matter. But simple, non-prejudiced dislike is enough reason to fire someone.
Our government explicitly says, privacy is a threat to our safety, and it is the duty of our government to prevent privacy from being possible at all costs.
Go ahead, people. Keep voting for the republicans, because at least they are not democrats. Oh, I mean, keep voting for democrats, because at least they are not republicans. NOTHING is going to change that way. They'll keep boning us up the ass with this "oh noooo... can't have privacy.... TARE! Fnord! War on TARE!!!!"
Actually y'know what? Fuck y'all. YOU are responsible for this. Not me. I have not voted for either major party in DECADES. YOU... YOU are responsible for allowing this to happen. YOU have gotten the government you deserve, you half-wits. Sadly, I am the one who has to suffer for you turds voting for the jackasses (Bush, Obama, whatever) who allow and enable shit like this.
First sentence says "Saudi Cleric" claims something is so. Why would anyone with any sense read any further? What are you guys, masochists? Do you intentionally look for things to irritate you? Surely you were aware than nothing beneficial or insightful can follow in anything beginning with "Saudi Cleric claims..."
Stop intentionally finding things to piss yourself off. You'll live a healthier, and probably longer, life.
"Why should the casino cheat? The odds are already in their favor. "
True. That's why you never see a casino go bankrupt.
Oh wait. Nvm.
Yes. For significant amounts of time. In Nevada, the courts take cheating very seriously and issue sentences involving years of jail time for cheating at a casino.
Laws specifically addressing cheating are absolutely required. By your example, simple breaches of the rules would lead to jail.
For example, the rules of craps say that you pick up and throw the dice with one hand. Touching the dice with both hands at the same time is forbidden. Doing so is against the rules.
So this simple breach of the rules... according to you, would lead to jail.
" if you are winning in a game of chance with the odds firmly tilted"
If you play basic strategy Blackjack (which is easy, because almost all casinos allow you to use a basic strategy card at the table... printed matter the size of a credit card to use as reference to how to play the hands) the house advantage is about 0.44%. Shooting craps and betting the pass line with odds yields about a 0.8% house advantage. I hardly call that "firmly tilted"
In such games it is possible to win for quite some time... often, up to days of elapsed play... before the house advantage eventually causes you to become a net loser.
Compare this to the typical 50% advantage states typically have in lottery games.
It is not the job of police to enforce EVERY law. The concept is called "selective enforcement" and result in things like cops issuing warnings, issuing a verbal scolding, or choosing not to cite at all for some things.
One question is often asked at interviews for police work is, "You catch your mother speeding. Do you give her a ticket?"
The proper answer is, "no". Departments don't want people who would give their own mother a speeding ticket. Contrary to popular belief, departments want thinking human beings, not robocops.
True.
It's sad that there are filters in place to ensure that only liars and the spineless can get elected to high office.
Obama does. Here he is... direct quote... talking about his faith in the Zombie Jesus:
"I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life." - Barack Hussein Obama
No need to be sorry.
Anyway, it is more complicated than "basic thermodynamics". You can't just take the calorie counts, as derived from a laboratory process, and say that is what your body is using.
Not 100% of the caloric value of foods is burned. For example, feces has a caloric content. The caloric counts posted on packaging accounts for this, but it is only an approximation. And it is often wildly incorrect.
So stop with the condescending "I'm sorry it's basic thermodynamics." It's more complicated than that for a number of reasons... I have only touched on one.
Ya think? You make this sound like some kind of revelation... as if you are imparting some kind of wise insight into the mind of Bloomberg.
Where have you been the past ten years? Anyone with a spine and a cerebral cortex has been aware of these things for quite some time.
Anyway, welcome back to planet earth.
Too easy.
"O.J. Simpson"
Zackly. It's fine for the prosecution to portray Zimmerman as a "wanna be cop" but when the defense wants to portray sweet, angelic Trayvon as a wanna be (if not actual) gangsta, all of a sudden, the judge has a case of the vapours.
Suck my big, veiny, throbbing dick. And don't tell me what to do, asshole.
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War 1942-49
“It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.”
Tariq Ali
“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“When EVIL men make bad laws, righteous men disobey them."
Pastor Butch Paugh
“Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it...
In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.”
Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Why would the average person give a fuck about their privacy? Most people have nothing to hide, and unless they are a fanatic or a hobbyist, they could not care less who reads their stuff.
This security stuff is NOT about the average guy, though. It's about movers and shakers... politicians, lawyers, businessmen, members of the media... people who have power in some ways to affect change, and who communicate in ways which REQUIRE privacy.
Likewise, the NSA monitoring the average person does not matter in the least. It is about them monitoring movers and shakers. It's about people who could potentially upset the powers that be.
So cut me a break with the ruminations about whether Joe Six Pack or Susy Soccer Mom is going to encrypt their email. The real question will be, will the next candidate for high office, who aims to shake things up, and who thinks the current Republicratic overlords need to GTFO... the question is... will he us it, and will he continue to be monitored.
I'll take that as meaning, you have a hunch which is not backed up by any empirical evidence, but is just based on "feeling".
That's par for the course with most people, of course.