By cutting off global trade that countries whom aren't threatening them depend on. Yeah, that makes sense -- Mexico attacks the United States so we seize the Panama Canal and refuse to let Chinese flagged ships use it. That's essentially what they are threatening to do.
A better analogy would be, say, shutting down and blacking out a website on the Internet for a period of time because some legislators are trying to pass some draconian legislation, as a means to bring people's attention to the matter.
Actually I'd love to see them try and close Hormuz -- that would bring the Chinese around to our side of this issue.
You really think so? China is going to completely abandon its strategic interests and abandon a key ally in its time of need to U.S military takeover? Clearly you are completely ignorant of Chinese politics. Their politicians could not afford such a loss of face and display of weakness by letting the U.S. trample on Iran. No, they would be forced to up the ante, matching our egotistical politicians tit for tat. We're about to end up on the brink of World War 3.
It's interesting that you decline the mention the nervousness of the Arab states that border Iran though.
You mean the Arab dictators, propped up by the U.S., who rule over states bordering Iran and worry about the effects on their power in the region if/when their big bully buddy (the U.S.) can no longer afford to hang around the region?
If it was purely about Israel one would think that the Saudis and their neighbors would be cheering the Iranian nuclear program on. Of course they aren't; the prospect bothers them just as much as it bothers the Western World.
For obvious reasons....to anyone whose viewpoint of the world isn't vastly oversimplified and distorted by popular media.
If Iran wants to be treated like a grown up perhaps it should start acting like one.
Iran is.......AN ENTIRE COUNTRY, YOU MORON.....NOT an INDIVIDUAL PERSON.
It's clear you have never met or interacted with a single Persian in your life. Yet you still felt the need to display your shockingly ignorant TYPICAL AMERICAN (yes, I am American) attitude for the world to see, didn't you?
Why can people be punished without being found guilty first?
Because they passed laws back in the 80s (RICO) allowing the Feds to go after those EVIL drug dealers, and seize all their possessions without the benefit of a jury or trial. The ignorant populace cheered them on. Now...surprise surprise!...it's being applied to everyone else too!
They typically start with making sure that defendant cannot afford a lawyer?
With the potentially illegally-gained money? So the guy can waste all the cash on a team of stupidly-high-priced lawyers (and the requisite hookers and blow) to intentionally leave nothing left to give back to the plaintiffs if he still gets a guilty verdict? That doesn't make any sense at all. What, are you just desperate to keep loopholes open in case you need to defraud the court system later?
With the potentially illegally-gained money?
Made by violating laws that shouldn't be law in the first place?
So the guy can waste all the cash on a team of stupidly-high-priced lawyers
Which is a) necessary in today's completely fucked, biased, and UN-just legal system b) to defend himself from going to prison for decades? Or do you think he would have a better chance with a public defender, or Joe Blow the Lawyer vs the Federal Government?
(and the requisite hookers and blow)
Which is none of your business
to intentionally leave nothing left to give back to the plaintiffs
"plaintiffs"? You mean the bloodsucking RIAA/MPAA/Uncle Sam? Pardon me if I feel absolutely NO sympathy for these tyrants and anti-patriots.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
The only one not making sense here is you. Why are you defending people who don't give a fuck if you live or die, as long as they continue to extract profits from you somehow? Why are you defending a government that is all too happy to TAKE BY FORCE (at GUNPOINT) people's belongings and earnings made in fair and honest (nobody was defrauded here) transactions?
Absolutely not. The solution to this problem is NOT dictatorship! Dictatorship of our education system IS the problem! I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I do know that one day I want to open my own school. A private, but affordable academy where middle class kids can get a quality education. Enjoy your outlawed private education because I will long have since emigrated to a free country to start my enterprise there, rather than in your tyrannical utopia hellhole of forced public indoctrinat..er, "education." Uruguay is looking better and better.
One of the problems is it that it is so bad that people that were affected themselves often glorify it in retrospect (to suppress the humiliation among other things) and then do it on their own children. Stupid, but all too human.
No, that is stupid nonsense. There is absolutely nothing wrong with swatting a kid on the behind if he/she refuses to behave. There is nothing that pisses me off more than seeing somebody's stupid ass kid running around and being obnoxious in public with the parent refusing to do anything about it, while everyone else has to suffer. Like for instance this girl I saw in the grocery store the other day who was acting bratty. Her mom told her she couldn't have a treat she asked about because she "had a complete meltdown earlier." Later at the checkout counter the girl was whiny and obnoxious all the way out the door. Yeah, that "withholding treats/affection/whatever" method of "child rearing" really seems to accomplish a lot huh?
You know, it's not even that I totally disagree with the "non violent" child rearing methods espoused by some people. Of course popping the kid on the butt should be used in moderation and as a last resort. No, it's the smug sense of superiority, saying child spanking etc should be "totally banned", etc. To anyone who says that: fuck you. Pass whatever stupid mother fucking laws you want to pass. There's already so damn many of them dictating how I want to live my life, that the Federal Government has even lost count of how many are on the books. Everybody is a criminal now and I guess I'm no exception. Come to my house and tell me I can't raise and discipline my child in the way I see fit? You'll be greeted with a shotgun to the face asking you politely but firmly to leave. Yeah that's right, this must be some of those "violent" "antisocial" thought patterns that have been "bred" into me by my "violent upbringing." Or maybe it's just my belief in the Constitution combined with my genetic disposition towards doing what I think is proper rather than what some ignorant asshole thinks is proper based on his own stupidity.
Some people are just too fucking naive and ignorant to stop for one second and look past their own lives, to understand than every single child is different and the same methods of upbringing that work fine on one child totally do not work on another. The same methods that work in one part of the kid's life might even not work as the child ages and develops. To say in a blanket statement that one type of child rearing that has been known to work for eons should be "totally banned" is something that only a person who totally disgusts me, the personification of everything that is wrong with this country, a person who is in favor of tyranny and dictatorship rather than freedom, would say. I say everyone live your lives how you see fit, and stay the fuck out of mine.
I'm reasonably certain that physical activity that's tied to the visual and auditory information did something to fix the material in my memory.
Yes, and you can generalize this out even further. There are also other things, such as your environment (light? dark? warm, cold? small, large? crowded, spare?) which also play a role in putting your brain into learning mode. It differs for each individual and what they've grown accustomed to. Clearly you have become accustomed to taking notes early in life (after having been forced to by the school, no doubt) when learning material in a classroom setting, and you thus need that "pattern" present to facilitate your learning to this very day, though clearly you are a logical thinker who is quite capable of reasoning about and learning the material without writing anything at all.
I'm like you except I just nodded and smiled when the teachers bitched at me for not taking notes, and started scribbling and drawing shit instead while making it look like I was writing. I never succumbed to or accepted their bullshit reasoning, and I never gained the habit of having to write while learning; and when I got to university, I did nothing but sit there and listen. I think you are capable of doing the same, but you would have to "retrain" yourself.
It's kinda like that movie about the duke who had a seemingly incurable stutter, which completely went away if he was prevented from hearing himself speak, via earmuffs etc. I think in some cases certain thinking patterns can get strongly etched into the mind in our early years and be extraordinarily difficult to change, but in most cases, they CAN be changed. I bet you could totally eliminate or reduce the compulsive note taking without hurting your learning. It would require persistence and lots of practice but it could pay dividends.
You might think, well, pen and ink is cheap so what would be the benefit? My thinking is it's bad to be a slave to our habits. It has been my experience that *every* mental self improvement has been totally worth it in the end, from the perceived as well as the totally unexpected benefits which often result.
A lot of time is burned in the context switch, and you don't reduce that switching time by spending less time in the next context. You've already spent the time switching! It isn't coming back.
Except the brain isn't a computer, it's an amazing biological machine that indeed does (or better stated, can have) the ability to seamlessly do multiple things at once. If your brain is incapable of this, it is simply because you haven't practiced. Your specific inborn talents, strengths, weaknesses may make this harder, but it is achievable. Like anything else it simply requires lots of practice.
A good practice for this would be watching some kind of dry documentary or video tape and writing down short key points as it plays, while consciously focusing on both what the video is saying and what you're writing. It will be difficult at first, but if you keep at it, within a few weeks you will notice *some* progress, perhaps sooner. The more you practice, the easier it'll be, and it'll pay dividends in your learning.
From a fellow person with the same strengths/weaknesses, take it from me: your auditory skills can (and will, especially if you practice) improve as you get older. Try to focus on paying attention to the "main point" behind what people say. It's basically a matter of practicing "hearing" the message behind people's words, which is difficult, but you will make progress if you put forth consistent effort.
I guess it's better to understand 50% than to regurgitate 80% of the material you've been given. Sure, the latter might give you better grades, but if grades are all you care about, I'm not sure you've actually understood the purpose of "learning".
Except I used your method all throughout school and aced every test. Taking notes during class did not help me I preferred to sit there and listen and think about what the professor is saying. When you understand the big picture that he's trying to put across, the little details (that some people are deathly worried about forgetting) become unimportant, and in fact easier to remember because you have a nice logical framework built into your mind to fit them into, instead of just a collection of memorized facts. This combined with a short review (1-2 hours) the night before the test was all I needed to consistently turn out A's.
What people don't seem to get is that no test is hard if you actually understand the material. If you rely on memorization, then of course I could see why people worry and fret so much about taking tests.
It might be that the digestive-process of the English Language in my mind that took decades somehow contributed in my enhance ability to match words (similar but not exact match) and that helped a lot
Exactly. Learning is not a discrete event; it is a continuous process. The things we learned in the past with great trouble and difficulty help us to learn similar things in the future.
Example from my own experience: I started out playing guitar with an acoustic Fender. I sucked for years and years. What finally got me over the "plateau" was when I bought a cheap drum set and started experimenting with it. I also learned to sing. Eventually I came back to the guitar, and bought an Ibanez electric. I found I was now able to make progress in my learning, just because I had exposed myself to these other types of musical experiences, thus helping learn some critical concepts deep in my brain which were needed to advance.
Wow, either you are a masterful troll who just trolled some mods hard, or I'm a complete fucking idiot.
Are you really saying that by using PEEK and POKE statements in BASIC one can "alter bit timings" and thus load a complete alternate OS via TCP/IP onto an unsuspecting network machine, and that the instructions you load into the machine will basically be running 180* out of phase with the normal OS, so the two will simultaneously run but aren't "aware" of each other?
LOLOLOLOLOL
Well played....
(moderations undone, including the initial -1 Troll which will probably be misinterpreted by some moronic meta mod)
The government's only role in the equation should be to ensure that the drugs sold are in fact what they say they are.
I'd go so far as to say they don't have any business with this, either. If the government's hands were completely out of it, we could rely on branding and trade marks to let us know which products to trust.
Pray tell me, what's so wrong about advertising and selling drugs to people like me who want them?
legal or illegal,
The overall effect of our laws (and the actual effect of these in question) is enslavement, not liberty, which is why patriots break these unjust laws whenever and wherever possible.
Actually if you look at our history the times of the highest growth was when the top tax rate was 70% or above which makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Actually if you look at our history, the times of the highest growth was in the *1800s* when there was ZERO income tax, for ANYONE.
The massive growth in the 1950s was due to our country being practically the only industrial power on the earth left standing after World War II. The growth was *in spite of* incredibly high taxation, not because of.
Revenge is a dish best served preemptively, it seems.
Of course. This why the U.S. puts people in jail for driving without insurance, or for smoking a reefer in the privacy of their own homes. Why wait for someone to cause actual harm, when you can just arrest everyone who "might potentially" somehow harm someone?
Both of the other replies to this comment have pointed out the single case I'm aware of where this happened recently: Eric Williamson, of Virginia. What they BOTH fail to point out is that his misdemeanor conviction was overturned in 20 minutes on appeal.
And what you fail to point out is the profound effect this had on his life, reputation, and financial situation. How expensive, embarrassing, and humiliating.
Of course, this case just shows that the system works. The police have to take the report seriously, because it's entirely possible he WAS exposing himself to children and women passers-by.
Could you justify that statement? Why is it so important for them to "this this seriously"? What does "taking it seriously" mean, anyway? Last I checked it more or less means (in practice) "kill them all and let God sort em out."
Of course, this case just shows that the system works. The police have to take the report seriously, because it's entirely possible he WAS exposing himself to children and women passers-by. But then upon examination of the evidence, it became pretty clear that the story the woman testified to was rather far-fetched, and she was just freaking out because she happened to see a dick hanging loose through somebody's window
Well I'm sure the victim here (the man in question) is quite comforted to know that the system "works." Yeah, it works to strip citizens of this formerly great country of their dignity, wealth, and possessions, then cast them out to the wolves. The lawyers get paid, the judges get paid, the cops get paid, the citizens get bent over the table and fucked.
Is that really the America you want?
Vote Ron Paul 2012 and let's start putting and end to this waking nightmare of tyranny and oppression. How far we've fallen.
Slashdot Mirror
By cutting off global trade that countries whom aren't threatening them depend on. Yeah, that makes sense -- Mexico attacks the United States so we seize the Panama Canal and refuse to let Chinese flagged ships use it. That's essentially what they are threatening to do.
A better analogy would be, say, shutting down and blacking out a website on the Internet for a period of time because some legislators are trying to pass some draconian legislation, as a means to bring people's attention to the matter.
Actually I'd love to see them try and close Hormuz -- that would bring the Chinese around to our side of this issue.
You really think so? China is going to completely abandon its strategic interests and abandon a key ally in its time of need to U.S military takeover? Clearly you are completely ignorant of Chinese politics. Their politicians could not afford such a loss of face and display of weakness by letting the U.S. trample on Iran. No, they would be forced to up the ante, matching our egotistical politicians tit for tat. We're about to end up on the brink of World War 3.
It's interesting that you decline the mention the nervousness of the Arab states that border Iran though.
You mean the Arab dictators, propped up by the U.S., who rule over states bordering Iran and worry about the effects on their power in the region if/when their big bully buddy (the U.S.) can no longer afford to hang around the region?
If it was purely about Israel one would think that the Saudis and their neighbors would be cheering the Iranian nuclear program on. Of course they aren't; the prospect bothers them just as much as it bothers the Western World.
For obvious reasons....to anyone whose viewpoint of the world isn't vastly oversimplified and distorted by popular media.
In fact, the only reason anyone really wants to bomb them now is *because* they are building nukes.
Complete nonsense. The nuke thing is being used as a red herring to *justify* the war that our government has been pining for, for decades.
If Iran wants to be treated like a grown up perhaps it should start acting like one.
Iran is.......AN ENTIRE COUNTRY, YOU MORON.....NOT an INDIVIDUAL PERSON.
It's clear you have never met or interacted with a single Persian in your life. Yet you still felt the need to display your shockingly ignorant TYPICAL AMERICAN (yes, I am American) attitude for the world to see, didn't you?
Or maybe Mormons avoid crazy people.
Probably
Why can people be punished without being found guilty first?
Because they passed laws back in the 80s (RICO) allowing the Feds to go after those EVIL drug dealers, and seize all their possessions without the benefit of a jury or trial. The ignorant populace cheered them on. Now...surprise surprise!...it's being applied to everyone else too!
Except nobody in your country's leadership has the balls to do any of that, so this is all a moot point
They typically start with making sure that defendant cannot afford a lawyer?
With the potentially illegally-gained money? So the guy can waste all the cash on a team of stupidly-high-priced lawyers (and the requisite hookers and blow) to intentionally leave nothing left to give back to the plaintiffs if he still gets a guilty verdict? That doesn't make any sense at all. What, are you just desperate to keep loopholes open in case you need to defraud the court system later?
With the potentially illegally-gained money?
Made by violating laws that shouldn't be law in the first place?
So the guy can waste all the cash on a team of stupidly-high-priced lawyers
Which is a) necessary in today's completely fucked, biased, and UN-just legal system b) to defend himself from going to prison for decades? Or do you think he would have a better chance with a public defender, or Joe Blow the Lawyer vs the Federal Government?
(and the requisite hookers and blow)
Which is none of your business
to intentionally leave nothing left to give back to the plaintiffs
"plaintiffs"? You mean the bloodsucking RIAA/MPAA/Uncle Sam? Pardon me if I feel absolutely NO sympathy for these tyrants and anti-patriots.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
The only one not making sense here is you. Why are you defending people who don't give a fuck if you live or die, as long as they continue to extract profits from you somehow? Why are you defending a government that is all too happy to TAKE BY FORCE (at GUNPOINT) people's belongings and earnings made in fair and honest (nobody was defrauded here) transactions?
"Occupy Wall Street"?? And as of TODAY, Occupy Oakland?? Hello, did you just emerge from a coma?
Absolutely not. The solution to this problem is NOT dictatorship! Dictatorship of our education system IS the problem! I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I do know that one day I want to open my own school. A private, but affordable academy where middle class kids can get a quality education. Enjoy your outlawed private education because I will long have since emigrated to a free country to start my enterprise there, rather than in your tyrannical utopia hellhole of forced public indoctrinat..er, "education." Uruguay is looking better and better.
I am fully aboard with jailing parents that use violence against their children. Nothing good comes from it and violence begets more violence.
So you're fully "on board" with putting people in cages at gunpoint, in the name of "stopping violence"?
Is that kinda like a "preventative war"?
Or "thoughtcrime prevention"?
One of the problems is it that it is so bad that people that were affected themselves often glorify it in retrospect (to suppress the humiliation among other things) and then do it on their own children. Stupid, but all too human.
No, that is stupid nonsense. There is absolutely nothing wrong with swatting a kid on the behind if he/she refuses to behave. There is nothing that pisses me off more than seeing somebody's stupid ass kid running around and being obnoxious in public with the parent refusing to do anything about it, while everyone else has to suffer. Like for instance this girl I saw in the grocery store the other day who was acting bratty. Her mom told her she couldn't have a treat she asked about because she "had a complete meltdown earlier." Later at the checkout counter the girl was whiny and obnoxious all the way out the door. Yeah, that "withholding treats/affection/whatever" method of "child rearing" really seems to accomplish a lot huh?
You know, it's not even that I totally disagree with the "non violent" child rearing methods espoused by some people. Of course popping the kid on the butt should be used in moderation and as a last resort. No, it's the smug sense of superiority, saying child spanking etc should be "totally banned", etc. To anyone who says that: fuck you. Pass whatever stupid mother fucking laws you want to pass. There's already so damn many of them dictating how I want to live my life, that the Federal Government has even lost count of how many are on the books. Everybody is a criminal now and I guess I'm no exception. Come to my house and tell me I can't raise and discipline my child in the way I see fit? You'll be greeted with a shotgun to the face asking you politely but firmly to leave. Yeah that's right, this must be some of those "violent" "antisocial" thought patterns that have been "bred" into me by my "violent upbringing." Or maybe it's just my belief in the Constitution combined with my genetic disposition towards doing what I think is proper rather than what some ignorant asshole thinks is proper based on his own stupidity.
Some people are just too fucking naive and ignorant to stop for one second and look past their own lives, to understand than every single child is different and the same methods of upbringing that work fine on one child totally do not work on another. The same methods that work in one part of the kid's life might even not work as the child ages and develops. To say in a blanket statement that one type of child rearing that has been known to work for eons should be "totally banned" is something that only a person who totally disgusts me, the personification of everything that is wrong with this country, a person who is in favor of tyranny and dictatorship rather than freedom, would say. I say everyone live your lives how you see fit, and stay the fuck out of mine.
A man can dream, right?
It's not a dream. It's a picture of the future.
I'm reasonably certain that physical activity that's tied to the visual and auditory information did something to fix the material in my memory.
Yes, and you can generalize this out even further. There are also other things, such as your environment (light? dark? warm, cold? small, large? crowded, spare?) which also play a role in putting your brain into learning mode. It differs for each individual and what they've grown accustomed to. Clearly you have become accustomed to taking notes early in life (after having been forced to by the school, no doubt) when learning material in a classroom setting, and you thus need that "pattern" present to facilitate your learning to this very day, though clearly you are a logical thinker who is quite capable of reasoning about and learning the material without writing anything at all.
I'm like you except I just nodded and smiled when the teachers bitched at me for not taking notes, and started scribbling and drawing shit instead while making it look like I was writing. I never succumbed to or accepted their bullshit reasoning, and I never gained the habit of having to write while learning; and when I got to university, I did nothing but sit there and listen. I think you are capable of doing the same, but you would have to "retrain" yourself.
It's kinda like that movie about the duke who had a seemingly incurable stutter, which completely went away if he was prevented from hearing himself speak, via earmuffs etc. I think in some cases certain thinking patterns can get strongly etched into the mind in our early years and be extraordinarily difficult to change, but in most cases, they CAN be changed. I bet you could totally eliminate or reduce the compulsive note taking without hurting your learning. It would require persistence and lots of practice but it could pay dividends.
You might think, well, pen and ink is cheap so what would be the benefit? My thinking is it's bad to be a slave to our habits. It has been my experience that *every* mental self improvement has been totally worth it in the end, from the perceived as well as the totally unexpected benefits which often result.
Just something to think about!
A lot of time is burned in the context switch, and you don't reduce that switching time by spending less time in the next context. You've already spent the time switching! It isn't coming back.
Except the brain isn't a computer, it's an amazing biological machine that indeed does (or better stated, can have) the ability to seamlessly do multiple things at once. If your brain is incapable of this, it is simply because you haven't practiced. Your specific inborn talents, strengths, weaknesses may make this harder, but it is achievable. Like anything else it simply requires lots of practice.
A good practice for this would be watching some kind of dry documentary or video tape and writing down short key points as it plays, while consciously focusing on both what the video is saying and what you're writing. It will be difficult at first, but if you keep at it, within a few weeks you will notice *some* progress, perhaps sooner. The more you practice, the easier it'll be, and it'll pay dividends in your learning.
From a fellow person with the same strengths/weaknesses, take it from me: your auditory skills can (and will, especially if you practice) improve as you get older. Try to focus on paying attention to the "main point" behind what people say. It's basically a matter of practicing "hearing" the message behind people's words, which is difficult, but you will make progress if you put forth consistent effort.
I guess it's better to understand 50% than to regurgitate 80% of the material you've been given. Sure, the latter might give you better grades, but if grades are all you care about, I'm not sure you've actually understood the purpose of "learning".
Except I used your method all throughout school and aced every test. Taking notes during class did not help me I preferred to sit there and listen and think about what the professor is saying. When you understand the big picture that he's trying to put across, the little details (that some people are deathly worried about forgetting) become unimportant, and in fact easier to remember because you have a nice logical framework built into your mind to fit them into, instead of just a collection of memorized facts. This combined with a short review (1-2 hours) the night before the test was all I needed to consistently turn out A's.
What people don't seem to get is that no test is hard if you actually understand the material. If you rely on memorization, then of course I could see why people worry and fret so much about taking tests.
It might be that the digestive-process of the English Language in my mind that took decades somehow contributed in my enhance ability to match words (similar but not exact match) and that helped a lot
Exactly. Learning is not a discrete event; it is a continuous process. The things we learned in the past with great trouble and difficulty help us to learn similar things in the future.
Example from my own experience: I started out playing guitar with an acoustic Fender. I sucked for years and years. What finally got me over the "plateau" was when I bought a cheap drum set and started experimenting with it. I also learned to sing. Eventually I came back to the guitar, and bought an Ibanez electric. I found I was now able to make progress in my learning, just because I had exposed myself to these other types of musical experiences, thus helping learn some critical concepts deep in my brain which were needed to advance.
I think Slashdot attracts just as many mentally feeble people as FB does
Facebook will be obsolete in 3-5 years with the rise of distributed social networking.
Wow, either you are a masterful troll who just trolled some mods hard, or I'm a complete fucking idiot.
Are you really saying that by using PEEK and POKE statements in BASIC one can "alter bit timings" and thus load a complete alternate OS via TCP/IP onto an unsuspecting network machine, and that the instructions you load into the machine will basically be running 180* out of phase with the normal OS, so the two will simultaneously run but aren't "aware" of each other?
LOLOLOLOLOL
Well played....
(moderations undone, including the initial -1 Troll which will probably be misinterpreted by some moronic meta mod)
Good argument.
The government's only role in the equation should be to ensure that the drugs sold are in fact what they say they are.
I'd go so far as to say they don't have any business with this, either. If the government's hands were completely out of it, we could rely on branding and trade marks to let us know which products to trust.
No right or wrong,
Pray tell me, what's so wrong about advertising and selling drugs to people like me who want them?
legal or illegal,
The overall effect of our laws (and the actual effect of these in question) is enslavement, not liberty, which is why patriots break these unjust laws whenever and wherever possible.
Actually if you look at our history the times of the highest growth was when the top tax rate was 70% or above which makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Actually if you look at our history, the times of the highest growth was in the *1800s* when there was ZERO income tax, for ANYONE.
The massive growth in the 1950s was due to our country being practically the only industrial power on the earth left standing after World War II. The growth was *in spite of* incredibly high taxation, not because of.
Revenge is a dish best served preemptively, it seems.
Of course. This why the U.S. puts people in jail for driving without insurance, or for smoking a reefer in the privacy of their own homes. Why wait for someone to cause actual harm, when you can just arrest everyone who "might potentially" somehow harm someone?
Both of the other replies to this comment have pointed out the single case I'm aware of where this happened recently: Eric Williamson, of Virginia. What they BOTH fail to point out is that his misdemeanor conviction was overturned in 20 minutes on appeal.
And what you fail to point out is the profound effect this had on his life, reputation, and financial situation. How expensive, embarrassing, and humiliating.
Of course, this case just shows that the system works. The police have to take the report seriously, because it's entirely possible he WAS exposing himself to children and women passers-by.
Could you justify that statement? Why is it so important for them to "this this seriously"? What does "taking it seriously" mean, anyway? Last I checked it more or less means (in practice) "kill them all and let God sort em out."
Of course, this case just shows that the system works. The police have to take the report seriously, because it's entirely possible he WAS exposing himself to children and women passers-by. But then upon examination of the evidence, it became pretty clear that the story the woman testified to was rather far-fetched, and she was just freaking out because she happened to see a dick hanging loose through somebody's window
Well I'm sure the victim here (the man in question) is quite comforted to know that the system "works." Yeah, it works to strip citizens of this formerly great country of their dignity, wealth, and possessions, then cast them out to the wolves. The lawyers get paid, the judges get paid, the cops get paid, the citizens get bent over the table and fucked.
Is that really the America you want?
Vote Ron Paul 2012 and let's start putting and end to this waking nightmare of tyranny and oppression. How far we've fallen.