I suspect you're underestimating the role guns play in causing violence. Guns make it easy to kill on a whim, this plays a big role in gang violence either turning a less serious confrontation lethal, or making a deliberate killing quite easy. These deaths then spark revenge killings and add more violence to the system.
Guns play a big part in the gang subculture that makes people very fearful and violent, and I think it's underestimated how this subculture bleeds out across society and causes a lot of additional violence.
Simply replacing a gun with a knife in any given confrontation will probably save a few lives. But creating a society where no-one is afraid of being shot will have a lot less confrontations.
The fact it's working doesn't mean it can't be improved.
The fact that you would even state such abject stupidity means you don't understand the simple, salient point that has long ago been made. You would do well to avail yourself of the reams of tired, boring, and utterly meaningless conversations in the past where I eventually explained the simple point so that a moron like you can stop wasting all our time in the here and now.
If you want "maturity" as defined by some passive aggressive type of niceness that comes when you don't ever say what you are actually thinking, you are in the wrong place. We're here to get something done and you can take your sissy, pandering, liberal business-speak ethos and cram it into some corner that doesn't involve the rest of us who are trying to get something valuable done.
You took 5 lines to insult me in various ways and make a couple points about why impolite speech is more effective.
Frankly I think you would have been more clear if you just insulted my position. You said what you were thinking and you drifted off-topic, so what if I'm a moron, and why do you think I'm not trying to get something valuable done? Neither of those are relevant to the discussion.
Yes I'm polite, but I also think I've very direct, and I don't think I'd be any more clear if I used profanity.
If someone else managed to do his job better than him it would be trivial to do a fork. That this has not happened is a testament that his way doing things works. Simple as that. So what if he is verbally abusive.
The fact Linux is awesome and Linus is an abusive and profane manager doesn't mean the profanity and abuse is necessary to make Linux awesome. It could be it helps cut through the BS and makes things more clear and efficient, it could also be being clear and direct would be just as effective and the profanity actually makes people emotional and irrational.
The fact it's working doesn't mean it can't be improved.
A bit of a beating?! Slamming someone's head into concrete isn't a bit of a beating, it is a serious attack. I don't know if you're familiar with the human brain, but it tends to not like coming to a quick stop due to meeting a hard surface.
I don't blame Zimmerman for panicking, I might have done the same, but his injuries were ultimately superficial. If Martin was simply punching him in the head MMA style (as according to one witness) Zimmerman might feel like he head is being slammed into the concrete but it's not going to cause much beyond a mild concussion. I suspect that was Martin's objective to lay on a bit of a beating, teach Zimmerman a lesson, and listen to his teenage hormones. There's no reason to think he wanted to seriously injure Zimmerman.
he didn't misread -- Zimmerman supposedly weighed 180 the night of the killing (a year ago), and now weighs in excess of 300 pounds.
I don't know what you're looking at if you can see GZ now and think he weighs 180 pounds. Or if you can compare the way he looks in his police interview videos to video of him standing in the courtroom. He's a tub of lard now.
Turns out I misread! I missed that he was arrested in April 2012, and I guess didn't pay attention to recent pictures of him.
I was really surprised that they managed to hold and finish the trial in 3 months though come to think of it 15 months is still fairly quick as trials go.
I thought I read that at his arrest he weighed around 180, but since then he has gained 120lbs. Maybe I misread the article. But yes, agreed, great motivation to exercise. Hopefully he doesn't choose to exercise by walking around his neighborhood following people!
I'm guessing you did misread, when people in the media spotlight gain 120lbs in 3 months it generally attracts more attention:)
He may indeed have to change his name and relocate, but whatever the reason for his immense weight gain, it may be beneficial for him now. People will remember the fat dude who was acquitted. If he slims back down to his previous weight of 180, he looks significantly different and people will most likely not recognize him.
According to wikipedia he's 5'7, I'm guessing he's around 180 right now which for someone 5'7 is generally going to be a bit fat.
That being said he just found a great motivation to diet.
Zimmerman didn't do much wrong, he followed someone who looked/acted kinda suspicious. Maybe didn't do enough to avoid a fight. Then probably panicked while someone was on top of him punching him in the head.
Martin freaked out and got pissed off at a guy who was following him when he hadn't done anything wrong. Then ended up laying a bit of a beating on him.
Martin probably deserved a misdemeanor while Zimmerman a bloody nose and a talking to about avoiding confrontations.
Toss in a gun and you have a dead body and a ruined life.
The disturbing thing is that in a more civilized part of the country, beating somebody that's on the ground would entitle the person on the ground to self defense, not the person that instigated the fight and is now standing over the victim. Which is what witnesses testified to and is the only way that GZ could have used the weapon that he would have been lieing on if pinned.
I'll add this to my list of reasons why I'm not going to be going to the FL ever again. I'm not sure how anybody can think that menacing a kid can turn into legitimate self defense.
I have doubts about Zimmerman's story, both that he was passive as he claimed about escalating the initial confrontation, and the extent to which Martin was actually threatening to killing him (and he didn't just panic).
But the witnesses with the best view all agreed that Martin was on top. The jury came to the correct decision with the available information.
Whether Zimmerman is guilty or not, he'll never have another job. He'll always be "that guy that got away with murder", irrespective of the actual, judiciary merit of that position. There have been many people, for example, accused of rape, and were later proved not just not guilty, but totally and irrefutably innocent of the charges. Their lives were still over all the same.
He might need a name change and a relocation but if he wants to he can regain his anonymity in a few months.
The founding fathers knew this -- that's why they advocated jury trials in the first place. It was an attempt to remove this mob mentality from the judicial process, and as a balance against populism swaying the government and giving in to the transient emotional outbursts of the crowd, the mob, the public. I don't think, if they were alive today in the age of the internet and instant communication, they would still advocate that these trials be open to the public...
I'd say this case was a perfect example of why we need open trials.
In the initial case I frankly do think there was a racial bias. Whether or not innocent was the proper finding I think it's hard to justify the casualness of the initial police response. Media oversight was a good thing here.
As for the trial, a trial open to the public actually protects the accused from being convicted by the media!
The media were talking about Zimmerman long before the trial so closing the trial won't stop him from being convicted by the media. But the only way to stop the media conviction from turning into a courtroom conviction via corruption is to keep the trial open to the media.
Drones introduce a single point of failure shared by the whole squadron or even a significant portion of the the air force.
You mean they fly drones without redundant links? That would be surprising if true.
You can implement redundancies and safeguards but at the end of the day technology causes things to scale, it means your capabilities get larger but it also means your vulnerabilities get larger with it.
Jamming, losing master encryption keys, there's a lot of big vulnerabilities involved with a drone fleet that can really hurt you against an advanced opponent, it's wise to keep some human pilot backups.
The problem with a drone is you're introducing a single point of failure that you can't fully protect
does anybody else see the irony here? Isn't a pilot a 'single point of failure'?
This is like space exploration. Everybody wants to go, but robots do SUCH a better job of it. Just like they will doing YOUR job in another few years...
The pilot is a single point of failure per plane.
Drones introduce a single point of failure shared by the whole squadron or even a significant portion of the the air force.
Let me ask you this: how does 2 guys or 2 women getting "married" affect you in any way?
It offends me.
How does drilling in ANWAR affect you in any way? How does a woman having or being denied an abortion in Texas affect you in any way? How does taxing rich people affect you in any way?
Drilling has environmental impacts that affect the entire planet.
A woman having/being denied an abortion in Texas affects that woman and the fetus in a profound way.
Taxing rich people affects the economy, taxes for everyone else, and government services.
Two gay people getting married affects those two people, in an overwhelmingly positive way. The fact that it makes you slightly uncomfortable isn't really relevant.
How does it affect you if the government calls your relation a civil union vs a marriage? Can you not have a wedding? Can you not wear a ring and tell everyone you are married? How does it make what you have any different?
The only difference I can see is that a civil union does not make me offended. But that's your whole point isn't it? You want to offend me and all Christians because you hate all Christians. Never mind that Muslims hang gays on the streets, they deserve to be heard and have their religious freedom, we must offend all Christians. And that's exactly why it will be held in a church.
Yes... telling two people their relationship isn't worthy of the title "marriage" shouldn't affect them at all, clearly the only objective is that everyone wants to offend Christians.
Democrats have already blocked a law protecting Chaplains in the US military from refusing to perform same sex marriages. How long do you think it will be before that same-sex couple sues the Catholic Church demanding "equal rights" to have a chapel wedding?
Lemme think... lets try never (well ok, they can sue but they'll lose).
If you're hired by the government to do a job, you need to do that job and you're not allowed to discriminate doing that job.
If you're a priest employed by a church you're protected by the constitution from having to violate your beliefs.
This isn't about equal rights. This is about getting even for perceived wrongs done to you. Tell me again how I am the bigot?
Because you've apparently decided that your offence is more important than them having a relationship with equal status to your own.
I don't believe that you have any gay friends
My mother owns a beauty salon that I worked in from before I was old enough to see over the counter. I know it's cliche to assume that gay me do hair, but it's a cliche for a reason. You have no idea how many gay friends I have. I have kinda grown up around them. I know what they are like, how they feel and what they are all about.
Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you have gay friends. Obviously anyone with gay friends can't discriminate against gay people because people are incapable of compartmentalizing something like that!
I guess that means kids from the south in the 1800s who grew up around slave kids couldn't be racists either since they would have had some black friends.
And I feel they deserve equal rights under the law. But they do NOT have equal rights under religion. You don't have to like it. You don't have to be in a religion. But since freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Constitution, government has to respect it.
Agreed. So why do we all now have to follow your religion and not call it a marriage?
Or are you saying only Christians are allowed to be married?
By the way, can you tell me marriage is guaranteed in the Constitution? I can't find it anywhere.
I don't believe you have any religious friends. If you did, you wouldn't think they are all bigots.
they go fuck themselves since the moon isn't America's
From TFA:
“The government would also have to submit the Apollo 11 lunar landing site to the United Nations for designation as a World Heritage site.”
I'd think they've got a legitimate case for that being accepted. Terminology gets a little interesting though, with "World" referring to the moon as well.
I'm not sure the attempt to be designated as a World Heritage site is an acknowledgement of the fact that the Moon isn't American property, I'm willing to bet that most UN World Heritage sites exist in some country's territory.
I'm looking at this with a very sympathetic eye, but at best this is a naive, but good hearted attempt to establish some precedence for protecting the Apollo landing sites before a serious commercial interest gets involved, an attempt that doesn't realize you can't declare a national park outside of your territory. At worst it's a cynical PR/ego move that doesn't care if it doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to do anything. It's just supposed to get their names in the papers and/or serve as a club with which to bat opposing legislators who oppose it.
I actually wouldn't mind a bill that said nothing but 'lets submit it to the UN as a World Heritage site and come up with some plan for protecting this stuff for when commercial interests eventually find their way up there", but talking about a national park is the wrong way to do it.
The idea that respect for your elders should be given priority even when doing so results in the death of hundreds of people (some of whom may actually be older than you) is utterly ridiculous. It basically amounts to mass murder.
Any cultural expectations which cause unnecessary death and suffering are fundamentally flawed and should be eliminated. People should be smart enough to question things, not just blindly follow what they've been taught ESPECIALLY when doing so is likely to be detrimental or cause death.
This is not racism so much as anti-stupidity.
And if you believe that aspects of culture should be preserved and protected even when they are clearly detrimental, consider that many cultures are or have been extremely racist and have often taught that members of other races or religions are inferior and should be converted, enslaved or wiped out. If you believe that cultural flaws like this should be changed, then surely you must accept that things like blindly respecting your elders without questioning them are also wrong.
I haven't read the chapter but I'm guessing the problem wasn't that pilot was about to plunge the plane into the ground but the co-pilot didn't say anything because it would be disrespectful. It was that the pilot would make a poor decision, one that was defensible but probably increased the risk some minuscule amount, and the co-pilot didn't feel comfortable enough to argue with him so the poor decision stood. The median effect of this is nothing, but over enough flights a few of them are going to crash.
American's aren't immune to this. The cultural belief that Americans are the world's saviours was at least partially responsible for the Iraq war, xenophobia towards other cultures helps fuel Islamic extremism, being overly accepting of other cultures legitimizes some very barbaric cultural practices, and celebrity culture is responsible for anti-vaxx, alternative health nuts, and Snooki.
Culture is a collection of heuristics about how to behave, there's a lot of times where excessive respect for your elders works very well, it turns out that flying airplanes is not one of them.
Drones require a robust communication channel between the control station and the drone.
Most current drones require an RF link. Future drones will likely use unjammable line-of-sight lasers to a relay (either a satellite or another drone). Even if the comm is jammed, they can be programmed to continue their mission. We don't have autonomous drones today for political reasons. But in a high-stakes war against a technologically equivalent adversary, we may be less squeamish.
So get your own laser to hit the receiver, jam the uplink to the satellite or mother drone, have a spy cut the comm cable linking the drone shop to the satellite transmitter, etc.
The problem with a drone is you're introducing a single point of failure that you can't fully protect, either a long communications channel and all the technological infrastructure around that, or an AI with a massive codebase and potentially exploitable bugs or behaviour.
A drone can be a very efficient way to wage warefare, but it's also a method with some potentially massive vulnerabilities that you may not be able to rely on in a significant conflict.
p.s. Even the context where drones are effective, waging war on the cheap, may not be a good one. The US is blowing up a lot of terrorists and bystanders because the drones make it cheap and easy, is that something that's really helping the US's security?
For the past few years in order to commute I've run instead of cycled and my worries about traffic were a definite factor in that decision.
Granted running decreases your range and takes a higher level of fitness, but it's not as hard as you imagine. Plus you don't have to drag a bike around, keep it maintained, and most of all you don't have to share the road with rolling blobs of death.
I've never been in an accident but once when I was in high school I saw some kids riding a quad in the ditch do an unintentional backflip. Even though it was the right thing to do I hesitated half a second before stopping just because I was worried I'd go out and have to deal with something real traumatic. Fortunately I did stop, more fortunately so did an off duty nurse, and most fortunately all the kids were fine.
Anyway I can kind of understand why the drivers keep going, they didn't hurt the person on purpose and pro-actively stopping the vehicle and taking responsibility is a hard thing to do. That being said it's still their responsibility to do that hard thing.
So, you're saying that the MAJORITY is unproductive, and they're STEALING from the PRODUCTIVE MINORITY? What the fuck are you talking about fool? Tell me, how are those "minority" so fucking productive? Signing the articles of incorporation and moving 1's and 0's between two points isn't fucking productive you moron. Who is being productive here are the workers that allow the business to make money. Nowhere is this more evident than in small businesses. I know, I've owned small businesses, starting with next to ZERO dollars, doing all the work myself.
When I was the Majority of my labor, I was most productive. When I hired on some help, I managed contracts and filed taxes, did office work for half the time. I relied on my laborers to do the productive work. That desk work is necessary red-tape, but it's far from fucking productive. Wheeling and dealing clients to get more jobs is necessary, but you're a fucking idiot if you think it's more productive that the people doing the labor to fill those contracts.
When you were an owner/manager I think you could be pretty productive, it's just that your productivity was expressed through the people below you. I've had bad management before and the result was despite doing a lot of work I wasn't really productive because the work was worthless.
When I talk about unproductive rich people I'm not talking about owners or managers from your position. I mean the people like George Bush, I'm not trying to be partisan but his legacy as a businessman was losing a lot of money, he didn't start and run companies because he was good at it, he did it because he had family connections. I think there's a lot of this going on, an upper class that have excellent high level jobs essentially handed to them that they're not really qualified for and where it's kinda hard to evaluate their value.
There's a whole other potion of the economy tied up in investment and financial services that has some productive value in directing capital to good companies that need it, but because they're so good at directing money they'd managed to direct much more of the economy than is required into their own sector. There's a lot of people making a lot of money gaming the system instead of actually helping organize the economy.
That's what I think of when I think of the unproductive rich, not the managers or owners who got their on their own work and talent, but the people who have learned to manipulate the economy to get rich without really adding anything in return.
As to the situation in USA where people are gambling with money rather than investing it into productive capacity, that's the inevitable result of the Keynesian monetary policy, printing money, inflation, but also various other policies with the expressed goal of growing consumption at the expense of production (so any type of government guaranteed loan, where the guarantee comes as an expense on the productive population and the loans that are given out are only given out due to the guarantee and would never be given out in a competitive free market environment, because those loans have no chance of making a meaningful productive return by creating something of any value to the market place).
I don't believe that's Keynesian economics you're describing.
IANAE (I am not an economist) but Keynesians basically believe that recession are a result of a drop in Aggregate Demand (AD), the total amount of spending. Basically because the economy sucks no one has extra money to spend, so no one is employed to make and sell things, so no one has extra money to spend...
So Keynesians say that during a recession when AD from the private sector drops the government should replace all the lost spending from the private sector with new spending from the government. Basically use fiscal policy and ramp up massive deficits during a recession, then when the economy recovers government spending should drop and you pay off the deficits. I think the 2008 recession would be predicted fairly well by Keynesian economics and the period of high spending prior to '08 was very much against Keynesian thinking.
There's another school of economists known as monetarists who agree about a drop in AD causing recessions, but like using monetary policy instead of fiscal policy, basically they print a bunch of new money, inject it into the economy, and hope it stimulates new activity. I think this is what you meant by "Keynesian monetary policy, printing money, inflation".
But in both cases you're talking about things like taxes and government loans that exited long before the recession, so they don't really have anything to do with Keynesians or monetarists.
You sound a bit like the Austrian school of economics, I don't know it that well but I think it basically believes that recessions are the results of government meddling in the economy, they don't really try to fix recessions, but seem to believe recessions wouldn't happen under their system. I think the modern version of this is the Chicago school who are very libertarian but are also monetarists in the case of a recession.
How about this? Stop making stupid Star Wars movies and come up with a new idea.
I don't necessarily agree, Star Wars has a very rich universe which gives a new movie the advantage of ditching some exposition and working in a universe the viewer has an emotional connection with.
Of course that only works if they recapture the vision and adventure of the original trilogy, I think it's possible (particularly if you pull in some of the old cast) but if they can't make it work it's probably better to leave it alone.
He does not lose his right to self-defense because some 911 operator told him to back off. So he followed a guy walking around in the rain in an area that had recent burglaries. So perhaps he 'profiled' him because he wore a hoodie, perhaps because he was black. Perhaps he did a poor job as a neighborhood watchman, he got too zealous in protecting the neighborhood (not as much as some mall cops but whatever). None of this has any baring on the fact that once Martin jumped on him and started bashing his head against the pavement (as all evidence suggest he did) he had the RIGHT to defend himself with lethal force. A legal right, as in under the law in force at the time. Charge him for sucking as a neighborhood watchman, or for following the guy (whatever crime that is) but there is no rational reason to charge him with murder. It is pure mob justice of the worst kind.
Here's what we do know.
Martin was walking home in a way that made Zimmerman suspicious. Zimmerman then started following him and called the police, at the same time Martin called his friend and apparently told her about the guy that was following him.
The next thing we know is there was a fight that Martin was probably winning until Zimmerman drew his gun and shot Martin.
Zimmerman's attempt to fill in the blanks has Zimmerman walking back to his car, Martin coming up from behind, confront him, punching him (breaking his nose), knocking him down and bashing his head against the side walk, seeing the gun and saying either "You're gonna die now" or "You're gonna die tonight", at which point Zimmerman drew his gun and fired.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that story has a lot of BS.
Maybe the confrontation happened when ZImmerman was going back to the car, or while he was continuing to follow. But there was probably some sort of escalating discussion before it turned into a fight, Martin certainly gave a good shot to the nose but the marks on the head could just be scuff marks from struggling on the sidewalk. And Martin seeing the other guy has a gun, and responding with "You're gonna die now" or "You're gonna die tonight" is frankly a bit over the top.
Now I don't know what actually happened, and the true story might still be valid self defense, but I'm sure there's some embellishment since Zimmerman's current tale basically has Martin going nuts for no reason while he's a saint. And we know Zimmerman lied, he clearly told Hannity that he never ever heard of stand your ground, while this witness said he taught Zimmerman in a course where stand your ground was a main topic.
Even "confrontation" makes no difference. The only thing that would negate the self-defense plea is if Zimmerman actually physically attacked Martin and then progressed from fighting to shooting.
Even if Martin did start the fight if Zimmerman was winning the fight (and it was Martin who was yelling for Zimmerman to get off of him) wouldn't that also negate the self-defense plea?
It's about respect, imagine you were at a conference, and because some management type decided geeks are too unappealing they hired bodybuilders and male models to stand out in front of the booths. Wouldn't you find that a little insulting, that despite all your knowledge and experience some dude with a six pack is more welcome at a tech conference than you?
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I suspect you're underestimating the role guns play in causing violence. Guns make it easy to kill on a whim, this plays a big role in gang violence either turning a less serious confrontation lethal, or making a deliberate killing quite easy. These deaths then spark revenge killings and add more violence to the system.
Guns play a big part in the gang subculture that makes people very fearful and violent, and I think it's underestimated how this subculture bleeds out across society and causes a lot of additional violence.
Simply replacing a gun with a knife in any given confrontation will probably save a few lives. But creating a society where no-one is afraid of being shot will have a lot less confrontations.
The fact it's working doesn't mean it can't be improved.
The fact that you would even state such abject stupidity means you don't understand the simple, salient point that has long ago been made. You would do well to avail yourself of the reams of tired, boring, and utterly meaningless conversations in the past where I eventually explained the simple point so that a moron like you can stop wasting all our time in the here and now.
If you want "maturity" as defined by some passive aggressive type of niceness that comes when you don't ever say what you are actually thinking, you are in the wrong place. We're here to get something done and you can take your sissy, pandering, liberal business-speak ethos and cram it into some corner that doesn't involve the rest of us who are trying to get something valuable done.
You took 5 lines to insult me in various ways and make a couple points about why impolite speech is more effective.
Frankly I think you would have been more clear if you just insulted my position. You said what you were thinking and you drifted off-topic, so what if I'm a moron, and why do you think I'm not trying to get something valuable done? Neither of those are relevant to the discussion.
Yes I'm polite, but I also think I've very direct, and I don't think I'd be any more clear if I used profanity.
If someone else managed to do his job better than him it would be trivial to do a fork. That this has not happened is a testament that his way doing things works. Simple as that. So what if he is verbally abusive.
The fact Linux is awesome and Linus is an abusive and profane manager doesn't mean the profanity and abuse is necessary to make Linux awesome. It could be it helps cut through the BS and makes things more clear and efficient, it could also be being clear and direct would be just as effective and the profanity actually makes people emotional and irrational.
The fact it's working doesn't mean it can't be improved.
A bit of a beating?! Slamming someone's head into concrete isn't a bit of a beating, it is a serious attack. I don't know if you're familiar with the human brain, but it tends to not like coming to a quick stop due to meeting a hard surface.
I don't blame Zimmerman for panicking, I might have done the same, but his injuries were ultimately superficial. If Martin was simply punching him in the head MMA style (as according to one witness) Zimmerman might feel like he head is being slammed into the concrete but it's not going to cause much beyond a mild concussion. I suspect that was Martin's objective to lay on a bit of a beating, teach Zimmerman a lesson, and listen to his teenage hormones. There's no reason to think he wanted to seriously injure Zimmerman.
he didn't misread -- Zimmerman supposedly weighed 180 the night of the killing (a year ago), and now weighs in excess of 300 pounds.
I don't know what you're looking at if you can see GZ now and think he weighs 180 pounds. Or if you can compare the way he looks in his police interview videos to video of him standing in the courtroom. He's a tub of lard now.
Turns out I misread! I missed that he was arrested in April 2012, and I guess didn't pay attention to recent pictures of him.
I was really surprised that they managed to hold and finish the trial in 3 months though come to think of it 15 months is still fairly quick as trials go.
I thought I read that at his arrest he weighed around 180, but since then he has gained 120lbs. Maybe I misread the article.
But yes, agreed, great motivation to exercise. Hopefully he doesn't choose to exercise by walking around his neighborhood following people!
I'm guessing you did misread, when people in the media spotlight gain 120lbs in 3 months it generally attracts more attention :)
He may indeed have to change his name and relocate, but whatever the reason for his immense weight gain, it may be beneficial for him now.
People will remember the fat dude who was acquitted.
If he slims back down to his previous weight of 180, he looks significantly different and people will most likely not recognize him.
According to wikipedia he's 5'7, I'm guessing he's around 180 right now which for someone 5'7 is generally going to be a bit fat.
That being said he just found a great motivation to diet.
Zimmerman didn't do much wrong, he followed someone who looked/acted kinda suspicious. Maybe didn't do enough to avoid a fight. Then probably panicked while someone was on top of him punching him in the head.
Martin freaked out and got pissed off at a guy who was following him when he hadn't done anything wrong. Then ended up laying a bit of a beating on him.
Martin probably deserved a misdemeanor while Zimmerman a bloody nose and a talking to about avoiding confrontations.
Toss in a gun and you have a dead body and a ruined life.
The disturbing thing is that in a more civilized part of the country, beating somebody that's on the ground would entitle the person on the ground to self defense, not the person that instigated the fight and is now standing over the victim. Which is what witnesses testified to and is the only way that GZ could have used the weapon that he would have been lieing on if pinned.
I'll add this to my list of reasons why I'm not going to be going to the FL ever again. I'm not sure how anybody can think that menacing a kid can turn into legitimate self defense.
I have doubts about Zimmerman's story, both that he was passive as he claimed about escalating the initial confrontation, and the extent to which Martin was actually threatening to killing him (and he didn't just panic).
But the witnesses with the best view all agreed that Martin was on top. The jury came to the correct decision with the available information.
Whether Zimmerman is guilty or not, he'll never have another job. He'll always be "that guy that got away with murder", irrespective of the actual, judiciary merit of that position. There have been many people, for example, accused of rape, and were later proved not just not guilty, but totally and irrefutably innocent of the charges. Their lives were still over all the same.
He might need a name change and a relocation but if he wants to he can regain his anonymity in a few months.
The founding fathers knew this -- that's why they advocated jury trials in the first place. It was an attempt to remove this mob mentality from the judicial process, and as a balance against populism swaying the government and giving in to the transient emotional outbursts of the crowd, the mob, the public. I don't think, if they were alive today in the age of the internet and instant communication, they would still advocate that these trials be open to the public...
I'd say this case was a perfect example of why we need open trials.
In the initial case I frankly do think there was a racial bias. Whether or not innocent was the proper finding I think it's hard to justify the casualness of the initial police response. Media oversight was a good thing here.
As for the trial, a trial open to the public actually protects the accused from being convicted by the media!
The media were talking about Zimmerman long before the trial so closing the trial won't stop him from being convicted by the media. But the only way to stop the media conviction from turning into a courtroom conviction via corruption is to keep the trial open to the media.
The pilot is a single point of failure per plane.
Drones introduce a single point of failure shared by the whole squadron or even a significant portion of the the air force.
You mean they fly drones without redundant links? That would be surprising if true.
You can implement redundancies and safeguards but at the end of the day technology causes things to scale, it means your capabilities get larger but it also means your vulnerabilities get larger with it.
Jamming, losing master encryption keys, there's a lot of big vulnerabilities involved with a drone fleet that can really hurt you against an advanced opponent, it's wise to keep some human pilot backups.
The problem with a drone is you're introducing a single point of failure that you can't fully protect
does anybody else see the irony here? Isn't a pilot a 'single point of failure'?
This is like space exploration. Everybody wants to go, but robots do SUCH a better job of it. Just like they will doing YOUR job in another few years...
The pilot is a single point of failure per plane.
Drones introduce a single point of failure shared by the whole squadron or even a significant portion of the the air force.
Let me ask you this: how does 2 guys or 2 women getting "married" affect you in any way?
It offends me.
How does drilling in ANWAR affect you in any way? How does a woman having or being denied an abortion in Texas affect you in any way? How does taxing rich people affect you in any way?
Drilling has environmental impacts that affect the entire planet.
A woman having/being denied an abortion in Texas affects that woman and the fetus in a profound way.
Taxing rich people affects the economy, taxes for everyone else, and government services.
Two gay people getting married affects those two people, in an overwhelmingly positive way. The fact that it makes you slightly uncomfortable isn't really relevant.
How does it affect you if the government calls your relation a civil union vs a marriage? Can you not have a wedding? Can you not wear a ring and tell everyone you are married? How does it make what you have any different?
The only difference I can see is that a civil union does not make me offended. But that's your whole point isn't it? You want to offend me and all Christians because you hate all Christians. Never mind that Muslims hang gays on the streets, they deserve to be heard and have their religious freedom, we must offend all Christians. And that's exactly why it will be held in a church.
Yes... telling two people their relationship isn't worthy of the title "marriage" shouldn't affect them at all, clearly the only objective is that everyone wants to offend Christians.
Democrats have already blocked a law protecting Chaplains in the US military from refusing to perform same sex marriages. How long do you think it will be before that same-sex couple sues the Catholic Church demanding "equal rights" to have a chapel wedding?
Lemme think... lets try never (well ok, they can sue but they'll lose).
If you're hired by the government to do a job, you need to do that job and you're not allowed to discriminate doing that job.
If you're a priest employed by a church you're protected by the constitution from having to violate your beliefs.
This isn't about equal rights. This is about getting even for perceived wrongs done to you. Tell me again how I am the bigot?
Because you've apparently decided that your offence is more important than them having a relationship with equal status to your own.
I don't believe that you have any gay friends
My mother owns a beauty salon that I worked in from before I was old enough to see over the counter. I know it's cliche to assume that gay me do hair, but it's a cliche for a reason. You have no idea how many gay friends I have. I have kinda grown up around them. I know what they are like, how they feel and what they are all about.
Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize you have gay friends. Obviously anyone with gay friends can't discriminate against gay people because people are incapable of compartmentalizing something like that!
I guess that means kids from the south in the 1800s who grew up around slave kids couldn't be racists either since they would have had some black friends.
And I feel they deserve equal rights under the law. But they do NOT have equal rights under religion. You don't have to like it. You don't have to be in a religion. But since freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Constitution, government has to respect it.
Agreed. So why do we all now have to follow your religion and not call it a marriage?
Or are you saying only Christians are allowed to be married?
By the way, can you tell me marriage is guaranteed in the Constitution? I can't find it anywhere.
I don't believe you have any religious friends. If you did, you wouldn't think they are all bigots.
And
they go fuck themselves since the moon isn't America's
From TFA:
“The government would also have to submit the Apollo 11 lunar landing site to the United Nations for designation as a World Heritage site.”
I'd think they've got a legitimate case for that being accepted. Terminology gets a little interesting though, with "World" referring to the moon as well.
I'm not sure the attempt to be designated as a World Heritage site is an acknowledgement of the fact that the Moon isn't American property, I'm willing to bet that most UN World Heritage sites exist in some country's territory.
I'm looking at this with a very sympathetic eye, but at best this is a naive, but good hearted attempt to establish some precedence for protecting the Apollo landing sites before a serious commercial interest gets involved, an attempt that doesn't realize you can't declare a national park outside of your territory. At worst it's a cynical PR/ego move that doesn't care if it doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to do anything. It's just supposed to get their names in the papers and/or serve as a club with which to bat opposing legislators who oppose it.
I actually wouldn't mind a bill that said nothing but 'lets submit it to the UN as a World Heritage site and come up with some plan for protecting this stuff for when commercial interests eventually find their way up there", but talking about a national park is the wrong way to do it.
His opinion is based on logic and common sense...
The idea that respect for your elders should be given priority even when doing so results in the death of hundreds of people (some of whom may actually be older than you) is utterly ridiculous. It basically amounts to mass murder.
Any cultural expectations which cause unnecessary death and suffering are fundamentally flawed and should be eliminated. People should be smart enough to question things, not just blindly follow what they've been taught ESPECIALLY when doing so is likely to be detrimental or cause death.
This is not racism so much as anti-stupidity.
And if you believe that aspects of culture should be preserved and protected even when they are clearly detrimental, consider that many cultures are or have been extremely racist and have often taught that members of other races or religions are inferior and should be converted, enslaved or wiped out. If you believe that cultural flaws like this should be changed, then surely you must accept that things like blindly respecting your elders without questioning them are also wrong.
I haven't read the chapter but I'm guessing the problem wasn't that pilot was about to plunge the plane into the ground but the co-pilot didn't say anything because it would be disrespectful. It was that the pilot would make a poor decision, one that was defensible but probably increased the risk some minuscule amount, and the co-pilot didn't feel comfortable enough to argue with him so the poor decision stood. The median effect of this is nothing, but over enough flights a few of them are going to crash.
American's aren't immune to this. The cultural belief that Americans are the world's saviours was at least partially responsible for the Iraq war, xenophobia towards other cultures helps fuel Islamic extremism, being overly accepting of other cultures legitimizes some very barbaric cultural practices, and celebrity culture is responsible for anti-vaxx, alternative health nuts, and Snooki.
Culture is a collection of heuristics about how to behave, there's a lot of times where excessive respect for your elders works very well, it turns out that flying airplanes is not one of them.
Drones require a robust communication channel between the control station and the drone.
Most current drones require an RF link. Future drones will likely use unjammable line-of-sight lasers to a relay (either a satellite or another drone). Even if the comm is jammed, they can be programmed to continue their mission. We don't have autonomous drones today for political reasons. But in a high-stakes war against a technologically equivalent adversary, we may be less squeamish.
So get your own laser to hit the receiver, jam the uplink to the satellite or mother drone, have a spy cut the comm cable linking the drone shop to the satellite transmitter, etc.
The problem with a drone is you're introducing a single point of failure that you can't fully protect, either a long communications channel and all the technological infrastructure around that, or an AI with a massive codebase and potentially exploitable bugs or behaviour.
A drone can be a very efficient way to wage warefare, but it's also a method with some potentially massive vulnerabilities that you may not be able to rely on in a significant conflict.
p.s. Even the context where drones are effective, waging war on the cheap, may not be a good one. The US is blowing up a lot of terrorists and bystanders because the drones make it cheap and easy, is that something that's really helping the US's security?
For the past few years in order to commute I've run instead of cycled and my worries about traffic were a definite factor in that decision.
Granted running decreases your range and takes a higher level of fitness, but it's not as hard as you imagine. Plus you don't have to drag a bike around, keep it maintained, and most of all you don't have to share the road with rolling blobs of death.
I've never been in an accident but once when I was in high school I saw some kids riding a quad in the ditch do an unintentional backflip. Even though it was the right thing to do I hesitated half a second before stopping just because I was worried I'd go out and have to deal with something real traumatic. Fortunately I did stop, more fortunately so did an off duty nurse, and most fortunately all the kids were fine.
Anyway I can kind of understand why the drivers keep going, they didn't hurt the person on purpose and pro-actively stopping the vehicle and taking responsibility is a hard thing to do. That being said it's still their responsibility to do that hard thing.
So, you're saying that the MAJORITY is unproductive, and they're STEALING from the PRODUCTIVE MINORITY? What the fuck are you talking about fool? Tell me, how are those "minority" so fucking productive? Signing the articles of incorporation and moving 1's and 0's between two points isn't fucking productive you moron. Who is being productive here are the workers that allow the business to make money. Nowhere is this more evident than in small businesses. I know, I've owned small businesses, starting with next to ZERO dollars, doing all the work myself.
When I was the Majority of my labor, I was most productive. When I hired on some help, I managed contracts and filed taxes, did office work for half the time. I relied on my laborers to do the productive work. That desk work is necessary red-tape, but it's far from fucking productive. Wheeling and dealing clients to get more jobs is necessary, but you're a fucking idiot if you think it's more productive that the people doing the labor to fill those contracts.
When you were an owner/manager I think you could be pretty productive, it's just that your productivity was expressed through the people below you. I've had bad management before and the result was despite doing a lot of work I wasn't really productive because the work was worthless.
When I talk about unproductive rich people I'm not talking about owners or managers from your position. I mean the people like George Bush, I'm not trying to be partisan but his legacy as a businessman was losing a lot of money, he didn't start and run companies because he was good at it, he did it because he had family connections. I think there's a lot of this going on, an upper class that have excellent high level jobs essentially handed to them that they're not really qualified for and where it's kinda hard to evaluate their value.
There's a whole other potion of the economy tied up in investment and financial services that has some productive value in directing capital to good companies that need it, but because they're so good at directing money they'd managed to direct much more of the economy than is required into their own sector. There's a lot of people making a lot of money gaming the system instead of actually helping organize the economy.
That's what I think of when I think of the unproductive rich, not the managers or owners who got their on their own work and talent, but the people who have learned to manipulate the economy to get rich without really adding anything in return.
As to the situation in USA where people are gambling with money rather than investing it into productive capacity, that's the inevitable result of the Keynesian monetary policy, printing money, inflation, but also various other policies with the expressed goal of growing consumption at the expense of production (so any type of government guaranteed loan, where the guarantee comes as an expense on the productive population and the loans that are given out are only given out due to the guarantee and would never be given out in a competitive free market environment, because those loans have no chance of making a meaningful productive return by creating something of any value to the market place).
I don't believe that's Keynesian economics you're describing.
IANAE (I am not an economist) but Keynesians basically believe that recession are a result of a drop in Aggregate Demand (AD), the total amount of spending. Basically because the economy sucks no one has extra money to spend, so no one is employed to make and sell things, so no one has extra money to spend...
So Keynesians say that during a recession when AD from the private sector drops the government should replace all the lost spending from the private sector with new spending from the government. Basically use fiscal policy and ramp up massive deficits during a recession, then when the economy recovers government spending should drop and you pay off the deficits. I think the 2008 recession would be predicted fairly well by Keynesian economics and the period of high spending prior to '08 was very much against Keynesian thinking.
There's another school of economists known as monetarists who agree about a drop in AD causing recessions, but like using monetary policy instead of fiscal policy, basically they print a bunch of new money, inject it into the economy, and hope it stimulates new activity. I think this is what you meant by "Keynesian monetary policy, printing money, inflation".
But in both cases you're talking about things like taxes and government loans that exited long before the recession, so they don't really have anything to do with Keynesians or monetarists.
You sound a bit like the Austrian school of economics, I don't know it that well but I think it basically believes that recessions are the results of government meddling in the economy, they don't really try to fix recessions, but seem to believe recessions wouldn't happen under their system. I think the modern version of this is the Chicago school who are very libertarian but are also monetarists in the case of a recession.
How about this? Stop making stupid Star Wars movies and come up with a new idea.
I don't necessarily agree, Star Wars has a very rich universe which gives a new movie the advantage of ditching some exposition and working in a universe the viewer has an emotional connection with.
Of course that only works if they recapture the vision and adventure of the original trilogy, I think it's possible (particularly if you pull in some of the old cast) but if they can't make it work it's probably better to leave it alone.
He does not lose his right to self-defense because some 911 operator told him to back off. So he followed a guy walking around in the rain in an area that had recent burglaries. So perhaps he 'profiled' him because he wore a hoodie, perhaps because he was black. Perhaps he did a poor job as a neighborhood watchman, he got too zealous in protecting the neighborhood (not as much as some mall cops but whatever). None of this has any baring on the fact that once Martin jumped on him and started bashing his head against the pavement (as all evidence suggest he did) he had the RIGHT to defend himself with lethal force. A legal right, as in under the law in force at the time. Charge him for sucking as a neighborhood watchman, or for following the guy (whatever crime that is) but there is no rational reason to charge him with murder. It is pure mob justice of the worst kind.
Here's what we do know.
Martin was walking home in a way that made Zimmerman suspicious. Zimmerman then started following him and called the police, at the same time Martin called his friend and apparently told her about the guy that was following him.
The next thing we know is there was a fight that Martin was probably winning until Zimmerman drew his gun and shot Martin.
Zimmerman's attempt to fill in the blanks has Zimmerman walking back to his car, Martin coming up from behind, confront him, punching him (breaking his nose), knocking him down and bashing his head against the side walk, seeing the gun and saying either "You're gonna die now" or "You're gonna die tonight", at which point Zimmerman drew his gun and fired.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that story has a lot of BS.
Maybe the confrontation happened when ZImmerman was going back to the car, or while he was continuing to follow. But there was probably some sort of escalating discussion before it turned into a fight, Martin certainly gave a good shot to the nose but the marks on the head could just be scuff marks from struggling on the sidewalk. And Martin seeing the other guy has a gun, and responding with "You're gonna die now" or "You're gonna die tonight" is frankly a bit over the top.
Now I don't know what actually happened, and the true story might still be valid self defense, but I'm sure there's some embellishment since Zimmerman's current tale basically has Martin going nuts for no reason while he's a saint. And we know Zimmerman lied, he clearly told Hannity that he never ever heard of stand your ground, while this witness said he taught Zimmerman in a course where stand your ground was a main topic.
Even "confrontation" makes no difference. The only thing that would negate the self-defense plea is if Zimmerman actually physically attacked Martin and then progressed from fighting to shooting.
Even if Martin did start the fight if Zimmerman was winning the fight (and it was Martin who was yelling for Zimmerman to get off of him) wouldn't that also negate the self-defense plea?
Seriously, the only people who really give two craps about booth babes are a) hypersensitive gender warriors and b) tech writers on a slow news day.
c) Female geeks at tech conferences.
To anyone still wondering why there's so few women in IT I'd like to offer this thread as evidence.
It's about respect, imagine you were at a conference, and because some management type decided geeks are too unappealing they hired bodybuilders and male models to stand out in front of the booths. Wouldn't you find that a little insulting, that despite all your knowledge and experience some dude with a six pack is more welcome at a tech conference than you?